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[ "Skunk Anansie", "Reunion: 2009-2010", "When was the reunion?", "Mark Richardson confirmed reports that the band was reforming in an interview with Drummer Magazine (November 2008 issue),", "Did they produce any albums?", "A \"greatest hits\" album, Smashes and Trashes, was released 2 November 2009." ]
C_4d9d37cea365442bb011ddbddba8f926_0
Did they go on tour?
3
Did Skunk Anansie go on tour?
Skunk Anansie
Mark Richardson confirmed reports that the band was reforming in an interview with Drummer Magazine (November 2008 issue), and said that the band planned to release a "best of" compilation as well as new material. Ace later set up an official page for the band on MySpace. On 2 and 3 April 2009, two shows took place at the Monto Water Rats (the former venue of the Splash Club) in London, under the alias SCAM (Skin, Cass, Ace, Mark) and sold out in 20 minutes. The band began their "Greatest Hits" tour on Friday, 9 October 2009 at the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels, with other dates across Europe. It was their first actual tour in eight years. A "greatest hits" album, Smashes and Trashes, was released 2 November 2009. It is a 15-track career-embracing album and includes three brand new tracks: "Because of You", "Tear the Place Up" and "Squander". A best-of remixes companion album was also released digitally. On 3 July 2009, the music video for "Tear the Place Up" was presented exclusively on MySpace, before on 10 August 2009, a new video for "Because of You" was presented exclusively on Kerrang.com. It was released 14 September 2009 in the UK and was the first single to be released from Smashes and Trashes. The single was a top 10 hit in Italy, before its follow-up "Squander" was a top 75 success in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. Their fifth album Wonderlustre was released internationally on 13 September 2010, preceded by the first single "My Ugly Boy", which was released in the UK on 16 August 2010 and in Europe July/August. The video for "My Ugly Boy" was presented exclusively on Kerrang.com on 23 July 2010. Wonderlustre reached number one on the Italian albums chart on 1 October 2010 and placed in the top 10 in charts all over Europe including in Germany, the Netherlands, France and Poland. In May 2010 they were a supporting act for Rammstein, during two concerts in Berlin. The second single from Wonderlustre, "Over the Love" was released internationally in November 2010. In November 2010 the band played on Idolos, a Portuguese equivalent to the UK's Pop Idol. "You Saved Me", the third single from Wonderlustre was released internationally in March 2011. CANNOTANSWER
The band began their "Greatest Hits" tour on Friday, 9 October 2009
Skunk Anansie are a British rock band whose members include Skin (lead vocals, guitar), Cass (bass, guitar, backing vocals), Ace (guitar, backing vocals) and Mark Richardson (drums and percussion). Skunk Anansie formed in 1994, disbanded in 2001 and reformed in 2009. The name "Skunk Anansie" is taken from Akan folk tales of Anansi the spider-man of Ghana, with "Skunk" added to "make the name nastier". They have released six studio albums: Paranoid & Sunburnt (1995), Stoosh (1996), Post Orgasmic Chill (1999), Wonderlustre (2010), Black Traffic (2012) and Anarchytecture (2016); one compilation album, Smashes and Trashes (2009); and several hit singles, including "Charity", "Hedonism", "Selling Jesus" and "Weak". They are often grouped as part of the Britrock movement, as opposed to the contemporary Britpop of their early years due to their overall harder sound. The band, in 2004, was named as one of the most successful UK chart acts between 1952 and 2003 by the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles & Albums, with a total of 142 weeks on both the singles and album charts ranking them at No. 491. When the book first published this annual top 500 list in 2000, it only involved weeks spent on the singles chart until 2004's 17th edition. History Formation and early career: 1994–2001 The group played its first gig at London's Splash club in March 1994. In 1995 they were voted Best New British Band by the readers of Kerrang! magazine. At the award ceremony that year drummer Mark Richardson met the band who were looking for a permanent replacement for Robbie France, so an audition was set up and the band was reformed. Soon after that, two of their songs, "Feed" and "Selling Jesus", appeared on the soundtrack of the film Strange Days in 1995. "Selling Jesus" became Skunk Anansie's controversial second song to receive radio play, following their first radio release "Little Baby Swastikkka". After hearing this song, radio personality Howard Stern claimed that the band would become a huge hit. Success continued for the band and they were also voted Kerrang!'s Best British Live Act in 1996. In 1997 they were nominated for Best Live Act and Best Group at the MTV Europe Music Awards. The group played its first gig at London's Splash club in March 1994, subsequently taking six weeks to record its debut album, Paranoid & Sunburnt, with producer Sylvia Massy at a "haunted house" outside the city. The band's first single, "Selling Jesus," was featured on the soundtrack of the film Strange Days; Stoosh followed in 1996. Both albums were released by One Little Indian Records. After switching to the Virgin label in 1998, their third album, Post Orgasmic Chill, was released in 1999. In 1996, the band played a set at the Coppid Beech Hotel, Bracknell during a record label event. In 1999, the band were the last band of the 20th Century to headline Glastonbury Festival; closing the Pyramid Stage on Sunday 27 June. Throughout the 1990s, the group toured globally with such bands as U2, Aerosmith, Feeder, Lenny Kravitz, Bad Religion, Rollins Band, Therapy?, Rammstein, Killing Joke, Soulfly, Sevendust, Oomph!, Muse, Staind, Powerman 5000, Veruca Salt, Marion and A Perfect Circle. Side projects: 2002–2008 After their split in 2001, Skin embarked on a solo career. Her debut solo album Fleshwounds, co-written with longtime songwriting partner Len Arran was released in September 2003 and Fake Chemical State was released in March 2006. She has also provided vocals for a number of other acts' songs. Ace released a low-key album, Still Hungry, under the name Ace Sounds, which featured many collaborations including Shingai Shoniwa from Noisettes and Skye from Morcheeba. He later joined a band called "Inner Mantra". Ace is also a tutor at the Brighton Institute of Modern Music In 2002 Cass recorded the album Scars with Gary Moore, and played bass and performed backing vocals. Cass also played various instruments on Skin's first solo album. When not recording he concentrates on photography. Mark recorded sessions for various artists including Skin before joining Feeder after the death of their original drummer, Jon Lee. Mark has also been tutoring at the Brighton Institute with bandmate Ace. Reunion: 2009–2010 Mark Richardson confirmed reports that the band was reforming in an interview with Drummer Magazine (November 2008 issue), and said that the band planned to release a "best of" compilation as well as new material. Ace later set up an official page for the band on MySpace. On 2 and 3 April 2009, two shows took place at the Monto Water Rats (the former venue of the Splash Club) in London, under the alias SCAM (Skin, Cass, Ace, Mark) and sold out in 20 minutes. The band began their "Greatest Hits" tour on Friday, 9 October 2009 at the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels, with other dates across Europe. It was their first actual tour in eight years. A "greatest hits" album, Smashes and Trashes, was released 2 November 2009. It is a 15-track career-embracing album and includes three brand new tracks: "Because of You", "Tear the Place Up" and "Squander". A best-of remixes companion album was also released digitally. On 3 July 2009, the music video for "Tear the Place Up" was presented exclusively on MySpace, before on 10 August 2009, a new video for "Because of You" was presented exclusively on Kerrang.com. It was released 14 September 2009 in the UK and was the first single to be released from Smashes and Trashes. The single was a top 10 hit in Italy, before its follow-up "Squander" was a top 75 success in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. Their fifth album Wonderlustre was released internationally on 13 September 2010, preceded by the first single "My Ugly Boy", which was released in the UK on 16 August 2010 and in Europe July/August. The video for "My Ugly Boy" was presented exclusively on Kerrang.com on 23 July 2010. Wonderlustre reached number one on the Italian albums chart on 1 October 2010 and placed in the top 10 in charts all over Europe including in Germany, the Netherlands, France and Poland. In May 2010 they were a supporting act for Rammstein, during two concerts in Berlin. The second single from Wonderlustre, "Over the Love" was released internationally in November 2010. In November 2010 the band played on Ídolos, a Portuguese equivalent to the UK's Pop Idol. "You Saved Me", the third single from Wonderlustre was released internationally in March 2011. Continuing career: 2011–present On 12 June 2011, the band performed at an open air 'Rock over Volga' at Samara, Russia. The performance was exceptionally well-received. The band also appeared on Friday 12 August at Sziget Festival in Budapest, Hungary playing a mixed set of hits and newer material. This was their first appearance at Sziget. Sziget's own website reporting "nobody had any doubts who the Queen of this year's Sziget turned out to be". Skunk Anansie was on stage when the tragedy occurred at Pukkelpop in Belgium on 18 August 2011. As the band was performing a small tornado hit the venue and artists and revellers alike were sent running for their lives. Five were killed whilst several more were injured. Singer Skin described the incident as the most terrifying of her life. Former drummer Robbie France died on 14 January 2012 in Spain. He was 52. On 11 June 2012, Skunk Anansie revealed the title for their 5th studio album: Black Traffic. The band's follow-up to 2010's critically acclaimed Wonderlustre was recorded in London and produced by Skunk Anansie and Chris Sheldon and mixed by Jeremy Wheatley and Adrian Bushby. Black Traffic became the band's first independent release via their own label working in partnership with 100% Records. The album was released in September 2012 release and was backed by the first leg of an extensive 20 date European Tour. On 29 June 2012, the band released the lyric video for a new track called 'Sad, Sad, Sad'. Nick Bassett praised the track on his site The Re-View: "Thrashing percussion and Skin's vocal - she remains one of the UK's greatest and most underrated female vocalists - are all in check as the band return to the heavy rock sound that first shot them into the mainstream in the mid-nineties." In September 2013, the band released their seventh album, An acoustic Skunk Anansie - Live in London which was recorded live at Cadogan Hall in April of that year. The album was also released as a live DVD and was described by the band as 'a family affair' as it featured Skin's longtime writing partner Len Arran on guitar and Erika Footman, Mark's wife on backing vocals and keyboards. On 15 January 2016, Skunk Anansie released their sixth studio album Anarchytecture, and embarked upon an extensive European tour in February 2016 and throughout Summer 2016. In 2017, Skunk Anansie turned their influence to help young aspiring musicians and launched the first ever Skunk Anansie scholarship in conjunction with The Academy of Contemporary Music. The band pick one successful applicant from either ACM Guildford, ACM London or ACM Birmingham and offer them £27,000 of funding for their degree course. The scholarship was again awarded the following year. In September 2018, the band announced they’d be releasing the very special live album, 25LIVE@25 through Republic of Music in celebration of their forthcoming 25th anniversary. It was released 25 January 2019 and features 25 tracks taken from across their six studio albums, which were captured live from various performances on their 2017 tour. Continuing the 25th anniversary celebrations Skunk Anansie will be touring Europe throughout the summer of 2019, headlining festivals and their own shows, finishing with a string of UK shows Across the UK and European media the importance of the band in today's culture has been given renewed prominence. The UK media have embraced the band once more with Skin appearing in interviews for the likes of Channel 4 News, Newsnight, The One Show, ITN, and Radio 2 discussing current political and social issues. The band have also been hailed as one of the most important rock bands of the modern age rock across a broad spectrum of UK press titles, and were the recipients of the Hall of Fame Award at the 2019 Kerrang! Awards on 19 June 2019. 2019 saw the release of the single "What You Do For Love". The black and white video for the song shows Skunk Anansie in concert. This was followed by the single "This Means War" in 2020. At the beginning of 2022, a new single - "Piggy" - was released. Influences Skin has described Skunk Anansie as a "clit-rock" group, which Allmusic clarifies as "an amalgam of heavy metal and black feminist rage". Members Skin and Ace have mentioned the Sex Pistols, Blondie, dub, reggae, electronica, hip-hop and world music as significant influences. Other media The band also covered The Stooges' song "Search and Destroy" specifically for the soundtrack of Zack Snyder's film Sucker Punch, released on 25 March 2011. The soundtrack also includes a Skunk Anansie remix of the song "Army of Me" by Björk. Band members Deborah "Skin" Dyer – lead vocals, guitar, theremin (1994–2001; 2009–present) Martin "Ace" Kent – guitar, backing vocals (1994–2001; 2009–present) Richard "Cass" Lewis – bass, guitar, backing vocals (1994–2001; 2009–present) Mark Richardson – drums, percussion, backing vocals (1995–2001; 2009–present) Former members Robbie France – drums, percussion (1994–1995; died 2012) Touring members Erika Footman – keyboards Discography Studio albums Paranoid & Sunburnt (1995) Stoosh (1996) Post Orgasmic Chill (1999) Wonderlustre (2010) Black Traffic (2012) Anarchytecture (2016) References External links Review of 'Squander' on the Daily Music Guide Official Website Review of 'Because Of You' on the Daily Music Guide Skinmusic.net - Lead singer's official site containing Skunk Anansie content Lisbon concert review English alternative rock groups English hard rock musical groups British alternative metal musical groups English heavy metal musical groups Musical groups disestablished in 2001 Musical groups established in 1994 Musical groups from London Musical groups reestablished in 2009 One Little Independent Records artists Virgin Records artists Epic Records artists V2 Records artists Musical quartets
true
[ "Andrew Butterfield (born 7 January 1972) is an English professional golfer who plays on the Challenge Tour.\n\nCareer\nButterfield was born in London, England. He turned professional in 1993 and joined the Challenge Tour in 1996. He played on the Challenge Tour until qualifying for the European Tour through Q-School in 1999. Butterfield did not perform well enough on tour in 2000 to retain his card and had to go back to the Challenge Tour in 2001. He got his European Tour card back through Q-School again in 2001 and played on the European Tour in 2002 but did not find any success on tour. He returned to the Challenge Tour and played there until 2005 when he finished 4th on the Challenge Tour's Order of Merit which earned him his European Tour card for 2006. He did not play well enough in 2006 to retain his tour card but was able to get temporary status on tour for 2007 by finishing 129th on the Order of Merit. He played on the European Tour and the Challenge Tour in 2007 and has played only on the Challenge Tour since 2008. He picked up his first win on the Challenge Tour in Sweden at The Princess in June 2009. He also won an event on the PGA EuroPro Tour in 2004.\n\nProfessional wins (2)\n\nChallenge Tour wins (1)\n\nChallenge Tour playoff record (0–1)\n\nPGA EuroPro Tour wins (1)\n2004 Matchroom Golf Management International at Owston Hall\n\nPlayoff record\nEuropean Tour playoff record (0–1)\n\nResults in major championships\n\nNote: Butterfield only played in The Open Championship.\nCUT = missed the half-way cut\n\nSee also\n2005 Challenge Tour graduates\n2009 Challenge Tour graduates\n\nExternal links\n\nEnglish male golfers\nEuropean Tour golfers\nSportspeople from London\nPeople from the London Borough of Bromley\n1972 births\nLiving people", "The Bob Dylan England Tour 1965 was a concert tour by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan during late April and early May 1965. The tour was widely documented by filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker, who used the footage of the tour in his documentary Dont Look Back.\n\nTour dates\n\nSet lists \nAs Dylan was still playing exclusively folk music live, much of the material performed during this tour was written pre-1965. Each show was divided into two halves, with seven songs performed during the first, and eight during the second. The set consisted of two songs from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, three from The Times They Are a-Changin', three from Another Side of Bob Dylan, a comic-relief concert staple; \"If You Gotta Go, Go Now\", issued as a single in Europe, and six songs off his then-recent album, Bringing It All Back Home, including the second side in its entirety.\n\n First half\n\"The Times They Are a-Changin'\"\n\"To Ramona\"\n\"Gates of Eden\"\n\"If You Gotta Go, Go Now (or Else You Got to Stay All Night)\"\n\"It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)\"\n\"Love Minus Zero/No Limit\"\n\"Mr. Tambourine Man\"\n\nSecond Half\n\"Talkin' World War III Blues\"\n\"Don't Think Twice, It's All Right\"\n\"With God on Our Side\"\n\"She Belongs to Me\"\n\"It Ain't Me Babe\"\n\"The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll\"\n\"All I Really Want to Do\"\n\"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue\"\n\nSet list per Olof Bjorner.\n\nAftermath \nJoan Baez accompanied him on the tour, but she was never invited to play with him in concert. In fact, they did not tour together again until 1975. After this tour, Dylan was hailed as a hero of folk music, but two months later, at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, he would alienate his fans and go electric. Dylan was the only artist apart from the Beatles to sell out the De Montfort Hall in the 1960s. Even the Rolling Stones did not sell out this venue.\n\nReferences \n\nHoward Sounes: Down the Highway. The Life of Bob Dylan.. 2001.\n\nExternal links \n Bjorner's Still on the Road 1965: Tour dates & set lists\n\nBob Dylan concert tours\n1965 concert tours\nConcert tours of the United Kingdom\n1965 in England" ]
[ "Skunk Anansie", "Reunion: 2009-2010", "When was the reunion?", "Mark Richardson confirmed reports that the band was reforming in an interview with Drummer Magazine (November 2008 issue),", "Did they produce any albums?", "A \"greatest hits\" album, Smashes and Trashes, was released 2 November 2009.", "Did they go on tour?", "The band began their \"Greatest Hits\" tour on Friday, 9 October 2009" ]
C_4d9d37cea365442bb011ddbddba8f926_0
What did they do in 2010?
4
What did Skunk Anansie do in 2010?
Skunk Anansie
Mark Richardson confirmed reports that the band was reforming in an interview with Drummer Magazine (November 2008 issue), and said that the band planned to release a "best of" compilation as well as new material. Ace later set up an official page for the band on MySpace. On 2 and 3 April 2009, two shows took place at the Monto Water Rats (the former venue of the Splash Club) in London, under the alias SCAM (Skin, Cass, Ace, Mark) and sold out in 20 minutes. The band began their "Greatest Hits" tour on Friday, 9 October 2009 at the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels, with other dates across Europe. It was their first actual tour in eight years. A "greatest hits" album, Smashes and Trashes, was released 2 November 2009. It is a 15-track career-embracing album and includes three brand new tracks: "Because of You", "Tear the Place Up" and "Squander". A best-of remixes companion album was also released digitally. On 3 July 2009, the music video for "Tear the Place Up" was presented exclusively on MySpace, before on 10 August 2009, a new video for "Because of You" was presented exclusively on Kerrang.com. It was released 14 September 2009 in the UK and was the first single to be released from Smashes and Trashes. The single was a top 10 hit in Italy, before its follow-up "Squander" was a top 75 success in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. Their fifth album Wonderlustre was released internationally on 13 September 2010, preceded by the first single "My Ugly Boy", which was released in the UK on 16 August 2010 and in Europe July/August. The video for "My Ugly Boy" was presented exclusively on Kerrang.com on 23 July 2010. Wonderlustre reached number one on the Italian albums chart on 1 October 2010 and placed in the top 10 in charts all over Europe including in Germany, the Netherlands, France and Poland. In May 2010 they were a supporting act for Rammstein, during two concerts in Berlin. The second single from Wonderlustre, "Over the Love" was released internationally in November 2010. In November 2010 the band played on Idolos, a Portuguese equivalent to the UK's Pop Idol. "You Saved Me", the third single from Wonderlustre was released internationally in March 2011. CANNOTANSWER
Their fifth album Wonderlustre was released internationally on 13 September 2010,
Skunk Anansie are a British rock band whose members include Skin (lead vocals, guitar), Cass (bass, guitar, backing vocals), Ace (guitar, backing vocals) and Mark Richardson (drums and percussion). Skunk Anansie formed in 1994, disbanded in 2001 and reformed in 2009. The name "Skunk Anansie" is taken from Akan folk tales of Anansi the spider-man of Ghana, with "Skunk" added to "make the name nastier". They have released six studio albums: Paranoid & Sunburnt (1995), Stoosh (1996), Post Orgasmic Chill (1999), Wonderlustre (2010), Black Traffic (2012) and Anarchytecture (2016); one compilation album, Smashes and Trashes (2009); and several hit singles, including "Charity", "Hedonism", "Selling Jesus" and "Weak". They are often grouped as part of the Britrock movement, as opposed to the contemporary Britpop of their early years due to their overall harder sound. The band, in 2004, was named as one of the most successful UK chart acts between 1952 and 2003 by the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles & Albums, with a total of 142 weeks on both the singles and album charts ranking them at No. 491. When the book first published this annual top 500 list in 2000, it only involved weeks spent on the singles chart until 2004's 17th edition. History Formation and early career: 1994–2001 The group played its first gig at London's Splash club in March 1994. In 1995 they were voted Best New British Band by the readers of Kerrang! magazine. At the award ceremony that year drummer Mark Richardson met the band who were looking for a permanent replacement for Robbie France, so an audition was set up and the band was reformed. Soon after that, two of their songs, "Feed" and "Selling Jesus", appeared on the soundtrack of the film Strange Days in 1995. "Selling Jesus" became Skunk Anansie's controversial second song to receive radio play, following their first radio release "Little Baby Swastikkka". After hearing this song, radio personality Howard Stern claimed that the band would become a huge hit. Success continued for the band and they were also voted Kerrang!'s Best British Live Act in 1996. In 1997 they were nominated for Best Live Act and Best Group at the MTV Europe Music Awards. The group played its first gig at London's Splash club in March 1994, subsequently taking six weeks to record its debut album, Paranoid & Sunburnt, with producer Sylvia Massy at a "haunted house" outside the city. The band's first single, "Selling Jesus," was featured on the soundtrack of the film Strange Days; Stoosh followed in 1996. Both albums were released by One Little Indian Records. After switching to the Virgin label in 1998, their third album, Post Orgasmic Chill, was released in 1999. In 1996, the band played a set at the Coppid Beech Hotel, Bracknell during a record label event. In 1999, the band were the last band of the 20th Century to headline Glastonbury Festival; closing the Pyramid Stage on Sunday 27 June. Throughout the 1990s, the group toured globally with such bands as U2, Aerosmith, Feeder, Lenny Kravitz, Bad Religion, Rollins Band, Therapy?, Rammstein, Killing Joke, Soulfly, Sevendust, Oomph!, Muse, Staind, Powerman 5000, Veruca Salt, Marion and A Perfect Circle. Side projects: 2002–2008 After their split in 2001, Skin embarked on a solo career. Her debut solo album Fleshwounds, co-written with longtime songwriting partner Len Arran was released in September 2003 and Fake Chemical State was released in March 2006. She has also provided vocals for a number of other acts' songs. Ace released a low-key album, Still Hungry, under the name Ace Sounds, which featured many collaborations including Shingai Shoniwa from Noisettes and Skye from Morcheeba. He later joined a band called "Inner Mantra". Ace is also a tutor at the Brighton Institute of Modern Music In 2002 Cass recorded the album Scars with Gary Moore, and played bass and performed backing vocals. Cass also played various instruments on Skin's first solo album. When not recording he concentrates on photography. Mark recorded sessions for various artists including Skin before joining Feeder after the death of their original drummer, Jon Lee. Mark has also been tutoring at the Brighton Institute with bandmate Ace. Reunion: 2009–2010 Mark Richardson confirmed reports that the band was reforming in an interview with Drummer Magazine (November 2008 issue), and said that the band planned to release a "best of" compilation as well as new material. Ace later set up an official page for the band on MySpace. On 2 and 3 April 2009, two shows took place at the Monto Water Rats (the former venue of the Splash Club) in London, under the alias SCAM (Skin, Cass, Ace, Mark) and sold out in 20 minutes. The band began their "Greatest Hits" tour on Friday, 9 October 2009 at the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels, with other dates across Europe. It was their first actual tour in eight years. A "greatest hits" album, Smashes and Trashes, was released 2 November 2009. It is a 15-track career-embracing album and includes three brand new tracks: "Because of You", "Tear the Place Up" and "Squander". A best-of remixes companion album was also released digitally. On 3 July 2009, the music video for "Tear the Place Up" was presented exclusively on MySpace, before on 10 August 2009, a new video for "Because of You" was presented exclusively on Kerrang.com. It was released 14 September 2009 in the UK and was the first single to be released from Smashes and Trashes. The single was a top 10 hit in Italy, before its follow-up "Squander" was a top 75 success in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. Their fifth album Wonderlustre was released internationally on 13 September 2010, preceded by the first single "My Ugly Boy", which was released in the UK on 16 August 2010 and in Europe July/August. The video for "My Ugly Boy" was presented exclusively on Kerrang.com on 23 July 2010. Wonderlustre reached number one on the Italian albums chart on 1 October 2010 and placed in the top 10 in charts all over Europe including in Germany, the Netherlands, France and Poland. In May 2010 they were a supporting act for Rammstein, during two concerts in Berlin. The second single from Wonderlustre, "Over the Love" was released internationally in November 2010. In November 2010 the band played on Ídolos, a Portuguese equivalent to the UK's Pop Idol. "You Saved Me", the third single from Wonderlustre was released internationally in March 2011. Continuing career: 2011–present On 12 June 2011, the band performed at an open air 'Rock over Volga' at Samara, Russia. The performance was exceptionally well-received. The band also appeared on Friday 12 August at Sziget Festival in Budapest, Hungary playing a mixed set of hits and newer material. This was their first appearance at Sziget. Sziget's own website reporting "nobody had any doubts who the Queen of this year's Sziget turned out to be". Skunk Anansie was on stage when the tragedy occurred at Pukkelpop in Belgium on 18 August 2011. As the band was performing a small tornado hit the venue and artists and revellers alike were sent running for their lives. Five were killed whilst several more were injured. Singer Skin described the incident as the most terrifying of her life. Former drummer Robbie France died on 14 January 2012 in Spain. He was 52. On 11 June 2012, Skunk Anansie revealed the title for their 5th studio album: Black Traffic. The band's follow-up to 2010's critically acclaimed Wonderlustre was recorded in London and produced by Skunk Anansie and Chris Sheldon and mixed by Jeremy Wheatley and Adrian Bushby. Black Traffic became the band's first independent release via their own label working in partnership with 100% Records. The album was released in September 2012 release and was backed by the first leg of an extensive 20 date European Tour. On 29 June 2012, the band released the lyric video for a new track called 'Sad, Sad, Sad'. Nick Bassett praised the track on his site The Re-View: "Thrashing percussion and Skin's vocal - she remains one of the UK's greatest and most underrated female vocalists - are all in check as the band return to the heavy rock sound that first shot them into the mainstream in the mid-nineties." In September 2013, the band released their seventh album, An acoustic Skunk Anansie - Live in London which was recorded live at Cadogan Hall in April of that year. The album was also released as a live DVD and was described by the band as 'a family affair' as it featured Skin's longtime writing partner Len Arran on guitar and Erika Footman, Mark's wife on backing vocals and keyboards. On 15 January 2016, Skunk Anansie released their sixth studio album Anarchytecture, and embarked upon an extensive European tour in February 2016 and throughout Summer 2016. In 2017, Skunk Anansie turned their influence to help young aspiring musicians and launched the first ever Skunk Anansie scholarship in conjunction with The Academy of Contemporary Music. The band pick one successful applicant from either ACM Guildford, ACM London or ACM Birmingham and offer them £27,000 of funding for their degree course. The scholarship was again awarded the following year. In September 2018, the band announced they’d be releasing the very special live album, 25LIVE@25 through Republic of Music in celebration of their forthcoming 25th anniversary. It was released 25 January 2019 and features 25 tracks taken from across their six studio albums, which were captured live from various performances on their 2017 tour. Continuing the 25th anniversary celebrations Skunk Anansie will be touring Europe throughout the summer of 2019, headlining festivals and their own shows, finishing with a string of UK shows Across the UK and European media the importance of the band in today's culture has been given renewed prominence. The UK media have embraced the band once more with Skin appearing in interviews for the likes of Channel 4 News, Newsnight, The One Show, ITN, and Radio 2 discussing current political and social issues. The band have also been hailed as one of the most important rock bands of the modern age rock across a broad spectrum of UK press titles, and were the recipients of the Hall of Fame Award at the 2019 Kerrang! Awards on 19 June 2019. 2019 saw the release of the single "What You Do For Love". The black and white video for the song shows Skunk Anansie in concert. This was followed by the single "This Means War" in 2020. At the beginning of 2022, a new single - "Piggy" - was released. Influences Skin has described Skunk Anansie as a "clit-rock" group, which Allmusic clarifies as "an amalgam of heavy metal and black feminist rage". Members Skin and Ace have mentioned the Sex Pistols, Blondie, dub, reggae, electronica, hip-hop and world music as significant influences. Other media The band also covered The Stooges' song "Search and Destroy" specifically for the soundtrack of Zack Snyder's film Sucker Punch, released on 25 March 2011. The soundtrack also includes a Skunk Anansie remix of the song "Army of Me" by Björk. Band members Deborah "Skin" Dyer – lead vocals, guitar, theremin (1994–2001; 2009–present) Martin "Ace" Kent – guitar, backing vocals (1994–2001; 2009–present) Richard "Cass" Lewis – bass, guitar, backing vocals (1994–2001; 2009–present) Mark Richardson – drums, percussion, backing vocals (1995–2001; 2009–present) Former members Robbie France – drums, percussion (1994–1995; died 2012) Touring members Erika Footman – keyboards Discography Studio albums Paranoid & Sunburnt (1995) Stoosh (1996) Post Orgasmic Chill (1999) Wonderlustre (2010) Black Traffic (2012) Anarchytecture (2016) References External links Review of 'Squander' on the Daily Music Guide Official Website Review of 'Because Of You' on the Daily Music Guide Skinmusic.net - Lead singer's official site containing Skunk Anansie content Lisbon concert review English alternative rock groups English hard rock musical groups British alternative metal musical groups English heavy metal musical groups Musical groups disestablished in 2001 Musical groups established in 1994 Musical groups from London Musical groups reestablished in 2009 One Little Independent Records artists Virgin Records artists Epic Records artists V2 Records artists Musical quartets
true
[ "\"What Did I Do to You?\" is a song recorded by British singer Lisa Stansfield for her 1989 album, Affection. It was written by Stansfield, Ian Devaney and Andy Morris, and produced by Devaney and Morris. The song was released as the fourth European single on 30 April 1990. It included three previously unreleased songs written by Stansfield, Devaney and Morris: \"My Apple Heart,\" \"Lay Me Down\" and \"Something's Happenin'.\" \"What Did I Do to You?\" was remixed by Mark Saunders and by the Grammy Award-winning American house music DJ and producer, David Morales. The single became a top forty hit in the European countries reaching number eighteen in Finland, number twenty in Ireland and number twenty-five in the United Kingdom. \"What Did I Do to You?\" was also released in Japan.\n\nIn 2014, the remixes of \"What Did I Do to You?\" were included on the deluxe 2CD + DVD re-release of Affection and on People Hold On ... The Remix Anthology. They were also featured on The Collection 1989–2003 box set (2014), including previously unreleased Red Zone Mix by David Morales.\n\nCritical reception\nThe song received positive reviews from music critics. Matthew Hocter from Albumism viewed it as a \"upbeat offering\". David Giles from Music Week said it is \"beautifully performed\" by Stansfield. A reviewer from Reading Eagle wrote that \"What Did I Do to You?\" \"would be right at home on the \"Saturday Night Fever\" soundtrack.\"\n\nMusic video\nA music video was produced to promote the single, directed by Philip Richardson, who had previously directed the videos for \"All Around the World\" and \"Live Together\". It features Stansfield with her kiss curls, dressed in a white outfit and performing with her band on a stage in front of a jumping audience. The video was later published on Stansfield's official YouTube channel in November 2009. It has amassed more than 1,6 million views as of October 2021.\n\nTrack listings\n\n European/UK 7\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix Edit) – 4:20\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n European/UK/Japanese CD single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix Edit) – 4:20\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 5:19\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 4:17\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n UK 10\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix) – 5:52\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 5:19\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 4:17\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n European/UK 12\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Morales Mix) – 7:59\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 4:22\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 3:19\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:15\n\n UK 12\" promotional single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Morales Mix) – 7:59\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Anti Poll Tax Dub) – 6:31\n\n Other remixes\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Red Zone Mix) – 7:45\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\nLisa Stansfield songs\n1990 singles\nSongs written by Lisa Stansfield\n1989 songs\nArista Records singles\nSongs written by Ian Devaney\nSongs written by Andy Morris (musician)", "\"What Would Steve Do?\" is the second single released by Mumm-Ra on Columbia Records, which was released on February 19, 2007. It is a re-recorded version of the self-release they did in April 2006. It reached #40 in the UK Singles Chart, making it their highest charting single.\n\nTrack listings\nAll songs written by Mumm-Ra.\n\nCD\n\"What Would Steve Do?\"\n\"Cute As\"\n\"Without You\"\n\n7\"\n\"What Would Steve Do?\"\n\"What Would Steve Do? (Floorboard Mix)\"\n\nGatefold 7\"\n\"What Would Steve Do?\"\n\"Cute As\"\n\nReferences\n\n2007 singles\nMumm-Ra (band) songs\n2006 songs\nColumbia Records singles" ]
[ "Skunk Anansie", "Reunion: 2009-2010", "When was the reunion?", "Mark Richardson confirmed reports that the band was reforming in an interview with Drummer Magazine (November 2008 issue),", "Did they produce any albums?", "A \"greatest hits\" album, Smashes and Trashes, was released 2 November 2009.", "Did they go on tour?", "The band began their \"Greatest Hits\" tour on Friday, 9 October 2009", "What did they do in 2010?", "Their fifth album Wonderlustre was released internationally on 13 September 2010," ]
C_4d9d37cea365442bb011ddbddba8f926_0
How well was this album recieved?
5
How well was Wonderlustre recieved?
Skunk Anansie
Mark Richardson confirmed reports that the band was reforming in an interview with Drummer Magazine (November 2008 issue), and said that the band planned to release a "best of" compilation as well as new material. Ace later set up an official page for the band on MySpace. On 2 and 3 April 2009, two shows took place at the Monto Water Rats (the former venue of the Splash Club) in London, under the alias SCAM (Skin, Cass, Ace, Mark) and sold out in 20 minutes. The band began their "Greatest Hits" tour on Friday, 9 October 2009 at the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels, with other dates across Europe. It was their first actual tour in eight years. A "greatest hits" album, Smashes and Trashes, was released 2 November 2009. It is a 15-track career-embracing album and includes three brand new tracks: "Because of You", "Tear the Place Up" and "Squander". A best-of remixes companion album was also released digitally. On 3 July 2009, the music video for "Tear the Place Up" was presented exclusively on MySpace, before on 10 August 2009, a new video for "Because of You" was presented exclusively on Kerrang.com. It was released 14 September 2009 in the UK and was the first single to be released from Smashes and Trashes. The single was a top 10 hit in Italy, before its follow-up "Squander" was a top 75 success in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. Their fifth album Wonderlustre was released internationally on 13 September 2010, preceded by the first single "My Ugly Boy", which was released in the UK on 16 August 2010 and in Europe July/August. The video for "My Ugly Boy" was presented exclusively on Kerrang.com on 23 July 2010. Wonderlustre reached number one on the Italian albums chart on 1 October 2010 and placed in the top 10 in charts all over Europe including in Germany, the Netherlands, France and Poland. In May 2010 they were a supporting act for Rammstein, during two concerts in Berlin. The second single from Wonderlustre, "Over the Love" was released internationally in November 2010. In November 2010 the band played on Idolos, a Portuguese equivalent to the UK's Pop Idol. "You Saved Me", the third single from Wonderlustre was released internationally in March 2011. CANNOTANSWER
Wonderlustre reached number one on the Italian albums chart
Skunk Anansie are a British rock band whose members include Skin (lead vocals, guitar), Cass (bass, guitar, backing vocals), Ace (guitar, backing vocals) and Mark Richardson (drums and percussion). Skunk Anansie formed in 1994, disbanded in 2001 and reformed in 2009. The name "Skunk Anansie" is taken from Akan folk tales of Anansi the spider-man of Ghana, with "Skunk" added to "make the name nastier". They have released six studio albums: Paranoid & Sunburnt (1995), Stoosh (1996), Post Orgasmic Chill (1999), Wonderlustre (2010), Black Traffic (2012) and Anarchytecture (2016); one compilation album, Smashes and Trashes (2009); and several hit singles, including "Charity", "Hedonism", "Selling Jesus" and "Weak". They are often grouped as part of the Britrock movement, as opposed to the contemporary Britpop of their early years due to their overall harder sound. The band, in 2004, was named as one of the most successful UK chart acts between 1952 and 2003 by the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles & Albums, with a total of 142 weeks on both the singles and album charts ranking them at No. 491. When the book first published this annual top 500 list in 2000, it only involved weeks spent on the singles chart until 2004's 17th edition. History Formation and early career: 1994–2001 The group played its first gig at London's Splash club in March 1994. In 1995 they were voted Best New British Band by the readers of Kerrang! magazine. At the award ceremony that year drummer Mark Richardson met the band who were looking for a permanent replacement for Robbie France, so an audition was set up and the band was reformed. Soon after that, two of their songs, "Feed" and "Selling Jesus", appeared on the soundtrack of the film Strange Days in 1995. "Selling Jesus" became Skunk Anansie's controversial second song to receive radio play, following their first radio release "Little Baby Swastikkka". After hearing this song, radio personality Howard Stern claimed that the band would become a huge hit. Success continued for the band and they were also voted Kerrang!'s Best British Live Act in 1996. In 1997 they were nominated for Best Live Act and Best Group at the MTV Europe Music Awards. The group played its first gig at London's Splash club in March 1994, subsequently taking six weeks to record its debut album, Paranoid & Sunburnt, with producer Sylvia Massy at a "haunted house" outside the city. The band's first single, "Selling Jesus," was featured on the soundtrack of the film Strange Days; Stoosh followed in 1996. Both albums were released by One Little Indian Records. After switching to the Virgin label in 1998, their third album, Post Orgasmic Chill, was released in 1999. In 1996, the band played a set at the Coppid Beech Hotel, Bracknell during a record label event. In 1999, the band were the last band of the 20th Century to headline Glastonbury Festival; closing the Pyramid Stage on Sunday 27 June. Throughout the 1990s, the group toured globally with such bands as U2, Aerosmith, Feeder, Lenny Kravitz, Bad Religion, Rollins Band, Therapy?, Rammstein, Killing Joke, Soulfly, Sevendust, Oomph!, Muse, Staind, Powerman 5000, Veruca Salt, Marion and A Perfect Circle. Side projects: 2002–2008 After their split in 2001, Skin embarked on a solo career. Her debut solo album Fleshwounds, co-written with longtime songwriting partner Len Arran was released in September 2003 and Fake Chemical State was released in March 2006. She has also provided vocals for a number of other acts' songs. Ace released a low-key album, Still Hungry, under the name Ace Sounds, which featured many collaborations including Shingai Shoniwa from Noisettes and Skye from Morcheeba. He later joined a band called "Inner Mantra". Ace is also a tutor at the Brighton Institute of Modern Music In 2002 Cass recorded the album Scars with Gary Moore, and played bass and performed backing vocals. Cass also played various instruments on Skin's first solo album. When not recording he concentrates on photography. Mark recorded sessions for various artists including Skin before joining Feeder after the death of their original drummer, Jon Lee. Mark has also been tutoring at the Brighton Institute with bandmate Ace. Reunion: 2009–2010 Mark Richardson confirmed reports that the band was reforming in an interview with Drummer Magazine (November 2008 issue), and said that the band planned to release a "best of" compilation as well as new material. Ace later set up an official page for the band on MySpace. On 2 and 3 April 2009, two shows took place at the Monto Water Rats (the former venue of the Splash Club) in London, under the alias SCAM (Skin, Cass, Ace, Mark) and sold out in 20 minutes. The band began their "Greatest Hits" tour on Friday, 9 October 2009 at the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels, with other dates across Europe. It was their first actual tour in eight years. A "greatest hits" album, Smashes and Trashes, was released 2 November 2009. It is a 15-track career-embracing album and includes three brand new tracks: "Because of You", "Tear the Place Up" and "Squander". A best-of remixes companion album was also released digitally. On 3 July 2009, the music video for "Tear the Place Up" was presented exclusively on MySpace, before on 10 August 2009, a new video for "Because of You" was presented exclusively on Kerrang.com. It was released 14 September 2009 in the UK and was the first single to be released from Smashes and Trashes. The single was a top 10 hit in Italy, before its follow-up "Squander" was a top 75 success in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. Their fifth album Wonderlustre was released internationally on 13 September 2010, preceded by the first single "My Ugly Boy", which was released in the UK on 16 August 2010 and in Europe July/August. The video for "My Ugly Boy" was presented exclusively on Kerrang.com on 23 July 2010. Wonderlustre reached number one on the Italian albums chart on 1 October 2010 and placed in the top 10 in charts all over Europe including in Germany, the Netherlands, France and Poland. In May 2010 they were a supporting act for Rammstein, during two concerts in Berlin. The second single from Wonderlustre, "Over the Love" was released internationally in November 2010. In November 2010 the band played on Ídolos, a Portuguese equivalent to the UK's Pop Idol. "You Saved Me", the third single from Wonderlustre was released internationally in March 2011. Continuing career: 2011–present On 12 June 2011, the band performed at an open air 'Rock over Volga' at Samara, Russia. The performance was exceptionally well-received. The band also appeared on Friday 12 August at Sziget Festival in Budapest, Hungary playing a mixed set of hits and newer material. This was their first appearance at Sziget. Sziget's own website reporting "nobody had any doubts who the Queen of this year's Sziget turned out to be". Skunk Anansie was on stage when the tragedy occurred at Pukkelpop in Belgium on 18 August 2011. As the band was performing a small tornado hit the venue and artists and revellers alike were sent running for their lives. Five were killed whilst several more were injured. Singer Skin described the incident as the most terrifying of her life. Former drummer Robbie France died on 14 January 2012 in Spain. He was 52. On 11 June 2012, Skunk Anansie revealed the title for their 5th studio album: Black Traffic. The band's follow-up to 2010's critically acclaimed Wonderlustre was recorded in London and produced by Skunk Anansie and Chris Sheldon and mixed by Jeremy Wheatley and Adrian Bushby. Black Traffic became the band's first independent release via their own label working in partnership with 100% Records. The album was released in September 2012 release and was backed by the first leg of an extensive 20 date European Tour. On 29 June 2012, the band released the lyric video for a new track called 'Sad, Sad, Sad'. Nick Bassett praised the track on his site The Re-View: "Thrashing percussion and Skin's vocal - she remains one of the UK's greatest and most underrated female vocalists - are all in check as the band return to the heavy rock sound that first shot them into the mainstream in the mid-nineties." In September 2013, the band released their seventh album, An acoustic Skunk Anansie - Live in London which was recorded live at Cadogan Hall in April of that year. The album was also released as a live DVD and was described by the band as 'a family affair' as it featured Skin's longtime writing partner Len Arran on guitar and Erika Footman, Mark's wife on backing vocals and keyboards. On 15 January 2016, Skunk Anansie released their sixth studio album Anarchytecture, and embarked upon an extensive European tour in February 2016 and throughout Summer 2016. In 2017, Skunk Anansie turned their influence to help young aspiring musicians and launched the first ever Skunk Anansie scholarship in conjunction with The Academy of Contemporary Music. The band pick one successful applicant from either ACM Guildford, ACM London or ACM Birmingham and offer them £27,000 of funding for their degree course. The scholarship was again awarded the following year. In September 2018, the band announced they’d be releasing the very special live album, 25LIVE@25 through Republic of Music in celebration of their forthcoming 25th anniversary. It was released 25 January 2019 and features 25 tracks taken from across their six studio albums, which were captured live from various performances on their 2017 tour. Continuing the 25th anniversary celebrations Skunk Anansie will be touring Europe throughout the summer of 2019, headlining festivals and their own shows, finishing with a string of UK shows Across the UK and European media the importance of the band in today's culture has been given renewed prominence. The UK media have embraced the band once more with Skin appearing in interviews for the likes of Channel 4 News, Newsnight, The One Show, ITN, and Radio 2 discussing current political and social issues. The band have also been hailed as one of the most important rock bands of the modern age rock across a broad spectrum of UK press titles, and were the recipients of the Hall of Fame Award at the 2019 Kerrang! Awards on 19 June 2019. 2019 saw the release of the single "What You Do For Love". The black and white video for the song shows Skunk Anansie in concert. This was followed by the single "This Means War" in 2020. At the beginning of 2022, a new single - "Piggy" - was released. Influences Skin has described Skunk Anansie as a "clit-rock" group, which Allmusic clarifies as "an amalgam of heavy metal and black feminist rage". Members Skin and Ace have mentioned the Sex Pistols, Blondie, dub, reggae, electronica, hip-hop and world music as significant influences. Other media The band also covered The Stooges' song "Search and Destroy" specifically for the soundtrack of Zack Snyder's film Sucker Punch, released on 25 March 2011. The soundtrack also includes a Skunk Anansie remix of the song "Army of Me" by Björk. Band members Deborah "Skin" Dyer – lead vocals, guitar, theremin (1994–2001; 2009–present) Martin "Ace" Kent – guitar, backing vocals (1994–2001; 2009–present) Richard "Cass" Lewis – bass, guitar, backing vocals (1994–2001; 2009–present) Mark Richardson – drums, percussion, backing vocals (1995–2001; 2009–present) Former members Robbie France – drums, percussion (1994–1995; died 2012) Touring members Erika Footman – keyboards Discography Studio albums Paranoid & Sunburnt (1995) Stoosh (1996) Post Orgasmic Chill (1999) Wonderlustre (2010) Black Traffic (2012) Anarchytecture (2016) References External links Review of 'Squander' on the Daily Music Guide Official Website Review of 'Because Of You' on the Daily Music Guide Skinmusic.net - Lead singer's official site containing Skunk Anansie content Lisbon concert review English alternative rock groups English hard rock musical groups British alternative metal musical groups English heavy metal musical groups Musical groups disestablished in 2001 Musical groups established in 1994 Musical groups from London Musical groups reestablished in 2009 One Little Independent Records artists Virgin Records artists Epic Records artists V2 Records artists Musical quartets
true
[ "Running to Follow is the debut studio album from the American-Christian praise & worship group Fellowship Creative. This is the band's third album overall, but first with label partners Fair Trade Services. The album released on May 13, 2014, and it was produced by C.J. Eiriksson. It charted on two Billboard charts, and received a four star reviews from New Release Tuesday and a two star review by CCM Magazine.\n\nBackground\nThis album is the follow to the commercially success second independent album by the group entitled, Always Been about You that released in 2013. This album was the band first with new label partners Fair Trade Services, and its production was handled by C.J. Eiriksson. The album released on May 13, 2014.\n\nCritical reception\n\nRunning to Follow received generally positive reception from the ratings and reviews of music critics. At New Release Tuesday, Kevin Davis rated the album four stars out of five, calling this a \"solid gourmet worship album\". Grace S. Aspinwall of CCM Magazine rated the album two stars out of five, indicating how the release \"feels incredibly disjointed.\" At 365 Days of Inspiring Media, Joshua Andre rated the album four stars out of five, stating how this is \"a fantastic label debut.\" David Bunce of CM Addict rated the album a perfect five stars, remarking how \"Not only are the instruments combined to create a high quality sound in every song, but the lyrics are well thought out and beautifully written.\" At Alpha Omega News, Rob Snyder graded the album an A-, writing how \"This is buoyant, well-produced rock/pop worship.\"\n\nCommercial performance\nFor the Billboard charting week of May 31, 2014, Running to Follow was the No. 22 most sold of the Christian Albums, and it was the No. 11 most sold in the breaking-and-entry chart of the Heatseekers Albums.\n\nTrack listing\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n2014 debut albums\nFair Trade Services albums", "How the West Was Won may refer to:\n How the West Was Won (film), a 1962 American Western film\n How the West Was Won (TV series), a 1970s television series loosely based on the film\n How the West Was Won (Bing Crosby album) (1959)\n How the West Was Won (Led Zeppelin album) (2003)\n How the West Was Won (Peter Perrett album) (2017)\n How the West Was Won, a 2002 album by Luni Coleone\n \"How the West Was Won\", a 1987 song by Laibach from Opus Dei\n \"How the West Was Won\", a 1996 song by the Romo band Plastic Fantastic\n\nSee also\n How the West Was Fun, a 1994 TV movie starring Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen\n How the West Was One (disambiguation)\n \"How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us\", a 1997 song by R.E.M." ]
[ "Skunk Anansie", "Reunion: 2009-2010", "When was the reunion?", "Mark Richardson confirmed reports that the band was reforming in an interview with Drummer Magazine (November 2008 issue),", "Did they produce any albums?", "A \"greatest hits\" album, Smashes and Trashes, was released 2 November 2009.", "Did they go on tour?", "The band began their \"Greatest Hits\" tour on Friday, 9 October 2009", "What did they do in 2010?", "Their fifth album Wonderlustre was released internationally on 13 September 2010,", "How well was this album recieved?", "Wonderlustre reached number one on the Italian albums chart" ]
C_4d9d37cea365442bb011ddbddba8f926_0
What songs were on this album?
6
What songs were on Wonderlustre?
Skunk Anansie
Mark Richardson confirmed reports that the band was reforming in an interview with Drummer Magazine (November 2008 issue), and said that the band planned to release a "best of" compilation as well as new material. Ace later set up an official page for the band on MySpace. On 2 and 3 April 2009, two shows took place at the Monto Water Rats (the former venue of the Splash Club) in London, under the alias SCAM (Skin, Cass, Ace, Mark) and sold out in 20 minutes. The band began their "Greatest Hits" tour on Friday, 9 October 2009 at the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels, with other dates across Europe. It was their first actual tour in eight years. A "greatest hits" album, Smashes and Trashes, was released 2 November 2009. It is a 15-track career-embracing album and includes three brand new tracks: "Because of You", "Tear the Place Up" and "Squander". A best-of remixes companion album was also released digitally. On 3 July 2009, the music video for "Tear the Place Up" was presented exclusively on MySpace, before on 10 August 2009, a new video for "Because of You" was presented exclusively on Kerrang.com. It was released 14 September 2009 in the UK and was the first single to be released from Smashes and Trashes. The single was a top 10 hit in Italy, before its follow-up "Squander" was a top 75 success in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. Their fifth album Wonderlustre was released internationally on 13 September 2010, preceded by the first single "My Ugly Boy", which was released in the UK on 16 August 2010 and in Europe July/August. The video for "My Ugly Boy" was presented exclusively on Kerrang.com on 23 July 2010. Wonderlustre reached number one on the Italian albums chart on 1 October 2010 and placed in the top 10 in charts all over Europe including in Germany, the Netherlands, France and Poland. In May 2010 they were a supporting act for Rammstein, during two concerts in Berlin. The second single from Wonderlustre, "Over the Love" was released internationally in November 2010. In November 2010 the band played on Idolos, a Portuguese equivalent to the UK's Pop Idol. "You Saved Me", the third single from Wonderlustre was released internationally in March 2011. CANNOTANSWER
first single "My Ugly Boy
Skunk Anansie are a British rock band whose members include Skin (lead vocals, guitar), Cass (bass, guitar, backing vocals), Ace (guitar, backing vocals) and Mark Richardson (drums and percussion). Skunk Anansie formed in 1994, disbanded in 2001 and reformed in 2009. The name "Skunk Anansie" is taken from Akan folk tales of Anansi the spider-man of Ghana, with "Skunk" added to "make the name nastier". They have released six studio albums: Paranoid & Sunburnt (1995), Stoosh (1996), Post Orgasmic Chill (1999), Wonderlustre (2010), Black Traffic (2012) and Anarchytecture (2016); one compilation album, Smashes and Trashes (2009); and several hit singles, including "Charity", "Hedonism", "Selling Jesus" and "Weak". They are often grouped as part of the Britrock movement, as opposed to the contemporary Britpop of their early years due to their overall harder sound. The band, in 2004, was named as one of the most successful UK chart acts between 1952 and 2003 by the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles & Albums, with a total of 142 weeks on both the singles and album charts ranking them at No. 491. When the book first published this annual top 500 list in 2000, it only involved weeks spent on the singles chart until 2004's 17th edition. History Formation and early career: 1994–2001 The group played its first gig at London's Splash club in March 1994. In 1995 they were voted Best New British Band by the readers of Kerrang! magazine. At the award ceremony that year drummer Mark Richardson met the band who were looking for a permanent replacement for Robbie France, so an audition was set up and the band was reformed. Soon after that, two of their songs, "Feed" and "Selling Jesus", appeared on the soundtrack of the film Strange Days in 1995. "Selling Jesus" became Skunk Anansie's controversial second song to receive radio play, following their first radio release "Little Baby Swastikkka". After hearing this song, radio personality Howard Stern claimed that the band would become a huge hit. Success continued for the band and they were also voted Kerrang!'s Best British Live Act in 1996. In 1997 they were nominated for Best Live Act and Best Group at the MTV Europe Music Awards. The group played its first gig at London's Splash club in March 1994, subsequently taking six weeks to record its debut album, Paranoid & Sunburnt, with producer Sylvia Massy at a "haunted house" outside the city. The band's first single, "Selling Jesus," was featured on the soundtrack of the film Strange Days; Stoosh followed in 1996. Both albums were released by One Little Indian Records. After switching to the Virgin label in 1998, their third album, Post Orgasmic Chill, was released in 1999. In 1996, the band played a set at the Coppid Beech Hotel, Bracknell during a record label event. In 1999, the band were the last band of the 20th Century to headline Glastonbury Festival; closing the Pyramid Stage on Sunday 27 June. Throughout the 1990s, the group toured globally with such bands as U2, Aerosmith, Feeder, Lenny Kravitz, Bad Religion, Rollins Band, Therapy?, Rammstein, Killing Joke, Soulfly, Sevendust, Oomph!, Muse, Staind, Powerman 5000, Veruca Salt, Marion and A Perfect Circle. Side projects: 2002–2008 After their split in 2001, Skin embarked on a solo career. Her debut solo album Fleshwounds, co-written with longtime songwriting partner Len Arran was released in September 2003 and Fake Chemical State was released in March 2006. She has also provided vocals for a number of other acts' songs. Ace released a low-key album, Still Hungry, under the name Ace Sounds, which featured many collaborations including Shingai Shoniwa from Noisettes and Skye from Morcheeba. He later joined a band called "Inner Mantra". Ace is also a tutor at the Brighton Institute of Modern Music In 2002 Cass recorded the album Scars with Gary Moore, and played bass and performed backing vocals. Cass also played various instruments on Skin's first solo album. When not recording he concentrates on photography. Mark recorded sessions for various artists including Skin before joining Feeder after the death of their original drummer, Jon Lee. Mark has also been tutoring at the Brighton Institute with bandmate Ace. Reunion: 2009–2010 Mark Richardson confirmed reports that the band was reforming in an interview with Drummer Magazine (November 2008 issue), and said that the band planned to release a "best of" compilation as well as new material. Ace later set up an official page for the band on MySpace. On 2 and 3 April 2009, two shows took place at the Monto Water Rats (the former venue of the Splash Club) in London, under the alias SCAM (Skin, Cass, Ace, Mark) and sold out in 20 minutes. The band began their "Greatest Hits" tour on Friday, 9 October 2009 at the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels, with other dates across Europe. It was their first actual tour in eight years. A "greatest hits" album, Smashes and Trashes, was released 2 November 2009. It is a 15-track career-embracing album and includes three brand new tracks: "Because of You", "Tear the Place Up" and "Squander". A best-of remixes companion album was also released digitally. On 3 July 2009, the music video for "Tear the Place Up" was presented exclusively on MySpace, before on 10 August 2009, a new video for "Because of You" was presented exclusively on Kerrang.com. It was released 14 September 2009 in the UK and was the first single to be released from Smashes and Trashes. The single was a top 10 hit in Italy, before its follow-up "Squander" was a top 75 success in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. Their fifth album Wonderlustre was released internationally on 13 September 2010, preceded by the first single "My Ugly Boy", which was released in the UK on 16 August 2010 and in Europe July/August. The video for "My Ugly Boy" was presented exclusively on Kerrang.com on 23 July 2010. Wonderlustre reached number one on the Italian albums chart on 1 October 2010 and placed in the top 10 in charts all over Europe including in Germany, the Netherlands, France and Poland. In May 2010 they were a supporting act for Rammstein, during two concerts in Berlin. The second single from Wonderlustre, "Over the Love" was released internationally in November 2010. In November 2010 the band played on Ídolos, a Portuguese equivalent to the UK's Pop Idol. "You Saved Me", the third single from Wonderlustre was released internationally in March 2011. Continuing career: 2011–present On 12 June 2011, the band performed at an open air 'Rock over Volga' at Samara, Russia. The performance was exceptionally well-received. The band also appeared on Friday 12 August at Sziget Festival in Budapest, Hungary playing a mixed set of hits and newer material. This was their first appearance at Sziget. Sziget's own website reporting "nobody had any doubts who the Queen of this year's Sziget turned out to be". Skunk Anansie was on stage when the tragedy occurred at Pukkelpop in Belgium on 18 August 2011. As the band was performing a small tornado hit the venue and artists and revellers alike were sent running for their lives. Five were killed whilst several more were injured. Singer Skin described the incident as the most terrifying of her life. Former drummer Robbie France died on 14 January 2012 in Spain. He was 52. On 11 June 2012, Skunk Anansie revealed the title for their 5th studio album: Black Traffic. The band's follow-up to 2010's critically acclaimed Wonderlustre was recorded in London and produced by Skunk Anansie and Chris Sheldon and mixed by Jeremy Wheatley and Adrian Bushby. Black Traffic became the band's first independent release via their own label working in partnership with 100% Records. The album was released in September 2012 release and was backed by the first leg of an extensive 20 date European Tour. On 29 June 2012, the band released the lyric video for a new track called 'Sad, Sad, Sad'. Nick Bassett praised the track on his site The Re-View: "Thrashing percussion and Skin's vocal - she remains one of the UK's greatest and most underrated female vocalists - are all in check as the band return to the heavy rock sound that first shot them into the mainstream in the mid-nineties." In September 2013, the band released their seventh album, An acoustic Skunk Anansie - Live in London which was recorded live at Cadogan Hall in April of that year. The album was also released as a live DVD and was described by the band as 'a family affair' as it featured Skin's longtime writing partner Len Arran on guitar and Erika Footman, Mark's wife on backing vocals and keyboards. On 15 January 2016, Skunk Anansie released their sixth studio album Anarchytecture, and embarked upon an extensive European tour in February 2016 and throughout Summer 2016. In 2017, Skunk Anansie turned their influence to help young aspiring musicians and launched the first ever Skunk Anansie scholarship in conjunction with The Academy of Contemporary Music. The band pick one successful applicant from either ACM Guildford, ACM London or ACM Birmingham and offer them £27,000 of funding for their degree course. The scholarship was again awarded the following year. In September 2018, the band announced they’d be releasing the very special live album, 25LIVE@25 through Republic of Music in celebration of their forthcoming 25th anniversary. It was released 25 January 2019 and features 25 tracks taken from across their six studio albums, which were captured live from various performances on their 2017 tour. Continuing the 25th anniversary celebrations Skunk Anansie will be touring Europe throughout the summer of 2019, headlining festivals and their own shows, finishing with a string of UK shows Across the UK and European media the importance of the band in today's culture has been given renewed prominence. The UK media have embraced the band once more with Skin appearing in interviews for the likes of Channel 4 News, Newsnight, The One Show, ITN, and Radio 2 discussing current political and social issues. The band have also been hailed as one of the most important rock bands of the modern age rock across a broad spectrum of UK press titles, and were the recipients of the Hall of Fame Award at the 2019 Kerrang! Awards on 19 June 2019. 2019 saw the release of the single "What You Do For Love". The black and white video for the song shows Skunk Anansie in concert. This was followed by the single "This Means War" in 2020. At the beginning of 2022, a new single - "Piggy" - was released. Influences Skin has described Skunk Anansie as a "clit-rock" group, which Allmusic clarifies as "an amalgam of heavy metal and black feminist rage". Members Skin and Ace have mentioned the Sex Pistols, Blondie, dub, reggae, electronica, hip-hop and world music as significant influences. Other media The band also covered The Stooges' song "Search and Destroy" specifically for the soundtrack of Zack Snyder's film Sucker Punch, released on 25 March 2011. The soundtrack also includes a Skunk Anansie remix of the song "Army of Me" by Björk. Band members Deborah "Skin" Dyer – lead vocals, guitar, theremin (1994–2001; 2009–present) Martin "Ace" Kent – guitar, backing vocals (1994–2001; 2009–present) Richard "Cass" Lewis – bass, guitar, backing vocals (1994–2001; 2009–present) Mark Richardson – drums, percussion, backing vocals (1995–2001; 2009–present) Former members Robbie France – drums, percussion (1994–1995; died 2012) Touring members Erika Footman – keyboards Discography Studio albums Paranoid & Sunburnt (1995) Stoosh (1996) Post Orgasmic Chill (1999) Wonderlustre (2010) Black Traffic (2012) Anarchytecture (2016) References External links Review of 'Squander' on the Daily Music Guide Official Website Review of 'Because Of You' on the Daily Music Guide Skinmusic.net - Lead singer's official site containing Skunk Anansie content Lisbon concert review English alternative rock groups English hard rock musical groups British alternative metal musical groups English heavy metal musical groups Musical groups disestablished in 2001 Musical groups established in 1994 Musical groups from London Musical groups reestablished in 2009 One Little Independent Records artists Virgin Records artists Epic Records artists V2 Records artists Musical quartets
true
[ "Followers is an album by the American contemporary Christian music (CCM) band Tenth Avenue North. It was released by Provident Label Group, a division of Sony Music Entertainment, under its Reunion Records label, on October 14, 2016. The album reached No. 5 on the Billboard Christian Albums chart, and No. 151 on the Billboard 200. Three singles from the album were released: \"What You Want\" in 2016, and \"I Have This Hope\" and \"Control (Somehow You Want Me)\" in 2017, all of which appeared on the Billboard Hot Christian Songs chart.\n\nRelease and performance \n\nFollowers was released on October 14, 2016, by Provident Label Group LLC, a division of Sony Music Entertainment. It first charted on both the US Billboard Christian Albums and Billboard 200 on the week of November 5, 2016, peaking that week on both charts at No. 5 and No. 151, respectively.\n\nThree singles were released from the album. The first, \"What You Want\", was released five months in advance of the album on May 13, 2016, and charted on the Billboard Hot Christian Songs list, peaking at No. 17 on September 3, 2016. The other two were released in 2017 after the album, and reached the top 10 on Hot Christian Songs: \"I Have This Hope\" peaked at No. 5 on June 10, 2017, and \"Control (Somehow You Want Me)\" peaked at No. 7 on January 13, 2018.\n\nReception \n\nCCM Magazine gave the album 4 out of 5 stars, and cited its \"killer vocal work on honest, relatable lyrics paired with ... strong songwriting.\"\n\nChristian review website JesusFreakHideout rated the album 3.5 out of 5 stars. The review said the album was \"pretty much what you would expect from a CCM release\" and wrote that \"What You Want\" was \"the most energetic song on the album\". It singled out the opening track as \"excellent\" and the closing track as \"powerful\", and characterized the remaining songs as \"eight solid but otherwise ordinary tracks.\"\n\nTrack listing\n\"Afraid\" (3:48)\n\"What You Want\" (3:37)\n\"Overflow\" (3:40)\n\"I Have This Hope\" (3:24)\n\"One Thing\" (3:28)\n\"Sparrow (Under Heaven's Eyes)\" (3:59)\n\"No One Can Steal Our Joy\" (3:40)\n\"Control (Somehow You Want Me)\" (4:08)\n\"Fighting for You\" (3:22)\n\"I Confess\" (5:15)\n\nChart performance\n\nReferences\n\n2016 albums\nTenth Avenue North albums", "\"What's Forever For\" is a song written by Rafe Van Hoy and first recorded by England Dan & John Ford Coley on their 1979 album Dr. Heckle and Mr. Jive.\n\nThe song saw its biggest success when it was recorded by American country music artist Michael Martin Murphey. It was released in June 1982 as the second single from his album, Michael Martin Murphey. \"What's Forever For\" was Murphey's first of two number ones on the country chart. The single went to number one for one week and spent 16 weeks in the country top 40. On the Hot 100, \"What's Forever For\" was his final Top 40 hit, peaking at number 19. The song is also one of his most well known in the Philippines, along with \"Maybe This Time\".\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nCover versions\nAnne Murray on her 1980 album Somebody's Waiting, released by Capitol Records. \"What's Forever For\" was also included as the B-side of her Beatles cover hit, \"I'm Happy Just to Dance with You\".\nT. G. Sheppard on his 1981 album I Love 'Em All, released by Warner Bros. Records.\nDaryl Somers on his 1982 single.\nJohnny Mathis on his 1982 album Friends in Love, released on Columbia Records.\nBilly Gilman on his 2000 album One Voice, released by Epic Records.\nFilipino acoustic singer Nyoy Volante covered the song on his 2008 album, Heartstrings.\nJeff Trachta and Bobbie Eakes, on the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful.\nTonny Willé and Marco Bakker.\nJohn Conlee on the album With Love in 1981 on MCA.\nB.J. Thomas on his 2000 album You Call That a Mountain.\n\nReferences\n\n1982 singles\nEngland Dan & John Ford Coley songs\nAnne Murray songs\nJohn Conlee songs\nT. G. Sheppard songs\nMichael Martin Murphey songs\nBilly Gilman songs\nB. J. Thomas songs\nSong recordings produced by Jim Ed Norman\nLiberty Records singles\nSongs written by Rafe Van Hoy\n1979 songs" ]
[ "Mary Shelley", "Lake Geneva and Frankenstein" ]
C_fcd11261399c4441ac5c013381bf1e1d_1
When did Mary Shelley write Frankenstein?
1
When did Mary Shelley write Frankenstein?
Mary Shelley
In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. The party arrived at Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted, "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. CANNOTANSWER
Mary Shelley remembered in 1831,
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and feminist activist Mary Wollstonecraft. Shelley's mother died less than a month after giving birth to her. She was raised by her father, who provided her with a rich if informal education, encouraging her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories. When she was four, her father married a neighbour, Mary Jane Clairmont, with whom Shelley came to have a troubled relationship. In 1814, Shelley began a romance with one of her father's political followers, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. Together with her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, she and Percy left for France and travelled through Europe. Upon their return to England, Shelley was pregnant with Percy's child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet. In 1816, the couple and Mary's stepsister famously spent a summer with Lord Byron and John William Polidori near Geneva, Switzerland, where Shelley conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, most likely caused by the brain tumour which killed her at age 53. Until the 1970s, Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish her husband's works and for her novel Frankenstein, which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Shelley's achievements. Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826) and her final two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). Studies of her lesser-known works, such as the travel book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–1846), support the growing view that Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life. Shelley's works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practised by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin. Life and career Early life Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, in 1797. She was the second child of the feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the first child of the philosopher, novelist, and journalist William Godwin. Wollstonecraft died of puerperal fever shortly after Mary was born. Godwin was left to bring up Mary, along with her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, Wollstonecraft's child by the American speculator Gilbert Imlay. A year after Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798), which he intended as a sincere and compassionate tribute. However, because the Memoirs revealed Wollstonecraft's affairs and her illegitimate child, they were seen as shocking. Mary Godwin read these memoirs and her mother's books, and was brought up to cherish her mother's memory. Mary's earliest years were happy, judging from the letters of William Godwin's housekeeper and nurse, Louisa Jones. But Godwin was often deeply in debt; feeling that he could not raise the children by himself, he cast about for a second wife. In December 1801, he married Mary Jane Clairmont, a well-educated woman with two young children of her own—Charles and Claire. Most of Godwin's friends disliked his new wife, describing her as quick-tempered and quarrelsome; but Godwin was devoted to her, and the marriage was a success. Mary Godwin, on the other hand, came to detest her stepmother. William Godwin's 19th-century biographer Charles Kegan Paul later suggested that Mrs Godwin had favoured her own children over those of Mary Wollstonecraft. Together, the Godwins started a publishing firm called M. J. Godwin, which sold children's books as well as stationery, maps, and games. However, the business did not turn a profit, and Godwin was forced to borrow substantial sums to keep it going. He continued to borrow to pay off earlier loans, compounding his problems. By 1809, Godwin's business was close to failure, and he was "near to despair". Godwin was saved from debtor's prison by philosophical devotees such as Francis Place, who lent him further money. Though Mary Godwin received little formal education, her father tutored her in a broad range of subjects. He often took the children on educational outings, and they had access to his library and to the many intellectuals who visited him, including the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the former vice-president of the United States Aaron Burr. Godwin admitted he was not educating the children according to Mary Wollstonecraft's philosophy as outlined in works such as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), but Mary Godwin nonetheless received an unusual and advanced education for a girl of the time. She had a governess, a daily tutor, and read many of her father's children's books on Roman and Greek history in manuscript. For six months in 1811, she also attended a boarding school in Ramsgate. Her father described her at age 15 as "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible." In June 1812, Mary's father sent her to stay with the dissenting family of the radical William Baxter, near Dundee, Scotland. To Baxter, he wrote, "I am anxious that she should be brought up ... like a philosopher, even like a cynic." Scholars have speculated that she may have been sent away for her health, to remove her from the seamy side of the business, or to introduce her to radical politics. Mary Godwin revelled in the spacious surroundings of Baxter's house and in the companionship of his four daughters, and she returned north in the summer of 1813 for a further stay of 10 months. In the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein, she recalled: "I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered." Percy Bysshe Shelley Mary Godwin may have first met the radical poet-philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley in the interval between her two stays in Scotland. By the time she returned home for a second time on 30 March 1814, Percy Shelley had become estranged from his wife and was regularly visiting William Godwin, whom he had agreed to bail out of debt. Percy Shelley's radicalism, particularly his economic views, which he had imbibed from William Godwin's Political Justice (1793), had alienated him from his wealthy aristocratic family: they wanted him to follow traditional models of the landed aristocracy, and he wanted to donate large amounts of the family's money to schemes intended to help the disadvantaged. Percy Shelley, therefore, had difficulty gaining access to money until he inherited his estate because his family did not want him wasting it on projects of "political justice". After several months of promises, Shelley announced that he either could not or would not pay off all of Godwin's debts. Godwin was angry and felt betrayed. Mary and Percy began meeting each other secretly at her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's grave in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, and they fell in love—she was 16, and he was 21. On 26 June 1814, Shelley and Godwin declared their love for one another as Shelley announced he could not hide his "ardent passion", leading her in a "sublime and rapturous moment" to say she felt the same way; on either that day or the next, Godwin lost her virginity to Shelley, which tradition claims happened in the churchyard. Godwin described herself as attracted to Shelley's "wild, intellectual, unearthly looks". To Mary's dismay, her father disapproved, and tried to thwart the relationship and salvage the "spotless fame" of his daughter. At about the same time, Mary's father learned of Shelley's inability to pay off the father's debts. Mary, who later wrote of "my excessive and romantic attachment to my father", was confused. She saw Percy Shelley as an embodiment of her parents' liberal and reformist ideas of the 1790s, particularly Godwin's view that marriage was a repressive monopoly, which he had argued in his 1793 edition of Political Justice but later retracted. On 28 July 1814, the couple eloped and secretly left for France, taking Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with them. After convincing Mary Jane Godwin, who had pursued them to Calais, that they did not wish to return, the trio travelled to Paris, and then, by donkey, mule, carriage, and foot, through a France recently ravaged by war, to Switzerland. "It was acting in a novel, being an incarnate romance," Mary Shelley recalled in 1826. Godwin wrote about France in 1814: "The distress of the inhabitants, whose houses had been burned, their cattle killed and all their wealth destroyed, has given a sting to my detestation of war...". As they travelled, Mary and Percy read works by Mary Wollstonecraft and others, kept a joint journal, and continued their own writing. At Lucerne, lack of money forced the three to turn back. They travelled down the Rhine and by land to the Dutch port of Maassluis, arriving at Gravesend, Kent, on 13 September 1814. The situation awaiting Mary Godwin in England was fraught with complications, some of which she had not foreseen. Either before or during the journey, she had become pregnant. She and Percy now found themselves penniless, and, to Mary's genuine surprise, her father refused to have anything to do with her. The couple moved with Claire into lodgings at Somers Town, and later, Nelson Square. They maintained their intense programme of reading and writing, and entertained Percy Shelley's friends, such as Thomas Jefferson Hogg and the writer Thomas Love Peacock. Percy Shelley sometimes left home for short periods to dodge creditors. The couple's distraught letters reveal their pain at these separations. Pregnant and often ill, Mary Godwin had to cope with Percy's joy at the birth of his son by Harriet Shelley in late 1814 and his constant outings with Claire Clairmont. Shelley and Clairmont were almost certainly lovers, which caused much jealousy on Godwin's part. Shelley greatly offended Godwin at one point when during a walk in the French countryside he suggested that they both take the plunge into a stream naked as it offended her principles. She was partly consoled by the visits of Hogg, whom she disliked at first but soon considered a close friend. Percy Shelley seems to have wanted Mary Godwin and Hogg to become lovers; Mary did not dismiss the idea, since in principle she believed in free love. In practice, however, she loved only Percy Shelley and seems to have ventured no further than flirting with Hogg. On 22 February 1815, she gave birth to a two-month premature baby girl, who was not expected to survive. On 6 March, she wrote to Hogg: My dearest Hogg my baby is dead—will you come to see me as soon as you can. I wish to see you—It was perfectly well when I went to bed—I awoke in the night to give it suck it appeared to be sleeping so quietly that I would not awake it. It was dead then, but we did not find that out till morning—from its appearance it evidently died of convulsions—Will you come—you are so calm a creature & Shelley is afraid of a fever from the milk—for I am no longer a mother now. The loss of her child induced acute depression in Mary Godwin, who was haunted by visions of the baby; but she conceived again and had recovered by the summer. With a revival in Percy Shelley's finances after the death of his grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, the couple holidayed in Torquay and then rented a two-storey cottage at Bishopsgate, on the edge of Windsor Great Park. Little is known about this period in Mary Godwin's life, since her journal from May 1815 to July 1816 is lost. At Bishopsgate, Percy wrote his poem Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude; and on 24 January 1816, Mary gave birth to a second child, William, named after her father, and soon nicknamed "Willmouse". In her novel The Last Man, she later imagined Windsor as a Garden of Eden. Lake Geneva and Frankenstein In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. In History of a Six Weeks’ Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland (1817), she describes the particularly desolate landscape in crossing from France into Switzerland. The party arrived in Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted; "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. Authorship of Frankenstein While her husband Percy encouraged her writing, the extent of Percy's contribution to the novel is unknown and has been argued over by readers and critics. Mary Shelley wrote, "I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement, it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world." She wrote that the preface to the first edition was Percy's work "as far as I can recollect." There are differences in the 1818, 1823 and 1831 editions, which have been attributed to Percy's editing. James Rieger concluded Percy's "assistance at every point in the book's manufacture was so extensive that one hardly knows whether to regard him as editor or minor collaborator", while Anne K. Mellor later argued Percy only "made many technical corrections and several times clarified the narrative and thematic continuity of the text." Charles E. Robinson, editor of a facsimile edition of the Frankenstein manuscripts, concluded that Percy's contributions to the book "were no more than what most publishers' editors have provided new (or old) authors or, in fact, what colleagues have provided to each other after reading each other's works in progress." Writing on the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein, literary scholar and poet Fiona Sampson asked, "Why hasn't Mary Shelley gotten the respect she deserves?" She noted that "In recent years Percy's corrections, visible in the Frankenstein notebooks held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, have been seized on as evidence that he must have at least co-authored the novel. In fact, when I examined the notebooks myself, I realized that Percy did rather less than any line editor working in publishing today." Sampson published her findings in In Search of Mary Shelley (2018), one of many biographies written about Shelley. Bath and Marlow On their return to England in September, Mary and Percy moved—with Claire Clairmont, who took lodgings nearby—to Bath, where they hoped to keep Claire's pregnancy secret. At Cologny, Mary Godwin had received two letters from her half-sister, Fanny Imlay, who alluded to her "unhappy life"; on 9 October, Fanny wrote an "alarming letter" from Bristol that sent Percy Shelley racing off to search for her, without success. On the morning of 10 October, Fanny Imlay was found dead in a room at a Swansea inn, along with a suicide note and a laudanum bottle. On 10 December, Percy Shelley's wife, Harriet, was discovered drowned in the Serpentine, a lake in Hyde Park, London. Both suicides were hushed up. Harriet's family obstructed Percy Shelley's efforts—fully supported by Mary Godwin—to assume custody of his two children by Harriet. His lawyers advised him to improve his case by marrying; so he and Mary, who was pregnant again, married on 30 December 1816 at St Mildred's Church, Bread Street, London. Mr and Mrs Godwin were present and the marriage ended the family rift. Claire Clairmont gave birth to a baby girl on 13 January, at first called Alba, later Allegra. In March of that year, the Chancery Court ruled Percy Shelley morally unfit to assume custody of his children and later placed them with a clergyman's family. Also in March, the Shelleys moved with Claire and Alba to Albion House at Marlow, Buckinghamshire, a large, damp building on the river Thames. There Mary Shelley gave birth to her third child, Clara, on 2 September. At Marlow, they entertained their new friends Marianne and Leigh Hunt, worked hard at their writing, and often discussed politics. Early in the summer of 1817, Mary Shelley finished Frankenstein, which was published anonymously in January 1818. Reviewers and readers assumed that Percy Shelley was the author, since the book was published with his preface and dedicated to his political hero William Godwin. At Marlow, Mary edited the joint journal of the group's 1814 Continental journey, adding material written in Switzerland in 1816, along with Percy's poem "Mont Blanc". The result was the History of a Six Weeks' Tour, published in November 1817. That autumn, Percy Shelley often lived away from home in London to evade creditors. The threat of a debtor's prison, combined with their ill health and fears of losing custody of their children, contributed to the couple's decision to leave England for Italy on 12 March 1818, taking Claire Clairmont and Alba with them. They had no intention of returning. Italy One of the party's first tasks on arriving in Italy was to hand Alba over to Byron, who was living in Venice. He had agreed to raise her so long as Claire had nothing more to do with her. The Shelleys then embarked on a roving existence, never settling in any one place for long. Along the way, they accumulated a circle of friends and acquaintances who often moved with them. The couple devoted their time to writing, reading, learning, sightseeing, and socialising. The Italian adventure was, however, blighted for Mary Shelley by the deaths of both her children—Clara, in September 1818 in Venice, and William, in June 1819 in Rome. These losses left her in a deep depression that isolated her from Percy Shelley, who wrote in his notebook: My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone, And left me in this dreary world alone? Thy form is here indeed—a lovely one— But thou art fled, gone down a dreary road That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode. For thine own sake I cannot follow thee Do thou return for mine. For a time, Mary Shelley found comfort only in her writing. The birth of her fourth child, Percy Florence, on 12 November 1819, finally lifted her spirits, though she nursed the memory of her lost children till the end of her life. Italy provided the Shelleys, Byron, and other exiles with political freedom unattainable at home. Despite its associations with personal loss, Italy became for Mary Shelley "a country which memory painted as paradise". Their Italian years were a time of intense intellectual and creative activity for both Shelleys. While Percy composed a series of major poems, Mary wrote the novel Matilda, the historical novel Valperga, and the plays Proserpine and Midas. Mary wrote Valperga to help alleviate her father's financial difficulties, as Percy refused to assist him further. She was often physically ill, however, and prone to depressions. She also had to cope with Percy's interest in other women, such as Sophia Stacey, Emilia Viviani, and Jane Williams. Since Mary Shelley shared his belief in the non-exclusivity of marriage, she formed emotional ties of her own among the men and women of their circle. She became particularly fond of the Greek revolutionary Prince Alexandros Mavrokordatos and of Jane and Edward Williams. In December 1818, the Shelleys travelled south with Claire Clairmont and their servants to Naples, where they stayed for three months, receiving only one visitor, a physician. In 1820, they found themselves plagued by accusations and threats from Paolo and Elise Foggi, former servants whom Percy Shelley had dismissed in Naples shortly after the Foggis had married. The pair revealed that on 27 February 1819 in Naples, Percy Shelley had registered as his child by Mary Shelley a two-month-old baby girl named Elena Adelaide Shelley. The Foggis also claimed that Claire Clairmont was the baby's mother. Biographers have offered various interpretations of these events: that Percy Shelley decided to adopt a local child; that the baby was his by Elise, Claire, or an unknown woman; or that she was Elise's by Byron. Mary Shelley insisted she would have known if Claire had been pregnant, but it is unclear how much she really knew. The events in Naples, a city Mary Shelley later called a paradise inhabited by devils, remain shrouded in mystery. The only certainty is that she herself was not the child's mother. Elena Adelaide Shelley died in Naples on 9 June 1820. After leaving Naples, the Shelleys settled in Rome, the city where her husband wrote where "the meanest streets were strewed with truncated columns, broken capitals...and sparkling fragments of granite or porphyry...The voice of dead time, in still vibrations, is breathed from these dumb things, animated and glorified as they were by man". Rome inspired her to begin writing the unfinished novel Valerius, the Reanimated Roman, where the eponymous hero resists the decay of Rome and the machinations of "superstitious" Catholicism. The writing of her novel was broken off when her son William died of malaria. Shelley bitterly commented that she had come to Italy to improve her husband's health, and instead the Italian climate had just killed her two children, leading her to write: "May you my dear Marianne never know what it is to lose two only and lovely children in one year—to watch their dying moments—and then at last to be left childless and forever miserable". To deal with her grief, Shelley wrote the novella The Fields of Fancy, which became Matilda, dealing with a young woman whose beauty inspired incestuous love in her father, who ultimately commits suicide to stop himself from acting on his passion for his daughter, while she spends the rest of her life full of despair about "the unnatural love I had inspired". The novella offered a feminist critique of a patriarchal society as Matilda is punished in the afterlife, though she did nothing to encourage her father's feelings. In the summer of 1822, a pregnant Mary moved with Percy, Claire, and Edward and Jane Williams to the isolated Villa Magni, at the sea's edge near the hamlet of San Terenzo in the Bay of Lerici. Once they were settled in, Percy broke the "evil news" to Claire that her daughter Allegra had died of typhus in a convent at Bagnacavallo. Mary Shelley was distracted and unhappy in the cramped and remote Villa Magni, which she came to regard as a dungeon. On 16 June, she miscarried, losing so much blood that she nearly died. Rather than wait for a doctor, Percy sat her in a bath of ice to stanch the bleeding, an act the doctor later told him saved her life. All was not well between the couple that summer, however, and Percy spent more time with Jane Williams than with his depressed and debilitated wife. Much of the short poetry Shelley wrote at San Terenzo involved Jane rather than Mary. The coast offered Percy Shelley and Edward Williams the chance to enjoy their "perfect plaything for the summer", a new sailing boat. The boat had been designed by Daniel Roberts and Edward Trelawny, an admirer of Byron's who had joined the party in January 1822. On 1 July 1822, Percy Shelley, Edward Ellerker Williams, and Captain Daniel Roberts sailed south down the coast to Livorno. There Percy Shelley discussed with Byron and Leigh Hunt the launch of a radical magazine called The Liberal. On 8 July, he and Edward Williams set out on the return journey to Lerici with their eighteen-year-old boat boy, Charles Vivian. They never reached their destination. A letter arrived at Villa Magni from Hunt to Percy Shelley, dated 8 July, saying, "pray write to tell us how you got home, for they say you had bad weather after you sailed Monday & we are anxious". "The paper fell from me," Mary told a friend later. "I trembled all over." She and Jane Williams rushed desperately to Livorno and then to Pisa in the fading hope that their husbands were still alive. Ten days after the storm, three bodies washed up on the coast near Viareggio, midway between Livorno and Lerici. Trelawny, Byron, and Hunt cremated Percy Shelley's corpse on the beach at Viareggio. Return to England and writing career After her husband's death, Mary Shelley lived for a year with Leigh Hunt and his family in Genoa, where she often saw Byron and transcribed his poems. She resolved to live by her pen and for her son, but her financial situation was precarious. On 23 July 1823, she left Genoa for England and stayed with her father and stepmother in the Strand until a small advance from her father-in-law enabled her to lodge nearby. Sir Timothy Shelley had at first agreed to support his grandson, Percy Florence, only if he were handed over to an appointed guardian. Mary Shelley rejected this idea instantly. She managed instead to wring out of Sir Timothy a limited annual allowance (which she had to repay when Percy Florence inherited the estate), but to the end of his days, he refused to meet her in person and dealt with her only through lawyers. Mary Shelley busied herself with editing her husband's poems, among other literary endeavours, but concern for her son restricted her options. Sir Timothy threatened to stop the allowance if any biography of the poet were published. In 1826, Percy Florence became the legal heir of the Shelley estate after the death of his half-brother Charles Shelley, his father's son by Harriet Shelley. Sir Timothy raised Mary's allowance from £100 a year to £250 but remained as difficult as ever. Mary Shelley enjoyed the stimulating society of William Godwin's circle, but poverty prevented her from socialising as she wished. She also felt ostracised by those who, like Sir Timothy, still disapproved of her relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley. In the summer of 1824, Mary Shelley moved to Kentish Town in north London to be near Jane Williams. She may have been, in the words of her biographer Muriel Spark, "a little in love" with Jane. Jane later disillusioned her by gossiping that Percy had preferred her to Mary, owing to Mary's inadequacy as a wife. At around this time, Mary Shelley was working on her novel, The Last Man (1826); and she assisted a series of friends who were writing memoirs of Byron and Percy Shelley—the beginnings of her attempts to immortalise her husband. She also met the American actor John Howard Payne and the American writer Washington Irving, who intrigued her. Payne fell in love with her and in 1826 asked her to marry him. She refused, saying that after being married to one genius, she could only marry another. Payne accepted the rejection and tried without success to talk his friend Irving into proposing himself. Mary Shelley was aware of Payne's plan, but how seriously she took it is unclear. In 1827, Mary Shelley was party to a scheme that enabled her friend Isabel Robinson and Isabel's lover, Mary Diana Dods, who wrote under the name David Lyndsay, to embark on a life together in France as husband and wife. With the help of Payne, whom she kept in the dark about the details, Mary Shelley obtained false passports for the couple. In 1828, she fell ill with smallpox while visiting them in Paris. Weeks later she recovered, unscarred but without her youthful beauty. During the period 1827–40, Mary Shelley was busy as an editor and writer. She wrote the novels The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835), and Falkner (1837). She contributed five volumes of Lives of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French authors to Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia. She also wrote stories for ladies' magazines. She was still helping to support her father, and they looked out for publishers for each other. In 1830, she sold the copyright for a new edition of Frankenstein for £60 to Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley for their new Standard Novels series. After her father's death in 1836 at the age of eighty, she began assembling his letters and a memoir for publication, as he had requested in his will; but after two years of work, she abandoned the project. Throughout this period, she also championed Percy Shelley's poetry, promoting its publication and quoting it in her writing. By 1837, Percy's works were well-known and increasingly admired. In the summer of 1838 Edward Moxon, the publisher of Tennyson and the son-in-law of Charles Lamb, proposed publishing a collected works of Percy Shelley. Mary was paid £500 to edit the Poetical Works (1838), which Sir Timothy insisted should not include a biography. Mary found a way to tell the story of Percy's life, nonetheless: she included extensive biographical notes about the poems. Shelley continued to practice her mother's feminist principles by extending aid to women whom society disapproved of. For instance, Shelley extended financial aid to Mary Diana Dods, a single mother and illegitimate herself who appears to have been a lesbian and gave her the new identity of Walter Sholto Douglas, husband of her lover Isabel Robinson. Shelley also assisted Georgiana Paul, a woman disallowed for by her husband for alleged adultery. Shelley in her diary about her assistance to the latter: "I do not make a boast-I do not say aloud-behold my generosity and greatness of mind-for in truth it is simple justice I perform-and so I am still reviled for being worldly". Mary Shelley continued to treat potential romantic partners with caution. In 1828, she met and flirted with the French writer Prosper Mérimée, but her one surviving letter to him appears to be a deflection of his declaration of love. She was delighted when her old friend from Italy, Edward Trelawny, returned to England, and they joked about marriage in their letters. Their friendship had altered, however, following her refusal to cooperate with his proposed biography of Percy Shelley; and he later reacted angrily to her omission of the atheistic section of Queen Mab from Percy Shelley's poems. Oblique references in her journals, from the early 1830s until the early 1840s, suggest that Mary Shelley had feelings for the radical politician Aubrey Beauclerk, who may have disappointed her by twice marrying others. Mary Shelley's first concern during these years was the welfare of Percy Florence. She honoured her late husband's wish that his son attend public school and, with Sir Timothy's grudging help, had him educated at Harrow. To avoid boarding fees, she moved to Harrow on the Hill herself so that Percy could attend as a day scholar. Though Percy went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, and dabbled in politics and the law, he showed no sign of his parents' gifts. He was devoted to his mother, and after he left university in 1841, he came to live with her. Final years and death In 1840 and 1842, mother and son travelled together on the continent, journeys that Mary Shelley recorded in Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843 (1844). In 1844, Sir Timothy Shelley finally died at the age of ninety, "falling from the stalk like an overblown flower", as Mary put it. For the first time, she and her son were financially independent, though the estate proved less valuable than they had hoped. In the mid-1840s, Mary Shelley found herself the target of three separate blackmailers. In 1845, an Italian political exile called Gatteschi, whom she had met in Paris, threatened to publish letters she had sent him. A friend of her son's bribed a police chief into seizing Gatteschi's papers, including the letters, which were then destroyed. Shortly afterwards, Mary Shelley bought some letters written by herself and Percy Bysshe Shelley from a man calling himself G. Byron and posing as the illegitimate son of the late Lord Byron. Also in 1845, Percy Bysshe Shelley's cousin Thomas Medwin approached her claiming to have written a damaging biography of Percy Shelley. He said he would suppress it in return for £250, but Mary Shelley refused. In 1848, Percy Florence married Jane Gibson St John. The marriage proved a happy one, and Mary Shelley and Jane were fond of each other. Mary lived with her son and daughter-in-law at Field Place, Sussex, the Shelleys' ancestral home, and at Chester Square, London, and accompanied them on travels abroad. Mary Shelley's last years were blighted by illness. From 1839, she suffered from headaches and bouts of paralysis in parts of her body, which sometimes prevented her from reading and writing. On 1 February 1851, at Chester Square, she died at the age of fifty-three from what her physician suspected was a brain tumour. According to Jane Shelley, Mary Shelley had asked to be buried with her mother and father; but Percy and Jane, judging the graveyard at St Pancras to be "dreadful", chose to bury her instead at St Peter's Church, Bournemouth, near their new home at Boscombe. On the first anniversary of Mary Shelley's death, the Shelleys opened her box-desk. Inside they found locks of her dead children's hair, a notebook she had shared with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a copy of his poem Adonaïs with one page folded round a silk parcel containing some of his ashes and the remains of his heart. Literary themes and styles Mary Shelley lived a literary life. Her father encouraged her to learn to write by composing letters, and her favourite occupation as a child was writing stories. Unfortunately, all of Mary's juvenilia were lost when she ran off with Percy in 1814, and none of her surviving manuscripts can be definitively dated before that year. Her first published work is often thought to have been Mounseer Nongtongpaw, comic verses written for Godwin's Juvenile Library when she was ten and a half; however, the poem is attributed to another writer in the most recent authoritative collection of her works. Percy Shelley enthusiastically encouraged Mary Shelley's writing: "My husband was, from the first, very anxious that I should prove myself worthy of my parentage, and enrol myself on the page of fame. He was forever inciting me to obtain literary reputation." Novels Autobiographical elements Certain sections of Mary Shelley's novels are often interpreted as masked rewritings of her life. Critics have pointed to the recurrence of the father–daughter motif in particular as evidence of this autobiographical style. For example, commentators frequently read Mathilda (1820) autobiographically, identifying the three central characters as versions of Mary Shelley, William Godwin, and Percy Shelley. Mary Shelley herself confided that she modelled the central characters of The Last Man on her Italian circle. Lord Raymond, who leaves England to fight for the Greeks and dies in Constantinople, is based on Lord Byron; and the utopian Adrian, Earl of Windsor, who leads his followers in search of a natural paradise and dies when his boat sinks in a storm, is a fictional portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley. However, as she wrote in her review of Godwin's novel Cloudesley (1830), she did not believe that authors "were merely copying from our own hearts". William Godwin regarded his daughter's characters as types rather than portraits from real life. Some modern critics, such as Patricia Clemit and Jane Blumberg, have taken the same view, resisting autobiographical readings of Mary Shelley's works. Novelistic genres Mary Shelley employed the techniques of many different novelistic genres, most vividly the Godwinian novel, Walter Scott's new historical novel, and the Gothic novel. The Godwinian novel, made popular during the 1790s with works such as Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794), "employed a Rousseauvian confessional form to explore the contradictory relations between the self and society", and Frankenstein exhibits many of the same themes and literary devices as Godwin's novel. However, Shelley critiques those Enlightenment ideals that Godwin promotes in his works. In The Last Man, she uses the philosophical form of the Godwinian novel to demonstrate the ultimate meaninglessness of the world. While earlier Godwinian novels had shown how rational individuals could slowly improve society, The Last Man and Frankenstein demonstrate the individual's lack of control over history. Shelley uses the historical novel to comment on gender relations; for example, Valperga is a feminist version of Scott's masculinist genre. Introducing women into the story who are not part of the historical record, Shelley uses their narratives to question established theological and political institutions. Shelley sets the male protagonist's compulsive greed for conquest in opposition to a female alternative: reason and sensibility. In Perkin Warbeck, Shelley's other historical novel, Lady Gordon stands for the values of friendship, domesticity, and equality. Through her, Shelley offers a feminine alternative to the masculine power politics that destroy the male characters. The novel provides a more inclusive historical narrative to challenge the one which usually relates only masculine events. Gender With the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1970s, Mary Shelley's works, particularly Frankenstein, began to attract much more attention from scholars. Feminist and psychoanalytic critics were largely responsible for the recovery from neglect of Shelley as a writer. Ellen Moers was one of the first to claim that Shelley's loss of a baby was a crucial influence on the writing of Frankenstein. She argues that the novel is a "birth myth" in which Shelley comes to terms with her guilt for causing her mother's death as well as for failing as a parent. Shelley scholar Anne K. Mellor suggests that, from a feminist viewpoint, it is a story "about what happens when a man tries to have a baby without a woman ... [Frankenstein] is profoundly concerned with natural as opposed to unnatural modes of production and reproduction". Victor Frankenstein's failure as a "parent" in the novel has been read as an expression of the anxieties which accompany pregnancy, giving birth, and particularly maternity. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue in their seminal book The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) that in Frankenstein in particular, Shelley responded to the masculine literary tradition represented by John Milton's Paradise Lost. In their interpretation, Shelley reaffirms this masculine tradition, including the misogyny inherent in it, but at the same time "conceal[s] fantasies of equality that occasionally erupt in monstrous images of rage". Mary Poovey reads the first edition of Frankenstein as part of a larger pattern in Shelley's writing, which begins with literary self-assertion and ends with conventional femininity. Poovey suggests that Frankenstein's multiple narratives enable Shelley to split her artistic persona: she can "express and efface herself at the same time". Shelley's fear of self-assertion is reflected in the fate of Frankenstein, who is punished for his egotism by losing all his domestic ties. Feminist critics often focus on how authorship itself, particularly female authorship, is represented in and through Shelley's novels. As Mellor explains, Shelley uses the Gothic style not only to explore repressed female sexual desire but also as way to "censor her own speech in Frankenstein". According to Poovey and Mellor, Shelley did not want to promote her own authorial persona and felt deeply inadequate as a writer, and "this shame contributed to the generation of her fictional images of abnormality, perversion, and destruction". Shelley's writings focus on the role of the family in society and women's role within that family. She celebrates the "feminine affections and compassion" associated with the family and suggests that civil society will fail without them. Shelley was "profoundly committed to an ethic of cooperation, mutual dependence, and self-sacrifice". In Lodore, for example, the central story follows the fortunes of the wife and daughter of the title character, Lord Lodore, who is killed in a duel at the end of the first volume, leaving a trail of legal, financial, and familial obstacles for the two "heroines" to negotiate. The novel is engaged with political and ideological issues, particularly the education and social role of women. It dissects a patriarchal culture that separated the sexes and pressured women into dependence on men. In the view of Shelley scholar Betty T. Bennett, "the novel proposes egalitarian educational paradigms for women and men, which would bring social justice as well as the spiritual and intellectual means by which to meet the challenges life invariably brings". However, Falkner is the only one of Mary Shelley's novels in which the heroine's agenda triumphs. The novel's resolution proposes that when female values triumph over violent and destructive masculinity, men will be freed to express the "compassion, sympathy, and generosity" of their better natures. Enlightenment and Romanticism Frankenstein, like much Gothic fiction of the period, mixes a visceral and alienating subject matter with speculative and thought-provoking themes. Rather than focusing on the twists and turns of the plot, however, the novel foregrounds the mental and moral struggles of the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, and Shelley imbues the text with her own brand of politicised Romanticism, one that criticised the individualism and egotism of traditional Romanticism. Victor Frankenstein is like Satan in Paradise Lost, and Prometheus: he rebels against tradition; he creates life; and he shapes his own destiny. These traits are not portrayed positively; as Blumberg writes, "his relentless ambition is a self-delusion, clothed as quest for truth". He must abandon his family to fulfill his ambition. Mary Shelley believed in the Enlightenment idea that people could improve society through the responsible exercise of political power, but she feared that the irresponsible exercise of power would lead to chaos. In practice, her works largely criticise the way 18th-century thinkers such as her parents believed such change could be brought about. The creature in Frankenstein, for example, reads books associated with radical ideals but the education he gains from them is ultimately useless. Shelley's works reveal her as less optimistic than Godwin and Wollstonecraft; she lacks faith in Godwin's theory that humanity could eventually be perfected. As literary scholar Kari Lokke writes, The Last Man, more so than Frankenstein, "in its refusal to place humanity at the centre of the universe, its questioning of our privileged position in relation to nature ... constitutes a profound and prophetic challenge to Western humanism." Specifically, Mary Shelley's allusions to what radicals believed was a failed revolution in France and the Godwinian, Wollstonecraftian, and Burkean responses to it, challenge "Enlightenment faith in the inevitability of progress through collective efforts". As in Frankenstein, Shelley "offers a profoundly disenchanted commentary on the age of revolution, which ends in a total rejection of the progressive ideals of her own generation". Not only does she reject these Enlightenment political ideals, but she also rejects the Romantic notion that the poetic or literary imagination can offer an alternative. Politics There is a new scholarly emphasis on Shelley as a lifelong reformer, deeply engaged in the liberal and feminist concerns of her day. In 1820, she was thrilled by the Liberal uprising in Spain which forced the king to grant a constitution. In 1823, she wrote articles for Leigh Hunt's periodical The Liberal and played an active role in the formulation of its outlook. She was delighted when the Whigs came back to power in 1830 and at the prospect of the 1832 Reform Act. Critics have until recently cited Lodore and Falkner as evidence of increasing conservatism in Mary Shelley's later works. In 1984, Mary Poovey influentially identified the retreat of Mary Shelley's reformist politics into the "separate sphere" of the domestic. Poovey suggested that Mary Shelley wrote Falkner to resolve her conflicted response to her father's combination of libertarian radicalism and stern insistence on social decorum. Mellor largely agreed, arguing that "Mary Shelley grounded her alternative political ideology on the metaphor of the peaceful, loving, bourgeois family. She thereby implicitly endorsed a conservative vision of gradual evolutionary reform." This vision allowed women to participate in the public sphere but it inherited the inequalities inherent in the bourgeois family. However, in the last decade or so this view has been challenged. For example, Bennett claims that Mary Shelley's works reveal a consistent commitment to Romantic idealism and political reform and Jane Blumberg's study of Shelley's early novels argues that her career cannot be easily divided into radical and conservative halves. She contends that "Shelley was never a passionate radical like her husband and her later lifestyle was not abruptly assumed nor was it a betrayal. She was in fact challenging the political and literary influences of her circle in her first work." In this reading, Shelley's early works are interpreted as a challenge to Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley's radicalism. Victor Frankenstein's "thoughtless rejection of family", for example, is seen as evidence of Shelley's constant concern for the domestic. Short stories In the 1820s and 1830s, Mary Shelley frequently wrote short stories for gift books or annuals, including sixteen for The Keepsake, which was aimed at middle-class women and bound in silk, with gilt-edged pages. Mary Shelley's work in this genre has been described as that of a "hack writer" and "wordy and pedestrian". However, critic Charlotte Sussman points out that other leading writers of the day, such as the Romantic poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, also took advantage of this profitable market. She explains that "the annuals were a major mode of literary production in the 1820s and 1830s", with The Keepsake the most successful. Many of Shelley's stories are set in places or times far removed from early 19th-century Britain, such as Greece and the reign of Henry IV of France. Shelley was particularly interested in "the fragility of individual identity" and often depicted "the way a person's role in the world can be cataclysmically altered either by an internal emotional upheaval, or by some supernatural occurrence that mirrors an internal schism". In her stories, female identity is tied to a woman's short-lived value in the marriage market while male identity can be sustained and transformed through the use of money. Although Mary Shelley wrote twenty-one short stories for the annuals between 1823 and 1839, she always saw herself, above all, as a novelist. She wrote to Leigh Hunt, "I write bad articles which help to make me miserable—but I am going to plunge into a novel and hope that its clear water will wash off the mud of the magazines." Travelogues When they ran off to France in the summer of 1814, Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley began a joint journal, which they published in 1817 under the title History of a Six Weeks' Tour, adding four letters, two by each of them, based on their visit to Geneva in 1816, along with Percy Shelley's poem "Mont Blanc". The work celebrates youthful love and political idealism and consciously follows the example of Mary Wollstonecraft and others who had combined travelling with writing. The perspective of the History is philosophical and reformist rather than that of a conventional travelogue; in particular, it addresses the effects of politics and war on France. The letters the couple wrote on the second journey confront the "great and extraordinary events" of the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo after his "Hundred Days" return in 1815. They also explore the sublimity of Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc as well as the revolutionary legacy of the philosopher and novelist Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Mary Shelley's last full-length book, written in the form of letters and published in 1844, was Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843, which recorded her travels with her son Percy Florence and his university friends. In Rambles, Shelley follows the tradition of Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark and her own A History of a Six Weeks' Tour in mapping her personal and political landscape through the discourse of sensibility and sympathy. For Shelley, building sympathetic connections between people is the way to build civil society and to increase knowledge: "knowledge, to enlighten and free the mind from clinging deadening prejudices—a wider circle of sympathy with our fellow-creatures;—these are the uses of travel". Between observations on scenery, culture, and "the people, especially in a political point of view", she uses the travelogue form to explore her roles as a widow and mother and to reflect on revolutionary nationalism in Italy. She also records her "pilgrimage" to scenes associated with Percy Shelley. According to critic Clarissa Orr, Mary Shelley's adoption of a persona of philosophical motherhood gives Rambles the unity of a prose poem, with "death and memory as central themes". At the same time, Shelley makes an egalitarian case against monarchy, class distinctions, slavery, and war. Biographies Between 1832 and 1839, Mary Shelley wrote many biographies of notable Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French men and a few women for Dionysius Lardner's Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men. These formed part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia, one of the best of many such series produced in the 1820s and 1830s in response to growing middle-class demand for self-education. Until the republication of these essays in 2002, their significance within her body of work was not appreciated. In the view of literary scholar Greg Kucich, they reveal Mary Shelley's "prodigious research across several centuries and in multiple languages", her gift for biographical narrative, and her interest in the "emerging forms of feminist historiography". Shelley wrote in a biographical style popularised by the 18th-century critic Samuel Johnson in his Lives of the Poets (1779–81), combining secondary sources, memoir and anecdote, and authorial evaluation. She records details of each writer's life and character, quotes their writing in the original as well as in translation, and ends with a critical assessment of their achievement. For Shelley, biographical writing was supposed to, in her words, "form as it were a school in which to study the philosophy of history", and to teach "lessons". Most frequently and importantly, these lessons consisted of criticisms of male-dominated institutions such as primogeniture. Shelley emphasises domesticity, romance, family, sympathy, and compassion in the lives of her subjects. Her conviction that such forces could improve society connects her biographical approach with that of other early feminist historians such as Mary Hays and Anna Jameson. Unlike her novels, most of which had an original print run of several hundred copies, the Lives had a print run of about 4,000 for each volume: thus, according to Kucich, Mary Shelley's "use of biography to forward the social agenda of women's historiography became one of her most influential political interventions". Editorial work Soon after Percy Shelley's death, Mary Shelley determined to write his biography. In a letter of 17 November 1822, she announced: "I shall write his life—& thus occupy myself in the only manner from which I can derive consolation." However, her father-in-law, Sir Timothy Shelley, effectively banned her from doing so. Mary began her fostering of Percy's poetic reputation in 1824 with the publication of his Posthumous Poems. In 1839, while she was working on the Lives, she prepared a new edition of his poetry, which became, in the words of literary scholar Susan J. Wolfson, "the canonizing event" in the history of her husband's reputation. The following year, Mary Shelley edited a volume of her husband's essays, letters, translations, and fragments, and throughout the 1830s, she introduced his poetry to a wider audience by publishing assorted works in the annual The Keepsake. Evading Sir Timothy's ban on a biography, Mary Shelley often included in these editions her own annotations and reflections on her husband's life and work. "I am to justify his ways," she had declared in 1824; "I am to make him beloved to all posterity." It was this goal, argues Blumberg, that led her to present Percy's work to the public in the "most popular form possible". To tailor his works for a Victorian audience, she cast Percy Shelley as a lyrical rather than a political poet. As Mary Favret writes, "the disembodied Percy identifies the spirit of poetry itself". Mary glossed Percy's political radicalism as a form of sentimentalism, arguing that his republicanism arose from sympathy for those who were suffering. She inserted romantic anecdotes of his benevolence, domesticity, and love of the natural world. Portraying herself as Percy's "practical muse", she also noted how she had suggested revisions as he wrote. Despite the emotions stirred by this task, Mary Shelley arguably proved herself in many respects a professional and scholarly editor. Working from Percy's messy, sometimes indecipherable, notebooks, she attempted to form a chronology for his writings, and she included poems, such as Epipsychidion, addressed to Emilia Viviani, which she would rather have left out. She was forced, however, into several compromises, and, as Blumberg notes, "modern critics have found fault with the edition and claim variously that she miscopied, misinterpreted, purposely obscured, and attempted to turn the poet into something he was not". According to Wolfson, Donald Reiman, a modern editor of Percy Bysshe Shelley's works, still refers to Mary Shelley's editions, while acknowledging that her editing style belongs "to an age of editing when the aim was not to establish accurate texts and scholarly apparatus but to present a full record of a writer's career for the general reader". In principle, Mary Shelley believed in publishing every last word of her husband's work; but she found herself obliged to omit certain passages, either by pressure from her publisher, Edward Moxon, or in deference to public propriety. For example, she removed the atheistic passages from Queen Mab for the first edition. After she restored them in the second edition, Moxon was prosecuted and convicted of blasphemous libel, though the prosecution was brought out of principle by the Chartist publisher Henry Hetherington, and no punishment was sought. Mary Shelley's omissions provoked criticism, often stinging, from members of Percy Shelley's former circle, and reviewers accused her of, among other things, indiscriminate inclusions. Her notes have nevertheless remained an essential source for the study of Percy Shelley's work. As Bennett explains, "biographers and critics agree that Mary Shelley's commitment to bring Shelley the notice she believed his works merited was the single, major force that established Shelley's reputation during a period when he almost certainly would have faded from public view". Reputation In her own lifetime, Mary Shelley was taken seriously as a writer, though reviewers often missed her writings' political edge. After her death, however, she was chiefly remembered as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of Frankenstein. In fact, in the introduction to her letters published in 1945, editor Frederick Jones wrote, "a collection of the present size could not be justified by the general quality of the letters or by Mary Shelley's importance as a writer. It is as the wife of [Percy Bysshe Shelley] that she excites our interest." This attitude had not disappeared by 1980 when Betty T. Bennett published the first volume of Mary Shelley's complete letters. As she explains, "the fact is that until recent years scholars have generally regarded Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley as a result: William Godwin's and Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter who became Shelley's Pygmalion." It was not until Emily Sunstein's Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality in 1989 that a full-length scholarly biography was published. The attempts of Mary Shelley's son and daughter-in-law to "Victorianise" her memory by censoring biographical documents contributed to a perception of Mary Shelley as a more conventional, less reformist figure than her works suggest. Her own timid omissions from Percy Shelley's works and her quiet avoidance of public controversy in her later years added to this impression. Commentary by Hogg, Trelawny, and other admirers of Percy Shelley also tended to downplay Mary Shelley's radicalism. Trelawny's Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author (1878) praised Percy Shelley at the expense of Mary, questioning her intelligence and even her authorship of Frankenstein. Lady Shelley, Percy Florence's wife, responded in part by presenting a severely edited collection of letters she had inherited, published privately as Shelley and Mary in 1882. From Frankenstein'''s first theatrical adaptation in 1823 to the cinematic adaptations of the 20th century, including the first cinematic version in 1910 and now-famous versions such as James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein, Mel Brooks' satirical 1974 Young Frankenstein, and Kenneth Branagh's 1994 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, many audiences first encounter the work of Mary Shelley through adaptation. Over the course of the 19th century, Mary Shelley came to be seen as a one-novel author at best, rather than as the professional writer she was; most of her works have remained out of print until the last thirty years, obstructing a larger view of her achievement. In recent decades, the republication of almost all her writing has stimulated a new recognition of its value. Her habit of intensive reading and study, revealed in her journals and letters and reflected in her works, is now better appreciated. Shelley's conception of herself as an author has also been recognised; after Percy's death, she wrote of her authorial ambitions: "I think that I can maintain myself, and there is something inspiriting in the idea." Scholars now consider Mary Shelley to be a major Romantic figure, significant for her literary achievement and her political voice as a woman and a liberal. Selected works History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817) Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) Mathilda (1819) Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823) Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1824) The Last Man (1826) The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830) Lodore (1835) Falkner (1837) The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1839) Contributions to Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men (1835–39), part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 (1844) Collections of Mary Shelley's papers are housed in Lord Abinger's Shelley Collection on deposit at the Bodleian Library, the New York Public Library (particularly The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle), the Huntington Library, the British Library, and in the John Murray Collection. See also Mary Shelley (2017 film) Godwin–Shelley family tree Map of 1814 and 1816 European journeys Map of 1840s European journeys Notes References All essays from The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley are marked with a "(CC)" and those from The Other Mary Shelley with an "(OMS)". Bibliography Primary sources Shelley, Mary. Collected Tales and Stories. Ed. Charles E. Robinson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. . Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Ed. Susan J. Wolfson. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. . Shelley, Mary. The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814–44. Ed. Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. The Last Man. Ed. Morton D. Paley. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1998. . Shelley, Mary. Lodore. Ed. Lisa Vargo. Ontario: Broadview Press, 1997. . Shelley, Mary. Mary Shelley's Literary Lives and Other Writings. 4 vols. Ed. Tilar J. Mazzeo. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2002. . Shelley, Mary. Mathilda . Ed. Elizabeth Nitchie. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 16 February 2008. Shelley, Mary. Matilda; with Mary and Maria, by Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd. London: Penguin, 1992. . Shelley, Mary, ed. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley . London: Edward Moxon, 1840. Google Books. Retrieved 6 April 2008. Shelley, Mary. Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca. Ed. Michael Rossington. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 2000. . Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Shelley's Poetry and Prose. Eds. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2002. . Secondary sources Bennett, Betty T. "Finding Mary Shelley in her Letters". Romantic Revisions. Ed. Robert Brinkley and Keith Hanley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. . Bennett, Betty T., ed. Mary Shelley in her Times. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Bennett, Betty T. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. . Bennett, Betty T. "The Political Philosophy of Mary Shelley's Historical Novels: Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". The Evidence of the Imagination. Ed. Donald H. Reiman, Michael C. Jaye, and Betty T. Bennett. New York: New York University Press, 1978. . Bieri, James. Percy Bysshe Shelley, a Biography: Exile of Unfulfilled Renown, 1816–1822. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005. . Blumberg, Jane. Mary Shelley's Early Novels: "This Child of Imagination and Misery". Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993. . Bunnell, Charlene E. "All the World's a Stage": Dramatic Sensibility in Mary Shelley's Novels. New York: Routledge, 2002. . Carlson, J. A. England's First Family of Writers: Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Shelley. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. . Clemit, Pamela. "From The Fields of Fancy to Matilda." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Clemit, Pamela. The Godwinian Novel: The Rational Fictions of Godwin, Brockden Brown, Mary Shelley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. . Conger, Syndy M., Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea, eds. Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Eberle-Sinatra, Michael, ed. Mary Shelley's Fictions: From Frankenstein to Falkner. New York: St. Martin's Press/Palgrave, 2000. . Fisch, Audrey A., Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schorr, eds. The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond "Frankenstein". New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. . Frank, Frederick S. "Mary Shelley's Other Fictions: A Bibliographic Consensus". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Garrett, Martin Mary Shelley. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. 1979. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. . Gittings, Robert and Jo Manton. Claire Clairmont and the Shelleys. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. . Holmes, Richard. Shelley: The Pursuit. 1974. London: Harper Perennial, 2003. . Jones, Steven. "Charles E. Robinson, Ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two)". (Book Review). Romantic Circles website, 1 January 1998. Retrieved 15 September 2016. Jump, Harriet Devine, Pamela Clemit, and Betty T. Bennett, eds. Lives of the Great Romantics III: Godwin, Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley by Their Contemporaries. London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999. . Levine, George and U. C. Knoepflmacher, eds. The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley's novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. . Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, her Fiction, Her Monsters. London: Routledge, 1990. . Myers, Mitzi. "Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley: The Female Author between Public and Private Spheres." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Orr, Clarissa Campbell. "Mary Shelley's Rambles in Germany and Italy, the Celebrity Author, and the Undiscovered Country of the Human Heart". Romanticism on the Net 11 (August 1998). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. . Robinson, Charles E., ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two). The Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics, Volume IX, Donald H. Reiman, general ed. Garland Publishing, 1996. . Schor, Esther, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. . Seymour, Miranda. Mary Shelley. London: John Murray, 2000. . Sites, Melissa. "Re/membering Home: Utopian Domesticity in Mary Shelley's Lodore". A Brighter Morn: The Shelley Circle's Utopian Project. Ed. Darby Lewes. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003. . Smith, Johanna M. "A Critical History of Frankenstein". Frankenstein. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. . Spark, Muriel. Mary Shelley. London: Cardinal, 1987. . St Clair, William. The Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography of a Family. London: Faber & Faber, 1989. . Sterrenburg, Lee. "The Last Man: Anatomy of Failed Revolutions". Nineteenth Century Fiction 33 (1978): 324–47. Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. 1989. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. . Townsend, William C. Modern State Trials. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1850. Wake, Ann M Frank. "Women in the Active Voice: Recovering Female History in Mary Shelley's Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . White, Daniel E. "'The god undeified': Mary Shelley's Valperga, Italy, and the Aesthetic of Desire ". Romanticism on the Net 6 (May 1997). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Further reading Goulding, Christopher. "The Real Doctor Frankenstein?" Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. The Royal Society of Medicine, May 2002. Richard Holmes, "Out of Control" (review of Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds, edited by David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Jason Scott Robert, MIT Press, 277 pp.; and Mary Shelley, The New Annotated Frankenstein, edited and with a foreword and notes by Leslie S. Klinger, Liveright, 352 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 20 (21 December 2017), pp. 38, 40–41. Gordon, Charlotte (2016). Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley'', Random House. External links Mary Shelley chronology and bibliography – part of Romantic Circles Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley manuscript material, 1815–1850, held by the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, New York Public Library Mary Shelley at the British Library Exhibits relating to Mary Shelley at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford 1797 births 1851 deaths 19th-century English women writers 19th-century English novelists 19th-century British short story writers British expatriates in Italy British expatriates in Switzerland British feminists British horror writers British science fiction writers Deaths from brain tumor Deaths from cancer in England English expatriates in Italy English expatriates in Switzerland English feminists English horror writers English science fiction writers English travel writers English women novelists Frankenstein Godwin family People from Bournemouth People from Somers Town, London Romanticism Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees Victorian novelists Women historical novelists Women horror writers Women of the Regency era Women science fiction and fantasy writers British women travel writers Writers of Gothic fiction Shelley family Weird fiction writers
true
[ "Frankenstein is a novel by Mary Shelley.\n\nMary Shelley's Frankenstein may refer to:\nMary Shelley's Frankenstein (film), 1994 film adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein\nMary Shelley's Frankenstein (pinball), 1995 pinball machine based on the film\nMary Shelley's Frankenstein (video game), video game for multiple platforms based on the film\n\nSee also\nFrankenstein (disambiguation)", "\"On Frankenstein\" is a review of the 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1817 but not published until 1832.\n\nBackground\nThe review was written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1817 to help promote the novel and to counter expected negative reviews. It remained unpublished, however, until after the third edition of Frankenstein appeared in 1831.<ref>[http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/PShelley/frankrev.html \"On Frankenstein.\"]</ref> Percy Bysshe Shelley's cousin Thomas Medwin submitted it to the British literary magazine The Athenaeum for the Saturday, November 10, 1832 issue on page 730. It was part of the series \"The Shelley Papers\" which appeared in The Athenaeum starting in September, 1832. \n\nIn his biography Life of Shelley, Medwin had written that he sought to have the review published to demonstrate that, contrary to claims, Shelley did not write the novel and did not have any role in its creation: \"I have heard it asserted that the idea [of Frankenstein] was [Percy Bysshe] Shelley's, and that he assisted much in the development of the plot.\" Notwithstanding Medwin's own claims, the drafts and proofs of the novel showed that this statement was accurate. Shelley had come up with the idea for the novel, as Mary herself acknowledged in the 1831 Introduction, and he had, at the very least, made substantial contributions to the writing of the novel. Mary had not, however, included the review in her compilations and publications of Shelley's prose works. John Lauritsen in The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein argued that Mary suppressed the review because she feared it would expose Shelley as the true author of the novel.\n\nThe review was republished in Thomas Medwin's Memoir of Percy Bysshe Shelley; and Original Poems and Papers by Percy Bysshe Shelley: Now First Collected in 1833. The review also appeared in The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley edited by E. B. Murray in 1993.\n\nThe review was republished in The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein by John Lauritsin in 2007 and The Original Frankenstein edited by Charles E. Robinson in 2008.\n\nSummary\n\nShelley wrote that the dialogues between the Being and De Lacey were the most powerful and moving in the novel. He wrote that the central moral of the novel is intolerance, describing innocent victims of prejudice in society, \"who are best qualified to be its benefactors and its ornaments.\" Shelley argued that the Being was a product of a xenophobic society: \"Treat a person ill, and he will become wicked.\"\n\nShelley referred to the monster as the \"Being\" five times in his review. He also referred to the anonymous author using a masculine pronoun, \"he\".\n\nThe British Library analysis noted the direct connection to Shelley's poem \"Mont Blanc\" which was published in 1817 in History of a Six Weeks' Tour. Frankenstein develops the theme of \"necessity\" which Shelley wrote about in that poem. It is a philosophical idea of the novel.\n\nThe review related Frankenstein to Percy Bysshe Shelley's own works: \n\n\"The environment is an aspect Shelley also emphasises in his preface to the 1818 edition. He examines the way the monster turns against the world as a direct result of his treatment. For Shelley this is an example of the philosophical idea he defined as necessity, 'an immense and uninterrupted chain of causes and effects', which is explored in 'Mont Blanc' and is 'the direct moral' of Frankenstein. He points out that the monster’s mind is formed by impressions, and thus a conflict is created between Frankenstein monster’s good intentions (moments at which he is 'affectionate and full of moral sensibility') and the reactions of those around him to his 'tremendous' (frightening) appearance.\"\n\nShelley concluded that the novel was \"one of the most original and complete productions of the age.\"\n\nReferences\n\nSources\nGrande, James. \"The Original Frankenstein, By Mary Shelley with Percy Shelley ed Charles E Robinson. To what extent did Percy Bysshe Shelley work on 'Frankenstein'? A new analysis reveals all.\" 16 November, 2008, The Independent. Retrieved 30 September, 2018.\nLauritsen, John. The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein. Dorchester, MA: Pagan Press, 2007.\nMedwin, Thomas. Memoir of Percy Bysshe Shelley; and Original Poems and Papers by Percy Bysshe Shelley: Now First Collected. London: Whittaker, Treacher, & Co., 1833, pp. 165-70.\nRobinson, Charles E., ed. The Original Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (with Percy Bysshe Shelley). New York: Vintage Books, 2008, pp. 434-36.\nRobinson, Charles E. \"Percy Bysshe Shelley's Text(s) in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein\", in The Neglected Shelley edited by Alan M. Weinberg and Timothy Webb. London and New York: Routledge, 2015, pp. 117-136.\nShelley, Percy Bysshe. \"On Frankenstein.\" The Athenaeum: Journal of English and Foreign Literature, Science, and the Fine Arts'', Saturday, November 10, 1832. No. 263, page 730.\n\nLiterature controversies\nWorks by Percy Bysshe Shelley\n Gothic fiction\n1832 works\nFrankenstein" ]
[ "Mary Shelley", "Lake Geneva and Frankenstein", "When did Mary Shelley write Frankenstein?", "Mary Shelley remembered in 1831," ]
C_fcd11261399c4441ac5c013381bf1e1d_1
What did she have to do with Lake Geneva?
2
What did Mary Shelley have to do with Lake Geneva?
Mary Shelley
In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. The party arrived at Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted, "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. CANNOTANSWER
close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and feminist activist Mary Wollstonecraft. Shelley's mother died less than a month after giving birth to her. She was raised by her father, who provided her with a rich if informal education, encouraging her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories. When she was four, her father married a neighbour, Mary Jane Clairmont, with whom Shelley came to have a troubled relationship. In 1814, Shelley began a romance with one of her father's political followers, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. Together with her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, she and Percy left for France and travelled through Europe. Upon their return to England, Shelley was pregnant with Percy's child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet. In 1816, the couple and Mary's stepsister famously spent a summer with Lord Byron and John William Polidori near Geneva, Switzerland, where Shelley conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, most likely caused by the brain tumour which killed her at age 53. Until the 1970s, Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish her husband's works and for her novel Frankenstein, which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Shelley's achievements. Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826) and her final two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). Studies of her lesser-known works, such as the travel book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–1846), support the growing view that Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life. Shelley's works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practised by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin. Life and career Early life Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, in 1797. She was the second child of the feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the first child of the philosopher, novelist, and journalist William Godwin. Wollstonecraft died of puerperal fever shortly after Mary was born. Godwin was left to bring up Mary, along with her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, Wollstonecraft's child by the American speculator Gilbert Imlay. A year after Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798), which he intended as a sincere and compassionate tribute. However, because the Memoirs revealed Wollstonecraft's affairs and her illegitimate child, they were seen as shocking. Mary Godwin read these memoirs and her mother's books, and was brought up to cherish her mother's memory. Mary's earliest years were happy, judging from the letters of William Godwin's housekeeper and nurse, Louisa Jones. But Godwin was often deeply in debt; feeling that he could not raise the children by himself, he cast about for a second wife. In December 1801, he married Mary Jane Clairmont, a well-educated woman with two young children of her own—Charles and Claire. Most of Godwin's friends disliked his new wife, describing her as quick-tempered and quarrelsome; but Godwin was devoted to her, and the marriage was a success. Mary Godwin, on the other hand, came to detest her stepmother. William Godwin's 19th-century biographer Charles Kegan Paul later suggested that Mrs Godwin had favoured her own children over those of Mary Wollstonecraft. Together, the Godwins started a publishing firm called M. J. Godwin, which sold children's books as well as stationery, maps, and games. However, the business did not turn a profit, and Godwin was forced to borrow substantial sums to keep it going. He continued to borrow to pay off earlier loans, compounding his problems. By 1809, Godwin's business was close to failure, and he was "near to despair". Godwin was saved from debtor's prison by philosophical devotees such as Francis Place, who lent him further money. Though Mary Godwin received little formal education, her father tutored her in a broad range of subjects. He often took the children on educational outings, and they had access to his library and to the many intellectuals who visited him, including the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the former vice-president of the United States Aaron Burr. Godwin admitted he was not educating the children according to Mary Wollstonecraft's philosophy as outlined in works such as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), but Mary Godwin nonetheless received an unusual and advanced education for a girl of the time. She had a governess, a daily tutor, and read many of her father's children's books on Roman and Greek history in manuscript. For six months in 1811, she also attended a boarding school in Ramsgate. Her father described her at age 15 as "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible." In June 1812, Mary's father sent her to stay with the dissenting family of the radical William Baxter, near Dundee, Scotland. To Baxter, he wrote, "I am anxious that she should be brought up ... like a philosopher, even like a cynic." Scholars have speculated that she may have been sent away for her health, to remove her from the seamy side of the business, or to introduce her to radical politics. Mary Godwin revelled in the spacious surroundings of Baxter's house and in the companionship of his four daughters, and she returned north in the summer of 1813 for a further stay of 10 months. In the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein, she recalled: "I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered." Percy Bysshe Shelley Mary Godwin may have first met the radical poet-philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley in the interval between her two stays in Scotland. By the time she returned home for a second time on 30 March 1814, Percy Shelley had become estranged from his wife and was regularly visiting William Godwin, whom he had agreed to bail out of debt. Percy Shelley's radicalism, particularly his economic views, which he had imbibed from William Godwin's Political Justice (1793), had alienated him from his wealthy aristocratic family: they wanted him to follow traditional models of the landed aristocracy, and he wanted to donate large amounts of the family's money to schemes intended to help the disadvantaged. Percy Shelley, therefore, had difficulty gaining access to money until he inherited his estate because his family did not want him wasting it on projects of "political justice". After several months of promises, Shelley announced that he either could not or would not pay off all of Godwin's debts. Godwin was angry and felt betrayed. Mary and Percy began meeting each other secretly at her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's grave in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, and they fell in love—she was 16, and he was 21. On 26 June 1814, Shelley and Godwin declared their love for one another as Shelley announced he could not hide his "ardent passion", leading her in a "sublime and rapturous moment" to say she felt the same way; on either that day or the next, Godwin lost her virginity to Shelley, which tradition claims happened in the churchyard. Godwin described herself as attracted to Shelley's "wild, intellectual, unearthly looks". To Mary's dismay, her father disapproved, and tried to thwart the relationship and salvage the "spotless fame" of his daughter. At about the same time, Mary's father learned of Shelley's inability to pay off the father's debts. Mary, who later wrote of "my excessive and romantic attachment to my father", was confused. She saw Percy Shelley as an embodiment of her parents' liberal and reformist ideas of the 1790s, particularly Godwin's view that marriage was a repressive monopoly, which he had argued in his 1793 edition of Political Justice but later retracted. On 28 July 1814, the couple eloped and secretly left for France, taking Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with them. After convincing Mary Jane Godwin, who had pursued them to Calais, that they did not wish to return, the trio travelled to Paris, and then, by donkey, mule, carriage, and foot, through a France recently ravaged by war, to Switzerland. "It was acting in a novel, being an incarnate romance," Mary Shelley recalled in 1826. Godwin wrote about France in 1814: "The distress of the inhabitants, whose houses had been burned, their cattle killed and all their wealth destroyed, has given a sting to my detestation of war...". As they travelled, Mary and Percy read works by Mary Wollstonecraft and others, kept a joint journal, and continued their own writing. At Lucerne, lack of money forced the three to turn back. They travelled down the Rhine and by land to the Dutch port of Maassluis, arriving at Gravesend, Kent, on 13 September 1814. The situation awaiting Mary Godwin in England was fraught with complications, some of which she had not foreseen. Either before or during the journey, she had become pregnant. She and Percy now found themselves penniless, and, to Mary's genuine surprise, her father refused to have anything to do with her. The couple moved with Claire into lodgings at Somers Town, and later, Nelson Square. They maintained their intense programme of reading and writing, and entertained Percy Shelley's friends, such as Thomas Jefferson Hogg and the writer Thomas Love Peacock. Percy Shelley sometimes left home for short periods to dodge creditors. The couple's distraught letters reveal their pain at these separations. Pregnant and often ill, Mary Godwin had to cope with Percy's joy at the birth of his son by Harriet Shelley in late 1814 and his constant outings with Claire Clairmont. Shelley and Clairmont were almost certainly lovers, which caused much jealousy on Godwin's part. Shelley greatly offended Godwin at one point when during a walk in the French countryside he suggested that they both take the plunge into a stream naked as it offended her principles. She was partly consoled by the visits of Hogg, whom she disliked at first but soon considered a close friend. Percy Shelley seems to have wanted Mary Godwin and Hogg to become lovers; Mary did not dismiss the idea, since in principle she believed in free love. In practice, however, she loved only Percy Shelley and seems to have ventured no further than flirting with Hogg. On 22 February 1815, she gave birth to a two-month premature baby girl, who was not expected to survive. On 6 March, she wrote to Hogg: My dearest Hogg my baby is dead—will you come to see me as soon as you can. I wish to see you—It was perfectly well when I went to bed—I awoke in the night to give it suck it appeared to be sleeping so quietly that I would not awake it. It was dead then, but we did not find that out till morning—from its appearance it evidently died of convulsions—Will you come—you are so calm a creature & Shelley is afraid of a fever from the milk—for I am no longer a mother now. The loss of her child induced acute depression in Mary Godwin, who was haunted by visions of the baby; but she conceived again and had recovered by the summer. With a revival in Percy Shelley's finances after the death of his grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, the couple holidayed in Torquay and then rented a two-storey cottage at Bishopsgate, on the edge of Windsor Great Park. Little is known about this period in Mary Godwin's life, since her journal from May 1815 to July 1816 is lost. At Bishopsgate, Percy wrote his poem Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude; and on 24 January 1816, Mary gave birth to a second child, William, named after her father, and soon nicknamed "Willmouse". In her novel The Last Man, she later imagined Windsor as a Garden of Eden. Lake Geneva and Frankenstein In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. In History of a Six Weeks’ Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland (1817), she describes the particularly desolate landscape in crossing from France into Switzerland. The party arrived in Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted; "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. Authorship of Frankenstein While her husband Percy encouraged her writing, the extent of Percy's contribution to the novel is unknown and has been argued over by readers and critics. Mary Shelley wrote, "I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement, it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world." She wrote that the preface to the first edition was Percy's work "as far as I can recollect." There are differences in the 1818, 1823 and 1831 editions, which have been attributed to Percy's editing. James Rieger concluded Percy's "assistance at every point in the book's manufacture was so extensive that one hardly knows whether to regard him as editor or minor collaborator", while Anne K. Mellor later argued Percy only "made many technical corrections and several times clarified the narrative and thematic continuity of the text." Charles E. Robinson, editor of a facsimile edition of the Frankenstein manuscripts, concluded that Percy's contributions to the book "were no more than what most publishers' editors have provided new (or old) authors or, in fact, what colleagues have provided to each other after reading each other's works in progress." Writing on the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein, literary scholar and poet Fiona Sampson asked, "Why hasn't Mary Shelley gotten the respect she deserves?" She noted that "In recent years Percy's corrections, visible in the Frankenstein notebooks held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, have been seized on as evidence that he must have at least co-authored the novel. In fact, when I examined the notebooks myself, I realized that Percy did rather less than any line editor working in publishing today." Sampson published her findings in In Search of Mary Shelley (2018), one of many biographies written about Shelley. Bath and Marlow On their return to England in September, Mary and Percy moved—with Claire Clairmont, who took lodgings nearby—to Bath, where they hoped to keep Claire's pregnancy secret. At Cologny, Mary Godwin had received two letters from her half-sister, Fanny Imlay, who alluded to her "unhappy life"; on 9 October, Fanny wrote an "alarming letter" from Bristol that sent Percy Shelley racing off to search for her, without success. On the morning of 10 October, Fanny Imlay was found dead in a room at a Swansea inn, along with a suicide note and a laudanum bottle. On 10 December, Percy Shelley's wife, Harriet, was discovered drowned in the Serpentine, a lake in Hyde Park, London. Both suicides were hushed up. Harriet's family obstructed Percy Shelley's efforts—fully supported by Mary Godwin—to assume custody of his two children by Harriet. His lawyers advised him to improve his case by marrying; so he and Mary, who was pregnant again, married on 30 December 1816 at St Mildred's Church, Bread Street, London. Mr and Mrs Godwin were present and the marriage ended the family rift. Claire Clairmont gave birth to a baby girl on 13 January, at first called Alba, later Allegra. In March of that year, the Chancery Court ruled Percy Shelley morally unfit to assume custody of his children and later placed them with a clergyman's family. Also in March, the Shelleys moved with Claire and Alba to Albion House at Marlow, Buckinghamshire, a large, damp building on the river Thames. There Mary Shelley gave birth to her third child, Clara, on 2 September. At Marlow, they entertained their new friends Marianne and Leigh Hunt, worked hard at their writing, and often discussed politics. Early in the summer of 1817, Mary Shelley finished Frankenstein, which was published anonymously in January 1818. Reviewers and readers assumed that Percy Shelley was the author, since the book was published with his preface and dedicated to his political hero William Godwin. At Marlow, Mary edited the joint journal of the group's 1814 Continental journey, adding material written in Switzerland in 1816, along with Percy's poem "Mont Blanc". The result was the History of a Six Weeks' Tour, published in November 1817. That autumn, Percy Shelley often lived away from home in London to evade creditors. The threat of a debtor's prison, combined with their ill health and fears of losing custody of their children, contributed to the couple's decision to leave England for Italy on 12 March 1818, taking Claire Clairmont and Alba with them. They had no intention of returning. Italy One of the party's first tasks on arriving in Italy was to hand Alba over to Byron, who was living in Venice. He had agreed to raise her so long as Claire had nothing more to do with her. The Shelleys then embarked on a roving existence, never settling in any one place for long. Along the way, they accumulated a circle of friends and acquaintances who often moved with them. The couple devoted their time to writing, reading, learning, sightseeing, and socialising. The Italian adventure was, however, blighted for Mary Shelley by the deaths of both her children—Clara, in September 1818 in Venice, and William, in June 1819 in Rome. These losses left her in a deep depression that isolated her from Percy Shelley, who wrote in his notebook: My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone, And left me in this dreary world alone? Thy form is here indeed—a lovely one— But thou art fled, gone down a dreary road That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode. For thine own sake I cannot follow thee Do thou return for mine. For a time, Mary Shelley found comfort only in her writing. The birth of her fourth child, Percy Florence, on 12 November 1819, finally lifted her spirits, though she nursed the memory of her lost children till the end of her life. Italy provided the Shelleys, Byron, and other exiles with political freedom unattainable at home. Despite its associations with personal loss, Italy became for Mary Shelley "a country which memory painted as paradise". Their Italian years were a time of intense intellectual and creative activity for both Shelleys. While Percy composed a series of major poems, Mary wrote the novel Matilda, the historical novel Valperga, and the plays Proserpine and Midas. Mary wrote Valperga to help alleviate her father's financial difficulties, as Percy refused to assist him further. She was often physically ill, however, and prone to depressions. She also had to cope with Percy's interest in other women, such as Sophia Stacey, Emilia Viviani, and Jane Williams. Since Mary Shelley shared his belief in the non-exclusivity of marriage, she formed emotional ties of her own among the men and women of their circle. She became particularly fond of the Greek revolutionary Prince Alexandros Mavrokordatos and of Jane and Edward Williams. In December 1818, the Shelleys travelled south with Claire Clairmont and their servants to Naples, where they stayed for three months, receiving only one visitor, a physician. In 1820, they found themselves plagued by accusations and threats from Paolo and Elise Foggi, former servants whom Percy Shelley had dismissed in Naples shortly after the Foggis had married. The pair revealed that on 27 February 1819 in Naples, Percy Shelley had registered as his child by Mary Shelley a two-month-old baby girl named Elena Adelaide Shelley. The Foggis also claimed that Claire Clairmont was the baby's mother. Biographers have offered various interpretations of these events: that Percy Shelley decided to adopt a local child; that the baby was his by Elise, Claire, or an unknown woman; or that she was Elise's by Byron. Mary Shelley insisted she would have known if Claire had been pregnant, but it is unclear how much she really knew. The events in Naples, a city Mary Shelley later called a paradise inhabited by devils, remain shrouded in mystery. The only certainty is that she herself was not the child's mother. Elena Adelaide Shelley died in Naples on 9 June 1820. After leaving Naples, the Shelleys settled in Rome, the city where her husband wrote where "the meanest streets were strewed with truncated columns, broken capitals...and sparkling fragments of granite or porphyry...The voice of dead time, in still vibrations, is breathed from these dumb things, animated and glorified as they were by man". Rome inspired her to begin writing the unfinished novel Valerius, the Reanimated Roman, where the eponymous hero resists the decay of Rome and the machinations of "superstitious" Catholicism. The writing of her novel was broken off when her son William died of malaria. Shelley bitterly commented that she had come to Italy to improve her husband's health, and instead the Italian climate had just killed her two children, leading her to write: "May you my dear Marianne never know what it is to lose two only and lovely children in one year—to watch their dying moments—and then at last to be left childless and forever miserable". To deal with her grief, Shelley wrote the novella The Fields of Fancy, which became Matilda, dealing with a young woman whose beauty inspired incestuous love in her father, who ultimately commits suicide to stop himself from acting on his passion for his daughter, while she spends the rest of her life full of despair about "the unnatural love I had inspired". The novella offered a feminist critique of a patriarchal society as Matilda is punished in the afterlife, though she did nothing to encourage her father's feelings. In the summer of 1822, a pregnant Mary moved with Percy, Claire, and Edward and Jane Williams to the isolated Villa Magni, at the sea's edge near the hamlet of San Terenzo in the Bay of Lerici. Once they were settled in, Percy broke the "evil news" to Claire that her daughter Allegra had died of typhus in a convent at Bagnacavallo. Mary Shelley was distracted and unhappy in the cramped and remote Villa Magni, which she came to regard as a dungeon. On 16 June, she miscarried, losing so much blood that she nearly died. Rather than wait for a doctor, Percy sat her in a bath of ice to stanch the bleeding, an act the doctor later told him saved her life. All was not well between the couple that summer, however, and Percy spent more time with Jane Williams than with his depressed and debilitated wife. Much of the short poetry Shelley wrote at San Terenzo involved Jane rather than Mary. The coast offered Percy Shelley and Edward Williams the chance to enjoy their "perfect plaything for the summer", a new sailing boat. The boat had been designed by Daniel Roberts and Edward Trelawny, an admirer of Byron's who had joined the party in January 1822. On 1 July 1822, Percy Shelley, Edward Ellerker Williams, and Captain Daniel Roberts sailed south down the coast to Livorno. There Percy Shelley discussed with Byron and Leigh Hunt the launch of a radical magazine called The Liberal. On 8 July, he and Edward Williams set out on the return journey to Lerici with their eighteen-year-old boat boy, Charles Vivian. They never reached their destination. A letter arrived at Villa Magni from Hunt to Percy Shelley, dated 8 July, saying, "pray write to tell us how you got home, for they say you had bad weather after you sailed Monday & we are anxious". "The paper fell from me," Mary told a friend later. "I trembled all over." She and Jane Williams rushed desperately to Livorno and then to Pisa in the fading hope that their husbands were still alive. Ten days after the storm, three bodies washed up on the coast near Viareggio, midway between Livorno and Lerici. Trelawny, Byron, and Hunt cremated Percy Shelley's corpse on the beach at Viareggio. Return to England and writing career After her husband's death, Mary Shelley lived for a year with Leigh Hunt and his family in Genoa, where she often saw Byron and transcribed his poems. She resolved to live by her pen and for her son, but her financial situation was precarious. On 23 July 1823, she left Genoa for England and stayed with her father and stepmother in the Strand until a small advance from her father-in-law enabled her to lodge nearby. Sir Timothy Shelley had at first agreed to support his grandson, Percy Florence, only if he were handed over to an appointed guardian. Mary Shelley rejected this idea instantly. She managed instead to wring out of Sir Timothy a limited annual allowance (which she had to repay when Percy Florence inherited the estate), but to the end of his days, he refused to meet her in person and dealt with her only through lawyers. Mary Shelley busied herself with editing her husband's poems, among other literary endeavours, but concern for her son restricted her options. Sir Timothy threatened to stop the allowance if any biography of the poet were published. In 1826, Percy Florence became the legal heir of the Shelley estate after the death of his half-brother Charles Shelley, his father's son by Harriet Shelley. Sir Timothy raised Mary's allowance from £100 a year to £250 but remained as difficult as ever. Mary Shelley enjoyed the stimulating society of William Godwin's circle, but poverty prevented her from socialising as she wished. She also felt ostracised by those who, like Sir Timothy, still disapproved of her relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley. In the summer of 1824, Mary Shelley moved to Kentish Town in north London to be near Jane Williams. She may have been, in the words of her biographer Muriel Spark, "a little in love" with Jane. Jane later disillusioned her by gossiping that Percy had preferred her to Mary, owing to Mary's inadequacy as a wife. At around this time, Mary Shelley was working on her novel, The Last Man (1826); and she assisted a series of friends who were writing memoirs of Byron and Percy Shelley—the beginnings of her attempts to immortalise her husband. She also met the American actor John Howard Payne and the American writer Washington Irving, who intrigued her. Payne fell in love with her and in 1826 asked her to marry him. She refused, saying that after being married to one genius, she could only marry another. Payne accepted the rejection and tried without success to talk his friend Irving into proposing himself. Mary Shelley was aware of Payne's plan, but how seriously she took it is unclear. In 1827, Mary Shelley was party to a scheme that enabled her friend Isabel Robinson and Isabel's lover, Mary Diana Dods, who wrote under the name David Lyndsay, to embark on a life together in France as husband and wife. With the help of Payne, whom she kept in the dark about the details, Mary Shelley obtained false passports for the couple. In 1828, she fell ill with smallpox while visiting them in Paris. Weeks later she recovered, unscarred but without her youthful beauty. During the period 1827–40, Mary Shelley was busy as an editor and writer. She wrote the novels The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835), and Falkner (1837). She contributed five volumes of Lives of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French authors to Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia. She also wrote stories for ladies' magazines. She was still helping to support her father, and they looked out for publishers for each other. In 1830, she sold the copyright for a new edition of Frankenstein for £60 to Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley for their new Standard Novels series. After her father's death in 1836 at the age of eighty, she began assembling his letters and a memoir for publication, as he had requested in his will; but after two years of work, she abandoned the project. Throughout this period, she also championed Percy Shelley's poetry, promoting its publication and quoting it in her writing. By 1837, Percy's works were well-known and increasingly admired. In the summer of 1838 Edward Moxon, the publisher of Tennyson and the son-in-law of Charles Lamb, proposed publishing a collected works of Percy Shelley. Mary was paid £500 to edit the Poetical Works (1838), which Sir Timothy insisted should not include a biography. Mary found a way to tell the story of Percy's life, nonetheless: she included extensive biographical notes about the poems. Shelley continued to practice her mother's feminist principles by extending aid to women whom society disapproved of. For instance, Shelley extended financial aid to Mary Diana Dods, a single mother and illegitimate herself who appears to have been a lesbian and gave her the new identity of Walter Sholto Douglas, husband of her lover Isabel Robinson. Shelley also assisted Georgiana Paul, a woman disallowed for by her husband for alleged adultery. Shelley in her diary about her assistance to the latter: "I do not make a boast-I do not say aloud-behold my generosity and greatness of mind-for in truth it is simple justice I perform-and so I am still reviled for being worldly". Mary Shelley continued to treat potential romantic partners with caution. In 1828, she met and flirted with the French writer Prosper Mérimée, but her one surviving letter to him appears to be a deflection of his declaration of love. She was delighted when her old friend from Italy, Edward Trelawny, returned to England, and they joked about marriage in their letters. Their friendship had altered, however, following her refusal to cooperate with his proposed biography of Percy Shelley; and he later reacted angrily to her omission of the atheistic section of Queen Mab from Percy Shelley's poems. Oblique references in her journals, from the early 1830s until the early 1840s, suggest that Mary Shelley had feelings for the radical politician Aubrey Beauclerk, who may have disappointed her by twice marrying others. Mary Shelley's first concern during these years was the welfare of Percy Florence. She honoured her late husband's wish that his son attend public school and, with Sir Timothy's grudging help, had him educated at Harrow. To avoid boarding fees, she moved to Harrow on the Hill herself so that Percy could attend as a day scholar. Though Percy went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, and dabbled in politics and the law, he showed no sign of his parents' gifts. He was devoted to his mother, and after he left university in 1841, he came to live with her. Final years and death In 1840 and 1842, mother and son travelled together on the continent, journeys that Mary Shelley recorded in Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843 (1844). In 1844, Sir Timothy Shelley finally died at the age of ninety, "falling from the stalk like an overblown flower", as Mary put it. For the first time, she and her son were financially independent, though the estate proved less valuable than they had hoped. In the mid-1840s, Mary Shelley found herself the target of three separate blackmailers. In 1845, an Italian political exile called Gatteschi, whom she had met in Paris, threatened to publish letters she had sent him. A friend of her son's bribed a police chief into seizing Gatteschi's papers, including the letters, which were then destroyed. Shortly afterwards, Mary Shelley bought some letters written by herself and Percy Bysshe Shelley from a man calling himself G. Byron and posing as the illegitimate son of the late Lord Byron. Also in 1845, Percy Bysshe Shelley's cousin Thomas Medwin approached her claiming to have written a damaging biography of Percy Shelley. He said he would suppress it in return for £250, but Mary Shelley refused. In 1848, Percy Florence married Jane Gibson St John. The marriage proved a happy one, and Mary Shelley and Jane were fond of each other. Mary lived with her son and daughter-in-law at Field Place, Sussex, the Shelleys' ancestral home, and at Chester Square, London, and accompanied them on travels abroad. Mary Shelley's last years were blighted by illness. From 1839, she suffered from headaches and bouts of paralysis in parts of her body, which sometimes prevented her from reading and writing. On 1 February 1851, at Chester Square, she died at the age of fifty-three from what her physician suspected was a brain tumour. According to Jane Shelley, Mary Shelley had asked to be buried with her mother and father; but Percy and Jane, judging the graveyard at St Pancras to be "dreadful", chose to bury her instead at St Peter's Church, Bournemouth, near their new home at Boscombe. On the first anniversary of Mary Shelley's death, the Shelleys opened her box-desk. Inside they found locks of her dead children's hair, a notebook she had shared with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a copy of his poem Adonaïs with one page folded round a silk parcel containing some of his ashes and the remains of his heart. Literary themes and styles Mary Shelley lived a literary life. Her father encouraged her to learn to write by composing letters, and her favourite occupation as a child was writing stories. Unfortunately, all of Mary's juvenilia were lost when she ran off with Percy in 1814, and none of her surviving manuscripts can be definitively dated before that year. Her first published work is often thought to have been Mounseer Nongtongpaw, comic verses written for Godwin's Juvenile Library when she was ten and a half; however, the poem is attributed to another writer in the most recent authoritative collection of her works. Percy Shelley enthusiastically encouraged Mary Shelley's writing: "My husband was, from the first, very anxious that I should prove myself worthy of my parentage, and enrol myself on the page of fame. He was forever inciting me to obtain literary reputation." Novels Autobiographical elements Certain sections of Mary Shelley's novels are often interpreted as masked rewritings of her life. Critics have pointed to the recurrence of the father–daughter motif in particular as evidence of this autobiographical style. For example, commentators frequently read Mathilda (1820) autobiographically, identifying the three central characters as versions of Mary Shelley, William Godwin, and Percy Shelley. Mary Shelley herself confided that she modelled the central characters of The Last Man on her Italian circle. Lord Raymond, who leaves England to fight for the Greeks and dies in Constantinople, is based on Lord Byron; and the utopian Adrian, Earl of Windsor, who leads his followers in search of a natural paradise and dies when his boat sinks in a storm, is a fictional portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley. However, as she wrote in her review of Godwin's novel Cloudesley (1830), she did not believe that authors "were merely copying from our own hearts". William Godwin regarded his daughter's characters as types rather than portraits from real life. Some modern critics, such as Patricia Clemit and Jane Blumberg, have taken the same view, resisting autobiographical readings of Mary Shelley's works. Novelistic genres Mary Shelley employed the techniques of many different novelistic genres, most vividly the Godwinian novel, Walter Scott's new historical novel, and the Gothic novel. The Godwinian novel, made popular during the 1790s with works such as Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794), "employed a Rousseauvian confessional form to explore the contradictory relations between the self and society", and Frankenstein exhibits many of the same themes and literary devices as Godwin's novel. However, Shelley critiques those Enlightenment ideals that Godwin promotes in his works. In The Last Man, she uses the philosophical form of the Godwinian novel to demonstrate the ultimate meaninglessness of the world. While earlier Godwinian novels had shown how rational individuals could slowly improve society, The Last Man and Frankenstein demonstrate the individual's lack of control over history. Shelley uses the historical novel to comment on gender relations; for example, Valperga is a feminist version of Scott's masculinist genre. Introducing women into the story who are not part of the historical record, Shelley uses their narratives to question established theological and political institutions. Shelley sets the male protagonist's compulsive greed for conquest in opposition to a female alternative: reason and sensibility. In Perkin Warbeck, Shelley's other historical novel, Lady Gordon stands for the values of friendship, domesticity, and equality. Through her, Shelley offers a feminine alternative to the masculine power politics that destroy the male characters. The novel provides a more inclusive historical narrative to challenge the one which usually relates only masculine events. Gender With the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1970s, Mary Shelley's works, particularly Frankenstein, began to attract much more attention from scholars. Feminist and psychoanalytic critics were largely responsible for the recovery from neglect of Shelley as a writer. Ellen Moers was one of the first to claim that Shelley's loss of a baby was a crucial influence on the writing of Frankenstein. She argues that the novel is a "birth myth" in which Shelley comes to terms with her guilt for causing her mother's death as well as for failing as a parent. Shelley scholar Anne K. Mellor suggests that, from a feminist viewpoint, it is a story "about what happens when a man tries to have a baby without a woman ... [Frankenstein] is profoundly concerned with natural as opposed to unnatural modes of production and reproduction". Victor Frankenstein's failure as a "parent" in the novel has been read as an expression of the anxieties which accompany pregnancy, giving birth, and particularly maternity. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue in their seminal book The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) that in Frankenstein in particular, Shelley responded to the masculine literary tradition represented by John Milton's Paradise Lost. In their interpretation, Shelley reaffirms this masculine tradition, including the misogyny inherent in it, but at the same time "conceal[s] fantasies of equality that occasionally erupt in monstrous images of rage". Mary Poovey reads the first edition of Frankenstein as part of a larger pattern in Shelley's writing, which begins with literary self-assertion and ends with conventional femininity. Poovey suggests that Frankenstein's multiple narratives enable Shelley to split her artistic persona: she can "express and efface herself at the same time". Shelley's fear of self-assertion is reflected in the fate of Frankenstein, who is punished for his egotism by losing all his domestic ties. Feminist critics often focus on how authorship itself, particularly female authorship, is represented in and through Shelley's novels. As Mellor explains, Shelley uses the Gothic style not only to explore repressed female sexual desire but also as way to "censor her own speech in Frankenstein". According to Poovey and Mellor, Shelley did not want to promote her own authorial persona and felt deeply inadequate as a writer, and "this shame contributed to the generation of her fictional images of abnormality, perversion, and destruction". Shelley's writings focus on the role of the family in society and women's role within that family. She celebrates the "feminine affections and compassion" associated with the family and suggests that civil society will fail without them. Shelley was "profoundly committed to an ethic of cooperation, mutual dependence, and self-sacrifice". In Lodore, for example, the central story follows the fortunes of the wife and daughter of the title character, Lord Lodore, who is killed in a duel at the end of the first volume, leaving a trail of legal, financial, and familial obstacles for the two "heroines" to negotiate. The novel is engaged with political and ideological issues, particularly the education and social role of women. It dissects a patriarchal culture that separated the sexes and pressured women into dependence on men. In the view of Shelley scholar Betty T. Bennett, "the novel proposes egalitarian educational paradigms for women and men, which would bring social justice as well as the spiritual and intellectual means by which to meet the challenges life invariably brings". However, Falkner is the only one of Mary Shelley's novels in which the heroine's agenda triumphs. The novel's resolution proposes that when female values triumph over violent and destructive masculinity, men will be freed to express the "compassion, sympathy, and generosity" of their better natures. Enlightenment and Romanticism Frankenstein, like much Gothic fiction of the period, mixes a visceral and alienating subject matter with speculative and thought-provoking themes. Rather than focusing on the twists and turns of the plot, however, the novel foregrounds the mental and moral struggles of the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, and Shelley imbues the text with her own brand of politicised Romanticism, one that criticised the individualism and egotism of traditional Romanticism. Victor Frankenstein is like Satan in Paradise Lost, and Prometheus: he rebels against tradition; he creates life; and he shapes his own destiny. These traits are not portrayed positively; as Blumberg writes, "his relentless ambition is a self-delusion, clothed as quest for truth". He must abandon his family to fulfill his ambition. Mary Shelley believed in the Enlightenment idea that people could improve society through the responsible exercise of political power, but she feared that the irresponsible exercise of power would lead to chaos. In practice, her works largely criticise the way 18th-century thinkers such as her parents believed such change could be brought about. The creature in Frankenstein, for example, reads books associated with radical ideals but the education he gains from them is ultimately useless. Shelley's works reveal her as less optimistic than Godwin and Wollstonecraft; she lacks faith in Godwin's theory that humanity could eventually be perfected. As literary scholar Kari Lokke writes, The Last Man, more so than Frankenstein, "in its refusal to place humanity at the centre of the universe, its questioning of our privileged position in relation to nature ... constitutes a profound and prophetic challenge to Western humanism." Specifically, Mary Shelley's allusions to what radicals believed was a failed revolution in France and the Godwinian, Wollstonecraftian, and Burkean responses to it, challenge "Enlightenment faith in the inevitability of progress through collective efforts". As in Frankenstein, Shelley "offers a profoundly disenchanted commentary on the age of revolution, which ends in a total rejection of the progressive ideals of her own generation". Not only does she reject these Enlightenment political ideals, but she also rejects the Romantic notion that the poetic or literary imagination can offer an alternative. Politics There is a new scholarly emphasis on Shelley as a lifelong reformer, deeply engaged in the liberal and feminist concerns of her day. In 1820, she was thrilled by the Liberal uprising in Spain which forced the king to grant a constitution. In 1823, she wrote articles for Leigh Hunt's periodical The Liberal and played an active role in the formulation of its outlook. She was delighted when the Whigs came back to power in 1830 and at the prospect of the 1832 Reform Act. Critics have until recently cited Lodore and Falkner as evidence of increasing conservatism in Mary Shelley's later works. In 1984, Mary Poovey influentially identified the retreat of Mary Shelley's reformist politics into the "separate sphere" of the domestic. Poovey suggested that Mary Shelley wrote Falkner to resolve her conflicted response to her father's combination of libertarian radicalism and stern insistence on social decorum. Mellor largely agreed, arguing that "Mary Shelley grounded her alternative political ideology on the metaphor of the peaceful, loving, bourgeois family. She thereby implicitly endorsed a conservative vision of gradual evolutionary reform." This vision allowed women to participate in the public sphere but it inherited the inequalities inherent in the bourgeois family. However, in the last decade or so this view has been challenged. For example, Bennett claims that Mary Shelley's works reveal a consistent commitment to Romantic idealism and political reform and Jane Blumberg's study of Shelley's early novels argues that her career cannot be easily divided into radical and conservative halves. She contends that "Shelley was never a passionate radical like her husband and her later lifestyle was not abruptly assumed nor was it a betrayal. She was in fact challenging the political and literary influences of her circle in her first work." In this reading, Shelley's early works are interpreted as a challenge to Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley's radicalism. Victor Frankenstein's "thoughtless rejection of family", for example, is seen as evidence of Shelley's constant concern for the domestic. Short stories In the 1820s and 1830s, Mary Shelley frequently wrote short stories for gift books or annuals, including sixteen for The Keepsake, which was aimed at middle-class women and bound in silk, with gilt-edged pages. Mary Shelley's work in this genre has been described as that of a "hack writer" and "wordy and pedestrian". However, critic Charlotte Sussman points out that other leading writers of the day, such as the Romantic poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, also took advantage of this profitable market. She explains that "the annuals were a major mode of literary production in the 1820s and 1830s", with The Keepsake the most successful. Many of Shelley's stories are set in places or times far removed from early 19th-century Britain, such as Greece and the reign of Henry IV of France. Shelley was particularly interested in "the fragility of individual identity" and often depicted "the way a person's role in the world can be cataclysmically altered either by an internal emotional upheaval, or by some supernatural occurrence that mirrors an internal schism". In her stories, female identity is tied to a woman's short-lived value in the marriage market while male identity can be sustained and transformed through the use of money. Although Mary Shelley wrote twenty-one short stories for the annuals between 1823 and 1839, she always saw herself, above all, as a novelist. She wrote to Leigh Hunt, "I write bad articles which help to make me miserable—but I am going to plunge into a novel and hope that its clear water will wash off the mud of the magazines." Travelogues When they ran off to France in the summer of 1814, Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley began a joint journal, which they published in 1817 under the title History of a Six Weeks' Tour, adding four letters, two by each of them, based on their visit to Geneva in 1816, along with Percy Shelley's poem "Mont Blanc". The work celebrates youthful love and political idealism and consciously follows the example of Mary Wollstonecraft and others who had combined travelling with writing. The perspective of the History is philosophical and reformist rather than that of a conventional travelogue; in particular, it addresses the effects of politics and war on France. The letters the couple wrote on the second journey confront the "great and extraordinary events" of the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo after his "Hundred Days" return in 1815. They also explore the sublimity of Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc as well as the revolutionary legacy of the philosopher and novelist Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Mary Shelley's last full-length book, written in the form of letters and published in 1844, was Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843, which recorded her travels with her son Percy Florence and his university friends. In Rambles, Shelley follows the tradition of Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark and her own A History of a Six Weeks' Tour in mapping her personal and political landscape through the discourse of sensibility and sympathy. For Shelley, building sympathetic connections between people is the way to build civil society and to increase knowledge: "knowledge, to enlighten and free the mind from clinging deadening prejudices—a wider circle of sympathy with our fellow-creatures;—these are the uses of travel". Between observations on scenery, culture, and "the people, especially in a political point of view", she uses the travelogue form to explore her roles as a widow and mother and to reflect on revolutionary nationalism in Italy. She also records her "pilgrimage" to scenes associated with Percy Shelley. According to critic Clarissa Orr, Mary Shelley's adoption of a persona of philosophical motherhood gives Rambles the unity of a prose poem, with "death and memory as central themes". At the same time, Shelley makes an egalitarian case against monarchy, class distinctions, slavery, and war. Biographies Between 1832 and 1839, Mary Shelley wrote many biographies of notable Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French men and a few women for Dionysius Lardner's Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men. These formed part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia, one of the best of many such series produced in the 1820s and 1830s in response to growing middle-class demand for self-education. Until the republication of these essays in 2002, their significance within her body of work was not appreciated. In the view of literary scholar Greg Kucich, they reveal Mary Shelley's "prodigious research across several centuries and in multiple languages", her gift for biographical narrative, and her interest in the "emerging forms of feminist historiography". Shelley wrote in a biographical style popularised by the 18th-century critic Samuel Johnson in his Lives of the Poets (1779–81), combining secondary sources, memoir and anecdote, and authorial evaluation. She records details of each writer's life and character, quotes their writing in the original as well as in translation, and ends with a critical assessment of their achievement. For Shelley, biographical writing was supposed to, in her words, "form as it were a school in which to study the philosophy of history", and to teach "lessons". Most frequently and importantly, these lessons consisted of criticisms of male-dominated institutions such as primogeniture. Shelley emphasises domesticity, romance, family, sympathy, and compassion in the lives of her subjects. Her conviction that such forces could improve society connects her biographical approach with that of other early feminist historians such as Mary Hays and Anna Jameson. Unlike her novels, most of which had an original print run of several hundred copies, the Lives had a print run of about 4,000 for each volume: thus, according to Kucich, Mary Shelley's "use of biography to forward the social agenda of women's historiography became one of her most influential political interventions". Editorial work Soon after Percy Shelley's death, Mary Shelley determined to write his biography. In a letter of 17 November 1822, she announced: "I shall write his life—& thus occupy myself in the only manner from which I can derive consolation." However, her father-in-law, Sir Timothy Shelley, effectively banned her from doing so. Mary began her fostering of Percy's poetic reputation in 1824 with the publication of his Posthumous Poems. In 1839, while she was working on the Lives, she prepared a new edition of his poetry, which became, in the words of literary scholar Susan J. Wolfson, "the canonizing event" in the history of her husband's reputation. The following year, Mary Shelley edited a volume of her husband's essays, letters, translations, and fragments, and throughout the 1830s, she introduced his poetry to a wider audience by publishing assorted works in the annual The Keepsake. Evading Sir Timothy's ban on a biography, Mary Shelley often included in these editions her own annotations and reflections on her husband's life and work. "I am to justify his ways," she had declared in 1824; "I am to make him beloved to all posterity." It was this goal, argues Blumberg, that led her to present Percy's work to the public in the "most popular form possible". To tailor his works for a Victorian audience, she cast Percy Shelley as a lyrical rather than a political poet. As Mary Favret writes, "the disembodied Percy identifies the spirit of poetry itself". Mary glossed Percy's political radicalism as a form of sentimentalism, arguing that his republicanism arose from sympathy for those who were suffering. She inserted romantic anecdotes of his benevolence, domesticity, and love of the natural world. Portraying herself as Percy's "practical muse", she also noted how she had suggested revisions as he wrote. Despite the emotions stirred by this task, Mary Shelley arguably proved herself in many respects a professional and scholarly editor. Working from Percy's messy, sometimes indecipherable, notebooks, she attempted to form a chronology for his writings, and she included poems, such as Epipsychidion, addressed to Emilia Viviani, which she would rather have left out. She was forced, however, into several compromises, and, as Blumberg notes, "modern critics have found fault with the edition and claim variously that she miscopied, misinterpreted, purposely obscured, and attempted to turn the poet into something he was not". According to Wolfson, Donald Reiman, a modern editor of Percy Bysshe Shelley's works, still refers to Mary Shelley's editions, while acknowledging that her editing style belongs "to an age of editing when the aim was not to establish accurate texts and scholarly apparatus but to present a full record of a writer's career for the general reader". In principle, Mary Shelley believed in publishing every last word of her husband's work; but she found herself obliged to omit certain passages, either by pressure from her publisher, Edward Moxon, or in deference to public propriety. For example, she removed the atheistic passages from Queen Mab for the first edition. After she restored them in the second edition, Moxon was prosecuted and convicted of blasphemous libel, though the prosecution was brought out of principle by the Chartist publisher Henry Hetherington, and no punishment was sought. Mary Shelley's omissions provoked criticism, often stinging, from members of Percy Shelley's former circle, and reviewers accused her of, among other things, indiscriminate inclusions. Her notes have nevertheless remained an essential source for the study of Percy Shelley's work. As Bennett explains, "biographers and critics agree that Mary Shelley's commitment to bring Shelley the notice she believed his works merited was the single, major force that established Shelley's reputation during a period when he almost certainly would have faded from public view". Reputation In her own lifetime, Mary Shelley was taken seriously as a writer, though reviewers often missed her writings' political edge. After her death, however, she was chiefly remembered as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of Frankenstein. In fact, in the introduction to her letters published in 1945, editor Frederick Jones wrote, "a collection of the present size could not be justified by the general quality of the letters or by Mary Shelley's importance as a writer. It is as the wife of [Percy Bysshe Shelley] that she excites our interest." This attitude had not disappeared by 1980 when Betty T. Bennett published the first volume of Mary Shelley's complete letters. As she explains, "the fact is that until recent years scholars have generally regarded Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley as a result: William Godwin's and Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter who became Shelley's Pygmalion." It was not until Emily Sunstein's Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality in 1989 that a full-length scholarly biography was published. The attempts of Mary Shelley's son and daughter-in-law to "Victorianise" her memory by censoring biographical documents contributed to a perception of Mary Shelley as a more conventional, less reformist figure than her works suggest. Her own timid omissions from Percy Shelley's works and her quiet avoidance of public controversy in her later years added to this impression. Commentary by Hogg, Trelawny, and other admirers of Percy Shelley also tended to downplay Mary Shelley's radicalism. Trelawny's Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author (1878) praised Percy Shelley at the expense of Mary, questioning her intelligence and even her authorship of Frankenstein. Lady Shelley, Percy Florence's wife, responded in part by presenting a severely edited collection of letters she had inherited, published privately as Shelley and Mary in 1882. From Frankenstein'''s first theatrical adaptation in 1823 to the cinematic adaptations of the 20th century, including the first cinematic version in 1910 and now-famous versions such as James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein, Mel Brooks' satirical 1974 Young Frankenstein, and Kenneth Branagh's 1994 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, many audiences first encounter the work of Mary Shelley through adaptation. Over the course of the 19th century, Mary Shelley came to be seen as a one-novel author at best, rather than as the professional writer she was; most of her works have remained out of print until the last thirty years, obstructing a larger view of her achievement. In recent decades, the republication of almost all her writing has stimulated a new recognition of its value. Her habit of intensive reading and study, revealed in her journals and letters and reflected in her works, is now better appreciated. Shelley's conception of herself as an author has also been recognised; after Percy's death, she wrote of her authorial ambitions: "I think that I can maintain myself, and there is something inspiriting in the idea." Scholars now consider Mary Shelley to be a major Romantic figure, significant for her literary achievement and her political voice as a woman and a liberal. Selected works History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817) Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) Mathilda (1819) Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823) Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1824) The Last Man (1826) The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830) Lodore (1835) Falkner (1837) The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1839) Contributions to Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men (1835–39), part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 (1844) Collections of Mary Shelley's papers are housed in Lord Abinger's Shelley Collection on deposit at the Bodleian Library, the New York Public Library (particularly The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle), the Huntington Library, the British Library, and in the John Murray Collection. See also Mary Shelley (2017 film) Godwin–Shelley family tree Map of 1814 and 1816 European journeys Map of 1840s European journeys Notes References All essays from The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley are marked with a "(CC)" and those from The Other Mary Shelley with an "(OMS)". Bibliography Primary sources Shelley, Mary. Collected Tales and Stories. Ed. Charles E. Robinson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. . Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Ed. Susan J. Wolfson. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. . Shelley, Mary. The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814–44. Ed. Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. The Last Man. Ed. Morton D. Paley. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1998. . Shelley, Mary. Lodore. Ed. Lisa Vargo. Ontario: Broadview Press, 1997. . Shelley, Mary. Mary Shelley's Literary Lives and Other Writings. 4 vols. Ed. Tilar J. Mazzeo. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2002. . Shelley, Mary. Mathilda . Ed. Elizabeth Nitchie. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 16 February 2008. Shelley, Mary. Matilda; with Mary and Maria, by Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd. London: Penguin, 1992. . Shelley, Mary, ed. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley . London: Edward Moxon, 1840. Google Books. Retrieved 6 April 2008. Shelley, Mary. Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca. Ed. Michael Rossington. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 2000. . Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Shelley's Poetry and Prose. Eds. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2002. . Secondary sources Bennett, Betty T. "Finding Mary Shelley in her Letters". Romantic Revisions. Ed. Robert Brinkley and Keith Hanley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. . Bennett, Betty T., ed. Mary Shelley in her Times. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Bennett, Betty T. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. . Bennett, Betty T. "The Political Philosophy of Mary Shelley's Historical Novels: Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". The Evidence of the Imagination. Ed. Donald H. Reiman, Michael C. Jaye, and Betty T. Bennett. New York: New York University Press, 1978. . Bieri, James. Percy Bysshe Shelley, a Biography: Exile of Unfulfilled Renown, 1816–1822. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005. . Blumberg, Jane. Mary Shelley's Early Novels: "This Child of Imagination and Misery". Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993. . Bunnell, Charlene E. "All the World's a Stage": Dramatic Sensibility in Mary Shelley's Novels. New York: Routledge, 2002. . Carlson, J. A. England's First Family of Writers: Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Shelley. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. . Clemit, Pamela. "From The Fields of Fancy to Matilda." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Clemit, Pamela. The Godwinian Novel: The Rational Fictions of Godwin, Brockden Brown, Mary Shelley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. . Conger, Syndy M., Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea, eds. Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Eberle-Sinatra, Michael, ed. Mary Shelley's Fictions: From Frankenstein to Falkner. New York: St. Martin's Press/Palgrave, 2000. . Fisch, Audrey A., Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schorr, eds. The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond "Frankenstein". New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. . Frank, Frederick S. "Mary Shelley's Other Fictions: A Bibliographic Consensus". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Garrett, Martin Mary Shelley. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. 1979. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. . Gittings, Robert and Jo Manton. Claire Clairmont and the Shelleys. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. . Holmes, Richard. Shelley: The Pursuit. 1974. London: Harper Perennial, 2003. . Jones, Steven. "Charles E. Robinson, Ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two)". (Book Review). Romantic Circles website, 1 January 1998. Retrieved 15 September 2016. Jump, Harriet Devine, Pamela Clemit, and Betty T. Bennett, eds. Lives of the Great Romantics III: Godwin, Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley by Their Contemporaries. London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999. . Levine, George and U. C. Knoepflmacher, eds. The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley's novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. . Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, her Fiction, Her Monsters. London: Routledge, 1990. . Myers, Mitzi. "Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley: The Female Author between Public and Private Spheres." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Orr, Clarissa Campbell. "Mary Shelley's Rambles in Germany and Italy, the Celebrity Author, and the Undiscovered Country of the Human Heart". Romanticism on the Net 11 (August 1998). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. . Robinson, Charles E., ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two). The Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics, Volume IX, Donald H. Reiman, general ed. Garland Publishing, 1996. . Schor, Esther, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. . Seymour, Miranda. Mary Shelley. London: John Murray, 2000. . Sites, Melissa. "Re/membering Home: Utopian Domesticity in Mary Shelley's Lodore". A Brighter Morn: The Shelley Circle's Utopian Project. Ed. Darby Lewes. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003. . Smith, Johanna M. "A Critical History of Frankenstein". Frankenstein. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. . Spark, Muriel. Mary Shelley. London: Cardinal, 1987. . St Clair, William. The Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography of a Family. London: Faber & Faber, 1989. . Sterrenburg, Lee. "The Last Man: Anatomy of Failed Revolutions". Nineteenth Century Fiction 33 (1978): 324–47. Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. 1989. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. . Townsend, William C. Modern State Trials. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1850. Wake, Ann M Frank. "Women in the Active Voice: Recovering Female History in Mary Shelley's Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . White, Daniel E. "'The god undeified': Mary Shelley's Valperga, Italy, and the Aesthetic of Desire ". Romanticism on the Net 6 (May 1997). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Further reading Goulding, Christopher. "The Real Doctor Frankenstein?" Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. The Royal Society of Medicine, May 2002. Richard Holmes, "Out of Control" (review of Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds, edited by David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Jason Scott Robert, MIT Press, 277 pp.; and Mary Shelley, The New Annotated Frankenstein, edited and with a foreword and notes by Leslie S. Klinger, Liveright, 352 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 20 (21 December 2017), pp. 38, 40–41. Gordon, Charlotte (2016). Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley'', Random House. External links Mary Shelley chronology and bibliography – part of Romantic Circles Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley manuscript material, 1815–1850, held by the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, New York Public Library Mary Shelley at the British Library Exhibits relating to Mary Shelley at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford 1797 births 1851 deaths 19th-century English women writers 19th-century English novelists 19th-century British short story writers British expatriates in Italy British expatriates in Switzerland British feminists British horror writers British science fiction writers Deaths from brain tumor Deaths from cancer in England English expatriates in Italy English expatriates in Switzerland English feminists English horror writers English science fiction writers English travel writers English women novelists Frankenstein Godwin family People from Bournemouth People from Somers Town, London Romanticism Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees Victorian novelists Women historical novelists Women horror writers Women of the Regency era Women science fiction and fantasy writers British women travel writers Writers of Gothic fiction Shelley family Weird fiction writers
true
[ "Big Foot (Potawatomi: Maungeezik, meaning “Big Foot”) was a leader of the Prairie Band of Potawatomi on Kishwauketoe (today Geneva Lake) in what would become the U.S. State of Wisconsin.\n\nBig Foot likely led his band in the Battle of Fort Dearborn in Chicago, part of the War of 1812, in which a Potawatomi war band killed 38 American soldiers, 14 civilians, captured dozens more, and burned Fort Dearborn to the ground. Following the War of 1812, the United States regularly sent agents to Geneva Lake to spy on Big Foot, including the Ottawa leader Shabbona and the British-Potawatomi fur trader Billy Caldwell, which interfered with Big Foot's plans to make further war against the United States. He spent several decades preparing for further hostilities against the United States that never materialized.\n\nAfter the Potawatomi’s defeat in the Black Hawk War of 1832, in which Big Foot did not participate, he negotiated and signed the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, which sold much of southeastern Wisconsin and northeastern Illinois to the United States. Under the treaty, the United States forcibly removed Big Foot and the Potawatomi band from Geneva Lake to the Platte River in Missouri and later to Lawrence, Kansas.\n\nSeveral modern locations around Geneva Lake bear Big Foot's name, including the community of Big Foot Prairie in Wisconsin and Illinois, Big Foot Beach State Park in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, Big Foot High School in Walworth, Wisconsin, and Big Foot Country Club in Fontana-on-Geneva Lake, Wisconsin. The original settler name for Geneva Lake in Wisconsin was Big Foot Lake.\n\nReferences \n\n19th-century Native Americans\n\nYear of birth missing (living people)", "State Trunk Highway 36 (often called Highway 36, STH-36 or WIS 36) is a state highway in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. It runs in a diagonal southwest–northeast direction across southeastern Wisconsin from Springfield which is north of Lake Geneva to Milwaukee.\n\nRoute description \n\nWIS 36 begins at its intersection with WIS 120 and travels in a general northeasterly direction to an intersection with WIS 11 in Burlington. The road continues northeast, passing through Waterford where it connects with WIS 164, then to Wind Lake and Muskego before heading to Franklin, where it runs concurrently with US Highway 45 (US 45) for a short distance, and crosses WIS 100. The highway then follows Loomis Road through Greendale and Greenfield, where it intersects with Interstate 43 (I-43) and I-894 before terminating at WIS 241 in Milwaukee.\n\nHistory\nWIS 36 is unusual in that its route has seen few changes since it was designated in 1918. The road originally began in Lake Geneva, approximately south of its current terminus, and ended near downtown Milwaukee. In 1921, the route was shortened to end at the junction with what was then WIS 57, which later became US 41, and is now WIS 241. In 1919, WIS 36 was extended to the west along WIS 50 to Williams Bay, then turned to the south into Walworth County to join WIS 89 (now US 14) to its end at the Illinois state line.\n\nThe route would change again in 1968; WIS 36 terminated at Lake Geneva, and the portion from Williams Bay to Walworth was redesignated as WIS 67. Later, in 1987–1988, WIS 120 was extended north from Lake Geneva via WIS 36 to Springfield, and then north along County Trunk Highway G (CTH-G) toward East Troy, placing the end of the highway at its present location.\n\nMajor intersections\n\nSee also\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n036\nTransportation in Walworth County, Wisconsin\nTransportation in Racine County, Wisconsin\nTransportation in Waukesha County, Wisconsin\nTransportation in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin" ]
[ "Mary Shelley", "Lake Geneva and Frankenstein", "When did Mary Shelley write Frankenstein?", "Mary Shelley remembered in 1831,", "What did she have to do with Lake Geneva?", "close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis" ]
C_fcd11261399c4441ac5c013381bf1e1d_1
what did they do while they were there?
3
What did Mary and Percy Shelley do while they were at Maison Chapuis?
Mary Shelley
In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. The party arrived at Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted, "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. CANNOTANSWER
They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and feminist activist Mary Wollstonecraft. Shelley's mother died less than a month after giving birth to her. She was raised by her father, who provided her with a rich if informal education, encouraging her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories. When she was four, her father married a neighbour, Mary Jane Clairmont, with whom Shelley came to have a troubled relationship. In 1814, Shelley began a romance with one of her father's political followers, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. Together with her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, she and Percy left for France and travelled through Europe. Upon their return to England, Shelley was pregnant with Percy's child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet. In 1816, the couple and Mary's stepsister famously spent a summer with Lord Byron and John William Polidori near Geneva, Switzerland, where Shelley conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, most likely caused by the brain tumour which killed her at age 53. Until the 1970s, Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish her husband's works and for her novel Frankenstein, which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Shelley's achievements. Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826) and her final two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). Studies of her lesser-known works, such as the travel book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–1846), support the growing view that Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life. Shelley's works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practised by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin. Life and career Early life Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, in 1797. She was the second child of the feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the first child of the philosopher, novelist, and journalist William Godwin. Wollstonecraft died of puerperal fever shortly after Mary was born. Godwin was left to bring up Mary, along with her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, Wollstonecraft's child by the American speculator Gilbert Imlay. A year after Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798), which he intended as a sincere and compassionate tribute. However, because the Memoirs revealed Wollstonecraft's affairs and her illegitimate child, they were seen as shocking. Mary Godwin read these memoirs and her mother's books, and was brought up to cherish her mother's memory. Mary's earliest years were happy, judging from the letters of William Godwin's housekeeper and nurse, Louisa Jones. But Godwin was often deeply in debt; feeling that he could not raise the children by himself, he cast about for a second wife. In December 1801, he married Mary Jane Clairmont, a well-educated woman with two young children of her own—Charles and Claire. Most of Godwin's friends disliked his new wife, describing her as quick-tempered and quarrelsome; but Godwin was devoted to her, and the marriage was a success. Mary Godwin, on the other hand, came to detest her stepmother. William Godwin's 19th-century biographer Charles Kegan Paul later suggested that Mrs Godwin had favoured her own children over those of Mary Wollstonecraft. Together, the Godwins started a publishing firm called M. J. Godwin, which sold children's books as well as stationery, maps, and games. However, the business did not turn a profit, and Godwin was forced to borrow substantial sums to keep it going. He continued to borrow to pay off earlier loans, compounding his problems. By 1809, Godwin's business was close to failure, and he was "near to despair". Godwin was saved from debtor's prison by philosophical devotees such as Francis Place, who lent him further money. Though Mary Godwin received little formal education, her father tutored her in a broad range of subjects. He often took the children on educational outings, and they had access to his library and to the many intellectuals who visited him, including the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the former vice-president of the United States Aaron Burr. Godwin admitted he was not educating the children according to Mary Wollstonecraft's philosophy as outlined in works such as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), but Mary Godwin nonetheless received an unusual and advanced education for a girl of the time. She had a governess, a daily tutor, and read many of her father's children's books on Roman and Greek history in manuscript. For six months in 1811, she also attended a boarding school in Ramsgate. Her father described her at age 15 as "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible." In June 1812, Mary's father sent her to stay with the dissenting family of the radical William Baxter, near Dundee, Scotland. To Baxter, he wrote, "I am anxious that she should be brought up ... like a philosopher, even like a cynic." Scholars have speculated that she may have been sent away for her health, to remove her from the seamy side of the business, or to introduce her to radical politics. Mary Godwin revelled in the spacious surroundings of Baxter's house and in the companionship of his four daughters, and she returned north in the summer of 1813 for a further stay of 10 months. In the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein, she recalled: "I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered." Percy Bysshe Shelley Mary Godwin may have first met the radical poet-philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley in the interval between her two stays in Scotland. By the time she returned home for a second time on 30 March 1814, Percy Shelley had become estranged from his wife and was regularly visiting William Godwin, whom he had agreed to bail out of debt. Percy Shelley's radicalism, particularly his economic views, which he had imbibed from William Godwin's Political Justice (1793), had alienated him from his wealthy aristocratic family: they wanted him to follow traditional models of the landed aristocracy, and he wanted to donate large amounts of the family's money to schemes intended to help the disadvantaged. Percy Shelley, therefore, had difficulty gaining access to money until he inherited his estate because his family did not want him wasting it on projects of "political justice". After several months of promises, Shelley announced that he either could not or would not pay off all of Godwin's debts. Godwin was angry and felt betrayed. Mary and Percy began meeting each other secretly at her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's grave in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, and they fell in love—she was 16, and he was 21. On 26 June 1814, Shelley and Godwin declared their love for one another as Shelley announced he could not hide his "ardent passion", leading her in a "sublime and rapturous moment" to say she felt the same way; on either that day or the next, Godwin lost her virginity to Shelley, which tradition claims happened in the churchyard. Godwin described herself as attracted to Shelley's "wild, intellectual, unearthly looks". To Mary's dismay, her father disapproved, and tried to thwart the relationship and salvage the "spotless fame" of his daughter. At about the same time, Mary's father learned of Shelley's inability to pay off the father's debts. Mary, who later wrote of "my excessive and romantic attachment to my father", was confused. She saw Percy Shelley as an embodiment of her parents' liberal and reformist ideas of the 1790s, particularly Godwin's view that marriage was a repressive monopoly, which he had argued in his 1793 edition of Political Justice but later retracted. On 28 July 1814, the couple eloped and secretly left for France, taking Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with them. After convincing Mary Jane Godwin, who had pursued them to Calais, that they did not wish to return, the trio travelled to Paris, and then, by donkey, mule, carriage, and foot, through a France recently ravaged by war, to Switzerland. "It was acting in a novel, being an incarnate romance," Mary Shelley recalled in 1826. Godwin wrote about France in 1814: "The distress of the inhabitants, whose houses had been burned, their cattle killed and all their wealth destroyed, has given a sting to my detestation of war...". As they travelled, Mary and Percy read works by Mary Wollstonecraft and others, kept a joint journal, and continued their own writing. At Lucerne, lack of money forced the three to turn back. They travelled down the Rhine and by land to the Dutch port of Maassluis, arriving at Gravesend, Kent, on 13 September 1814. The situation awaiting Mary Godwin in England was fraught with complications, some of which she had not foreseen. Either before or during the journey, she had become pregnant. She and Percy now found themselves penniless, and, to Mary's genuine surprise, her father refused to have anything to do with her. The couple moved with Claire into lodgings at Somers Town, and later, Nelson Square. They maintained their intense programme of reading and writing, and entertained Percy Shelley's friends, such as Thomas Jefferson Hogg and the writer Thomas Love Peacock. Percy Shelley sometimes left home for short periods to dodge creditors. The couple's distraught letters reveal their pain at these separations. Pregnant and often ill, Mary Godwin had to cope with Percy's joy at the birth of his son by Harriet Shelley in late 1814 and his constant outings with Claire Clairmont. Shelley and Clairmont were almost certainly lovers, which caused much jealousy on Godwin's part. Shelley greatly offended Godwin at one point when during a walk in the French countryside he suggested that they both take the plunge into a stream naked as it offended her principles. She was partly consoled by the visits of Hogg, whom she disliked at first but soon considered a close friend. Percy Shelley seems to have wanted Mary Godwin and Hogg to become lovers; Mary did not dismiss the idea, since in principle she believed in free love. In practice, however, she loved only Percy Shelley and seems to have ventured no further than flirting with Hogg. On 22 February 1815, she gave birth to a two-month premature baby girl, who was not expected to survive. On 6 March, she wrote to Hogg: My dearest Hogg my baby is dead—will you come to see me as soon as you can. I wish to see you—It was perfectly well when I went to bed—I awoke in the night to give it suck it appeared to be sleeping so quietly that I would not awake it. It was dead then, but we did not find that out till morning—from its appearance it evidently died of convulsions—Will you come—you are so calm a creature & Shelley is afraid of a fever from the milk—for I am no longer a mother now. The loss of her child induced acute depression in Mary Godwin, who was haunted by visions of the baby; but she conceived again and had recovered by the summer. With a revival in Percy Shelley's finances after the death of his grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, the couple holidayed in Torquay and then rented a two-storey cottage at Bishopsgate, on the edge of Windsor Great Park. Little is known about this period in Mary Godwin's life, since her journal from May 1815 to July 1816 is lost. At Bishopsgate, Percy wrote his poem Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude; and on 24 January 1816, Mary gave birth to a second child, William, named after her father, and soon nicknamed "Willmouse". In her novel The Last Man, she later imagined Windsor as a Garden of Eden. Lake Geneva and Frankenstein In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. In History of a Six Weeks’ Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland (1817), she describes the particularly desolate landscape in crossing from France into Switzerland. The party arrived in Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted; "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. Authorship of Frankenstein While her husband Percy encouraged her writing, the extent of Percy's contribution to the novel is unknown and has been argued over by readers and critics. Mary Shelley wrote, "I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement, it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world." She wrote that the preface to the first edition was Percy's work "as far as I can recollect." There are differences in the 1818, 1823 and 1831 editions, which have been attributed to Percy's editing. James Rieger concluded Percy's "assistance at every point in the book's manufacture was so extensive that one hardly knows whether to regard him as editor or minor collaborator", while Anne K. Mellor later argued Percy only "made many technical corrections and several times clarified the narrative and thematic continuity of the text." Charles E. Robinson, editor of a facsimile edition of the Frankenstein manuscripts, concluded that Percy's contributions to the book "were no more than what most publishers' editors have provided new (or old) authors or, in fact, what colleagues have provided to each other after reading each other's works in progress." Writing on the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein, literary scholar and poet Fiona Sampson asked, "Why hasn't Mary Shelley gotten the respect she deserves?" She noted that "In recent years Percy's corrections, visible in the Frankenstein notebooks held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, have been seized on as evidence that he must have at least co-authored the novel. In fact, when I examined the notebooks myself, I realized that Percy did rather less than any line editor working in publishing today." Sampson published her findings in In Search of Mary Shelley (2018), one of many biographies written about Shelley. Bath and Marlow On their return to England in September, Mary and Percy moved—with Claire Clairmont, who took lodgings nearby—to Bath, where they hoped to keep Claire's pregnancy secret. At Cologny, Mary Godwin had received two letters from her half-sister, Fanny Imlay, who alluded to her "unhappy life"; on 9 October, Fanny wrote an "alarming letter" from Bristol that sent Percy Shelley racing off to search for her, without success. On the morning of 10 October, Fanny Imlay was found dead in a room at a Swansea inn, along with a suicide note and a laudanum bottle. On 10 December, Percy Shelley's wife, Harriet, was discovered drowned in the Serpentine, a lake in Hyde Park, London. Both suicides were hushed up. Harriet's family obstructed Percy Shelley's efforts—fully supported by Mary Godwin—to assume custody of his two children by Harriet. His lawyers advised him to improve his case by marrying; so he and Mary, who was pregnant again, married on 30 December 1816 at St Mildred's Church, Bread Street, London. Mr and Mrs Godwin were present and the marriage ended the family rift. Claire Clairmont gave birth to a baby girl on 13 January, at first called Alba, later Allegra. In March of that year, the Chancery Court ruled Percy Shelley morally unfit to assume custody of his children and later placed them with a clergyman's family. Also in March, the Shelleys moved with Claire and Alba to Albion House at Marlow, Buckinghamshire, a large, damp building on the river Thames. There Mary Shelley gave birth to her third child, Clara, on 2 September. At Marlow, they entertained their new friends Marianne and Leigh Hunt, worked hard at their writing, and often discussed politics. Early in the summer of 1817, Mary Shelley finished Frankenstein, which was published anonymously in January 1818. Reviewers and readers assumed that Percy Shelley was the author, since the book was published with his preface and dedicated to his political hero William Godwin. At Marlow, Mary edited the joint journal of the group's 1814 Continental journey, adding material written in Switzerland in 1816, along with Percy's poem "Mont Blanc". The result was the History of a Six Weeks' Tour, published in November 1817. That autumn, Percy Shelley often lived away from home in London to evade creditors. The threat of a debtor's prison, combined with their ill health and fears of losing custody of their children, contributed to the couple's decision to leave England for Italy on 12 March 1818, taking Claire Clairmont and Alba with them. They had no intention of returning. Italy One of the party's first tasks on arriving in Italy was to hand Alba over to Byron, who was living in Venice. He had agreed to raise her so long as Claire had nothing more to do with her. The Shelleys then embarked on a roving existence, never settling in any one place for long. Along the way, they accumulated a circle of friends and acquaintances who often moved with them. The couple devoted their time to writing, reading, learning, sightseeing, and socialising. The Italian adventure was, however, blighted for Mary Shelley by the deaths of both her children—Clara, in September 1818 in Venice, and William, in June 1819 in Rome. These losses left her in a deep depression that isolated her from Percy Shelley, who wrote in his notebook: My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone, And left me in this dreary world alone? Thy form is here indeed—a lovely one— But thou art fled, gone down a dreary road That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode. For thine own sake I cannot follow thee Do thou return for mine. For a time, Mary Shelley found comfort only in her writing. The birth of her fourth child, Percy Florence, on 12 November 1819, finally lifted her spirits, though she nursed the memory of her lost children till the end of her life. Italy provided the Shelleys, Byron, and other exiles with political freedom unattainable at home. Despite its associations with personal loss, Italy became for Mary Shelley "a country which memory painted as paradise". Their Italian years were a time of intense intellectual and creative activity for both Shelleys. While Percy composed a series of major poems, Mary wrote the novel Matilda, the historical novel Valperga, and the plays Proserpine and Midas. Mary wrote Valperga to help alleviate her father's financial difficulties, as Percy refused to assist him further. She was often physically ill, however, and prone to depressions. She also had to cope with Percy's interest in other women, such as Sophia Stacey, Emilia Viviani, and Jane Williams. Since Mary Shelley shared his belief in the non-exclusivity of marriage, she formed emotional ties of her own among the men and women of their circle. She became particularly fond of the Greek revolutionary Prince Alexandros Mavrokordatos and of Jane and Edward Williams. In December 1818, the Shelleys travelled south with Claire Clairmont and their servants to Naples, where they stayed for three months, receiving only one visitor, a physician. In 1820, they found themselves plagued by accusations and threats from Paolo and Elise Foggi, former servants whom Percy Shelley had dismissed in Naples shortly after the Foggis had married. The pair revealed that on 27 February 1819 in Naples, Percy Shelley had registered as his child by Mary Shelley a two-month-old baby girl named Elena Adelaide Shelley. The Foggis also claimed that Claire Clairmont was the baby's mother. Biographers have offered various interpretations of these events: that Percy Shelley decided to adopt a local child; that the baby was his by Elise, Claire, or an unknown woman; or that she was Elise's by Byron. Mary Shelley insisted she would have known if Claire had been pregnant, but it is unclear how much she really knew. The events in Naples, a city Mary Shelley later called a paradise inhabited by devils, remain shrouded in mystery. The only certainty is that she herself was not the child's mother. Elena Adelaide Shelley died in Naples on 9 June 1820. After leaving Naples, the Shelleys settled in Rome, the city where her husband wrote where "the meanest streets were strewed with truncated columns, broken capitals...and sparkling fragments of granite or porphyry...The voice of dead time, in still vibrations, is breathed from these dumb things, animated and glorified as they were by man". Rome inspired her to begin writing the unfinished novel Valerius, the Reanimated Roman, where the eponymous hero resists the decay of Rome and the machinations of "superstitious" Catholicism. The writing of her novel was broken off when her son William died of malaria. Shelley bitterly commented that she had come to Italy to improve her husband's health, and instead the Italian climate had just killed her two children, leading her to write: "May you my dear Marianne never know what it is to lose two only and lovely children in one year—to watch their dying moments—and then at last to be left childless and forever miserable". To deal with her grief, Shelley wrote the novella The Fields of Fancy, which became Matilda, dealing with a young woman whose beauty inspired incestuous love in her father, who ultimately commits suicide to stop himself from acting on his passion for his daughter, while she spends the rest of her life full of despair about "the unnatural love I had inspired". The novella offered a feminist critique of a patriarchal society as Matilda is punished in the afterlife, though she did nothing to encourage her father's feelings. In the summer of 1822, a pregnant Mary moved with Percy, Claire, and Edward and Jane Williams to the isolated Villa Magni, at the sea's edge near the hamlet of San Terenzo in the Bay of Lerici. Once they were settled in, Percy broke the "evil news" to Claire that her daughter Allegra had died of typhus in a convent at Bagnacavallo. Mary Shelley was distracted and unhappy in the cramped and remote Villa Magni, which she came to regard as a dungeon. On 16 June, she miscarried, losing so much blood that she nearly died. Rather than wait for a doctor, Percy sat her in a bath of ice to stanch the bleeding, an act the doctor later told him saved her life. All was not well between the couple that summer, however, and Percy spent more time with Jane Williams than with his depressed and debilitated wife. Much of the short poetry Shelley wrote at San Terenzo involved Jane rather than Mary. The coast offered Percy Shelley and Edward Williams the chance to enjoy their "perfect plaything for the summer", a new sailing boat. The boat had been designed by Daniel Roberts and Edward Trelawny, an admirer of Byron's who had joined the party in January 1822. On 1 July 1822, Percy Shelley, Edward Ellerker Williams, and Captain Daniel Roberts sailed south down the coast to Livorno. There Percy Shelley discussed with Byron and Leigh Hunt the launch of a radical magazine called The Liberal. On 8 July, he and Edward Williams set out on the return journey to Lerici with their eighteen-year-old boat boy, Charles Vivian. They never reached their destination. A letter arrived at Villa Magni from Hunt to Percy Shelley, dated 8 July, saying, "pray write to tell us how you got home, for they say you had bad weather after you sailed Monday & we are anxious". "The paper fell from me," Mary told a friend later. "I trembled all over." She and Jane Williams rushed desperately to Livorno and then to Pisa in the fading hope that their husbands were still alive. Ten days after the storm, three bodies washed up on the coast near Viareggio, midway between Livorno and Lerici. Trelawny, Byron, and Hunt cremated Percy Shelley's corpse on the beach at Viareggio. Return to England and writing career After her husband's death, Mary Shelley lived for a year with Leigh Hunt and his family in Genoa, where she often saw Byron and transcribed his poems. She resolved to live by her pen and for her son, but her financial situation was precarious. On 23 July 1823, she left Genoa for England and stayed with her father and stepmother in the Strand until a small advance from her father-in-law enabled her to lodge nearby. Sir Timothy Shelley had at first agreed to support his grandson, Percy Florence, only if he were handed over to an appointed guardian. Mary Shelley rejected this idea instantly. She managed instead to wring out of Sir Timothy a limited annual allowance (which she had to repay when Percy Florence inherited the estate), but to the end of his days, he refused to meet her in person and dealt with her only through lawyers. Mary Shelley busied herself with editing her husband's poems, among other literary endeavours, but concern for her son restricted her options. Sir Timothy threatened to stop the allowance if any biography of the poet were published. In 1826, Percy Florence became the legal heir of the Shelley estate after the death of his half-brother Charles Shelley, his father's son by Harriet Shelley. Sir Timothy raised Mary's allowance from £100 a year to £250 but remained as difficult as ever. Mary Shelley enjoyed the stimulating society of William Godwin's circle, but poverty prevented her from socialising as she wished. She also felt ostracised by those who, like Sir Timothy, still disapproved of her relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley. In the summer of 1824, Mary Shelley moved to Kentish Town in north London to be near Jane Williams. She may have been, in the words of her biographer Muriel Spark, "a little in love" with Jane. Jane later disillusioned her by gossiping that Percy had preferred her to Mary, owing to Mary's inadequacy as a wife. At around this time, Mary Shelley was working on her novel, The Last Man (1826); and she assisted a series of friends who were writing memoirs of Byron and Percy Shelley—the beginnings of her attempts to immortalise her husband. She also met the American actor John Howard Payne and the American writer Washington Irving, who intrigued her. Payne fell in love with her and in 1826 asked her to marry him. She refused, saying that after being married to one genius, she could only marry another. Payne accepted the rejection and tried without success to talk his friend Irving into proposing himself. Mary Shelley was aware of Payne's plan, but how seriously she took it is unclear. In 1827, Mary Shelley was party to a scheme that enabled her friend Isabel Robinson and Isabel's lover, Mary Diana Dods, who wrote under the name David Lyndsay, to embark on a life together in France as husband and wife. With the help of Payne, whom she kept in the dark about the details, Mary Shelley obtained false passports for the couple. In 1828, she fell ill with smallpox while visiting them in Paris. Weeks later she recovered, unscarred but without her youthful beauty. During the period 1827–40, Mary Shelley was busy as an editor and writer. She wrote the novels The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835), and Falkner (1837). She contributed five volumes of Lives of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French authors to Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia. She also wrote stories for ladies' magazines. She was still helping to support her father, and they looked out for publishers for each other. In 1830, she sold the copyright for a new edition of Frankenstein for £60 to Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley for their new Standard Novels series. After her father's death in 1836 at the age of eighty, she began assembling his letters and a memoir for publication, as he had requested in his will; but after two years of work, she abandoned the project. Throughout this period, she also championed Percy Shelley's poetry, promoting its publication and quoting it in her writing. By 1837, Percy's works were well-known and increasingly admired. In the summer of 1838 Edward Moxon, the publisher of Tennyson and the son-in-law of Charles Lamb, proposed publishing a collected works of Percy Shelley. Mary was paid £500 to edit the Poetical Works (1838), which Sir Timothy insisted should not include a biography. Mary found a way to tell the story of Percy's life, nonetheless: she included extensive biographical notes about the poems. Shelley continued to practice her mother's feminist principles by extending aid to women whom society disapproved of. For instance, Shelley extended financial aid to Mary Diana Dods, a single mother and illegitimate herself who appears to have been a lesbian and gave her the new identity of Walter Sholto Douglas, husband of her lover Isabel Robinson. Shelley also assisted Georgiana Paul, a woman disallowed for by her husband for alleged adultery. Shelley in her diary about her assistance to the latter: "I do not make a boast-I do not say aloud-behold my generosity and greatness of mind-for in truth it is simple justice I perform-and so I am still reviled for being worldly". Mary Shelley continued to treat potential romantic partners with caution. In 1828, she met and flirted with the French writer Prosper Mérimée, but her one surviving letter to him appears to be a deflection of his declaration of love. She was delighted when her old friend from Italy, Edward Trelawny, returned to England, and they joked about marriage in their letters. Their friendship had altered, however, following her refusal to cooperate with his proposed biography of Percy Shelley; and he later reacted angrily to her omission of the atheistic section of Queen Mab from Percy Shelley's poems. Oblique references in her journals, from the early 1830s until the early 1840s, suggest that Mary Shelley had feelings for the radical politician Aubrey Beauclerk, who may have disappointed her by twice marrying others. Mary Shelley's first concern during these years was the welfare of Percy Florence. She honoured her late husband's wish that his son attend public school and, with Sir Timothy's grudging help, had him educated at Harrow. To avoid boarding fees, she moved to Harrow on the Hill herself so that Percy could attend as a day scholar. Though Percy went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, and dabbled in politics and the law, he showed no sign of his parents' gifts. He was devoted to his mother, and after he left university in 1841, he came to live with her. Final years and death In 1840 and 1842, mother and son travelled together on the continent, journeys that Mary Shelley recorded in Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843 (1844). In 1844, Sir Timothy Shelley finally died at the age of ninety, "falling from the stalk like an overblown flower", as Mary put it. For the first time, she and her son were financially independent, though the estate proved less valuable than they had hoped. In the mid-1840s, Mary Shelley found herself the target of three separate blackmailers. In 1845, an Italian political exile called Gatteschi, whom she had met in Paris, threatened to publish letters she had sent him. A friend of her son's bribed a police chief into seizing Gatteschi's papers, including the letters, which were then destroyed. Shortly afterwards, Mary Shelley bought some letters written by herself and Percy Bysshe Shelley from a man calling himself G. Byron and posing as the illegitimate son of the late Lord Byron. Also in 1845, Percy Bysshe Shelley's cousin Thomas Medwin approached her claiming to have written a damaging biography of Percy Shelley. He said he would suppress it in return for £250, but Mary Shelley refused. In 1848, Percy Florence married Jane Gibson St John. The marriage proved a happy one, and Mary Shelley and Jane were fond of each other. Mary lived with her son and daughter-in-law at Field Place, Sussex, the Shelleys' ancestral home, and at Chester Square, London, and accompanied them on travels abroad. Mary Shelley's last years were blighted by illness. From 1839, she suffered from headaches and bouts of paralysis in parts of her body, which sometimes prevented her from reading and writing. On 1 February 1851, at Chester Square, she died at the age of fifty-three from what her physician suspected was a brain tumour. According to Jane Shelley, Mary Shelley had asked to be buried with her mother and father; but Percy and Jane, judging the graveyard at St Pancras to be "dreadful", chose to bury her instead at St Peter's Church, Bournemouth, near their new home at Boscombe. On the first anniversary of Mary Shelley's death, the Shelleys opened her box-desk. Inside they found locks of her dead children's hair, a notebook she had shared with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a copy of his poem Adonaïs with one page folded round a silk parcel containing some of his ashes and the remains of his heart. Literary themes and styles Mary Shelley lived a literary life. Her father encouraged her to learn to write by composing letters, and her favourite occupation as a child was writing stories. Unfortunately, all of Mary's juvenilia were lost when she ran off with Percy in 1814, and none of her surviving manuscripts can be definitively dated before that year. Her first published work is often thought to have been Mounseer Nongtongpaw, comic verses written for Godwin's Juvenile Library when she was ten and a half; however, the poem is attributed to another writer in the most recent authoritative collection of her works. Percy Shelley enthusiastically encouraged Mary Shelley's writing: "My husband was, from the first, very anxious that I should prove myself worthy of my parentage, and enrol myself on the page of fame. He was forever inciting me to obtain literary reputation." Novels Autobiographical elements Certain sections of Mary Shelley's novels are often interpreted as masked rewritings of her life. Critics have pointed to the recurrence of the father–daughter motif in particular as evidence of this autobiographical style. For example, commentators frequently read Mathilda (1820) autobiographically, identifying the three central characters as versions of Mary Shelley, William Godwin, and Percy Shelley. Mary Shelley herself confided that she modelled the central characters of The Last Man on her Italian circle. Lord Raymond, who leaves England to fight for the Greeks and dies in Constantinople, is based on Lord Byron; and the utopian Adrian, Earl of Windsor, who leads his followers in search of a natural paradise and dies when his boat sinks in a storm, is a fictional portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley. However, as she wrote in her review of Godwin's novel Cloudesley (1830), she did not believe that authors "were merely copying from our own hearts". William Godwin regarded his daughter's characters as types rather than portraits from real life. Some modern critics, such as Patricia Clemit and Jane Blumberg, have taken the same view, resisting autobiographical readings of Mary Shelley's works. Novelistic genres Mary Shelley employed the techniques of many different novelistic genres, most vividly the Godwinian novel, Walter Scott's new historical novel, and the Gothic novel. The Godwinian novel, made popular during the 1790s with works such as Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794), "employed a Rousseauvian confessional form to explore the contradictory relations between the self and society", and Frankenstein exhibits many of the same themes and literary devices as Godwin's novel. However, Shelley critiques those Enlightenment ideals that Godwin promotes in his works. In The Last Man, she uses the philosophical form of the Godwinian novel to demonstrate the ultimate meaninglessness of the world. While earlier Godwinian novels had shown how rational individuals could slowly improve society, The Last Man and Frankenstein demonstrate the individual's lack of control over history. Shelley uses the historical novel to comment on gender relations; for example, Valperga is a feminist version of Scott's masculinist genre. Introducing women into the story who are not part of the historical record, Shelley uses their narratives to question established theological and political institutions. Shelley sets the male protagonist's compulsive greed for conquest in opposition to a female alternative: reason and sensibility. In Perkin Warbeck, Shelley's other historical novel, Lady Gordon stands for the values of friendship, domesticity, and equality. Through her, Shelley offers a feminine alternative to the masculine power politics that destroy the male characters. The novel provides a more inclusive historical narrative to challenge the one which usually relates only masculine events. Gender With the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1970s, Mary Shelley's works, particularly Frankenstein, began to attract much more attention from scholars. Feminist and psychoanalytic critics were largely responsible for the recovery from neglect of Shelley as a writer. Ellen Moers was one of the first to claim that Shelley's loss of a baby was a crucial influence on the writing of Frankenstein. She argues that the novel is a "birth myth" in which Shelley comes to terms with her guilt for causing her mother's death as well as for failing as a parent. Shelley scholar Anne K. Mellor suggests that, from a feminist viewpoint, it is a story "about what happens when a man tries to have a baby without a woman ... [Frankenstein] is profoundly concerned with natural as opposed to unnatural modes of production and reproduction". Victor Frankenstein's failure as a "parent" in the novel has been read as an expression of the anxieties which accompany pregnancy, giving birth, and particularly maternity. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue in their seminal book The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) that in Frankenstein in particular, Shelley responded to the masculine literary tradition represented by John Milton's Paradise Lost. In their interpretation, Shelley reaffirms this masculine tradition, including the misogyny inherent in it, but at the same time "conceal[s] fantasies of equality that occasionally erupt in monstrous images of rage". Mary Poovey reads the first edition of Frankenstein as part of a larger pattern in Shelley's writing, which begins with literary self-assertion and ends with conventional femininity. Poovey suggests that Frankenstein's multiple narratives enable Shelley to split her artistic persona: she can "express and efface herself at the same time". Shelley's fear of self-assertion is reflected in the fate of Frankenstein, who is punished for his egotism by losing all his domestic ties. Feminist critics often focus on how authorship itself, particularly female authorship, is represented in and through Shelley's novels. As Mellor explains, Shelley uses the Gothic style not only to explore repressed female sexual desire but also as way to "censor her own speech in Frankenstein". According to Poovey and Mellor, Shelley did not want to promote her own authorial persona and felt deeply inadequate as a writer, and "this shame contributed to the generation of her fictional images of abnormality, perversion, and destruction". Shelley's writings focus on the role of the family in society and women's role within that family. She celebrates the "feminine affections and compassion" associated with the family and suggests that civil society will fail without them. Shelley was "profoundly committed to an ethic of cooperation, mutual dependence, and self-sacrifice". In Lodore, for example, the central story follows the fortunes of the wife and daughter of the title character, Lord Lodore, who is killed in a duel at the end of the first volume, leaving a trail of legal, financial, and familial obstacles for the two "heroines" to negotiate. The novel is engaged with political and ideological issues, particularly the education and social role of women. It dissects a patriarchal culture that separated the sexes and pressured women into dependence on men. In the view of Shelley scholar Betty T. Bennett, "the novel proposes egalitarian educational paradigms for women and men, which would bring social justice as well as the spiritual and intellectual means by which to meet the challenges life invariably brings". However, Falkner is the only one of Mary Shelley's novels in which the heroine's agenda triumphs. The novel's resolution proposes that when female values triumph over violent and destructive masculinity, men will be freed to express the "compassion, sympathy, and generosity" of their better natures. Enlightenment and Romanticism Frankenstein, like much Gothic fiction of the period, mixes a visceral and alienating subject matter with speculative and thought-provoking themes. Rather than focusing on the twists and turns of the plot, however, the novel foregrounds the mental and moral struggles of the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, and Shelley imbues the text with her own brand of politicised Romanticism, one that criticised the individualism and egotism of traditional Romanticism. Victor Frankenstein is like Satan in Paradise Lost, and Prometheus: he rebels against tradition; he creates life; and he shapes his own destiny. These traits are not portrayed positively; as Blumberg writes, "his relentless ambition is a self-delusion, clothed as quest for truth". He must abandon his family to fulfill his ambition. Mary Shelley believed in the Enlightenment idea that people could improve society through the responsible exercise of political power, but she feared that the irresponsible exercise of power would lead to chaos. In practice, her works largely criticise the way 18th-century thinkers such as her parents believed such change could be brought about. The creature in Frankenstein, for example, reads books associated with radical ideals but the education he gains from them is ultimately useless. Shelley's works reveal her as less optimistic than Godwin and Wollstonecraft; she lacks faith in Godwin's theory that humanity could eventually be perfected. As literary scholar Kari Lokke writes, The Last Man, more so than Frankenstein, "in its refusal to place humanity at the centre of the universe, its questioning of our privileged position in relation to nature ... constitutes a profound and prophetic challenge to Western humanism." Specifically, Mary Shelley's allusions to what radicals believed was a failed revolution in France and the Godwinian, Wollstonecraftian, and Burkean responses to it, challenge "Enlightenment faith in the inevitability of progress through collective efforts". As in Frankenstein, Shelley "offers a profoundly disenchanted commentary on the age of revolution, which ends in a total rejection of the progressive ideals of her own generation". Not only does she reject these Enlightenment political ideals, but she also rejects the Romantic notion that the poetic or literary imagination can offer an alternative. Politics There is a new scholarly emphasis on Shelley as a lifelong reformer, deeply engaged in the liberal and feminist concerns of her day. In 1820, she was thrilled by the Liberal uprising in Spain which forced the king to grant a constitution. In 1823, she wrote articles for Leigh Hunt's periodical The Liberal and played an active role in the formulation of its outlook. She was delighted when the Whigs came back to power in 1830 and at the prospect of the 1832 Reform Act. Critics have until recently cited Lodore and Falkner as evidence of increasing conservatism in Mary Shelley's later works. In 1984, Mary Poovey influentially identified the retreat of Mary Shelley's reformist politics into the "separate sphere" of the domestic. Poovey suggested that Mary Shelley wrote Falkner to resolve her conflicted response to her father's combination of libertarian radicalism and stern insistence on social decorum. Mellor largely agreed, arguing that "Mary Shelley grounded her alternative political ideology on the metaphor of the peaceful, loving, bourgeois family. She thereby implicitly endorsed a conservative vision of gradual evolutionary reform." This vision allowed women to participate in the public sphere but it inherited the inequalities inherent in the bourgeois family. However, in the last decade or so this view has been challenged. For example, Bennett claims that Mary Shelley's works reveal a consistent commitment to Romantic idealism and political reform and Jane Blumberg's study of Shelley's early novels argues that her career cannot be easily divided into radical and conservative halves. She contends that "Shelley was never a passionate radical like her husband and her later lifestyle was not abruptly assumed nor was it a betrayal. She was in fact challenging the political and literary influences of her circle in her first work." In this reading, Shelley's early works are interpreted as a challenge to Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley's radicalism. Victor Frankenstein's "thoughtless rejection of family", for example, is seen as evidence of Shelley's constant concern for the domestic. Short stories In the 1820s and 1830s, Mary Shelley frequently wrote short stories for gift books or annuals, including sixteen for The Keepsake, which was aimed at middle-class women and bound in silk, with gilt-edged pages. Mary Shelley's work in this genre has been described as that of a "hack writer" and "wordy and pedestrian". However, critic Charlotte Sussman points out that other leading writers of the day, such as the Romantic poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, also took advantage of this profitable market. She explains that "the annuals were a major mode of literary production in the 1820s and 1830s", with The Keepsake the most successful. Many of Shelley's stories are set in places or times far removed from early 19th-century Britain, such as Greece and the reign of Henry IV of France. Shelley was particularly interested in "the fragility of individual identity" and often depicted "the way a person's role in the world can be cataclysmically altered either by an internal emotional upheaval, or by some supernatural occurrence that mirrors an internal schism". In her stories, female identity is tied to a woman's short-lived value in the marriage market while male identity can be sustained and transformed through the use of money. Although Mary Shelley wrote twenty-one short stories for the annuals between 1823 and 1839, she always saw herself, above all, as a novelist. She wrote to Leigh Hunt, "I write bad articles which help to make me miserable—but I am going to plunge into a novel and hope that its clear water will wash off the mud of the magazines." Travelogues When they ran off to France in the summer of 1814, Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley began a joint journal, which they published in 1817 under the title History of a Six Weeks' Tour, adding four letters, two by each of them, based on their visit to Geneva in 1816, along with Percy Shelley's poem "Mont Blanc". The work celebrates youthful love and political idealism and consciously follows the example of Mary Wollstonecraft and others who had combined travelling with writing. The perspective of the History is philosophical and reformist rather than that of a conventional travelogue; in particular, it addresses the effects of politics and war on France. The letters the couple wrote on the second journey confront the "great and extraordinary events" of the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo after his "Hundred Days" return in 1815. They also explore the sublimity of Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc as well as the revolutionary legacy of the philosopher and novelist Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Mary Shelley's last full-length book, written in the form of letters and published in 1844, was Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843, which recorded her travels with her son Percy Florence and his university friends. In Rambles, Shelley follows the tradition of Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark and her own A History of a Six Weeks' Tour in mapping her personal and political landscape through the discourse of sensibility and sympathy. For Shelley, building sympathetic connections between people is the way to build civil society and to increase knowledge: "knowledge, to enlighten and free the mind from clinging deadening prejudices—a wider circle of sympathy with our fellow-creatures;—these are the uses of travel". Between observations on scenery, culture, and "the people, especially in a political point of view", she uses the travelogue form to explore her roles as a widow and mother and to reflect on revolutionary nationalism in Italy. She also records her "pilgrimage" to scenes associated with Percy Shelley. According to critic Clarissa Orr, Mary Shelley's adoption of a persona of philosophical motherhood gives Rambles the unity of a prose poem, with "death and memory as central themes". At the same time, Shelley makes an egalitarian case against monarchy, class distinctions, slavery, and war. Biographies Between 1832 and 1839, Mary Shelley wrote many biographies of notable Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French men and a few women for Dionysius Lardner's Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men. These formed part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia, one of the best of many such series produced in the 1820s and 1830s in response to growing middle-class demand for self-education. Until the republication of these essays in 2002, their significance within her body of work was not appreciated. In the view of literary scholar Greg Kucich, they reveal Mary Shelley's "prodigious research across several centuries and in multiple languages", her gift for biographical narrative, and her interest in the "emerging forms of feminist historiography". Shelley wrote in a biographical style popularised by the 18th-century critic Samuel Johnson in his Lives of the Poets (1779–81), combining secondary sources, memoir and anecdote, and authorial evaluation. She records details of each writer's life and character, quotes their writing in the original as well as in translation, and ends with a critical assessment of their achievement. For Shelley, biographical writing was supposed to, in her words, "form as it were a school in which to study the philosophy of history", and to teach "lessons". Most frequently and importantly, these lessons consisted of criticisms of male-dominated institutions such as primogeniture. Shelley emphasises domesticity, romance, family, sympathy, and compassion in the lives of her subjects. Her conviction that such forces could improve society connects her biographical approach with that of other early feminist historians such as Mary Hays and Anna Jameson. Unlike her novels, most of which had an original print run of several hundred copies, the Lives had a print run of about 4,000 for each volume: thus, according to Kucich, Mary Shelley's "use of biography to forward the social agenda of women's historiography became one of her most influential political interventions". Editorial work Soon after Percy Shelley's death, Mary Shelley determined to write his biography. In a letter of 17 November 1822, she announced: "I shall write his life—& thus occupy myself in the only manner from which I can derive consolation." However, her father-in-law, Sir Timothy Shelley, effectively banned her from doing so. Mary began her fostering of Percy's poetic reputation in 1824 with the publication of his Posthumous Poems. In 1839, while she was working on the Lives, she prepared a new edition of his poetry, which became, in the words of literary scholar Susan J. Wolfson, "the canonizing event" in the history of her husband's reputation. The following year, Mary Shelley edited a volume of her husband's essays, letters, translations, and fragments, and throughout the 1830s, she introduced his poetry to a wider audience by publishing assorted works in the annual The Keepsake. Evading Sir Timothy's ban on a biography, Mary Shelley often included in these editions her own annotations and reflections on her husband's life and work. "I am to justify his ways," she had declared in 1824; "I am to make him beloved to all posterity." It was this goal, argues Blumberg, that led her to present Percy's work to the public in the "most popular form possible". To tailor his works for a Victorian audience, she cast Percy Shelley as a lyrical rather than a political poet. As Mary Favret writes, "the disembodied Percy identifies the spirit of poetry itself". Mary glossed Percy's political radicalism as a form of sentimentalism, arguing that his republicanism arose from sympathy for those who were suffering. She inserted romantic anecdotes of his benevolence, domesticity, and love of the natural world. Portraying herself as Percy's "practical muse", she also noted how she had suggested revisions as he wrote. Despite the emotions stirred by this task, Mary Shelley arguably proved herself in many respects a professional and scholarly editor. Working from Percy's messy, sometimes indecipherable, notebooks, she attempted to form a chronology for his writings, and she included poems, such as Epipsychidion, addressed to Emilia Viviani, which she would rather have left out. She was forced, however, into several compromises, and, as Blumberg notes, "modern critics have found fault with the edition and claim variously that she miscopied, misinterpreted, purposely obscured, and attempted to turn the poet into something he was not". According to Wolfson, Donald Reiman, a modern editor of Percy Bysshe Shelley's works, still refers to Mary Shelley's editions, while acknowledging that her editing style belongs "to an age of editing when the aim was not to establish accurate texts and scholarly apparatus but to present a full record of a writer's career for the general reader". In principle, Mary Shelley believed in publishing every last word of her husband's work; but she found herself obliged to omit certain passages, either by pressure from her publisher, Edward Moxon, or in deference to public propriety. For example, she removed the atheistic passages from Queen Mab for the first edition. After she restored them in the second edition, Moxon was prosecuted and convicted of blasphemous libel, though the prosecution was brought out of principle by the Chartist publisher Henry Hetherington, and no punishment was sought. Mary Shelley's omissions provoked criticism, often stinging, from members of Percy Shelley's former circle, and reviewers accused her of, among other things, indiscriminate inclusions. Her notes have nevertheless remained an essential source for the study of Percy Shelley's work. As Bennett explains, "biographers and critics agree that Mary Shelley's commitment to bring Shelley the notice she believed his works merited was the single, major force that established Shelley's reputation during a period when he almost certainly would have faded from public view". Reputation In her own lifetime, Mary Shelley was taken seriously as a writer, though reviewers often missed her writings' political edge. After her death, however, she was chiefly remembered as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of Frankenstein. In fact, in the introduction to her letters published in 1945, editor Frederick Jones wrote, "a collection of the present size could not be justified by the general quality of the letters or by Mary Shelley's importance as a writer. It is as the wife of [Percy Bysshe Shelley] that she excites our interest." This attitude had not disappeared by 1980 when Betty T. Bennett published the first volume of Mary Shelley's complete letters. As she explains, "the fact is that until recent years scholars have generally regarded Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley as a result: William Godwin's and Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter who became Shelley's Pygmalion." It was not until Emily Sunstein's Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality in 1989 that a full-length scholarly biography was published. The attempts of Mary Shelley's son and daughter-in-law to "Victorianise" her memory by censoring biographical documents contributed to a perception of Mary Shelley as a more conventional, less reformist figure than her works suggest. Her own timid omissions from Percy Shelley's works and her quiet avoidance of public controversy in her later years added to this impression. Commentary by Hogg, Trelawny, and other admirers of Percy Shelley also tended to downplay Mary Shelley's radicalism. Trelawny's Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author (1878) praised Percy Shelley at the expense of Mary, questioning her intelligence and even her authorship of Frankenstein. Lady Shelley, Percy Florence's wife, responded in part by presenting a severely edited collection of letters she had inherited, published privately as Shelley and Mary in 1882. From Frankenstein'''s first theatrical adaptation in 1823 to the cinematic adaptations of the 20th century, including the first cinematic version in 1910 and now-famous versions such as James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein, Mel Brooks' satirical 1974 Young Frankenstein, and Kenneth Branagh's 1994 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, many audiences first encounter the work of Mary Shelley through adaptation. Over the course of the 19th century, Mary Shelley came to be seen as a one-novel author at best, rather than as the professional writer she was; most of her works have remained out of print until the last thirty years, obstructing a larger view of her achievement. In recent decades, the republication of almost all her writing has stimulated a new recognition of its value. Her habit of intensive reading and study, revealed in her journals and letters and reflected in her works, is now better appreciated. Shelley's conception of herself as an author has also been recognised; after Percy's death, she wrote of her authorial ambitions: "I think that I can maintain myself, and there is something inspiriting in the idea." Scholars now consider Mary Shelley to be a major Romantic figure, significant for her literary achievement and her political voice as a woman and a liberal. Selected works History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817) Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) Mathilda (1819) Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823) Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1824) The Last Man (1826) The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830) Lodore (1835) Falkner (1837) The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1839) Contributions to Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men (1835–39), part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 (1844) Collections of Mary Shelley's papers are housed in Lord Abinger's Shelley Collection on deposit at the Bodleian Library, the New York Public Library (particularly The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle), the Huntington Library, the British Library, and in the John Murray Collection. See also Mary Shelley (2017 film) Godwin–Shelley family tree Map of 1814 and 1816 European journeys Map of 1840s European journeys Notes References All essays from The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley are marked with a "(CC)" and those from The Other Mary Shelley with an "(OMS)". Bibliography Primary sources Shelley, Mary. Collected Tales and Stories. Ed. Charles E. Robinson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. . Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Ed. Susan J. Wolfson. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. . Shelley, Mary. The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814–44. Ed. Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. The Last Man. Ed. Morton D. Paley. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1998. . Shelley, Mary. Lodore. Ed. Lisa Vargo. Ontario: Broadview Press, 1997. . Shelley, Mary. Mary Shelley's Literary Lives and Other Writings. 4 vols. Ed. Tilar J. Mazzeo. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2002. . Shelley, Mary. Mathilda . Ed. Elizabeth Nitchie. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 16 February 2008. Shelley, Mary. Matilda; with Mary and Maria, by Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd. London: Penguin, 1992. . Shelley, Mary, ed. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley . London: Edward Moxon, 1840. Google Books. Retrieved 6 April 2008. Shelley, Mary. Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca. Ed. Michael Rossington. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 2000. . Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Shelley's Poetry and Prose. Eds. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2002. . Secondary sources Bennett, Betty T. "Finding Mary Shelley in her Letters". Romantic Revisions. Ed. Robert Brinkley and Keith Hanley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. . Bennett, Betty T., ed. Mary Shelley in her Times. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Bennett, Betty T. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. . Bennett, Betty T. "The Political Philosophy of Mary Shelley's Historical Novels: Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". The Evidence of the Imagination. Ed. Donald H. Reiman, Michael C. Jaye, and Betty T. Bennett. New York: New York University Press, 1978. . Bieri, James. Percy Bysshe Shelley, a Biography: Exile of Unfulfilled Renown, 1816–1822. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005. . Blumberg, Jane. Mary Shelley's Early Novels: "This Child of Imagination and Misery". Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993. . Bunnell, Charlene E. "All the World's a Stage": Dramatic Sensibility in Mary Shelley's Novels. New York: Routledge, 2002. . Carlson, J. A. England's First Family of Writers: Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Shelley. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. . Clemit, Pamela. "From The Fields of Fancy to Matilda." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Clemit, Pamela. The Godwinian Novel: The Rational Fictions of Godwin, Brockden Brown, Mary Shelley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. . Conger, Syndy M., Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea, eds. Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Eberle-Sinatra, Michael, ed. Mary Shelley's Fictions: From Frankenstein to Falkner. New York: St. Martin's Press/Palgrave, 2000. . Fisch, Audrey A., Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schorr, eds. The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond "Frankenstein". New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. . Frank, Frederick S. "Mary Shelley's Other Fictions: A Bibliographic Consensus". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Garrett, Martin Mary Shelley. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. 1979. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. . Gittings, Robert and Jo Manton. Claire Clairmont and the Shelleys. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. . Holmes, Richard. Shelley: The Pursuit. 1974. London: Harper Perennial, 2003. . Jones, Steven. "Charles E. Robinson, Ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two)". (Book Review). Romantic Circles website, 1 January 1998. Retrieved 15 September 2016. Jump, Harriet Devine, Pamela Clemit, and Betty T. Bennett, eds. Lives of the Great Romantics III: Godwin, Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley by Their Contemporaries. London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999. . Levine, George and U. C. Knoepflmacher, eds. The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley's novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. . Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, her Fiction, Her Monsters. London: Routledge, 1990. . Myers, Mitzi. "Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley: The Female Author between Public and Private Spheres." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Orr, Clarissa Campbell. "Mary Shelley's Rambles in Germany and Italy, the Celebrity Author, and the Undiscovered Country of the Human Heart". Romanticism on the Net 11 (August 1998). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. . Robinson, Charles E., ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two). The Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics, Volume IX, Donald H. Reiman, general ed. Garland Publishing, 1996. . Schor, Esther, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. . Seymour, Miranda. Mary Shelley. London: John Murray, 2000. . Sites, Melissa. "Re/membering Home: Utopian Domesticity in Mary Shelley's Lodore". A Brighter Morn: The Shelley Circle's Utopian Project. Ed. Darby Lewes. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003. . Smith, Johanna M. "A Critical History of Frankenstein". Frankenstein. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. . Spark, Muriel. Mary Shelley. London: Cardinal, 1987. . St Clair, William. The Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography of a Family. London: Faber & Faber, 1989. . Sterrenburg, Lee. "The Last Man: Anatomy of Failed Revolutions". Nineteenth Century Fiction 33 (1978): 324–47. Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. 1989. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. . Townsend, William C. Modern State Trials. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1850. Wake, Ann M Frank. "Women in the Active Voice: Recovering Female History in Mary Shelley's Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . White, Daniel E. "'The god undeified': Mary Shelley's Valperga, Italy, and the Aesthetic of Desire ". Romanticism on the Net 6 (May 1997). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Further reading Goulding, Christopher. "The Real Doctor Frankenstein?" Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. The Royal Society of Medicine, May 2002. Richard Holmes, "Out of Control" (review of Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds, edited by David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Jason Scott Robert, MIT Press, 277 pp.; and Mary Shelley, The New Annotated Frankenstein, edited and with a foreword and notes by Leslie S. Klinger, Liveright, 352 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 20 (21 December 2017), pp. 38, 40–41. Gordon, Charlotte (2016). Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley'', Random House. External links Mary Shelley chronology and bibliography – part of Romantic Circles Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley manuscript material, 1815–1850, held by the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, New York Public Library Mary Shelley at the British Library Exhibits relating to Mary Shelley at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford 1797 births 1851 deaths 19th-century English women writers 19th-century English novelists 19th-century British short story writers British expatriates in Italy British expatriates in Switzerland British feminists British horror writers British science fiction writers Deaths from brain tumor Deaths from cancer in England English expatriates in Italy English expatriates in Switzerland English feminists English horror writers English science fiction writers English travel writers English women novelists Frankenstein Godwin family People from Bournemouth People from Somers Town, London Romanticism Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees Victorian novelists Women historical novelists Women horror writers Women of the Regency era Women science fiction and fantasy writers British women travel writers Writers of Gothic fiction Shelley family Weird fiction writers
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[ "Follow Me! is a series of television programmes produced by Bayerischer Rundfunk and the BBC in the late 1970s to provide a crash course in the English language. It became popular in many overseas countries as a first introduction to English; in 1983, one hundred million people watched the show in China alone, featuring Kathy Flower.\n\nThe British actor Francis Matthews hosted and narrated the series.\n\nThe course consists of sixty lessons. Each lesson lasts from 12 to 15 minutes and covers a specific lexis. The lessons follow a consistent group of actors, with the relationships between their characters developing during the course.\n\nFollow Me! actors\n Francis Matthews\n Raymond Mason\n David Savile\n Ian Bamforth\n Keith Alexander\n Diane Mercer\n Jane Argyle\n Diana King\n Veronica Leigh\n Elaine Wells\n Danielle Cohn\n Lashawnda Bell\n\nEpisodes \n \"What's your name\"\n \"How are you\"\n \"Can you help me\"\n \"Left, right, straight ahead\"\n \"Where are they\"\n \"What's the time\"\n \"What's this What's that\"\n \"I like it very much\"\n \"Have you got any wine\"\n \"What are they doing\"\n \"Can I have your name, please\"\n \"What does she look like\"\n \"No smoking\"\n \"It's on the first floor\"\n \"Where's he gone\"\n \"Going away\"\n \"Buying things\"\n \"Why do you like it\"\n \"What do you need\"\n \"I sometimes work late\"\n \"Welcome to Britain\"\n \"Who's that\"\n \"What would you like to do\"\n \"How can I get there?\"\n \"Where is it\"\n \"What's the date\"\n \"Whose is it\"\n \"I enjoy it\"\n \"How many and how much\"\n \"What have you done\"\n \"Haven't we met before\"\n \"What did you say\"\n \"Please stop\"\n \"How can I get to Brightly\"\n \"Where can I get it\"\n \"There's a concert on Wednesday\"\n \"What's it like\"\n \"What do you think of him\"\n \"I need someone\"\n \"What were you doing\"\n \"What do you do\"\n \"What do you know about him\"\n \"You shouldn't do that\"\n \"I hope you enjoy your holiday\"\n \"Where can I see a football match\"\n \"When will it be ready\"\n \"Where did you go\"\n \"I think it's awful\"\n \"A room with a view\"\n \"You'll be ill\"\n \"I don't believe in strikes\"\n \"They look tired\"\n \"Would you like to\"\n \"Holiday plans\"\n \"The second shelf on the left\"\n \"When you are ready\"\n \"Tell them about Britain\"\n \"I liked everything\"\n \"Classical or modern\"\n \"Finale\"\n\nReferences \n\n BBC article about the series in China\n\nExternal links \n Follow Me – Beginner level \n Follow Me – Elementary level\n Follow Me – Intermediate level\n Follow Me – Advanced level\n\nAdult education television series\nEnglish-language education television programming", "\"What Did I Do to You?\" is a song recorded by British singer Lisa Stansfield for her 1989 album, Affection. It was written by Stansfield, Ian Devaney and Andy Morris, and produced by Devaney and Morris. The song was released as the fourth European single on 30 April 1990. It included three previously unreleased songs written by Stansfield, Devaney and Morris: \"My Apple Heart,\" \"Lay Me Down\" and \"Something's Happenin'.\" \"What Did I Do to You?\" was remixed by Mark Saunders and by the Grammy Award-winning American house music DJ and producer, David Morales. The single became a top forty hit in the European countries reaching number eighteen in Finland, number twenty in Ireland and number twenty-five in the United Kingdom. \"What Did I Do to You?\" was also released in Japan.\n\nIn 2014, the remixes of \"What Did I Do to You?\" were included on the deluxe 2CD + DVD re-release of Affection and on People Hold On ... The Remix Anthology. They were also featured on The Collection 1989–2003 box set (2014), including previously unreleased Red Zone Mix by David Morales.\n\nCritical reception\nThe song received positive reviews from music critics. Matthew Hocter from Albumism viewed it as a \"upbeat offering\". David Giles from Music Week said it is \"beautifully performed\" by Stansfield. A reviewer from Reading Eagle wrote that \"What Did I Do to You?\" \"would be right at home on the \"Saturday Night Fever\" soundtrack.\"\n\nMusic video\nA music video was produced to promote the single, directed by Philip Richardson, who had previously directed the videos for \"All Around the World\" and \"Live Together\". It features Stansfield with her kiss curls, dressed in a white outfit and performing with her band on a stage in front of a jumping audience. The video was later published on Stansfield's official YouTube channel in November 2009. It has amassed more than 1,6 million views as of October 2021.\n\nTrack listings\n\n European/UK 7\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix Edit) – 4:20\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n European/UK/Japanese CD single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix Edit) – 4:20\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 5:19\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 4:17\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n UK 10\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix) – 5:52\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 5:19\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 4:17\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n European/UK 12\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Morales Mix) – 7:59\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 4:22\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 3:19\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:15\n\n UK 12\" promotional single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Morales Mix) – 7:59\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Anti Poll Tax Dub) – 6:31\n\n Other remixes\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Red Zone Mix) – 7:45\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\nLisa Stansfield songs\n1990 singles\nSongs written by Lisa Stansfield\n1989 songs\nArista Records singles\nSongs written by Ian Devaney\nSongs written by Andy Morris (musician)" ]
[ "Mary Shelley", "Lake Geneva and Frankenstein", "When did Mary Shelley write Frankenstein?", "Mary Shelley remembered in 1831,", "What did she have to do with Lake Geneva?", "close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis", "what did they do while they were there?", "They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. \"" ]
C_fcd11261399c4441ac5c013381bf1e1d_1
What did they write while they were there?
4
What did Mary and Percy Shelley write while they were at Maison Chapuis?
Mary Shelley
In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. The party arrived at Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted, "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. CANNOTANSWER
Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story".
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and feminist activist Mary Wollstonecraft. Shelley's mother died less than a month after giving birth to her. She was raised by her father, who provided her with a rich if informal education, encouraging her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories. When she was four, her father married a neighbour, Mary Jane Clairmont, with whom Shelley came to have a troubled relationship. In 1814, Shelley began a romance with one of her father's political followers, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. Together with her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, she and Percy left for France and travelled through Europe. Upon their return to England, Shelley was pregnant with Percy's child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet. In 1816, the couple and Mary's stepsister famously spent a summer with Lord Byron and John William Polidori near Geneva, Switzerland, where Shelley conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, most likely caused by the brain tumour which killed her at age 53. Until the 1970s, Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish her husband's works and for her novel Frankenstein, which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Shelley's achievements. Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826) and her final two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). Studies of her lesser-known works, such as the travel book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–1846), support the growing view that Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life. Shelley's works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practised by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin. Life and career Early life Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, in 1797. She was the second child of the feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the first child of the philosopher, novelist, and journalist William Godwin. Wollstonecraft died of puerperal fever shortly after Mary was born. Godwin was left to bring up Mary, along with her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, Wollstonecraft's child by the American speculator Gilbert Imlay. A year after Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798), which he intended as a sincere and compassionate tribute. However, because the Memoirs revealed Wollstonecraft's affairs and her illegitimate child, they were seen as shocking. Mary Godwin read these memoirs and her mother's books, and was brought up to cherish her mother's memory. Mary's earliest years were happy, judging from the letters of William Godwin's housekeeper and nurse, Louisa Jones. But Godwin was often deeply in debt; feeling that he could not raise the children by himself, he cast about for a second wife. In December 1801, he married Mary Jane Clairmont, a well-educated woman with two young children of her own—Charles and Claire. Most of Godwin's friends disliked his new wife, describing her as quick-tempered and quarrelsome; but Godwin was devoted to her, and the marriage was a success. Mary Godwin, on the other hand, came to detest her stepmother. William Godwin's 19th-century biographer Charles Kegan Paul later suggested that Mrs Godwin had favoured her own children over those of Mary Wollstonecraft. Together, the Godwins started a publishing firm called M. J. Godwin, which sold children's books as well as stationery, maps, and games. However, the business did not turn a profit, and Godwin was forced to borrow substantial sums to keep it going. He continued to borrow to pay off earlier loans, compounding his problems. By 1809, Godwin's business was close to failure, and he was "near to despair". Godwin was saved from debtor's prison by philosophical devotees such as Francis Place, who lent him further money. Though Mary Godwin received little formal education, her father tutored her in a broad range of subjects. He often took the children on educational outings, and they had access to his library and to the many intellectuals who visited him, including the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the former vice-president of the United States Aaron Burr. Godwin admitted he was not educating the children according to Mary Wollstonecraft's philosophy as outlined in works such as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), but Mary Godwin nonetheless received an unusual and advanced education for a girl of the time. She had a governess, a daily tutor, and read many of her father's children's books on Roman and Greek history in manuscript. For six months in 1811, she also attended a boarding school in Ramsgate. Her father described her at age 15 as "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible." In June 1812, Mary's father sent her to stay with the dissenting family of the radical William Baxter, near Dundee, Scotland. To Baxter, he wrote, "I am anxious that she should be brought up ... like a philosopher, even like a cynic." Scholars have speculated that she may have been sent away for her health, to remove her from the seamy side of the business, or to introduce her to radical politics. Mary Godwin revelled in the spacious surroundings of Baxter's house and in the companionship of his four daughters, and she returned north in the summer of 1813 for a further stay of 10 months. In the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein, she recalled: "I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered." Percy Bysshe Shelley Mary Godwin may have first met the radical poet-philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley in the interval between her two stays in Scotland. By the time she returned home for a second time on 30 March 1814, Percy Shelley had become estranged from his wife and was regularly visiting William Godwin, whom he had agreed to bail out of debt. Percy Shelley's radicalism, particularly his economic views, which he had imbibed from William Godwin's Political Justice (1793), had alienated him from his wealthy aristocratic family: they wanted him to follow traditional models of the landed aristocracy, and he wanted to donate large amounts of the family's money to schemes intended to help the disadvantaged. Percy Shelley, therefore, had difficulty gaining access to money until he inherited his estate because his family did not want him wasting it on projects of "political justice". After several months of promises, Shelley announced that he either could not or would not pay off all of Godwin's debts. Godwin was angry and felt betrayed. Mary and Percy began meeting each other secretly at her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's grave in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, and they fell in love—she was 16, and he was 21. On 26 June 1814, Shelley and Godwin declared their love for one another as Shelley announced he could not hide his "ardent passion", leading her in a "sublime and rapturous moment" to say she felt the same way; on either that day or the next, Godwin lost her virginity to Shelley, which tradition claims happened in the churchyard. Godwin described herself as attracted to Shelley's "wild, intellectual, unearthly looks". To Mary's dismay, her father disapproved, and tried to thwart the relationship and salvage the "spotless fame" of his daughter. At about the same time, Mary's father learned of Shelley's inability to pay off the father's debts. Mary, who later wrote of "my excessive and romantic attachment to my father", was confused. She saw Percy Shelley as an embodiment of her parents' liberal and reformist ideas of the 1790s, particularly Godwin's view that marriage was a repressive monopoly, which he had argued in his 1793 edition of Political Justice but later retracted. On 28 July 1814, the couple eloped and secretly left for France, taking Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with them. After convincing Mary Jane Godwin, who had pursued them to Calais, that they did not wish to return, the trio travelled to Paris, and then, by donkey, mule, carriage, and foot, through a France recently ravaged by war, to Switzerland. "It was acting in a novel, being an incarnate romance," Mary Shelley recalled in 1826. Godwin wrote about France in 1814: "The distress of the inhabitants, whose houses had been burned, their cattle killed and all their wealth destroyed, has given a sting to my detestation of war...". As they travelled, Mary and Percy read works by Mary Wollstonecraft and others, kept a joint journal, and continued their own writing. At Lucerne, lack of money forced the three to turn back. They travelled down the Rhine and by land to the Dutch port of Maassluis, arriving at Gravesend, Kent, on 13 September 1814. The situation awaiting Mary Godwin in England was fraught with complications, some of which she had not foreseen. Either before or during the journey, she had become pregnant. She and Percy now found themselves penniless, and, to Mary's genuine surprise, her father refused to have anything to do with her. The couple moved with Claire into lodgings at Somers Town, and later, Nelson Square. They maintained their intense programme of reading and writing, and entertained Percy Shelley's friends, such as Thomas Jefferson Hogg and the writer Thomas Love Peacock. Percy Shelley sometimes left home for short periods to dodge creditors. The couple's distraught letters reveal their pain at these separations. Pregnant and often ill, Mary Godwin had to cope with Percy's joy at the birth of his son by Harriet Shelley in late 1814 and his constant outings with Claire Clairmont. Shelley and Clairmont were almost certainly lovers, which caused much jealousy on Godwin's part. Shelley greatly offended Godwin at one point when during a walk in the French countryside he suggested that they both take the plunge into a stream naked as it offended her principles. She was partly consoled by the visits of Hogg, whom she disliked at first but soon considered a close friend. Percy Shelley seems to have wanted Mary Godwin and Hogg to become lovers; Mary did not dismiss the idea, since in principle she believed in free love. In practice, however, she loved only Percy Shelley and seems to have ventured no further than flirting with Hogg. On 22 February 1815, she gave birth to a two-month premature baby girl, who was not expected to survive. On 6 March, she wrote to Hogg: My dearest Hogg my baby is dead—will you come to see me as soon as you can. I wish to see you—It was perfectly well when I went to bed—I awoke in the night to give it suck it appeared to be sleeping so quietly that I would not awake it. It was dead then, but we did not find that out till morning—from its appearance it evidently died of convulsions—Will you come—you are so calm a creature & Shelley is afraid of a fever from the milk—for I am no longer a mother now. The loss of her child induced acute depression in Mary Godwin, who was haunted by visions of the baby; but she conceived again and had recovered by the summer. With a revival in Percy Shelley's finances after the death of his grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, the couple holidayed in Torquay and then rented a two-storey cottage at Bishopsgate, on the edge of Windsor Great Park. Little is known about this period in Mary Godwin's life, since her journal from May 1815 to July 1816 is lost. At Bishopsgate, Percy wrote his poem Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude; and on 24 January 1816, Mary gave birth to a second child, William, named after her father, and soon nicknamed "Willmouse". In her novel The Last Man, she later imagined Windsor as a Garden of Eden. Lake Geneva and Frankenstein In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. In History of a Six Weeks’ Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland (1817), she describes the particularly desolate landscape in crossing from France into Switzerland. The party arrived in Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted; "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. Authorship of Frankenstein While her husband Percy encouraged her writing, the extent of Percy's contribution to the novel is unknown and has been argued over by readers and critics. Mary Shelley wrote, "I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement, it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world." She wrote that the preface to the first edition was Percy's work "as far as I can recollect." There are differences in the 1818, 1823 and 1831 editions, which have been attributed to Percy's editing. James Rieger concluded Percy's "assistance at every point in the book's manufacture was so extensive that one hardly knows whether to regard him as editor or minor collaborator", while Anne K. Mellor later argued Percy only "made many technical corrections and several times clarified the narrative and thematic continuity of the text." Charles E. Robinson, editor of a facsimile edition of the Frankenstein manuscripts, concluded that Percy's contributions to the book "were no more than what most publishers' editors have provided new (or old) authors or, in fact, what colleagues have provided to each other after reading each other's works in progress." Writing on the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein, literary scholar and poet Fiona Sampson asked, "Why hasn't Mary Shelley gotten the respect she deserves?" She noted that "In recent years Percy's corrections, visible in the Frankenstein notebooks held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, have been seized on as evidence that he must have at least co-authored the novel. In fact, when I examined the notebooks myself, I realized that Percy did rather less than any line editor working in publishing today." Sampson published her findings in In Search of Mary Shelley (2018), one of many biographies written about Shelley. Bath and Marlow On their return to England in September, Mary and Percy moved—with Claire Clairmont, who took lodgings nearby—to Bath, where they hoped to keep Claire's pregnancy secret. At Cologny, Mary Godwin had received two letters from her half-sister, Fanny Imlay, who alluded to her "unhappy life"; on 9 October, Fanny wrote an "alarming letter" from Bristol that sent Percy Shelley racing off to search for her, without success. On the morning of 10 October, Fanny Imlay was found dead in a room at a Swansea inn, along with a suicide note and a laudanum bottle. On 10 December, Percy Shelley's wife, Harriet, was discovered drowned in the Serpentine, a lake in Hyde Park, London. Both suicides were hushed up. Harriet's family obstructed Percy Shelley's efforts—fully supported by Mary Godwin—to assume custody of his two children by Harriet. His lawyers advised him to improve his case by marrying; so he and Mary, who was pregnant again, married on 30 December 1816 at St Mildred's Church, Bread Street, London. Mr and Mrs Godwin were present and the marriage ended the family rift. Claire Clairmont gave birth to a baby girl on 13 January, at first called Alba, later Allegra. In March of that year, the Chancery Court ruled Percy Shelley morally unfit to assume custody of his children and later placed them with a clergyman's family. Also in March, the Shelleys moved with Claire and Alba to Albion House at Marlow, Buckinghamshire, a large, damp building on the river Thames. There Mary Shelley gave birth to her third child, Clara, on 2 September. At Marlow, they entertained their new friends Marianne and Leigh Hunt, worked hard at their writing, and often discussed politics. Early in the summer of 1817, Mary Shelley finished Frankenstein, which was published anonymously in January 1818. Reviewers and readers assumed that Percy Shelley was the author, since the book was published with his preface and dedicated to his political hero William Godwin. At Marlow, Mary edited the joint journal of the group's 1814 Continental journey, adding material written in Switzerland in 1816, along with Percy's poem "Mont Blanc". The result was the History of a Six Weeks' Tour, published in November 1817. That autumn, Percy Shelley often lived away from home in London to evade creditors. The threat of a debtor's prison, combined with their ill health and fears of losing custody of their children, contributed to the couple's decision to leave England for Italy on 12 March 1818, taking Claire Clairmont and Alba with them. They had no intention of returning. Italy One of the party's first tasks on arriving in Italy was to hand Alba over to Byron, who was living in Venice. He had agreed to raise her so long as Claire had nothing more to do with her. The Shelleys then embarked on a roving existence, never settling in any one place for long. Along the way, they accumulated a circle of friends and acquaintances who often moved with them. The couple devoted their time to writing, reading, learning, sightseeing, and socialising. The Italian adventure was, however, blighted for Mary Shelley by the deaths of both her children—Clara, in September 1818 in Venice, and William, in June 1819 in Rome. These losses left her in a deep depression that isolated her from Percy Shelley, who wrote in his notebook: My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone, And left me in this dreary world alone? Thy form is here indeed—a lovely one— But thou art fled, gone down a dreary road That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode. For thine own sake I cannot follow thee Do thou return for mine. For a time, Mary Shelley found comfort only in her writing. The birth of her fourth child, Percy Florence, on 12 November 1819, finally lifted her spirits, though she nursed the memory of her lost children till the end of her life. Italy provided the Shelleys, Byron, and other exiles with political freedom unattainable at home. Despite its associations with personal loss, Italy became for Mary Shelley "a country which memory painted as paradise". Their Italian years were a time of intense intellectual and creative activity for both Shelleys. While Percy composed a series of major poems, Mary wrote the novel Matilda, the historical novel Valperga, and the plays Proserpine and Midas. Mary wrote Valperga to help alleviate her father's financial difficulties, as Percy refused to assist him further. She was often physically ill, however, and prone to depressions. She also had to cope with Percy's interest in other women, such as Sophia Stacey, Emilia Viviani, and Jane Williams. Since Mary Shelley shared his belief in the non-exclusivity of marriage, she formed emotional ties of her own among the men and women of their circle. She became particularly fond of the Greek revolutionary Prince Alexandros Mavrokordatos and of Jane and Edward Williams. In December 1818, the Shelleys travelled south with Claire Clairmont and their servants to Naples, where they stayed for three months, receiving only one visitor, a physician. In 1820, they found themselves plagued by accusations and threats from Paolo and Elise Foggi, former servants whom Percy Shelley had dismissed in Naples shortly after the Foggis had married. The pair revealed that on 27 February 1819 in Naples, Percy Shelley had registered as his child by Mary Shelley a two-month-old baby girl named Elena Adelaide Shelley. The Foggis also claimed that Claire Clairmont was the baby's mother. Biographers have offered various interpretations of these events: that Percy Shelley decided to adopt a local child; that the baby was his by Elise, Claire, or an unknown woman; or that she was Elise's by Byron. Mary Shelley insisted she would have known if Claire had been pregnant, but it is unclear how much she really knew. The events in Naples, a city Mary Shelley later called a paradise inhabited by devils, remain shrouded in mystery. The only certainty is that she herself was not the child's mother. Elena Adelaide Shelley died in Naples on 9 June 1820. After leaving Naples, the Shelleys settled in Rome, the city where her husband wrote where "the meanest streets were strewed with truncated columns, broken capitals...and sparkling fragments of granite or porphyry...The voice of dead time, in still vibrations, is breathed from these dumb things, animated and glorified as they were by man". Rome inspired her to begin writing the unfinished novel Valerius, the Reanimated Roman, where the eponymous hero resists the decay of Rome and the machinations of "superstitious" Catholicism. The writing of her novel was broken off when her son William died of malaria. Shelley bitterly commented that she had come to Italy to improve her husband's health, and instead the Italian climate had just killed her two children, leading her to write: "May you my dear Marianne never know what it is to lose two only and lovely children in one year—to watch their dying moments—and then at last to be left childless and forever miserable". To deal with her grief, Shelley wrote the novella The Fields of Fancy, which became Matilda, dealing with a young woman whose beauty inspired incestuous love in her father, who ultimately commits suicide to stop himself from acting on his passion for his daughter, while she spends the rest of her life full of despair about "the unnatural love I had inspired". The novella offered a feminist critique of a patriarchal society as Matilda is punished in the afterlife, though she did nothing to encourage her father's feelings. In the summer of 1822, a pregnant Mary moved with Percy, Claire, and Edward and Jane Williams to the isolated Villa Magni, at the sea's edge near the hamlet of San Terenzo in the Bay of Lerici. Once they were settled in, Percy broke the "evil news" to Claire that her daughter Allegra had died of typhus in a convent at Bagnacavallo. Mary Shelley was distracted and unhappy in the cramped and remote Villa Magni, which she came to regard as a dungeon. On 16 June, she miscarried, losing so much blood that she nearly died. Rather than wait for a doctor, Percy sat her in a bath of ice to stanch the bleeding, an act the doctor later told him saved her life. All was not well between the couple that summer, however, and Percy spent more time with Jane Williams than with his depressed and debilitated wife. Much of the short poetry Shelley wrote at San Terenzo involved Jane rather than Mary. The coast offered Percy Shelley and Edward Williams the chance to enjoy their "perfect plaything for the summer", a new sailing boat. The boat had been designed by Daniel Roberts and Edward Trelawny, an admirer of Byron's who had joined the party in January 1822. On 1 July 1822, Percy Shelley, Edward Ellerker Williams, and Captain Daniel Roberts sailed south down the coast to Livorno. There Percy Shelley discussed with Byron and Leigh Hunt the launch of a radical magazine called The Liberal. On 8 July, he and Edward Williams set out on the return journey to Lerici with their eighteen-year-old boat boy, Charles Vivian. They never reached their destination. A letter arrived at Villa Magni from Hunt to Percy Shelley, dated 8 July, saying, "pray write to tell us how you got home, for they say you had bad weather after you sailed Monday & we are anxious". "The paper fell from me," Mary told a friend later. "I trembled all over." She and Jane Williams rushed desperately to Livorno and then to Pisa in the fading hope that their husbands were still alive. Ten days after the storm, three bodies washed up on the coast near Viareggio, midway between Livorno and Lerici. Trelawny, Byron, and Hunt cremated Percy Shelley's corpse on the beach at Viareggio. Return to England and writing career After her husband's death, Mary Shelley lived for a year with Leigh Hunt and his family in Genoa, where she often saw Byron and transcribed his poems. She resolved to live by her pen and for her son, but her financial situation was precarious. On 23 July 1823, she left Genoa for England and stayed with her father and stepmother in the Strand until a small advance from her father-in-law enabled her to lodge nearby. Sir Timothy Shelley had at first agreed to support his grandson, Percy Florence, only if he were handed over to an appointed guardian. Mary Shelley rejected this idea instantly. She managed instead to wring out of Sir Timothy a limited annual allowance (which she had to repay when Percy Florence inherited the estate), but to the end of his days, he refused to meet her in person and dealt with her only through lawyers. Mary Shelley busied herself with editing her husband's poems, among other literary endeavours, but concern for her son restricted her options. Sir Timothy threatened to stop the allowance if any biography of the poet were published. In 1826, Percy Florence became the legal heir of the Shelley estate after the death of his half-brother Charles Shelley, his father's son by Harriet Shelley. Sir Timothy raised Mary's allowance from £100 a year to £250 but remained as difficult as ever. Mary Shelley enjoyed the stimulating society of William Godwin's circle, but poverty prevented her from socialising as she wished. She also felt ostracised by those who, like Sir Timothy, still disapproved of her relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley. In the summer of 1824, Mary Shelley moved to Kentish Town in north London to be near Jane Williams. She may have been, in the words of her biographer Muriel Spark, "a little in love" with Jane. Jane later disillusioned her by gossiping that Percy had preferred her to Mary, owing to Mary's inadequacy as a wife. At around this time, Mary Shelley was working on her novel, The Last Man (1826); and she assisted a series of friends who were writing memoirs of Byron and Percy Shelley—the beginnings of her attempts to immortalise her husband. She also met the American actor John Howard Payne and the American writer Washington Irving, who intrigued her. Payne fell in love with her and in 1826 asked her to marry him. She refused, saying that after being married to one genius, she could only marry another. Payne accepted the rejection and tried without success to talk his friend Irving into proposing himself. Mary Shelley was aware of Payne's plan, but how seriously she took it is unclear. In 1827, Mary Shelley was party to a scheme that enabled her friend Isabel Robinson and Isabel's lover, Mary Diana Dods, who wrote under the name David Lyndsay, to embark on a life together in France as husband and wife. With the help of Payne, whom she kept in the dark about the details, Mary Shelley obtained false passports for the couple. In 1828, she fell ill with smallpox while visiting them in Paris. Weeks later she recovered, unscarred but without her youthful beauty. During the period 1827–40, Mary Shelley was busy as an editor and writer. She wrote the novels The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835), and Falkner (1837). She contributed five volumes of Lives of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French authors to Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia. She also wrote stories for ladies' magazines. She was still helping to support her father, and they looked out for publishers for each other. In 1830, she sold the copyright for a new edition of Frankenstein for £60 to Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley for their new Standard Novels series. After her father's death in 1836 at the age of eighty, she began assembling his letters and a memoir for publication, as he had requested in his will; but after two years of work, she abandoned the project. Throughout this period, she also championed Percy Shelley's poetry, promoting its publication and quoting it in her writing. By 1837, Percy's works were well-known and increasingly admired. In the summer of 1838 Edward Moxon, the publisher of Tennyson and the son-in-law of Charles Lamb, proposed publishing a collected works of Percy Shelley. Mary was paid £500 to edit the Poetical Works (1838), which Sir Timothy insisted should not include a biography. Mary found a way to tell the story of Percy's life, nonetheless: she included extensive biographical notes about the poems. Shelley continued to practice her mother's feminist principles by extending aid to women whom society disapproved of. For instance, Shelley extended financial aid to Mary Diana Dods, a single mother and illegitimate herself who appears to have been a lesbian and gave her the new identity of Walter Sholto Douglas, husband of her lover Isabel Robinson. Shelley also assisted Georgiana Paul, a woman disallowed for by her husband for alleged adultery. Shelley in her diary about her assistance to the latter: "I do not make a boast-I do not say aloud-behold my generosity and greatness of mind-for in truth it is simple justice I perform-and so I am still reviled for being worldly". Mary Shelley continued to treat potential romantic partners with caution. In 1828, she met and flirted with the French writer Prosper Mérimée, but her one surviving letter to him appears to be a deflection of his declaration of love. She was delighted when her old friend from Italy, Edward Trelawny, returned to England, and they joked about marriage in their letters. Their friendship had altered, however, following her refusal to cooperate with his proposed biography of Percy Shelley; and he later reacted angrily to her omission of the atheistic section of Queen Mab from Percy Shelley's poems. Oblique references in her journals, from the early 1830s until the early 1840s, suggest that Mary Shelley had feelings for the radical politician Aubrey Beauclerk, who may have disappointed her by twice marrying others. Mary Shelley's first concern during these years was the welfare of Percy Florence. She honoured her late husband's wish that his son attend public school and, with Sir Timothy's grudging help, had him educated at Harrow. To avoid boarding fees, she moved to Harrow on the Hill herself so that Percy could attend as a day scholar. Though Percy went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, and dabbled in politics and the law, he showed no sign of his parents' gifts. He was devoted to his mother, and after he left university in 1841, he came to live with her. Final years and death In 1840 and 1842, mother and son travelled together on the continent, journeys that Mary Shelley recorded in Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843 (1844). In 1844, Sir Timothy Shelley finally died at the age of ninety, "falling from the stalk like an overblown flower", as Mary put it. For the first time, she and her son were financially independent, though the estate proved less valuable than they had hoped. In the mid-1840s, Mary Shelley found herself the target of three separate blackmailers. In 1845, an Italian political exile called Gatteschi, whom she had met in Paris, threatened to publish letters she had sent him. A friend of her son's bribed a police chief into seizing Gatteschi's papers, including the letters, which were then destroyed. Shortly afterwards, Mary Shelley bought some letters written by herself and Percy Bysshe Shelley from a man calling himself G. Byron and posing as the illegitimate son of the late Lord Byron. Also in 1845, Percy Bysshe Shelley's cousin Thomas Medwin approached her claiming to have written a damaging biography of Percy Shelley. He said he would suppress it in return for £250, but Mary Shelley refused. In 1848, Percy Florence married Jane Gibson St John. The marriage proved a happy one, and Mary Shelley and Jane were fond of each other. Mary lived with her son and daughter-in-law at Field Place, Sussex, the Shelleys' ancestral home, and at Chester Square, London, and accompanied them on travels abroad. Mary Shelley's last years were blighted by illness. From 1839, she suffered from headaches and bouts of paralysis in parts of her body, which sometimes prevented her from reading and writing. On 1 February 1851, at Chester Square, she died at the age of fifty-three from what her physician suspected was a brain tumour. According to Jane Shelley, Mary Shelley had asked to be buried with her mother and father; but Percy and Jane, judging the graveyard at St Pancras to be "dreadful", chose to bury her instead at St Peter's Church, Bournemouth, near their new home at Boscombe. On the first anniversary of Mary Shelley's death, the Shelleys opened her box-desk. Inside they found locks of her dead children's hair, a notebook she had shared with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a copy of his poem Adonaïs with one page folded round a silk parcel containing some of his ashes and the remains of his heart. Literary themes and styles Mary Shelley lived a literary life. Her father encouraged her to learn to write by composing letters, and her favourite occupation as a child was writing stories. Unfortunately, all of Mary's juvenilia were lost when she ran off with Percy in 1814, and none of her surviving manuscripts can be definitively dated before that year. Her first published work is often thought to have been Mounseer Nongtongpaw, comic verses written for Godwin's Juvenile Library when she was ten and a half; however, the poem is attributed to another writer in the most recent authoritative collection of her works. Percy Shelley enthusiastically encouraged Mary Shelley's writing: "My husband was, from the first, very anxious that I should prove myself worthy of my parentage, and enrol myself on the page of fame. He was forever inciting me to obtain literary reputation." Novels Autobiographical elements Certain sections of Mary Shelley's novels are often interpreted as masked rewritings of her life. Critics have pointed to the recurrence of the father–daughter motif in particular as evidence of this autobiographical style. For example, commentators frequently read Mathilda (1820) autobiographically, identifying the three central characters as versions of Mary Shelley, William Godwin, and Percy Shelley. Mary Shelley herself confided that she modelled the central characters of The Last Man on her Italian circle. Lord Raymond, who leaves England to fight for the Greeks and dies in Constantinople, is based on Lord Byron; and the utopian Adrian, Earl of Windsor, who leads his followers in search of a natural paradise and dies when his boat sinks in a storm, is a fictional portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley. However, as she wrote in her review of Godwin's novel Cloudesley (1830), she did not believe that authors "were merely copying from our own hearts". William Godwin regarded his daughter's characters as types rather than portraits from real life. Some modern critics, such as Patricia Clemit and Jane Blumberg, have taken the same view, resisting autobiographical readings of Mary Shelley's works. Novelistic genres Mary Shelley employed the techniques of many different novelistic genres, most vividly the Godwinian novel, Walter Scott's new historical novel, and the Gothic novel. The Godwinian novel, made popular during the 1790s with works such as Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794), "employed a Rousseauvian confessional form to explore the contradictory relations between the self and society", and Frankenstein exhibits many of the same themes and literary devices as Godwin's novel. However, Shelley critiques those Enlightenment ideals that Godwin promotes in his works. In The Last Man, she uses the philosophical form of the Godwinian novel to demonstrate the ultimate meaninglessness of the world. While earlier Godwinian novels had shown how rational individuals could slowly improve society, The Last Man and Frankenstein demonstrate the individual's lack of control over history. Shelley uses the historical novel to comment on gender relations; for example, Valperga is a feminist version of Scott's masculinist genre. Introducing women into the story who are not part of the historical record, Shelley uses their narratives to question established theological and political institutions. Shelley sets the male protagonist's compulsive greed for conquest in opposition to a female alternative: reason and sensibility. In Perkin Warbeck, Shelley's other historical novel, Lady Gordon stands for the values of friendship, domesticity, and equality. Through her, Shelley offers a feminine alternative to the masculine power politics that destroy the male characters. The novel provides a more inclusive historical narrative to challenge the one which usually relates only masculine events. Gender With the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1970s, Mary Shelley's works, particularly Frankenstein, began to attract much more attention from scholars. Feminist and psychoanalytic critics were largely responsible for the recovery from neglect of Shelley as a writer. Ellen Moers was one of the first to claim that Shelley's loss of a baby was a crucial influence on the writing of Frankenstein. She argues that the novel is a "birth myth" in which Shelley comes to terms with her guilt for causing her mother's death as well as for failing as a parent. Shelley scholar Anne K. Mellor suggests that, from a feminist viewpoint, it is a story "about what happens when a man tries to have a baby without a woman ... [Frankenstein] is profoundly concerned with natural as opposed to unnatural modes of production and reproduction". Victor Frankenstein's failure as a "parent" in the novel has been read as an expression of the anxieties which accompany pregnancy, giving birth, and particularly maternity. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue in their seminal book The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) that in Frankenstein in particular, Shelley responded to the masculine literary tradition represented by John Milton's Paradise Lost. In their interpretation, Shelley reaffirms this masculine tradition, including the misogyny inherent in it, but at the same time "conceal[s] fantasies of equality that occasionally erupt in monstrous images of rage". Mary Poovey reads the first edition of Frankenstein as part of a larger pattern in Shelley's writing, which begins with literary self-assertion and ends with conventional femininity. Poovey suggests that Frankenstein's multiple narratives enable Shelley to split her artistic persona: she can "express and efface herself at the same time". Shelley's fear of self-assertion is reflected in the fate of Frankenstein, who is punished for his egotism by losing all his domestic ties. Feminist critics often focus on how authorship itself, particularly female authorship, is represented in and through Shelley's novels. As Mellor explains, Shelley uses the Gothic style not only to explore repressed female sexual desire but also as way to "censor her own speech in Frankenstein". According to Poovey and Mellor, Shelley did not want to promote her own authorial persona and felt deeply inadequate as a writer, and "this shame contributed to the generation of her fictional images of abnormality, perversion, and destruction". Shelley's writings focus on the role of the family in society and women's role within that family. She celebrates the "feminine affections and compassion" associated with the family and suggests that civil society will fail without them. Shelley was "profoundly committed to an ethic of cooperation, mutual dependence, and self-sacrifice". In Lodore, for example, the central story follows the fortunes of the wife and daughter of the title character, Lord Lodore, who is killed in a duel at the end of the first volume, leaving a trail of legal, financial, and familial obstacles for the two "heroines" to negotiate. The novel is engaged with political and ideological issues, particularly the education and social role of women. It dissects a patriarchal culture that separated the sexes and pressured women into dependence on men. In the view of Shelley scholar Betty T. Bennett, "the novel proposes egalitarian educational paradigms for women and men, which would bring social justice as well as the spiritual and intellectual means by which to meet the challenges life invariably brings". However, Falkner is the only one of Mary Shelley's novels in which the heroine's agenda triumphs. The novel's resolution proposes that when female values triumph over violent and destructive masculinity, men will be freed to express the "compassion, sympathy, and generosity" of their better natures. Enlightenment and Romanticism Frankenstein, like much Gothic fiction of the period, mixes a visceral and alienating subject matter with speculative and thought-provoking themes. Rather than focusing on the twists and turns of the plot, however, the novel foregrounds the mental and moral struggles of the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, and Shelley imbues the text with her own brand of politicised Romanticism, one that criticised the individualism and egotism of traditional Romanticism. Victor Frankenstein is like Satan in Paradise Lost, and Prometheus: he rebels against tradition; he creates life; and he shapes his own destiny. These traits are not portrayed positively; as Blumberg writes, "his relentless ambition is a self-delusion, clothed as quest for truth". He must abandon his family to fulfill his ambition. Mary Shelley believed in the Enlightenment idea that people could improve society through the responsible exercise of political power, but she feared that the irresponsible exercise of power would lead to chaos. In practice, her works largely criticise the way 18th-century thinkers such as her parents believed such change could be brought about. The creature in Frankenstein, for example, reads books associated with radical ideals but the education he gains from them is ultimately useless. Shelley's works reveal her as less optimistic than Godwin and Wollstonecraft; she lacks faith in Godwin's theory that humanity could eventually be perfected. As literary scholar Kari Lokke writes, The Last Man, more so than Frankenstein, "in its refusal to place humanity at the centre of the universe, its questioning of our privileged position in relation to nature ... constitutes a profound and prophetic challenge to Western humanism." Specifically, Mary Shelley's allusions to what radicals believed was a failed revolution in France and the Godwinian, Wollstonecraftian, and Burkean responses to it, challenge "Enlightenment faith in the inevitability of progress through collective efforts". As in Frankenstein, Shelley "offers a profoundly disenchanted commentary on the age of revolution, which ends in a total rejection of the progressive ideals of her own generation". Not only does she reject these Enlightenment political ideals, but she also rejects the Romantic notion that the poetic or literary imagination can offer an alternative. Politics There is a new scholarly emphasis on Shelley as a lifelong reformer, deeply engaged in the liberal and feminist concerns of her day. In 1820, she was thrilled by the Liberal uprising in Spain which forced the king to grant a constitution. In 1823, she wrote articles for Leigh Hunt's periodical The Liberal and played an active role in the formulation of its outlook. She was delighted when the Whigs came back to power in 1830 and at the prospect of the 1832 Reform Act. Critics have until recently cited Lodore and Falkner as evidence of increasing conservatism in Mary Shelley's later works. In 1984, Mary Poovey influentially identified the retreat of Mary Shelley's reformist politics into the "separate sphere" of the domestic. Poovey suggested that Mary Shelley wrote Falkner to resolve her conflicted response to her father's combination of libertarian radicalism and stern insistence on social decorum. Mellor largely agreed, arguing that "Mary Shelley grounded her alternative political ideology on the metaphor of the peaceful, loving, bourgeois family. She thereby implicitly endorsed a conservative vision of gradual evolutionary reform." This vision allowed women to participate in the public sphere but it inherited the inequalities inherent in the bourgeois family. However, in the last decade or so this view has been challenged. For example, Bennett claims that Mary Shelley's works reveal a consistent commitment to Romantic idealism and political reform and Jane Blumberg's study of Shelley's early novels argues that her career cannot be easily divided into radical and conservative halves. She contends that "Shelley was never a passionate radical like her husband and her later lifestyle was not abruptly assumed nor was it a betrayal. She was in fact challenging the political and literary influences of her circle in her first work." In this reading, Shelley's early works are interpreted as a challenge to Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley's radicalism. Victor Frankenstein's "thoughtless rejection of family", for example, is seen as evidence of Shelley's constant concern for the domestic. Short stories In the 1820s and 1830s, Mary Shelley frequently wrote short stories for gift books or annuals, including sixteen for The Keepsake, which was aimed at middle-class women and bound in silk, with gilt-edged pages. Mary Shelley's work in this genre has been described as that of a "hack writer" and "wordy and pedestrian". However, critic Charlotte Sussman points out that other leading writers of the day, such as the Romantic poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, also took advantage of this profitable market. She explains that "the annuals were a major mode of literary production in the 1820s and 1830s", with The Keepsake the most successful. Many of Shelley's stories are set in places or times far removed from early 19th-century Britain, such as Greece and the reign of Henry IV of France. Shelley was particularly interested in "the fragility of individual identity" and often depicted "the way a person's role in the world can be cataclysmically altered either by an internal emotional upheaval, or by some supernatural occurrence that mirrors an internal schism". In her stories, female identity is tied to a woman's short-lived value in the marriage market while male identity can be sustained and transformed through the use of money. Although Mary Shelley wrote twenty-one short stories for the annuals between 1823 and 1839, she always saw herself, above all, as a novelist. She wrote to Leigh Hunt, "I write bad articles which help to make me miserable—but I am going to plunge into a novel and hope that its clear water will wash off the mud of the magazines." Travelogues When they ran off to France in the summer of 1814, Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley began a joint journal, which they published in 1817 under the title History of a Six Weeks' Tour, adding four letters, two by each of them, based on their visit to Geneva in 1816, along with Percy Shelley's poem "Mont Blanc". The work celebrates youthful love and political idealism and consciously follows the example of Mary Wollstonecraft and others who had combined travelling with writing. The perspective of the History is philosophical and reformist rather than that of a conventional travelogue; in particular, it addresses the effects of politics and war on France. The letters the couple wrote on the second journey confront the "great and extraordinary events" of the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo after his "Hundred Days" return in 1815. They also explore the sublimity of Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc as well as the revolutionary legacy of the philosopher and novelist Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Mary Shelley's last full-length book, written in the form of letters and published in 1844, was Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843, which recorded her travels with her son Percy Florence and his university friends. In Rambles, Shelley follows the tradition of Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark and her own A History of a Six Weeks' Tour in mapping her personal and political landscape through the discourse of sensibility and sympathy. For Shelley, building sympathetic connections between people is the way to build civil society and to increase knowledge: "knowledge, to enlighten and free the mind from clinging deadening prejudices—a wider circle of sympathy with our fellow-creatures;—these are the uses of travel". Between observations on scenery, culture, and "the people, especially in a political point of view", she uses the travelogue form to explore her roles as a widow and mother and to reflect on revolutionary nationalism in Italy. She also records her "pilgrimage" to scenes associated with Percy Shelley. According to critic Clarissa Orr, Mary Shelley's adoption of a persona of philosophical motherhood gives Rambles the unity of a prose poem, with "death and memory as central themes". At the same time, Shelley makes an egalitarian case against monarchy, class distinctions, slavery, and war. Biographies Between 1832 and 1839, Mary Shelley wrote many biographies of notable Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French men and a few women for Dionysius Lardner's Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men. These formed part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia, one of the best of many such series produced in the 1820s and 1830s in response to growing middle-class demand for self-education. Until the republication of these essays in 2002, their significance within her body of work was not appreciated. In the view of literary scholar Greg Kucich, they reveal Mary Shelley's "prodigious research across several centuries and in multiple languages", her gift for biographical narrative, and her interest in the "emerging forms of feminist historiography". Shelley wrote in a biographical style popularised by the 18th-century critic Samuel Johnson in his Lives of the Poets (1779–81), combining secondary sources, memoir and anecdote, and authorial evaluation. She records details of each writer's life and character, quotes their writing in the original as well as in translation, and ends with a critical assessment of their achievement. For Shelley, biographical writing was supposed to, in her words, "form as it were a school in which to study the philosophy of history", and to teach "lessons". Most frequently and importantly, these lessons consisted of criticisms of male-dominated institutions such as primogeniture. Shelley emphasises domesticity, romance, family, sympathy, and compassion in the lives of her subjects. Her conviction that such forces could improve society connects her biographical approach with that of other early feminist historians such as Mary Hays and Anna Jameson. Unlike her novels, most of which had an original print run of several hundred copies, the Lives had a print run of about 4,000 for each volume: thus, according to Kucich, Mary Shelley's "use of biography to forward the social agenda of women's historiography became one of her most influential political interventions". Editorial work Soon after Percy Shelley's death, Mary Shelley determined to write his biography. In a letter of 17 November 1822, she announced: "I shall write his life—& thus occupy myself in the only manner from which I can derive consolation." However, her father-in-law, Sir Timothy Shelley, effectively banned her from doing so. Mary began her fostering of Percy's poetic reputation in 1824 with the publication of his Posthumous Poems. In 1839, while she was working on the Lives, she prepared a new edition of his poetry, which became, in the words of literary scholar Susan J. Wolfson, "the canonizing event" in the history of her husband's reputation. The following year, Mary Shelley edited a volume of her husband's essays, letters, translations, and fragments, and throughout the 1830s, she introduced his poetry to a wider audience by publishing assorted works in the annual The Keepsake. Evading Sir Timothy's ban on a biography, Mary Shelley often included in these editions her own annotations and reflections on her husband's life and work. "I am to justify his ways," she had declared in 1824; "I am to make him beloved to all posterity." It was this goal, argues Blumberg, that led her to present Percy's work to the public in the "most popular form possible". To tailor his works for a Victorian audience, she cast Percy Shelley as a lyrical rather than a political poet. As Mary Favret writes, "the disembodied Percy identifies the spirit of poetry itself". Mary glossed Percy's political radicalism as a form of sentimentalism, arguing that his republicanism arose from sympathy for those who were suffering. She inserted romantic anecdotes of his benevolence, domesticity, and love of the natural world. Portraying herself as Percy's "practical muse", she also noted how she had suggested revisions as he wrote. Despite the emotions stirred by this task, Mary Shelley arguably proved herself in many respects a professional and scholarly editor. Working from Percy's messy, sometimes indecipherable, notebooks, she attempted to form a chronology for his writings, and she included poems, such as Epipsychidion, addressed to Emilia Viviani, which she would rather have left out. She was forced, however, into several compromises, and, as Blumberg notes, "modern critics have found fault with the edition and claim variously that she miscopied, misinterpreted, purposely obscured, and attempted to turn the poet into something he was not". According to Wolfson, Donald Reiman, a modern editor of Percy Bysshe Shelley's works, still refers to Mary Shelley's editions, while acknowledging that her editing style belongs "to an age of editing when the aim was not to establish accurate texts and scholarly apparatus but to present a full record of a writer's career for the general reader". In principle, Mary Shelley believed in publishing every last word of her husband's work; but she found herself obliged to omit certain passages, either by pressure from her publisher, Edward Moxon, or in deference to public propriety. For example, she removed the atheistic passages from Queen Mab for the first edition. After she restored them in the second edition, Moxon was prosecuted and convicted of blasphemous libel, though the prosecution was brought out of principle by the Chartist publisher Henry Hetherington, and no punishment was sought. Mary Shelley's omissions provoked criticism, often stinging, from members of Percy Shelley's former circle, and reviewers accused her of, among other things, indiscriminate inclusions. Her notes have nevertheless remained an essential source for the study of Percy Shelley's work. As Bennett explains, "biographers and critics agree that Mary Shelley's commitment to bring Shelley the notice she believed his works merited was the single, major force that established Shelley's reputation during a period when he almost certainly would have faded from public view". Reputation In her own lifetime, Mary Shelley was taken seriously as a writer, though reviewers often missed her writings' political edge. After her death, however, she was chiefly remembered as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of Frankenstein. In fact, in the introduction to her letters published in 1945, editor Frederick Jones wrote, "a collection of the present size could not be justified by the general quality of the letters or by Mary Shelley's importance as a writer. It is as the wife of [Percy Bysshe Shelley] that she excites our interest." This attitude had not disappeared by 1980 when Betty T. Bennett published the first volume of Mary Shelley's complete letters. As she explains, "the fact is that until recent years scholars have generally regarded Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley as a result: William Godwin's and Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter who became Shelley's Pygmalion." It was not until Emily Sunstein's Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality in 1989 that a full-length scholarly biography was published. The attempts of Mary Shelley's son and daughter-in-law to "Victorianise" her memory by censoring biographical documents contributed to a perception of Mary Shelley as a more conventional, less reformist figure than her works suggest. Her own timid omissions from Percy Shelley's works and her quiet avoidance of public controversy in her later years added to this impression. Commentary by Hogg, Trelawny, and other admirers of Percy Shelley also tended to downplay Mary Shelley's radicalism. Trelawny's Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author (1878) praised Percy Shelley at the expense of Mary, questioning her intelligence and even her authorship of Frankenstein. Lady Shelley, Percy Florence's wife, responded in part by presenting a severely edited collection of letters she had inherited, published privately as Shelley and Mary in 1882. From Frankenstein'''s first theatrical adaptation in 1823 to the cinematic adaptations of the 20th century, including the first cinematic version in 1910 and now-famous versions such as James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein, Mel Brooks' satirical 1974 Young Frankenstein, and Kenneth Branagh's 1994 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, many audiences first encounter the work of Mary Shelley through adaptation. Over the course of the 19th century, Mary Shelley came to be seen as a one-novel author at best, rather than as the professional writer she was; most of her works have remained out of print until the last thirty years, obstructing a larger view of her achievement. In recent decades, the republication of almost all her writing has stimulated a new recognition of its value. Her habit of intensive reading and study, revealed in her journals and letters and reflected in her works, is now better appreciated. Shelley's conception of herself as an author has also been recognised; after Percy's death, she wrote of her authorial ambitions: "I think that I can maintain myself, and there is something inspiriting in the idea." Scholars now consider Mary Shelley to be a major Romantic figure, significant for her literary achievement and her political voice as a woman and a liberal. Selected works History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817) Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) Mathilda (1819) Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823) Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1824) The Last Man (1826) The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830) Lodore (1835) Falkner (1837) The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1839) Contributions to Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men (1835–39), part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 (1844) Collections of Mary Shelley's papers are housed in Lord Abinger's Shelley Collection on deposit at the Bodleian Library, the New York Public Library (particularly The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle), the Huntington Library, the British Library, and in the John Murray Collection. See also Mary Shelley (2017 film) Godwin–Shelley family tree Map of 1814 and 1816 European journeys Map of 1840s European journeys Notes References All essays from The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley are marked with a "(CC)" and those from The Other Mary Shelley with an "(OMS)". Bibliography Primary sources Shelley, Mary. Collected Tales and Stories. Ed. Charles E. Robinson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. . Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Ed. Susan J. Wolfson. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. . Shelley, Mary. The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814–44. Ed. Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. The Last Man. Ed. Morton D. Paley. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1998. . Shelley, Mary. Lodore. Ed. Lisa Vargo. Ontario: Broadview Press, 1997. . Shelley, Mary. Mary Shelley's Literary Lives and Other Writings. 4 vols. Ed. Tilar J. Mazzeo. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2002. . Shelley, Mary. Mathilda . Ed. Elizabeth Nitchie. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 16 February 2008. Shelley, Mary. Matilda; with Mary and Maria, by Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd. London: Penguin, 1992. . Shelley, Mary, ed. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley . London: Edward Moxon, 1840. Google Books. Retrieved 6 April 2008. Shelley, Mary. Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca. Ed. Michael Rossington. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 2000. . Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Shelley's Poetry and Prose. Eds. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2002. . Secondary sources Bennett, Betty T. "Finding Mary Shelley in her Letters". Romantic Revisions. Ed. Robert Brinkley and Keith Hanley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. . Bennett, Betty T., ed. Mary Shelley in her Times. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Bennett, Betty T. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. . Bennett, Betty T. "The Political Philosophy of Mary Shelley's Historical Novels: Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". The Evidence of the Imagination. Ed. Donald H. Reiman, Michael C. Jaye, and Betty T. Bennett. New York: New York University Press, 1978. . Bieri, James. Percy Bysshe Shelley, a Biography: Exile of Unfulfilled Renown, 1816–1822. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005. . Blumberg, Jane. Mary Shelley's Early Novels: "This Child of Imagination and Misery". Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993. . Bunnell, Charlene E. "All the World's a Stage": Dramatic Sensibility in Mary Shelley's Novels. New York: Routledge, 2002. . Carlson, J. A. England's First Family of Writers: Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Shelley. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. . Clemit, Pamela. "From The Fields of Fancy to Matilda." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Clemit, Pamela. The Godwinian Novel: The Rational Fictions of Godwin, Brockden Brown, Mary Shelley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. . Conger, Syndy M., Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea, eds. Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Eberle-Sinatra, Michael, ed. Mary Shelley's Fictions: From Frankenstein to Falkner. New York: St. Martin's Press/Palgrave, 2000. . Fisch, Audrey A., Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schorr, eds. The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond "Frankenstein". New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. . Frank, Frederick S. "Mary Shelley's Other Fictions: A Bibliographic Consensus". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Garrett, Martin Mary Shelley. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. 1979. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. . Gittings, Robert and Jo Manton. Claire Clairmont and the Shelleys. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. . Holmes, Richard. Shelley: The Pursuit. 1974. London: Harper Perennial, 2003. . Jones, Steven. "Charles E. Robinson, Ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two)". (Book Review). Romantic Circles website, 1 January 1998. Retrieved 15 September 2016. Jump, Harriet Devine, Pamela Clemit, and Betty T. Bennett, eds. Lives of the Great Romantics III: Godwin, Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley by Their Contemporaries. London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999. . Levine, George and U. C. Knoepflmacher, eds. The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley's novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. . Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, her Fiction, Her Monsters. London: Routledge, 1990. . Myers, Mitzi. "Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley: The Female Author between Public and Private Spheres." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Orr, Clarissa Campbell. "Mary Shelley's Rambles in Germany and Italy, the Celebrity Author, and the Undiscovered Country of the Human Heart". Romanticism on the Net 11 (August 1998). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. . Robinson, Charles E., ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two). The Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics, Volume IX, Donald H. Reiman, general ed. Garland Publishing, 1996. . Schor, Esther, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. . Seymour, Miranda. Mary Shelley. London: John Murray, 2000. . Sites, Melissa. "Re/membering Home: Utopian Domesticity in Mary Shelley's Lodore". A Brighter Morn: The Shelley Circle's Utopian Project. Ed. Darby Lewes. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003. . Smith, Johanna M. "A Critical History of Frankenstein". Frankenstein. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. . Spark, Muriel. Mary Shelley. London: Cardinal, 1987. . St Clair, William. The Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography of a Family. London: Faber & Faber, 1989. . Sterrenburg, Lee. "The Last Man: Anatomy of Failed Revolutions". Nineteenth Century Fiction 33 (1978): 324–47. Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. 1989. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. . Townsend, William C. Modern State Trials. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1850. Wake, Ann M Frank. "Women in the Active Voice: Recovering Female History in Mary Shelley's Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . White, Daniel E. "'The god undeified': Mary Shelley's Valperga, Italy, and the Aesthetic of Desire ". Romanticism on the Net 6 (May 1997). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Further reading Goulding, Christopher. "The Real Doctor Frankenstein?" Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. The Royal Society of Medicine, May 2002. Richard Holmes, "Out of Control" (review of Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds, edited by David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Jason Scott Robert, MIT Press, 277 pp.; and Mary Shelley, The New Annotated Frankenstein, edited and with a foreword and notes by Leslie S. Klinger, Liveright, 352 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 20 (21 December 2017), pp. 38, 40–41. Gordon, Charlotte (2016). Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley'', Random House. External links Mary Shelley chronology and bibliography – part of Romantic Circles Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley manuscript material, 1815–1850, held by the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, New York Public Library Mary Shelley at the British Library Exhibits relating to Mary Shelley at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford 1797 births 1851 deaths 19th-century English women writers 19th-century English novelists 19th-century British short story writers British expatriates in Italy British expatriates in Switzerland British feminists British horror writers British science fiction writers Deaths from brain tumor Deaths from cancer in England English expatriates in Italy English expatriates in Switzerland English feminists English horror writers English science fiction writers English travel writers English women novelists Frankenstein Godwin family People from Bournemouth People from Somers Town, London Romanticism Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees Victorian novelists Women historical novelists Women horror writers Women of the Regency era Women science fiction and fantasy writers British women travel writers Writers of Gothic fiction Shelley family Weird fiction writers
true
[ "Flight MH370: The Mystery is a 2014 book by the American-born-British author Nigel Cawthorne concerning the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.\n\nSynopsis\nThe book is critical of official accounts of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, noting 'In a world where we can be tracked by our mobile phones, CCTV and spy cameras, things do not just disappear. Especially not a big thing like a jumbo jet'. The book questions alleged failure by governments and organisations to share information concerning Flight MH370. The author suggests a cover up has occurred because the United States Military shot down the plane during military exercises in the region.\n\nReception\nThe book was fiercely criticised in The Australian by David Free, who described it as an 'information gumbo' that 'reproduces the slapdash atmosphere of the worst kind of 24-hour news show' and advised readers 'Next time you're in one (a shop), buy any book other than this. I guarantee it won't be worse' while The Daily Telegraph reported some relatives of the victims were angered by the book\n\nIn a May 2014 segment of the Australian television program Today, co-host Karl Stefanovic also took issue with guest Cawthorne.“You write in the book: ‘They’ll never be sure, the families, what happened to their loved ones. Did they die painlessly unaware of their fate or did they die in terror in a flaming wreck crashing from the sky at the hands of a madman?’ Stefanovic characterized the book as \"disgusting\" and insensitive to the families. When asked \"why would you write the book?\", the author replied, “I’m afraid it’s what I do for a living.\"\n\nReferences\n\n2014 non-fiction books\nMalaysia Airlines Flight 370\nBooks about conspiracy theories\nBooks by Nigel Cawthorne", "\n\nTrack listing\n Opening Overture\n \"I Get a Kick Out of You\" (Cole Porter)\n \"You Are the Sunshine of My Life\" (Stevie Wonder)\n \"You Will Be My Music\" (Joe Raposo)\n \"Don't Worry 'bout Me\" (Ted Koehler, Rube Bloom)\n \"If\" (David Gates)\n \"Bad, Bad Leroy Brown\" (Jim Croce)\n \"Ol' Man River\" (Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II)\n Famous Monologue\n Saloon Trilogy: \"Last Night When We Were Young\"/\"Violets for Your Furs\"/\"Here's That Rainy Day\" (Harold Arlen, E.Y. Harburg)/(Matt Dennis, Tom Adair)/(Jimmy Van Heusen, Johnny Burke)\n \"I've Got You Under My Skin\" (Porter)\n \"My Kind of Town\" (Sammy Cahn, Van Heusen)\n \"Let Me Try Again\" (Paul Anka, Cahn, Michel Jourdan)\n \"The Lady Is a Tramp\" (Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart)\n \"My Way\" (Anka, Claude Francois, Jacques Revaux, Gilles Thibaut)\n\nFrank Sinatra's Monologue About the Australian Press\nI do believe this is my interval, as we say... We've been having a marvelous time being chased around the country for three days. You know, I think it's worth mentioning because it's so idiotic, it's so ridiculous what's been happening. We came all the way to Australia because I chose to come here. I haven't been here for a long time and I wanted to come back for a few days. Wait now, wait. I'm not buttering anybody at all. I don't have to. I really don't have to. I like coming here. I like the people. I love your attitude. I like the booze and the beer and everything else that comes into the scene. I also like the way the country's growing and it's a swinging place.\n\nSo we come here and what happens? We gotta run all day long because of the parasites who chase us with automobiles. That's dangerous, too, on the road, you know. Might cause an accident. They won't quit. They wonder why I won't talk to them. I wouldn't drink their water, let alone talk to them. And if any of you folks in the press are in the audience, please quote me properly. Don't mix it up, do it exactly as I'm saying it, please. Write it down very clearly. One idiot called me up and he wanted to know what I had for breakfast. What the hell does he care what I had for breakfast? I was about to tell him what I did after breakfast. Oh, boy, they're murder! We have a name in the States for their counterparts: They're called parasites. Because they take and take and take and never give, absolutely, never give. I don't care what you think about any press in the world, I say they're bums and they'll always be bums, everyone of them. There are just a few exceptions to the rule. Some good editorial writers who don't go out in the street and chase people around. Critics don't bother me, because if I do badly, I know I'm bad before they even write it, and if I'm good, I know I'm good before they write it. It's true. I know best about myself. So, a critic is a critic. He doesn't anger me. It's the scandal man who bugs you, drives you crazy. It's the two-bit-type work that they do. They're pimps. They're just crazy, you know. And the broads who work in the press are the hookers of the press. Need I explain that to you? I might offer them a buck and a half... I'm not sure. I once gave a chick in Washington $2 and I overpaid her, I found out. She didn't even bathe. Imagine what that was like, ha, ha.\n\nNow, it's a good thing I'm not angry. Really. It's a good thing I'm not angry. I couldn't care less. The press of the world never made a person a star who was untalented, nor did they ever hurt any artist who was talented. So we, who have God-given talent, say, \"To hell with them.\" It doesn't make any difference, you know. And I want to say one more thing. From what I see what's happened since I was last here... what, 16 years ago? Twelve years ago. From what I've seen to happen with the type of news that they print in this town shocked me. And do you know what is devastating? It's old-fashioned. It was done in America and England twenty years ago. And they're catching up with it now, with the scandal sheet. They're rags, that's what they are. You use them to train your dog and your parrot. What else do I have to say? Oh, I guess that's it. That'll keep them talking to themselves for a while. I think most of them are a bunch of fags anyway. Never did a hard day's work in their life. I love when they say, \"What do you mean, you won't stand still when I take your picture?\" All of a sudden, they're God. We gotta do what they want us to do. It's incredible. A pox on them... Now, let's get down to some serious business here...\n\nSee also\nConcerts of Frank Sinatra\n\nFrank Sinatra" ]
[ "Mary Shelley", "Lake Geneva and Frankenstein", "When did Mary Shelley write Frankenstein?", "Mary Shelley remembered in 1831,", "What did she have to do with Lake Geneva?", "close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis", "what did they do while they were there?", "They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. \"", "What did they write while they were there?", "Byron to propose that they \"each write a ghost story\"." ]
C_fcd11261399c4441ac5c013381bf1e1d_1
Did they write the ghost story?
5
Did Mary and Percy Shelley write the ghost story?
Mary Shelley
In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. The party arrived at Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted, "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. CANNOTANSWER
she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story:
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and feminist activist Mary Wollstonecraft. Shelley's mother died less than a month after giving birth to her. She was raised by her father, who provided her with a rich if informal education, encouraging her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories. When she was four, her father married a neighbour, Mary Jane Clairmont, with whom Shelley came to have a troubled relationship. In 1814, Shelley began a romance with one of her father's political followers, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. Together with her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, she and Percy left for France and travelled through Europe. Upon their return to England, Shelley was pregnant with Percy's child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet. In 1816, the couple and Mary's stepsister famously spent a summer with Lord Byron and John William Polidori near Geneva, Switzerland, where Shelley conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, most likely caused by the brain tumour which killed her at age 53. Until the 1970s, Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish her husband's works and for her novel Frankenstein, which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Shelley's achievements. Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826) and her final two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). Studies of her lesser-known works, such as the travel book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–1846), support the growing view that Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life. Shelley's works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practised by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin. Life and career Early life Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, in 1797. She was the second child of the feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the first child of the philosopher, novelist, and journalist William Godwin. Wollstonecraft died of puerperal fever shortly after Mary was born. Godwin was left to bring up Mary, along with her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, Wollstonecraft's child by the American speculator Gilbert Imlay. A year after Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798), which he intended as a sincere and compassionate tribute. However, because the Memoirs revealed Wollstonecraft's affairs and her illegitimate child, they were seen as shocking. Mary Godwin read these memoirs and her mother's books, and was brought up to cherish her mother's memory. Mary's earliest years were happy, judging from the letters of William Godwin's housekeeper and nurse, Louisa Jones. But Godwin was often deeply in debt; feeling that he could not raise the children by himself, he cast about for a second wife. In December 1801, he married Mary Jane Clairmont, a well-educated woman with two young children of her own—Charles and Claire. Most of Godwin's friends disliked his new wife, describing her as quick-tempered and quarrelsome; but Godwin was devoted to her, and the marriage was a success. Mary Godwin, on the other hand, came to detest her stepmother. William Godwin's 19th-century biographer Charles Kegan Paul later suggested that Mrs Godwin had favoured her own children over those of Mary Wollstonecraft. Together, the Godwins started a publishing firm called M. J. Godwin, which sold children's books as well as stationery, maps, and games. However, the business did not turn a profit, and Godwin was forced to borrow substantial sums to keep it going. He continued to borrow to pay off earlier loans, compounding his problems. By 1809, Godwin's business was close to failure, and he was "near to despair". Godwin was saved from debtor's prison by philosophical devotees such as Francis Place, who lent him further money. Though Mary Godwin received little formal education, her father tutored her in a broad range of subjects. He often took the children on educational outings, and they had access to his library and to the many intellectuals who visited him, including the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the former vice-president of the United States Aaron Burr. Godwin admitted he was not educating the children according to Mary Wollstonecraft's philosophy as outlined in works such as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), but Mary Godwin nonetheless received an unusual and advanced education for a girl of the time. She had a governess, a daily tutor, and read many of her father's children's books on Roman and Greek history in manuscript. For six months in 1811, she also attended a boarding school in Ramsgate. Her father described her at age 15 as "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible." In June 1812, Mary's father sent her to stay with the dissenting family of the radical William Baxter, near Dundee, Scotland. To Baxter, he wrote, "I am anxious that she should be brought up ... like a philosopher, even like a cynic." Scholars have speculated that she may have been sent away for her health, to remove her from the seamy side of the business, or to introduce her to radical politics. Mary Godwin revelled in the spacious surroundings of Baxter's house and in the companionship of his four daughters, and she returned north in the summer of 1813 for a further stay of 10 months. In the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein, she recalled: "I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered." Percy Bysshe Shelley Mary Godwin may have first met the radical poet-philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley in the interval between her two stays in Scotland. By the time she returned home for a second time on 30 March 1814, Percy Shelley had become estranged from his wife and was regularly visiting William Godwin, whom he had agreed to bail out of debt. Percy Shelley's radicalism, particularly his economic views, which he had imbibed from William Godwin's Political Justice (1793), had alienated him from his wealthy aristocratic family: they wanted him to follow traditional models of the landed aristocracy, and he wanted to donate large amounts of the family's money to schemes intended to help the disadvantaged. Percy Shelley, therefore, had difficulty gaining access to money until he inherited his estate because his family did not want him wasting it on projects of "political justice". After several months of promises, Shelley announced that he either could not or would not pay off all of Godwin's debts. Godwin was angry and felt betrayed. Mary and Percy began meeting each other secretly at her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's grave in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, and they fell in love—she was 16, and he was 21. On 26 June 1814, Shelley and Godwin declared their love for one another as Shelley announced he could not hide his "ardent passion", leading her in a "sublime and rapturous moment" to say she felt the same way; on either that day or the next, Godwin lost her virginity to Shelley, which tradition claims happened in the churchyard. Godwin described herself as attracted to Shelley's "wild, intellectual, unearthly looks". To Mary's dismay, her father disapproved, and tried to thwart the relationship and salvage the "spotless fame" of his daughter. At about the same time, Mary's father learned of Shelley's inability to pay off the father's debts. Mary, who later wrote of "my excessive and romantic attachment to my father", was confused. She saw Percy Shelley as an embodiment of her parents' liberal and reformist ideas of the 1790s, particularly Godwin's view that marriage was a repressive monopoly, which he had argued in his 1793 edition of Political Justice but later retracted. On 28 July 1814, the couple eloped and secretly left for France, taking Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with them. After convincing Mary Jane Godwin, who had pursued them to Calais, that they did not wish to return, the trio travelled to Paris, and then, by donkey, mule, carriage, and foot, through a France recently ravaged by war, to Switzerland. "It was acting in a novel, being an incarnate romance," Mary Shelley recalled in 1826. Godwin wrote about France in 1814: "The distress of the inhabitants, whose houses had been burned, their cattle killed and all their wealth destroyed, has given a sting to my detestation of war...". As they travelled, Mary and Percy read works by Mary Wollstonecraft and others, kept a joint journal, and continued their own writing. At Lucerne, lack of money forced the three to turn back. They travelled down the Rhine and by land to the Dutch port of Maassluis, arriving at Gravesend, Kent, on 13 September 1814. The situation awaiting Mary Godwin in England was fraught with complications, some of which she had not foreseen. Either before or during the journey, she had become pregnant. She and Percy now found themselves penniless, and, to Mary's genuine surprise, her father refused to have anything to do with her. The couple moved with Claire into lodgings at Somers Town, and later, Nelson Square. They maintained their intense programme of reading and writing, and entertained Percy Shelley's friends, such as Thomas Jefferson Hogg and the writer Thomas Love Peacock. Percy Shelley sometimes left home for short periods to dodge creditors. The couple's distraught letters reveal their pain at these separations. Pregnant and often ill, Mary Godwin had to cope with Percy's joy at the birth of his son by Harriet Shelley in late 1814 and his constant outings with Claire Clairmont. Shelley and Clairmont were almost certainly lovers, which caused much jealousy on Godwin's part. Shelley greatly offended Godwin at one point when during a walk in the French countryside he suggested that they both take the plunge into a stream naked as it offended her principles. She was partly consoled by the visits of Hogg, whom she disliked at first but soon considered a close friend. Percy Shelley seems to have wanted Mary Godwin and Hogg to become lovers; Mary did not dismiss the idea, since in principle she believed in free love. In practice, however, she loved only Percy Shelley and seems to have ventured no further than flirting with Hogg. On 22 February 1815, she gave birth to a two-month premature baby girl, who was not expected to survive. On 6 March, she wrote to Hogg: My dearest Hogg my baby is dead—will you come to see me as soon as you can. I wish to see you—It was perfectly well when I went to bed—I awoke in the night to give it suck it appeared to be sleeping so quietly that I would not awake it. It was dead then, but we did not find that out till morning—from its appearance it evidently died of convulsions—Will you come—you are so calm a creature & Shelley is afraid of a fever from the milk—for I am no longer a mother now. The loss of her child induced acute depression in Mary Godwin, who was haunted by visions of the baby; but she conceived again and had recovered by the summer. With a revival in Percy Shelley's finances after the death of his grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, the couple holidayed in Torquay and then rented a two-storey cottage at Bishopsgate, on the edge of Windsor Great Park. Little is known about this period in Mary Godwin's life, since her journal from May 1815 to July 1816 is lost. At Bishopsgate, Percy wrote his poem Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude; and on 24 January 1816, Mary gave birth to a second child, William, named after her father, and soon nicknamed "Willmouse". In her novel The Last Man, she later imagined Windsor as a Garden of Eden. Lake Geneva and Frankenstein In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. In History of a Six Weeks’ Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland (1817), she describes the particularly desolate landscape in crossing from France into Switzerland. The party arrived in Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted; "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. Authorship of Frankenstein While her husband Percy encouraged her writing, the extent of Percy's contribution to the novel is unknown and has been argued over by readers and critics. Mary Shelley wrote, "I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement, it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world." She wrote that the preface to the first edition was Percy's work "as far as I can recollect." There are differences in the 1818, 1823 and 1831 editions, which have been attributed to Percy's editing. James Rieger concluded Percy's "assistance at every point in the book's manufacture was so extensive that one hardly knows whether to regard him as editor or minor collaborator", while Anne K. Mellor later argued Percy only "made many technical corrections and several times clarified the narrative and thematic continuity of the text." Charles E. Robinson, editor of a facsimile edition of the Frankenstein manuscripts, concluded that Percy's contributions to the book "were no more than what most publishers' editors have provided new (or old) authors or, in fact, what colleagues have provided to each other after reading each other's works in progress." Writing on the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein, literary scholar and poet Fiona Sampson asked, "Why hasn't Mary Shelley gotten the respect she deserves?" She noted that "In recent years Percy's corrections, visible in the Frankenstein notebooks held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, have been seized on as evidence that he must have at least co-authored the novel. In fact, when I examined the notebooks myself, I realized that Percy did rather less than any line editor working in publishing today." Sampson published her findings in In Search of Mary Shelley (2018), one of many biographies written about Shelley. Bath and Marlow On their return to England in September, Mary and Percy moved—with Claire Clairmont, who took lodgings nearby—to Bath, where they hoped to keep Claire's pregnancy secret. At Cologny, Mary Godwin had received two letters from her half-sister, Fanny Imlay, who alluded to her "unhappy life"; on 9 October, Fanny wrote an "alarming letter" from Bristol that sent Percy Shelley racing off to search for her, without success. On the morning of 10 October, Fanny Imlay was found dead in a room at a Swansea inn, along with a suicide note and a laudanum bottle. On 10 December, Percy Shelley's wife, Harriet, was discovered drowned in the Serpentine, a lake in Hyde Park, London. Both suicides were hushed up. Harriet's family obstructed Percy Shelley's efforts—fully supported by Mary Godwin—to assume custody of his two children by Harriet. His lawyers advised him to improve his case by marrying; so he and Mary, who was pregnant again, married on 30 December 1816 at St Mildred's Church, Bread Street, London. Mr and Mrs Godwin were present and the marriage ended the family rift. Claire Clairmont gave birth to a baby girl on 13 January, at first called Alba, later Allegra. In March of that year, the Chancery Court ruled Percy Shelley morally unfit to assume custody of his children and later placed them with a clergyman's family. Also in March, the Shelleys moved with Claire and Alba to Albion House at Marlow, Buckinghamshire, a large, damp building on the river Thames. There Mary Shelley gave birth to her third child, Clara, on 2 September. At Marlow, they entertained their new friends Marianne and Leigh Hunt, worked hard at their writing, and often discussed politics. Early in the summer of 1817, Mary Shelley finished Frankenstein, which was published anonymously in January 1818. Reviewers and readers assumed that Percy Shelley was the author, since the book was published with his preface and dedicated to his political hero William Godwin. At Marlow, Mary edited the joint journal of the group's 1814 Continental journey, adding material written in Switzerland in 1816, along with Percy's poem "Mont Blanc". The result was the History of a Six Weeks' Tour, published in November 1817. That autumn, Percy Shelley often lived away from home in London to evade creditors. The threat of a debtor's prison, combined with their ill health and fears of losing custody of their children, contributed to the couple's decision to leave England for Italy on 12 March 1818, taking Claire Clairmont and Alba with them. They had no intention of returning. Italy One of the party's first tasks on arriving in Italy was to hand Alba over to Byron, who was living in Venice. He had agreed to raise her so long as Claire had nothing more to do with her. The Shelleys then embarked on a roving existence, never settling in any one place for long. Along the way, they accumulated a circle of friends and acquaintances who often moved with them. The couple devoted their time to writing, reading, learning, sightseeing, and socialising. The Italian adventure was, however, blighted for Mary Shelley by the deaths of both her children—Clara, in September 1818 in Venice, and William, in June 1819 in Rome. These losses left her in a deep depression that isolated her from Percy Shelley, who wrote in his notebook: My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone, And left me in this dreary world alone? Thy form is here indeed—a lovely one— But thou art fled, gone down a dreary road That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode. For thine own sake I cannot follow thee Do thou return for mine. For a time, Mary Shelley found comfort only in her writing. The birth of her fourth child, Percy Florence, on 12 November 1819, finally lifted her spirits, though she nursed the memory of her lost children till the end of her life. Italy provided the Shelleys, Byron, and other exiles with political freedom unattainable at home. Despite its associations with personal loss, Italy became for Mary Shelley "a country which memory painted as paradise". Their Italian years were a time of intense intellectual and creative activity for both Shelleys. While Percy composed a series of major poems, Mary wrote the novel Matilda, the historical novel Valperga, and the plays Proserpine and Midas. Mary wrote Valperga to help alleviate her father's financial difficulties, as Percy refused to assist him further. She was often physically ill, however, and prone to depressions. She also had to cope with Percy's interest in other women, such as Sophia Stacey, Emilia Viviani, and Jane Williams. Since Mary Shelley shared his belief in the non-exclusivity of marriage, she formed emotional ties of her own among the men and women of their circle. She became particularly fond of the Greek revolutionary Prince Alexandros Mavrokordatos and of Jane and Edward Williams. In December 1818, the Shelleys travelled south with Claire Clairmont and their servants to Naples, where they stayed for three months, receiving only one visitor, a physician. In 1820, they found themselves plagued by accusations and threats from Paolo and Elise Foggi, former servants whom Percy Shelley had dismissed in Naples shortly after the Foggis had married. The pair revealed that on 27 February 1819 in Naples, Percy Shelley had registered as his child by Mary Shelley a two-month-old baby girl named Elena Adelaide Shelley. The Foggis also claimed that Claire Clairmont was the baby's mother. Biographers have offered various interpretations of these events: that Percy Shelley decided to adopt a local child; that the baby was his by Elise, Claire, or an unknown woman; or that she was Elise's by Byron. Mary Shelley insisted she would have known if Claire had been pregnant, but it is unclear how much she really knew. The events in Naples, a city Mary Shelley later called a paradise inhabited by devils, remain shrouded in mystery. The only certainty is that she herself was not the child's mother. Elena Adelaide Shelley died in Naples on 9 June 1820. After leaving Naples, the Shelleys settled in Rome, the city where her husband wrote where "the meanest streets were strewed with truncated columns, broken capitals...and sparkling fragments of granite or porphyry...The voice of dead time, in still vibrations, is breathed from these dumb things, animated and glorified as they were by man". Rome inspired her to begin writing the unfinished novel Valerius, the Reanimated Roman, where the eponymous hero resists the decay of Rome and the machinations of "superstitious" Catholicism. The writing of her novel was broken off when her son William died of malaria. Shelley bitterly commented that she had come to Italy to improve her husband's health, and instead the Italian climate had just killed her two children, leading her to write: "May you my dear Marianne never know what it is to lose two only and lovely children in one year—to watch their dying moments—and then at last to be left childless and forever miserable". To deal with her grief, Shelley wrote the novella The Fields of Fancy, which became Matilda, dealing with a young woman whose beauty inspired incestuous love in her father, who ultimately commits suicide to stop himself from acting on his passion for his daughter, while she spends the rest of her life full of despair about "the unnatural love I had inspired". The novella offered a feminist critique of a patriarchal society as Matilda is punished in the afterlife, though she did nothing to encourage her father's feelings. In the summer of 1822, a pregnant Mary moved with Percy, Claire, and Edward and Jane Williams to the isolated Villa Magni, at the sea's edge near the hamlet of San Terenzo in the Bay of Lerici. Once they were settled in, Percy broke the "evil news" to Claire that her daughter Allegra had died of typhus in a convent at Bagnacavallo. Mary Shelley was distracted and unhappy in the cramped and remote Villa Magni, which she came to regard as a dungeon. On 16 June, she miscarried, losing so much blood that she nearly died. Rather than wait for a doctor, Percy sat her in a bath of ice to stanch the bleeding, an act the doctor later told him saved her life. All was not well between the couple that summer, however, and Percy spent more time with Jane Williams than with his depressed and debilitated wife. Much of the short poetry Shelley wrote at San Terenzo involved Jane rather than Mary. The coast offered Percy Shelley and Edward Williams the chance to enjoy their "perfect plaything for the summer", a new sailing boat. The boat had been designed by Daniel Roberts and Edward Trelawny, an admirer of Byron's who had joined the party in January 1822. On 1 July 1822, Percy Shelley, Edward Ellerker Williams, and Captain Daniel Roberts sailed south down the coast to Livorno. There Percy Shelley discussed with Byron and Leigh Hunt the launch of a radical magazine called The Liberal. On 8 July, he and Edward Williams set out on the return journey to Lerici with their eighteen-year-old boat boy, Charles Vivian. They never reached their destination. A letter arrived at Villa Magni from Hunt to Percy Shelley, dated 8 July, saying, "pray write to tell us how you got home, for they say you had bad weather after you sailed Monday & we are anxious". "The paper fell from me," Mary told a friend later. "I trembled all over." She and Jane Williams rushed desperately to Livorno and then to Pisa in the fading hope that their husbands were still alive. Ten days after the storm, three bodies washed up on the coast near Viareggio, midway between Livorno and Lerici. Trelawny, Byron, and Hunt cremated Percy Shelley's corpse on the beach at Viareggio. Return to England and writing career After her husband's death, Mary Shelley lived for a year with Leigh Hunt and his family in Genoa, where she often saw Byron and transcribed his poems. She resolved to live by her pen and for her son, but her financial situation was precarious. On 23 July 1823, she left Genoa for England and stayed with her father and stepmother in the Strand until a small advance from her father-in-law enabled her to lodge nearby. Sir Timothy Shelley had at first agreed to support his grandson, Percy Florence, only if he were handed over to an appointed guardian. Mary Shelley rejected this idea instantly. She managed instead to wring out of Sir Timothy a limited annual allowance (which she had to repay when Percy Florence inherited the estate), but to the end of his days, he refused to meet her in person and dealt with her only through lawyers. Mary Shelley busied herself with editing her husband's poems, among other literary endeavours, but concern for her son restricted her options. Sir Timothy threatened to stop the allowance if any biography of the poet were published. In 1826, Percy Florence became the legal heir of the Shelley estate after the death of his half-brother Charles Shelley, his father's son by Harriet Shelley. Sir Timothy raised Mary's allowance from £100 a year to £250 but remained as difficult as ever. Mary Shelley enjoyed the stimulating society of William Godwin's circle, but poverty prevented her from socialising as she wished. She also felt ostracised by those who, like Sir Timothy, still disapproved of her relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley. In the summer of 1824, Mary Shelley moved to Kentish Town in north London to be near Jane Williams. She may have been, in the words of her biographer Muriel Spark, "a little in love" with Jane. Jane later disillusioned her by gossiping that Percy had preferred her to Mary, owing to Mary's inadequacy as a wife. At around this time, Mary Shelley was working on her novel, The Last Man (1826); and she assisted a series of friends who were writing memoirs of Byron and Percy Shelley—the beginnings of her attempts to immortalise her husband. She also met the American actor John Howard Payne and the American writer Washington Irving, who intrigued her. Payne fell in love with her and in 1826 asked her to marry him. She refused, saying that after being married to one genius, she could only marry another. Payne accepted the rejection and tried without success to talk his friend Irving into proposing himself. Mary Shelley was aware of Payne's plan, but how seriously she took it is unclear. In 1827, Mary Shelley was party to a scheme that enabled her friend Isabel Robinson and Isabel's lover, Mary Diana Dods, who wrote under the name David Lyndsay, to embark on a life together in France as husband and wife. With the help of Payne, whom she kept in the dark about the details, Mary Shelley obtained false passports for the couple. In 1828, she fell ill with smallpox while visiting them in Paris. Weeks later she recovered, unscarred but without her youthful beauty. During the period 1827–40, Mary Shelley was busy as an editor and writer. She wrote the novels The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835), and Falkner (1837). She contributed five volumes of Lives of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French authors to Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia. She also wrote stories for ladies' magazines. She was still helping to support her father, and they looked out for publishers for each other. In 1830, she sold the copyright for a new edition of Frankenstein for £60 to Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley for their new Standard Novels series. After her father's death in 1836 at the age of eighty, she began assembling his letters and a memoir for publication, as he had requested in his will; but after two years of work, she abandoned the project. Throughout this period, she also championed Percy Shelley's poetry, promoting its publication and quoting it in her writing. By 1837, Percy's works were well-known and increasingly admired. In the summer of 1838 Edward Moxon, the publisher of Tennyson and the son-in-law of Charles Lamb, proposed publishing a collected works of Percy Shelley. Mary was paid £500 to edit the Poetical Works (1838), which Sir Timothy insisted should not include a biography. Mary found a way to tell the story of Percy's life, nonetheless: she included extensive biographical notes about the poems. Shelley continued to practice her mother's feminist principles by extending aid to women whom society disapproved of. For instance, Shelley extended financial aid to Mary Diana Dods, a single mother and illegitimate herself who appears to have been a lesbian and gave her the new identity of Walter Sholto Douglas, husband of her lover Isabel Robinson. Shelley also assisted Georgiana Paul, a woman disallowed for by her husband for alleged adultery. Shelley in her diary about her assistance to the latter: "I do not make a boast-I do not say aloud-behold my generosity and greatness of mind-for in truth it is simple justice I perform-and so I am still reviled for being worldly". Mary Shelley continued to treat potential romantic partners with caution. In 1828, she met and flirted with the French writer Prosper Mérimée, but her one surviving letter to him appears to be a deflection of his declaration of love. She was delighted when her old friend from Italy, Edward Trelawny, returned to England, and they joked about marriage in their letters. Their friendship had altered, however, following her refusal to cooperate with his proposed biography of Percy Shelley; and he later reacted angrily to her omission of the atheistic section of Queen Mab from Percy Shelley's poems. Oblique references in her journals, from the early 1830s until the early 1840s, suggest that Mary Shelley had feelings for the radical politician Aubrey Beauclerk, who may have disappointed her by twice marrying others. Mary Shelley's first concern during these years was the welfare of Percy Florence. She honoured her late husband's wish that his son attend public school and, with Sir Timothy's grudging help, had him educated at Harrow. To avoid boarding fees, she moved to Harrow on the Hill herself so that Percy could attend as a day scholar. Though Percy went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, and dabbled in politics and the law, he showed no sign of his parents' gifts. He was devoted to his mother, and after he left university in 1841, he came to live with her. Final years and death In 1840 and 1842, mother and son travelled together on the continent, journeys that Mary Shelley recorded in Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843 (1844). In 1844, Sir Timothy Shelley finally died at the age of ninety, "falling from the stalk like an overblown flower", as Mary put it. For the first time, she and her son were financially independent, though the estate proved less valuable than they had hoped. In the mid-1840s, Mary Shelley found herself the target of three separate blackmailers. In 1845, an Italian political exile called Gatteschi, whom she had met in Paris, threatened to publish letters she had sent him. A friend of her son's bribed a police chief into seizing Gatteschi's papers, including the letters, which were then destroyed. Shortly afterwards, Mary Shelley bought some letters written by herself and Percy Bysshe Shelley from a man calling himself G. Byron and posing as the illegitimate son of the late Lord Byron. Also in 1845, Percy Bysshe Shelley's cousin Thomas Medwin approached her claiming to have written a damaging biography of Percy Shelley. He said he would suppress it in return for £250, but Mary Shelley refused. In 1848, Percy Florence married Jane Gibson St John. The marriage proved a happy one, and Mary Shelley and Jane were fond of each other. Mary lived with her son and daughter-in-law at Field Place, Sussex, the Shelleys' ancestral home, and at Chester Square, London, and accompanied them on travels abroad. Mary Shelley's last years were blighted by illness. From 1839, she suffered from headaches and bouts of paralysis in parts of her body, which sometimes prevented her from reading and writing. On 1 February 1851, at Chester Square, she died at the age of fifty-three from what her physician suspected was a brain tumour. According to Jane Shelley, Mary Shelley had asked to be buried with her mother and father; but Percy and Jane, judging the graveyard at St Pancras to be "dreadful", chose to bury her instead at St Peter's Church, Bournemouth, near their new home at Boscombe. On the first anniversary of Mary Shelley's death, the Shelleys opened her box-desk. Inside they found locks of her dead children's hair, a notebook she had shared with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a copy of his poem Adonaïs with one page folded round a silk parcel containing some of his ashes and the remains of his heart. Literary themes and styles Mary Shelley lived a literary life. Her father encouraged her to learn to write by composing letters, and her favourite occupation as a child was writing stories. Unfortunately, all of Mary's juvenilia were lost when she ran off with Percy in 1814, and none of her surviving manuscripts can be definitively dated before that year. Her first published work is often thought to have been Mounseer Nongtongpaw, comic verses written for Godwin's Juvenile Library when she was ten and a half; however, the poem is attributed to another writer in the most recent authoritative collection of her works. Percy Shelley enthusiastically encouraged Mary Shelley's writing: "My husband was, from the first, very anxious that I should prove myself worthy of my parentage, and enrol myself on the page of fame. He was forever inciting me to obtain literary reputation." Novels Autobiographical elements Certain sections of Mary Shelley's novels are often interpreted as masked rewritings of her life. Critics have pointed to the recurrence of the father–daughter motif in particular as evidence of this autobiographical style. For example, commentators frequently read Mathilda (1820) autobiographically, identifying the three central characters as versions of Mary Shelley, William Godwin, and Percy Shelley. Mary Shelley herself confided that she modelled the central characters of The Last Man on her Italian circle. Lord Raymond, who leaves England to fight for the Greeks and dies in Constantinople, is based on Lord Byron; and the utopian Adrian, Earl of Windsor, who leads his followers in search of a natural paradise and dies when his boat sinks in a storm, is a fictional portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley. However, as she wrote in her review of Godwin's novel Cloudesley (1830), she did not believe that authors "were merely copying from our own hearts". William Godwin regarded his daughter's characters as types rather than portraits from real life. Some modern critics, such as Patricia Clemit and Jane Blumberg, have taken the same view, resisting autobiographical readings of Mary Shelley's works. Novelistic genres Mary Shelley employed the techniques of many different novelistic genres, most vividly the Godwinian novel, Walter Scott's new historical novel, and the Gothic novel. The Godwinian novel, made popular during the 1790s with works such as Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794), "employed a Rousseauvian confessional form to explore the contradictory relations between the self and society", and Frankenstein exhibits many of the same themes and literary devices as Godwin's novel. However, Shelley critiques those Enlightenment ideals that Godwin promotes in his works. In The Last Man, she uses the philosophical form of the Godwinian novel to demonstrate the ultimate meaninglessness of the world. While earlier Godwinian novels had shown how rational individuals could slowly improve society, The Last Man and Frankenstein demonstrate the individual's lack of control over history. Shelley uses the historical novel to comment on gender relations; for example, Valperga is a feminist version of Scott's masculinist genre. Introducing women into the story who are not part of the historical record, Shelley uses their narratives to question established theological and political institutions. Shelley sets the male protagonist's compulsive greed for conquest in opposition to a female alternative: reason and sensibility. In Perkin Warbeck, Shelley's other historical novel, Lady Gordon stands for the values of friendship, domesticity, and equality. Through her, Shelley offers a feminine alternative to the masculine power politics that destroy the male characters. The novel provides a more inclusive historical narrative to challenge the one which usually relates only masculine events. Gender With the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1970s, Mary Shelley's works, particularly Frankenstein, began to attract much more attention from scholars. Feminist and psychoanalytic critics were largely responsible for the recovery from neglect of Shelley as a writer. Ellen Moers was one of the first to claim that Shelley's loss of a baby was a crucial influence on the writing of Frankenstein. She argues that the novel is a "birth myth" in which Shelley comes to terms with her guilt for causing her mother's death as well as for failing as a parent. Shelley scholar Anne K. Mellor suggests that, from a feminist viewpoint, it is a story "about what happens when a man tries to have a baby without a woman ... [Frankenstein] is profoundly concerned with natural as opposed to unnatural modes of production and reproduction". Victor Frankenstein's failure as a "parent" in the novel has been read as an expression of the anxieties which accompany pregnancy, giving birth, and particularly maternity. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue in their seminal book The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) that in Frankenstein in particular, Shelley responded to the masculine literary tradition represented by John Milton's Paradise Lost. In their interpretation, Shelley reaffirms this masculine tradition, including the misogyny inherent in it, but at the same time "conceal[s] fantasies of equality that occasionally erupt in monstrous images of rage". Mary Poovey reads the first edition of Frankenstein as part of a larger pattern in Shelley's writing, which begins with literary self-assertion and ends with conventional femininity. Poovey suggests that Frankenstein's multiple narratives enable Shelley to split her artistic persona: she can "express and efface herself at the same time". Shelley's fear of self-assertion is reflected in the fate of Frankenstein, who is punished for his egotism by losing all his domestic ties. Feminist critics often focus on how authorship itself, particularly female authorship, is represented in and through Shelley's novels. As Mellor explains, Shelley uses the Gothic style not only to explore repressed female sexual desire but also as way to "censor her own speech in Frankenstein". According to Poovey and Mellor, Shelley did not want to promote her own authorial persona and felt deeply inadequate as a writer, and "this shame contributed to the generation of her fictional images of abnormality, perversion, and destruction". Shelley's writings focus on the role of the family in society and women's role within that family. She celebrates the "feminine affections and compassion" associated with the family and suggests that civil society will fail without them. Shelley was "profoundly committed to an ethic of cooperation, mutual dependence, and self-sacrifice". In Lodore, for example, the central story follows the fortunes of the wife and daughter of the title character, Lord Lodore, who is killed in a duel at the end of the first volume, leaving a trail of legal, financial, and familial obstacles for the two "heroines" to negotiate. The novel is engaged with political and ideological issues, particularly the education and social role of women. It dissects a patriarchal culture that separated the sexes and pressured women into dependence on men. In the view of Shelley scholar Betty T. Bennett, "the novel proposes egalitarian educational paradigms for women and men, which would bring social justice as well as the spiritual and intellectual means by which to meet the challenges life invariably brings". However, Falkner is the only one of Mary Shelley's novels in which the heroine's agenda triumphs. The novel's resolution proposes that when female values triumph over violent and destructive masculinity, men will be freed to express the "compassion, sympathy, and generosity" of their better natures. Enlightenment and Romanticism Frankenstein, like much Gothic fiction of the period, mixes a visceral and alienating subject matter with speculative and thought-provoking themes. Rather than focusing on the twists and turns of the plot, however, the novel foregrounds the mental and moral struggles of the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, and Shelley imbues the text with her own brand of politicised Romanticism, one that criticised the individualism and egotism of traditional Romanticism. Victor Frankenstein is like Satan in Paradise Lost, and Prometheus: he rebels against tradition; he creates life; and he shapes his own destiny. These traits are not portrayed positively; as Blumberg writes, "his relentless ambition is a self-delusion, clothed as quest for truth". He must abandon his family to fulfill his ambition. Mary Shelley believed in the Enlightenment idea that people could improve society through the responsible exercise of political power, but she feared that the irresponsible exercise of power would lead to chaos. In practice, her works largely criticise the way 18th-century thinkers such as her parents believed such change could be brought about. The creature in Frankenstein, for example, reads books associated with radical ideals but the education he gains from them is ultimately useless. Shelley's works reveal her as less optimistic than Godwin and Wollstonecraft; she lacks faith in Godwin's theory that humanity could eventually be perfected. As literary scholar Kari Lokke writes, The Last Man, more so than Frankenstein, "in its refusal to place humanity at the centre of the universe, its questioning of our privileged position in relation to nature ... constitutes a profound and prophetic challenge to Western humanism." Specifically, Mary Shelley's allusions to what radicals believed was a failed revolution in France and the Godwinian, Wollstonecraftian, and Burkean responses to it, challenge "Enlightenment faith in the inevitability of progress through collective efforts". As in Frankenstein, Shelley "offers a profoundly disenchanted commentary on the age of revolution, which ends in a total rejection of the progressive ideals of her own generation". Not only does she reject these Enlightenment political ideals, but she also rejects the Romantic notion that the poetic or literary imagination can offer an alternative. Politics There is a new scholarly emphasis on Shelley as a lifelong reformer, deeply engaged in the liberal and feminist concerns of her day. In 1820, she was thrilled by the Liberal uprising in Spain which forced the king to grant a constitution. In 1823, she wrote articles for Leigh Hunt's periodical The Liberal and played an active role in the formulation of its outlook. She was delighted when the Whigs came back to power in 1830 and at the prospect of the 1832 Reform Act. Critics have until recently cited Lodore and Falkner as evidence of increasing conservatism in Mary Shelley's later works. In 1984, Mary Poovey influentially identified the retreat of Mary Shelley's reformist politics into the "separate sphere" of the domestic. Poovey suggested that Mary Shelley wrote Falkner to resolve her conflicted response to her father's combination of libertarian radicalism and stern insistence on social decorum. Mellor largely agreed, arguing that "Mary Shelley grounded her alternative political ideology on the metaphor of the peaceful, loving, bourgeois family. She thereby implicitly endorsed a conservative vision of gradual evolutionary reform." This vision allowed women to participate in the public sphere but it inherited the inequalities inherent in the bourgeois family. However, in the last decade or so this view has been challenged. For example, Bennett claims that Mary Shelley's works reveal a consistent commitment to Romantic idealism and political reform and Jane Blumberg's study of Shelley's early novels argues that her career cannot be easily divided into radical and conservative halves. She contends that "Shelley was never a passionate radical like her husband and her later lifestyle was not abruptly assumed nor was it a betrayal. She was in fact challenging the political and literary influences of her circle in her first work." In this reading, Shelley's early works are interpreted as a challenge to Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley's radicalism. Victor Frankenstein's "thoughtless rejection of family", for example, is seen as evidence of Shelley's constant concern for the domestic. Short stories In the 1820s and 1830s, Mary Shelley frequently wrote short stories for gift books or annuals, including sixteen for The Keepsake, which was aimed at middle-class women and bound in silk, with gilt-edged pages. Mary Shelley's work in this genre has been described as that of a "hack writer" and "wordy and pedestrian". However, critic Charlotte Sussman points out that other leading writers of the day, such as the Romantic poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, also took advantage of this profitable market. She explains that "the annuals were a major mode of literary production in the 1820s and 1830s", with The Keepsake the most successful. Many of Shelley's stories are set in places or times far removed from early 19th-century Britain, such as Greece and the reign of Henry IV of France. Shelley was particularly interested in "the fragility of individual identity" and often depicted "the way a person's role in the world can be cataclysmically altered either by an internal emotional upheaval, or by some supernatural occurrence that mirrors an internal schism". In her stories, female identity is tied to a woman's short-lived value in the marriage market while male identity can be sustained and transformed through the use of money. Although Mary Shelley wrote twenty-one short stories for the annuals between 1823 and 1839, she always saw herself, above all, as a novelist. She wrote to Leigh Hunt, "I write bad articles which help to make me miserable—but I am going to plunge into a novel and hope that its clear water will wash off the mud of the magazines." Travelogues When they ran off to France in the summer of 1814, Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley began a joint journal, which they published in 1817 under the title History of a Six Weeks' Tour, adding four letters, two by each of them, based on their visit to Geneva in 1816, along with Percy Shelley's poem "Mont Blanc". The work celebrates youthful love and political idealism and consciously follows the example of Mary Wollstonecraft and others who had combined travelling with writing. The perspective of the History is philosophical and reformist rather than that of a conventional travelogue; in particular, it addresses the effects of politics and war on France. The letters the couple wrote on the second journey confront the "great and extraordinary events" of the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo after his "Hundred Days" return in 1815. They also explore the sublimity of Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc as well as the revolutionary legacy of the philosopher and novelist Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Mary Shelley's last full-length book, written in the form of letters and published in 1844, was Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843, which recorded her travels with her son Percy Florence and his university friends. In Rambles, Shelley follows the tradition of Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark and her own A History of a Six Weeks' Tour in mapping her personal and political landscape through the discourse of sensibility and sympathy. For Shelley, building sympathetic connections between people is the way to build civil society and to increase knowledge: "knowledge, to enlighten and free the mind from clinging deadening prejudices—a wider circle of sympathy with our fellow-creatures;—these are the uses of travel". Between observations on scenery, culture, and "the people, especially in a political point of view", she uses the travelogue form to explore her roles as a widow and mother and to reflect on revolutionary nationalism in Italy. She also records her "pilgrimage" to scenes associated with Percy Shelley. According to critic Clarissa Orr, Mary Shelley's adoption of a persona of philosophical motherhood gives Rambles the unity of a prose poem, with "death and memory as central themes". At the same time, Shelley makes an egalitarian case against monarchy, class distinctions, slavery, and war. Biographies Between 1832 and 1839, Mary Shelley wrote many biographies of notable Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French men and a few women for Dionysius Lardner's Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men. These formed part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia, one of the best of many such series produced in the 1820s and 1830s in response to growing middle-class demand for self-education. Until the republication of these essays in 2002, their significance within her body of work was not appreciated. In the view of literary scholar Greg Kucich, they reveal Mary Shelley's "prodigious research across several centuries and in multiple languages", her gift for biographical narrative, and her interest in the "emerging forms of feminist historiography". Shelley wrote in a biographical style popularised by the 18th-century critic Samuel Johnson in his Lives of the Poets (1779–81), combining secondary sources, memoir and anecdote, and authorial evaluation. She records details of each writer's life and character, quotes their writing in the original as well as in translation, and ends with a critical assessment of their achievement. For Shelley, biographical writing was supposed to, in her words, "form as it were a school in which to study the philosophy of history", and to teach "lessons". Most frequently and importantly, these lessons consisted of criticisms of male-dominated institutions such as primogeniture. Shelley emphasises domesticity, romance, family, sympathy, and compassion in the lives of her subjects. Her conviction that such forces could improve society connects her biographical approach with that of other early feminist historians such as Mary Hays and Anna Jameson. Unlike her novels, most of which had an original print run of several hundred copies, the Lives had a print run of about 4,000 for each volume: thus, according to Kucich, Mary Shelley's "use of biography to forward the social agenda of women's historiography became one of her most influential political interventions". Editorial work Soon after Percy Shelley's death, Mary Shelley determined to write his biography. In a letter of 17 November 1822, she announced: "I shall write his life—& thus occupy myself in the only manner from which I can derive consolation." However, her father-in-law, Sir Timothy Shelley, effectively banned her from doing so. Mary began her fostering of Percy's poetic reputation in 1824 with the publication of his Posthumous Poems. In 1839, while she was working on the Lives, she prepared a new edition of his poetry, which became, in the words of literary scholar Susan J. Wolfson, "the canonizing event" in the history of her husband's reputation. The following year, Mary Shelley edited a volume of her husband's essays, letters, translations, and fragments, and throughout the 1830s, she introduced his poetry to a wider audience by publishing assorted works in the annual The Keepsake. Evading Sir Timothy's ban on a biography, Mary Shelley often included in these editions her own annotations and reflections on her husband's life and work. "I am to justify his ways," she had declared in 1824; "I am to make him beloved to all posterity." It was this goal, argues Blumberg, that led her to present Percy's work to the public in the "most popular form possible". To tailor his works for a Victorian audience, she cast Percy Shelley as a lyrical rather than a political poet. As Mary Favret writes, "the disembodied Percy identifies the spirit of poetry itself". Mary glossed Percy's political radicalism as a form of sentimentalism, arguing that his republicanism arose from sympathy for those who were suffering. She inserted romantic anecdotes of his benevolence, domesticity, and love of the natural world. Portraying herself as Percy's "practical muse", she also noted how she had suggested revisions as he wrote. Despite the emotions stirred by this task, Mary Shelley arguably proved herself in many respects a professional and scholarly editor. Working from Percy's messy, sometimes indecipherable, notebooks, she attempted to form a chronology for his writings, and she included poems, such as Epipsychidion, addressed to Emilia Viviani, which she would rather have left out. She was forced, however, into several compromises, and, as Blumberg notes, "modern critics have found fault with the edition and claim variously that she miscopied, misinterpreted, purposely obscured, and attempted to turn the poet into something he was not". According to Wolfson, Donald Reiman, a modern editor of Percy Bysshe Shelley's works, still refers to Mary Shelley's editions, while acknowledging that her editing style belongs "to an age of editing when the aim was not to establish accurate texts and scholarly apparatus but to present a full record of a writer's career for the general reader". In principle, Mary Shelley believed in publishing every last word of her husband's work; but she found herself obliged to omit certain passages, either by pressure from her publisher, Edward Moxon, or in deference to public propriety. For example, she removed the atheistic passages from Queen Mab for the first edition. After she restored them in the second edition, Moxon was prosecuted and convicted of blasphemous libel, though the prosecution was brought out of principle by the Chartist publisher Henry Hetherington, and no punishment was sought. Mary Shelley's omissions provoked criticism, often stinging, from members of Percy Shelley's former circle, and reviewers accused her of, among other things, indiscriminate inclusions. Her notes have nevertheless remained an essential source for the study of Percy Shelley's work. As Bennett explains, "biographers and critics agree that Mary Shelley's commitment to bring Shelley the notice she believed his works merited was the single, major force that established Shelley's reputation during a period when he almost certainly would have faded from public view". Reputation In her own lifetime, Mary Shelley was taken seriously as a writer, though reviewers often missed her writings' political edge. After her death, however, she was chiefly remembered as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of Frankenstein. In fact, in the introduction to her letters published in 1945, editor Frederick Jones wrote, "a collection of the present size could not be justified by the general quality of the letters or by Mary Shelley's importance as a writer. It is as the wife of [Percy Bysshe Shelley] that she excites our interest." This attitude had not disappeared by 1980 when Betty T. Bennett published the first volume of Mary Shelley's complete letters. As she explains, "the fact is that until recent years scholars have generally regarded Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley as a result: William Godwin's and Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter who became Shelley's Pygmalion." It was not until Emily Sunstein's Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality in 1989 that a full-length scholarly biography was published. The attempts of Mary Shelley's son and daughter-in-law to "Victorianise" her memory by censoring biographical documents contributed to a perception of Mary Shelley as a more conventional, less reformist figure than her works suggest. Her own timid omissions from Percy Shelley's works and her quiet avoidance of public controversy in her later years added to this impression. Commentary by Hogg, Trelawny, and other admirers of Percy Shelley also tended to downplay Mary Shelley's radicalism. Trelawny's Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author (1878) praised Percy Shelley at the expense of Mary, questioning her intelligence and even her authorship of Frankenstein. Lady Shelley, Percy Florence's wife, responded in part by presenting a severely edited collection of letters she had inherited, published privately as Shelley and Mary in 1882. From Frankenstein'''s first theatrical adaptation in 1823 to the cinematic adaptations of the 20th century, including the first cinematic version in 1910 and now-famous versions such as James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein, Mel Brooks' satirical 1974 Young Frankenstein, and Kenneth Branagh's 1994 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, many audiences first encounter the work of Mary Shelley through adaptation. Over the course of the 19th century, Mary Shelley came to be seen as a one-novel author at best, rather than as the professional writer she was; most of her works have remained out of print until the last thirty years, obstructing a larger view of her achievement. In recent decades, the republication of almost all her writing has stimulated a new recognition of its value. Her habit of intensive reading and study, revealed in her journals and letters and reflected in her works, is now better appreciated. Shelley's conception of herself as an author has also been recognised; after Percy's death, she wrote of her authorial ambitions: "I think that I can maintain myself, and there is something inspiriting in the idea." Scholars now consider Mary Shelley to be a major Romantic figure, significant for her literary achievement and her political voice as a woman and a liberal. Selected works History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817) Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) Mathilda (1819) Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823) Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1824) The Last Man (1826) The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830) Lodore (1835) Falkner (1837) The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1839) Contributions to Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men (1835–39), part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 (1844) Collections of Mary Shelley's papers are housed in Lord Abinger's Shelley Collection on deposit at the Bodleian Library, the New York Public Library (particularly The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle), the Huntington Library, the British Library, and in the John Murray Collection. See also Mary Shelley (2017 film) Godwin–Shelley family tree Map of 1814 and 1816 European journeys Map of 1840s European journeys Notes References All essays from The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley are marked with a "(CC)" and those from The Other Mary Shelley with an "(OMS)". Bibliography Primary sources Shelley, Mary. Collected Tales and Stories. Ed. Charles E. Robinson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. . Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Ed. Susan J. Wolfson. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. . Shelley, Mary. The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814–44. Ed. Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. The Last Man. Ed. Morton D. Paley. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1998. . Shelley, Mary. Lodore. Ed. Lisa Vargo. Ontario: Broadview Press, 1997. . Shelley, Mary. Mary Shelley's Literary Lives and Other Writings. 4 vols. Ed. Tilar J. Mazzeo. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2002. . Shelley, Mary. Mathilda . Ed. Elizabeth Nitchie. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 16 February 2008. Shelley, Mary. Matilda; with Mary and Maria, by Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd. London: Penguin, 1992. . Shelley, Mary, ed. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley . London: Edward Moxon, 1840. Google Books. Retrieved 6 April 2008. Shelley, Mary. Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca. Ed. Michael Rossington. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 2000. . Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Shelley's Poetry and Prose. Eds. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2002. . Secondary sources Bennett, Betty T. "Finding Mary Shelley in her Letters". Romantic Revisions. Ed. Robert Brinkley and Keith Hanley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. . Bennett, Betty T., ed. Mary Shelley in her Times. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Bennett, Betty T. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. . Bennett, Betty T. "The Political Philosophy of Mary Shelley's Historical Novels: Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". The Evidence of the Imagination. Ed. Donald H. Reiman, Michael C. Jaye, and Betty T. Bennett. New York: New York University Press, 1978. . Bieri, James. Percy Bysshe Shelley, a Biography: Exile of Unfulfilled Renown, 1816–1822. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005. . Blumberg, Jane. Mary Shelley's Early Novels: "This Child of Imagination and Misery". Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993. . Bunnell, Charlene E. "All the World's a Stage": Dramatic Sensibility in Mary Shelley's Novels. New York: Routledge, 2002. . Carlson, J. A. England's First Family of Writers: Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Shelley. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. . Clemit, Pamela. "From The Fields of Fancy to Matilda." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Clemit, Pamela. The Godwinian Novel: The Rational Fictions of Godwin, Brockden Brown, Mary Shelley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. . Conger, Syndy M., Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea, eds. Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Eberle-Sinatra, Michael, ed. Mary Shelley's Fictions: From Frankenstein to Falkner. New York: St. Martin's Press/Palgrave, 2000. . Fisch, Audrey A., Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schorr, eds. The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond "Frankenstein". New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. . Frank, Frederick S. "Mary Shelley's Other Fictions: A Bibliographic Consensus". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Garrett, Martin Mary Shelley. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. 1979. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. . Gittings, Robert and Jo Manton. Claire Clairmont and the Shelleys. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. . Holmes, Richard. Shelley: The Pursuit. 1974. London: Harper Perennial, 2003. . Jones, Steven. "Charles E. Robinson, Ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two)". (Book Review). Romantic Circles website, 1 January 1998. Retrieved 15 September 2016. Jump, Harriet Devine, Pamela Clemit, and Betty T. Bennett, eds. Lives of the Great Romantics III: Godwin, Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley by Their Contemporaries. London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999. . Levine, George and U. C. Knoepflmacher, eds. The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley's novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. . Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, her Fiction, Her Monsters. London: Routledge, 1990. . Myers, Mitzi. "Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley: The Female Author between Public and Private Spheres." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Orr, Clarissa Campbell. "Mary Shelley's Rambles in Germany and Italy, the Celebrity Author, and the Undiscovered Country of the Human Heart". Romanticism on the Net 11 (August 1998). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. . Robinson, Charles E., ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two). The Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics, Volume IX, Donald H. Reiman, general ed. Garland Publishing, 1996. . Schor, Esther, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. . Seymour, Miranda. Mary Shelley. London: John Murray, 2000. . Sites, Melissa. "Re/membering Home: Utopian Domesticity in Mary Shelley's Lodore". A Brighter Morn: The Shelley Circle's Utopian Project. Ed. Darby Lewes. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003. . Smith, Johanna M. "A Critical History of Frankenstein". Frankenstein. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. . Spark, Muriel. Mary Shelley. London: Cardinal, 1987. . St Clair, William. The Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography of a Family. London: Faber & Faber, 1989. . Sterrenburg, Lee. "The Last Man: Anatomy of Failed Revolutions". Nineteenth Century Fiction 33 (1978): 324–47. Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. 1989. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. . Townsend, William C. Modern State Trials. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1850. Wake, Ann M Frank. "Women in the Active Voice: Recovering Female History in Mary Shelley's Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . White, Daniel E. "'The god undeified': Mary Shelley's Valperga, Italy, and the Aesthetic of Desire ". Romanticism on the Net 6 (May 1997). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Further reading Goulding, Christopher. "The Real Doctor Frankenstein?" Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. The Royal Society of Medicine, May 2002. Richard Holmes, "Out of Control" (review of Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds, edited by David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Jason Scott Robert, MIT Press, 277 pp.; and Mary Shelley, The New Annotated Frankenstein, edited and with a foreword and notes by Leslie S. Klinger, Liveright, 352 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 20 (21 December 2017), pp. 38, 40–41. Gordon, Charlotte (2016). Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley'', Random House. External links Mary Shelley chronology and bibliography – part of Romantic Circles Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley manuscript material, 1815–1850, held by the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, New York Public Library Mary Shelley at the British Library Exhibits relating to Mary Shelley at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford 1797 births 1851 deaths 19th-century English women writers 19th-century English novelists 19th-century British short story writers British expatriates in Italy British expatriates in Switzerland British feminists British horror writers British science fiction writers Deaths from brain tumor Deaths from cancer in England English expatriates in Italy English expatriates in Switzerland English feminists English horror writers English science fiction writers English travel writers English women novelists Frankenstein Godwin family People from Bournemouth People from Somers Town, London Romanticism Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees Victorian novelists Women historical novelists Women horror writers Women of the Regency era Women science fiction and fantasy writers British women travel writers Writers of Gothic fiction Shelley family Weird fiction writers
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[ "14 Vileyrey (English: fourteenth night) is a 2011 Maldivian romantic horror film directed by Abdul Faththaah. Produced by Hassan under Dash Studio, the film stars Ali Seezan, Mariyam Nisha and Aishath Rishmy in pivotal roles. The film was released on 27 June 2011. Upon release, the film received mixed response from critics, did good business at box office and was ultimately declared a \"Hit\".\n\nCast \n Ali Seezan\n Mariyam Nisha\n Aishath Rishmy as Nazima\n Fauziyya Hassan\n Arifa Ibrahim\n Roanu Hassan Manik\n\nDevelopment\nAbdul Faththaah assigned Ibrahim Waheed to write the story and script for the film in 2010. Initially Fatthah, wanted the story to involve a ghost and a spirit, though Waheed and Fatthah later came to a conclusion to omit the involvement of ghost in script since \"its a challenge to incorporate both ghost and spirit simultaneously\". The project faced controversy when the team of Kuhveriakee Kaakuhey? accuses Fatthah for \"purloining their plot\" which also features Aishath Rishmy.\n\nSoundtrack\n\nAccolades\n\nReferences\n\n2011 films\nMaldivian films\nMaldivian horror films\n2011 horror films\nRomantic horror films", "Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories (1983) is a collection of ghost stories chosen by Roald Dahl.\n\nDahl read 749 supernatural tales from an array of writers at the British Museum before choosing 14 that he considered the best. In the book Dahl writes; \"Spookiness is, after all, the real purpose of the ghost story\". He initially did this while working to develop an American television programme that would feature dramatisations of these stories. He wrote a pilot based on E. F. Benson's \"The Hanging of Alfred Wadham\", that was then filmed, but when producers saw the film they were concerned that it would offend American Catholics, due to the story being about the stipulations of confession. As a result, the show was cancelled, and years later Dahl decided to use his research to make a book.\n\nContents\nW.S. (1952) by L.P. Hartley\nHarry (1955) by Rosemary Timperley\nThe Corner Shop (1926) by Lady Cynthia Asquith\nIn the Tube (1922) by E.F. Benson\nChristmas Meeting (1952) by Rosemary Timperley\nElias and the Draug (1902) by Jonas Lie\nPlaymates (1927) by A. M. Burrage\nRinging the Changes (1955) by Robert Aickman\nThe Telephone (1955) by Mary Treadgold\nThe Ghost of a Hand (1962) by Sheridan Le Fanu\nThe Sweeper (1931) by A. M. Burrage\nAfterward (1910) by Edith Wharton\nOn the Brighton Road (1912) by Richard Barham Middleton\nThe Upper Berth (1885) by Francis Marion Crawford\n\nReferences\n\n1983 short story collections\nShort story collections by Roald Dahl\nJonathan Cape books\nGhost stories\nHorror short story collections\nFantasy short story collections\nFarrar, Straus and Giroux books" ]
[ "Mary Shelley", "Lake Geneva and Frankenstein", "When did Mary Shelley write Frankenstein?", "Mary Shelley remembered in 1831,", "What did she have to do with Lake Geneva?", "close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis", "what did they do while they were there?", "They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. \"", "What did they write while they were there?", "Byron to propose that they \"each write a ghost story\".", "Did they write the ghost story?", "she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her \"waking dream\", her ghost story:" ]
C_fcd11261399c4441ac5c013381bf1e1d_1
how did that end for her?
6
How did the ghost story end for Mary Shelley?
Mary Shelley
In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. The party arrived at Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted, "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. CANNOTANSWER
She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein:
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and feminist activist Mary Wollstonecraft. Shelley's mother died less than a month after giving birth to her. She was raised by her father, who provided her with a rich if informal education, encouraging her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories. When she was four, her father married a neighbour, Mary Jane Clairmont, with whom Shelley came to have a troubled relationship. In 1814, Shelley began a romance with one of her father's political followers, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. Together with her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, she and Percy left for France and travelled through Europe. Upon their return to England, Shelley was pregnant with Percy's child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet. In 1816, the couple and Mary's stepsister famously spent a summer with Lord Byron and John William Polidori near Geneva, Switzerland, where Shelley conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, most likely caused by the brain tumour which killed her at age 53. Until the 1970s, Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish her husband's works and for her novel Frankenstein, which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Shelley's achievements. Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826) and her final two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). Studies of her lesser-known works, such as the travel book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–1846), support the growing view that Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life. Shelley's works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practised by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin. Life and career Early life Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, in 1797. She was the second child of the feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the first child of the philosopher, novelist, and journalist William Godwin. Wollstonecraft died of puerperal fever shortly after Mary was born. Godwin was left to bring up Mary, along with her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, Wollstonecraft's child by the American speculator Gilbert Imlay. A year after Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798), which he intended as a sincere and compassionate tribute. However, because the Memoirs revealed Wollstonecraft's affairs and her illegitimate child, they were seen as shocking. Mary Godwin read these memoirs and her mother's books, and was brought up to cherish her mother's memory. Mary's earliest years were happy, judging from the letters of William Godwin's housekeeper and nurse, Louisa Jones. But Godwin was often deeply in debt; feeling that he could not raise the children by himself, he cast about for a second wife. In December 1801, he married Mary Jane Clairmont, a well-educated woman with two young children of her own—Charles and Claire. Most of Godwin's friends disliked his new wife, describing her as quick-tempered and quarrelsome; but Godwin was devoted to her, and the marriage was a success. Mary Godwin, on the other hand, came to detest her stepmother. William Godwin's 19th-century biographer Charles Kegan Paul later suggested that Mrs Godwin had favoured her own children over those of Mary Wollstonecraft. Together, the Godwins started a publishing firm called M. J. Godwin, which sold children's books as well as stationery, maps, and games. However, the business did not turn a profit, and Godwin was forced to borrow substantial sums to keep it going. He continued to borrow to pay off earlier loans, compounding his problems. By 1809, Godwin's business was close to failure, and he was "near to despair". Godwin was saved from debtor's prison by philosophical devotees such as Francis Place, who lent him further money. Though Mary Godwin received little formal education, her father tutored her in a broad range of subjects. He often took the children on educational outings, and they had access to his library and to the many intellectuals who visited him, including the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the former vice-president of the United States Aaron Burr. Godwin admitted he was not educating the children according to Mary Wollstonecraft's philosophy as outlined in works such as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), but Mary Godwin nonetheless received an unusual and advanced education for a girl of the time. She had a governess, a daily tutor, and read many of her father's children's books on Roman and Greek history in manuscript. For six months in 1811, she also attended a boarding school in Ramsgate. Her father described her at age 15 as "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible." In June 1812, Mary's father sent her to stay with the dissenting family of the radical William Baxter, near Dundee, Scotland. To Baxter, he wrote, "I am anxious that she should be brought up ... like a philosopher, even like a cynic." Scholars have speculated that she may have been sent away for her health, to remove her from the seamy side of the business, or to introduce her to radical politics. Mary Godwin revelled in the spacious surroundings of Baxter's house and in the companionship of his four daughters, and she returned north in the summer of 1813 for a further stay of 10 months. In the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein, she recalled: "I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered." Percy Bysshe Shelley Mary Godwin may have first met the radical poet-philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley in the interval between her two stays in Scotland. By the time she returned home for a second time on 30 March 1814, Percy Shelley had become estranged from his wife and was regularly visiting William Godwin, whom he had agreed to bail out of debt. Percy Shelley's radicalism, particularly his economic views, which he had imbibed from William Godwin's Political Justice (1793), had alienated him from his wealthy aristocratic family: they wanted him to follow traditional models of the landed aristocracy, and he wanted to donate large amounts of the family's money to schemes intended to help the disadvantaged. Percy Shelley, therefore, had difficulty gaining access to money until he inherited his estate because his family did not want him wasting it on projects of "political justice". After several months of promises, Shelley announced that he either could not or would not pay off all of Godwin's debts. Godwin was angry and felt betrayed. Mary and Percy began meeting each other secretly at her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's grave in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, and they fell in love—she was 16, and he was 21. On 26 June 1814, Shelley and Godwin declared their love for one another as Shelley announced he could not hide his "ardent passion", leading her in a "sublime and rapturous moment" to say she felt the same way; on either that day or the next, Godwin lost her virginity to Shelley, which tradition claims happened in the churchyard. Godwin described herself as attracted to Shelley's "wild, intellectual, unearthly looks". To Mary's dismay, her father disapproved, and tried to thwart the relationship and salvage the "spotless fame" of his daughter. At about the same time, Mary's father learned of Shelley's inability to pay off the father's debts. Mary, who later wrote of "my excessive and romantic attachment to my father", was confused. She saw Percy Shelley as an embodiment of her parents' liberal and reformist ideas of the 1790s, particularly Godwin's view that marriage was a repressive monopoly, which he had argued in his 1793 edition of Political Justice but later retracted. On 28 July 1814, the couple eloped and secretly left for France, taking Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with them. After convincing Mary Jane Godwin, who had pursued them to Calais, that they did not wish to return, the trio travelled to Paris, and then, by donkey, mule, carriage, and foot, through a France recently ravaged by war, to Switzerland. "It was acting in a novel, being an incarnate romance," Mary Shelley recalled in 1826. Godwin wrote about France in 1814: "The distress of the inhabitants, whose houses had been burned, their cattle killed and all their wealth destroyed, has given a sting to my detestation of war...". As they travelled, Mary and Percy read works by Mary Wollstonecraft and others, kept a joint journal, and continued their own writing. At Lucerne, lack of money forced the three to turn back. They travelled down the Rhine and by land to the Dutch port of Maassluis, arriving at Gravesend, Kent, on 13 September 1814. The situation awaiting Mary Godwin in England was fraught with complications, some of which she had not foreseen. Either before or during the journey, she had become pregnant. She and Percy now found themselves penniless, and, to Mary's genuine surprise, her father refused to have anything to do with her. The couple moved with Claire into lodgings at Somers Town, and later, Nelson Square. They maintained their intense programme of reading and writing, and entertained Percy Shelley's friends, such as Thomas Jefferson Hogg and the writer Thomas Love Peacock. Percy Shelley sometimes left home for short periods to dodge creditors. The couple's distraught letters reveal their pain at these separations. Pregnant and often ill, Mary Godwin had to cope with Percy's joy at the birth of his son by Harriet Shelley in late 1814 and his constant outings with Claire Clairmont. Shelley and Clairmont were almost certainly lovers, which caused much jealousy on Godwin's part. Shelley greatly offended Godwin at one point when during a walk in the French countryside he suggested that they both take the plunge into a stream naked as it offended her principles. She was partly consoled by the visits of Hogg, whom she disliked at first but soon considered a close friend. Percy Shelley seems to have wanted Mary Godwin and Hogg to become lovers; Mary did not dismiss the idea, since in principle she believed in free love. In practice, however, she loved only Percy Shelley and seems to have ventured no further than flirting with Hogg. On 22 February 1815, she gave birth to a two-month premature baby girl, who was not expected to survive. On 6 March, she wrote to Hogg: My dearest Hogg my baby is dead—will you come to see me as soon as you can. I wish to see you—It was perfectly well when I went to bed—I awoke in the night to give it suck it appeared to be sleeping so quietly that I would not awake it. It was dead then, but we did not find that out till morning—from its appearance it evidently died of convulsions—Will you come—you are so calm a creature & Shelley is afraid of a fever from the milk—for I am no longer a mother now. The loss of her child induced acute depression in Mary Godwin, who was haunted by visions of the baby; but she conceived again and had recovered by the summer. With a revival in Percy Shelley's finances after the death of his grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, the couple holidayed in Torquay and then rented a two-storey cottage at Bishopsgate, on the edge of Windsor Great Park. Little is known about this period in Mary Godwin's life, since her journal from May 1815 to July 1816 is lost. At Bishopsgate, Percy wrote his poem Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude; and on 24 January 1816, Mary gave birth to a second child, William, named after her father, and soon nicknamed "Willmouse". In her novel The Last Man, she later imagined Windsor as a Garden of Eden. Lake Geneva and Frankenstein In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. In History of a Six Weeks’ Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland (1817), she describes the particularly desolate landscape in crossing from France into Switzerland. The party arrived in Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted; "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. Authorship of Frankenstein While her husband Percy encouraged her writing, the extent of Percy's contribution to the novel is unknown and has been argued over by readers and critics. Mary Shelley wrote, "I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement, it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world." She wrote that the preface to the first edition was Percy's work "as far as I can recollect." There are differences in the 1818, 1823 and 1831 editions, which have been attributed to Percy's editing. James Rieger concluded Percy's "assistance at every point in the book's manufacture was so extensive that one hardly knows whether to regard him as editor or minor collaborator", while Anne K. Mellor later argued Percy only "made many technical corrections and several times clarified the narrative and thematic continuity of the text." Charles E. Robinson, editor of a facsimile edition of the Frankenstein manuscripts, concluded that Percy's contributions to the book "were no more than what most publishers' editors have provided new (or old) authors or, in fact, what colleagues have provided to each other after reading each other's works in progress." Writing on the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein, literary scholar and poet Fiona Sampson asked, "Why hasn't Mary Shelley gotten the respect she deserves?" She noted that "In recent years Percy's corrections, visible in the Frankenstein notebooks held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, have been seized on as evidence that he must have at least co-authored the novel. In fact, when I examined the notebooks myself, I realized that Percy did rather less than any line editor working in publishing today." Sampson published her findings in In Search of Mary Shelley (2018), one of many biographies written about Shelley. Bath and Marlow On their return to England in September, Mary and Percy moved—with Claire Clairmont, who took lodgings nearby—to Bath, where they hoped to keep Claire's pregnancy secret. At Cologny, Mary Godwin had received two letters from her half-sister, Fanny Imlay, who alluded to her "unhappy life"; on 9 October, Fanny wrote an "alarming letter" from Bristol that sent Percy Shelley racing off to search for her, without success. On the morning of 10 October, Fanny Imlay was found dead in a room at a Swansea inn, along with a suicide note and a laudanum bottle. On 10 December, Percy Shelley's wife, Harriet, was discovered drowned in the Serpentine, a lake in Hyde Park, London. Both suicides were hushed up. Harriet's family obstructed Percy Shelley's efforts—fully supported by Mary Godwin—to assume custody of his two children by Harriet. His lawyers advised him to improve his case by marrying; so he and Mary, who was pregnant again, married on 30 December 1816 at St Mildred's Church, Bread Street, London. Mr and Mrs Godwin were present and the marriage ended the family rift. Claire Clairmont gave birth to a baby girl on 13 January, at first called Alba, later Allegra. In March of that year, the Chancery Court ruled Percy Shelley morally unfit to assume custody of his children and later placed them with a clergyman's family. Also in March, the Shelleys moved with Claire and Alba to Albion House at Marlow, Buckinghamshire, a large, damp building on the river Thames. There Mary Shelley gave birth to her third child, Clara, on 2 September. At Marlow, they entertained their new friends Marianne and Leigh Hunt, worked hard at their writing, and often discussed politics. Early in the summer of 1817, Mary Shelley finished Frankenstein, which was published anonymously in January 1818. Reviewers and readers assumed that Percy Shelley was the author, since the book was published with his preface and dedicated to his political hero William Godwin. At Marlow, Mary edited the joint journal of the group's 1814 Continental journey, adding material written in Switzerland in 1816, along with Percy's poem "Mont Blanc". The result was the History of a Six Weeks' Tour, published in November 1817. That autumn, Percy Shelley often lived away from home in London to evade creditors. The threat of a debtor's prison, combined with their ill health and fears of losing custody of their children, contributed to the couple's decision to leave England for Italy on 12 March 1818, taking Claire Clairmont and Alba with them. They had no intention of returning. Italy One of the party's first tasks on arriving in Italy was to hand Alba over to Byron, who was living in Venice. He had agreed to raise her so long as Claire had nothing more to do with her. The Shelleys then embarked on a roving existence, never settling in any one place for long. Along the way, they accumulated a circle of friends and acquaintances who often moved with them. The couple devoted their time to writing, reading, learning, sightseeing, and socialising. The Italian adventure was, however, blighted for Mary Shelley by the deaths of both her children—Clara, in September 1818 in Venice, and William, in June 1819 in Rome. These losses left her in a deep depression that isolated her from Percy Shelley, who wrote in his notebook: My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone, And left me in this dreary world alone? Thy form is here indeed—a lovely one— But thou art fled, gone down a dreary road That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode. For thine own sake I cannot follow thee Do thou return for mine. For a time, Mary Shelley found comfort only in her writing. The birth of her fourth child, Percy Florence, on 12 November 1819, finally lifted her spirits, though she nursed the memory of her lost children till the end of her life. Italy provided the Shelleys, Byron, and other exiles with political freedom unattainable at home. Despite its associations with personal loss, Italy became for Mary Shelley "a country which memory painted as paradise". Their Italian years were a time of intense intellectual and creative activity for both Shelleys. While Percy composed a series of major poems, Mary wrote the novel Matilda, the historical novel Valperga, and the plays Proserpine and Midas. Mary wrote Valperga to help alleviate her father's financial difficulties, as Percy refused to assist him further. She was often physically ill, however, and prone to depressions. She also had to cope with Percy's interest in other women, such as Sophia Stacey, Emilia Viviani, and Jane Williams. Since Mary Shelley shared his belief in the non-exclusivity of marriage, she formed emotional ties of her own among the men and women of their circle. She became particularly fond of the Greek revolutionary Prince Alexandros Mavrokordatos and of Jane and Edward Williams. In December 1818, the Shelleys travelled south with Claire Clairmont and their servants to Naples, where they stayed for three months, receiving only one visitor, a physician. In 1820, they found themselves plagued by accusations and threats from Paolo and Elise Foggi, former servants whom Percy Shelley had dismissed in Naples shortly after the Foggis had married. The pair revealed that on 27 February 1819 in Naples, Percy Shelley had registered as his child by Mary Shelley a two-month-old baby girl named Elena Adelaide Shelley. The Foggis also claimed that Claire Clairmont was the baby's mother. Biographers have offered various interpretations of these events: that Percy Shelley decided to adopt a local child; that the baby was his by Elise, Claire, or an unknown woman; or that she was Elise's by Byron. Mary Shelley insisted she would have known if Claire had been pregnant, but it is unclear how much she really knew. The events in Naples, a city Mary Shelley later called a paradise inhabited by devils, remain shrouded in mystery. The only certainty is that she herself was not the child's mother. Elena Adelaide Shelley died in Naples on 9 June 1820. After leaving Naples, the Shelleys settled in Rome, the city where her husband wrote where "the meanest streets were strewed with truncated columns, broken capitals...and sparkling fragments of granite or porphyry...The voice of dead time, in still vibrations, is breathed from these dumb things, animated and glorified as they were by man". Rome inspired her to begin writing the unfinished novel Valerius, the Reanimated Roman, where the eponymous hero resists the decay of Rome and the machinations of "superstitious" Catholicism. The writing of her novel was broken off when her son William died of malaria. Shelley bitterly commented that she had come to Italy to improve her husband's health, and instead the Italian climate had just killed her two children, leading her to write: "May you my dear Marianne never know what it is to lose two only and lovely children in one year—to watch their dying moments—and then at last to be left childless and forever miserable". To deal with her grief, Shelley wrote the novella The Fields of Fancy, which became Matilda, dealing with a young woman whose beauty inspired incestuous love in her father, who ultimately commits suicide to stop himself from acting on his passion for his daughter, while she spends the rest of her life full of despair about "the unnatural love I had inspired". The novella offered a feminist critique of a patriarchal society as Matilda is punished in the afterlife, though she did nothing to encourage her father's feelings. In the summer of 1822, a pregnant Mary moved with Percy, Claire, and Edward and Jane Williams to the isolated Villa Magni, at the sea's edge near the hamlet of San Terenzo in the Bay of Lerici. Once they were settled in, Percy broke the "evil news" to Claire that her daughter Allegra had died of typhus in a convent at Bagnacavallo. Mary Shelley was distracted and unhappy in the cramped and remote Villa Magni, which she came to regard as a dungeon. On 16 June, she miscarried, losing so much blood that she nearly died. Rather than wait for a doctor, Percy sat her in a bath of ice to stanch the bleeding, an act the doctor later told him saved her life. All was not well between the couple that summer, however, and Percy spent more time with Jane Williams than with his depressed and debilitated wife. Much of the short poetry Shelley wrote at San Terenzo involved Jane rather than Mary. The coast offered Percy Shelley and Edward Williams the chance to enjoy their "perfect plaything for the summer", a new sailing boat. The boat had been designed by Daniel Roberts and Edward Trelawny, an admirer of Byron's who had joined the party in January 1822. On 1 July 1822, Percy Shelley, Edward Ellerker Williams, and Captain Daniel Roberts sailed south down the coast to Livorno. There Percy Shelley discussed with Byron and Leigh Hunt the launch of a radical magazine called The Liberal. On 8 July, he and Edward Williams set out on the return journey to Lerici with their eighteen-year-old boat boy, Charles Vivian. They never reached their destination. A letter arrived at Villa Magni from Hunt to Percy Shelley, dated 8 July, saying, "pray write to tell us how you got home, for they say you had bad weather after you sailed Monday & we are anxious". "The paper fell from me," Mary told a friend later. "I trembled all over." She and Jane Williams rushed desperately to Livorno and then to Pisa in the fading hope that their husbands were still alive. Ten days after the storm, three bodies washed up on the coast near Viareggio, midway between Livorno and Lerici. Trelawny, Byron, and Hunt cremated Percy Shelley's corpse on the beach at Viareggio. Return to England and writing career After her husband's death, Mary Shelley lived for a year with Leigh Hunt and his family in Genoa, where she often saw Byron and transcribed his poems. She resolved to live by her pen and for her son, but her financial situation was precarious. On 23 July 1823, she left Genoa for England and stayed with her father and stepmother in the Strand until a small advance from her father-in-law enabled her to lodge nearby. Sir Timothy Shelley had at first agreed to support his grandson, Percy Florence, only if he were handed over to an appointed guardian. Mary Shelley rejected this idea instantly. She managed instead to wring out of Sir Timothy a limited annual allowance (which she had to repay when Percy Florence inherited the estate), but to the end of his days, he refused to meet her in person and dealt with her only through lawyers. Mary Shelley busied herself with editing her husband's poems, among other literary endeavours, but concern for her son restricted her options. Sir Timothy threatened to stop the allowance if any biography of the poet were published. In 1826, Percy Florence became the legal heir of the Shelley estate after the death of his half-brother Charles Shelley, his father's son by Harriet Shelley. Sir Timothy raised Mary's allowance from £100 a year to £250 but remained as difficult as ever. Mary Shelley enjoyed the stimulating society of William Godwin's circle, but poverty prevented her from socialising as she wished. She also felt ostracised by those who, like Sir Timothy, still disapproved of her relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley. In the summer of 1824, Mary Shelley moved to Kentish Town in north London to be near Jane Williams. She may have been, in the words of her biographer Muriel Spark, "a little in love" with Jane. Jane later disillusioned her by gossiping that Percy had preferred her to Mary, owing to Mary's inadequacy as a wife. At around this time, Mary Shelley was working on her novel, The Last Man (1826); and she assisted a series of friends who were writing memoirs of Byron and Percy Shelley—the beginnings of her attempts to immortalise her husband. She also met the American actor John Howard Payne and the American writer Washington Irving, who intrigued her. Payne fell in love with her and in 1826 asked her to marry him. She refused, saying that after being married to one genius, she could only marry another. Payne accepted the rejection and tried without success to talk his friend Irving into proposing himself. Mary Shelley was aware of Payne's plan, but how seriously she took it is unclear. In 1827, Mary Shelley was party to a scheme that enabled her friend Isabel Robinson and Isabel's lover, Mary Diana Dods, who wrote under the name David Lyndsay, to embark on a life together in France as husband and wife. With the help of Payne, whom she kept in the dark about the details, Mary Shelley obtained false passports for the couple. In 1828, she fell ill with smallpox while visiting them in Paris. Weeks later she recovered, unscarred but without her youthful beauty. During the period 1827–40, Mary Shelley was busy as an editor and writer. She wrote the novels The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835), and Falkner (1837). She contributed five volumes of Lives of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French authors to Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia. She also wrote stories for ladies' magazines. She was still helping to support her father, and they looked out for publishers for each other. In 1830, she sold the copyright for a new edition of Frankenstein for £60 to Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley for their new Standard Novels series. After her father's death in 1836 at the age of eighty, she began assembling his letters and a memoir for publication, as he had requested in his will; but after two years of work, she abandoned the project. Throughout this period, she also championed Percy Shelley's poetry, promoting its publication and quoting it in her writing. By 1837, Percy's works were well-known and increasingly admired. In the summer of 1838 Edward Moxon, the publisher of Tennyson and the son-in-law of Charles Lamb, proposed publishing a collected works of Percy Shelley. Mary was paid £500 to edit the Poetical Works (1838), which Sir Timothy insisted should not include a biography. Mary found a way to tell the story of Percy's life, nonetheless: she included extensive biographical notes about the poems. Shelley continued to practice her mother's feminist principles by extending aid to women whom society disapproved of. For instance, Shelley extended financial aid to Mary Diana Dods, a single mother and illegitimate herself who appears to have been a lesbian and gave her the new identity of Walter Sholto Douglas, husband of her lover Isabel Robinson. Shelley also assisted Georgiana Paul, a woman disallowed for by her husband for alleged adultery. Shelley in her diary about her assistance to the latter: "I do not make a boast-I do not say aloud-behold my generosity and greatness of mind-for in truth it is simple justice I perform-and so I am still reviled for being worldly". Mary Shelley continued to treat potential romantic partners with caution. In 1828, she met and flirted with the French writer Prosper Mérimée, but her one surviving letter to him appears to be a deflection of his declaration of love. She was delighted when her old friend from Italy, Edward Trelawny, returned to England, and they joked about marriage in their letters. Their friendship had altered, however, following her refusal to cooperate with his proposed biography of Percy Shelley; and he later reacted angrily to her omission of the atheistic section of Queen Mab from Percy Shelley's poems. Oblique references in her journals, from the early 1830s until the early 1840s, suggest that Mary Shelley had feelings for the radical politician Aubrey Beauclerk, who may have disappointed her by twice marrying others. Mary Shelley's first concern during these years was the welfare of Percy Florence. She honoured her late husband's wish that his son attend public school and, with Sir Timothy's grudging help, had him educated at Harrow. To avoid boarding fees, she moved to Harrow on the Hill herself so that Percy could attend as a day scholar. Though Percy went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, and dabbled in politics and the law, he showed no sign of his parents' gifts. He was devoted to his mother, and after he left university in 1841, he came to live with her. Final years and death In 1840 and 1842, mother and son travelled together on the continent, journeys that Mary Shelley recorded in Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843 (1844). In 1844, Sir Timothy Shelley finally died at the age of ninety, "falling from the stalk like an overblown flower", as Mary put it. For the first time, she and her son were financially independent, though the estate proved less valuable than they had hoped. In the mid-1840s, Mary Shelley found herself the target of three separate blackmailers. In 1845, an Italian political exile called Gatteschi, whom she had met in Paris, threatened to publish letters she had sent him. A friend of her son's bribed a police chief into seizing Gatteschi's papers, including the letters, which were then destroyed. Shortly afterwards, Mary Shelley bought some letters written by herself and Percy Bysshe Shelley from a man calling himself G. Byron and posing as the illegitimate son of the late Lord Byron. Also in 1845, Percy Bysshe Shelley's cousin Thomas Medwin approached her claiming to have written a damaging biography of Percy Shelley. He said he would suppress it in return for £250, but Mary Shelley refused. In 1848, Percy Florence married Jane Gibson St John. The marriage proved a happy one, and Mary Shelley and Jane were fond of each other. Mary lived with her son and daughter-in-law at Field Place, Sussex, the Shelleys' ancestral home, and at Chester Square, London, and accompanied them on travels abroad. Mary Shelley's last years were blighted by illness. From 1839, she suffered from headaches and bouts of paralysis in parts of her body, which sometimes prevented her from reading and writing. On 1 February 1851, at Chester Square, she died at the age of fifty-three from what her physician suspected was a brain tumour. According to Jane Shelley, Mary Shelley had asked to be buried with her mother and father; but Percy and Jane, judging the graveyard at St Pancras to be "dreadful", chose to bury her instead at St Peter's Church, Bournemouth, near their new home at Boscombe. On the first anniversary of Mary Shelley's death, the Shelleys opened her box-desk. Inside they found locks of her dead children's hair, a notebook she had shared with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a copy of his poem Adonaïs with one page folded round a silk parcel containing some of his ashes and the remains of his heart. Literary themes and styles Mary Shelley lived a literary life. Her father encouraged her to learn to write by composing letters, and her favourite occupation as a child was writing stories. Unfortunately, all of Mary's juvenilia were lost when she ran off with Percy in 1814, and none of her surviving manuscripts can be definitively dated before that year. Her first published work is often thought to have been Mounseer Nongtongpaw, comic verses written for Godwin's Juvenile Library when she was ten and a half; however, the poem is attributed to another writer in the most recent authoritative collection of her works. Percy Shelley enthusiastically encouraged Mary Shelley's writing: "My husband was, from the first, very anxious that I should prove myself worthy of my parentage, and enrol myself on the page of fame. He was forever inciting me to obtain literary reputation." Novels Autobiographical elements Certain sections of Mary Shelley's novels are often interpreted as masked rewritings of her life. Critics have pointed to the recurrence of the father–daughter motif in particular as evidence of this autobiographical style. For example, commentators frequently read Mathilda (1820) autobiographically, identifying the three central characters as versions of Mary Shelley, William Godwin, and Percy Shelley. Mary Shelley herself confided that she modelled the central characters of The Last Man on her Italian circle. Lord Raymond, who leaves England to fight for the Greeks and dies in Constantinople, is based on Lord Byron; and the utopian Adrian, Earl of Windsor, who leads his followers in search of a natural paradise and dies when his boat sinks in a storm, is a fictional portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley. However, as she wrote in her review of Godwin's novel Cloudesley (1830), she did not believe that authors "were merely copying from our own hearts". William Godwin regarded his daughter's characters as types rather than portraits from real life. Some modern critics, such as Patricia Clemit and Jane Blumberg, have taken the same view, resisting autobiographical readings of Mary Shelley's works. Novelistic genres Mary Shelley employed the techniques of many different novelistic genres, most vividly the Godwinian novel, Walter Scott's new historical novel, and the Gothic novel. The Godwinian novel, made popular during the 1790s with works such as Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794), "employed a Rousseauvian confessional form to explore the contradictory relations between the self and society", and Frankenstein exhibits many of the same themes and literary devices as Godwin's novel. However, Shelley critiques those Enlightenment ideals that Godwin promotes in his works. In The Last Man, she uses the philosophical form of the Godwinian novel to demonstrate the ultimate meaninglessness of the world. While earlier Godwinian novels had shown how rational individuals could slowly improve society, The Last Man and Frankenstein demonstrate the individual's lack of control over history. Shelley uses the historical novel to comment on gender relations; for example, Valperga is a feminist version of Scott's masculinist genre. Introducing women into the story who are not part of the historical record, Shelley uses their narratives to question established theological and political institutions. Shelley sets the male protagonist's compulsive greed for conquest in opposition to a female alternative: reason and sensibility. In Perkin Warbeck, Shelley's other historical novel, Lady Gordon stands for the values of friendship, domesticity, and equality. Through her, Shelley offers a feminine alternative to the masculine power politics that destroy the male characters. The novel provides a more inclusive historical narrative to challenge the one which usually relates only masculine events. Gender With the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1970s, Mary Shelley's works, particularly Frankenstein, began to attract much more attention from scholars. Feminist and psychoanalytic critics were largely responsible for the recovery from neglect of Shelley as a writer. Ellen Moers was one of the first to claim that Shelley's loss of a baby was a crucial influence on the writing of Frankenstein. She argues that the novel is a "birth myth" in which Shelley comes to terms with her guilt for causing her mother's death as well as for failing as a parent. Shelley scholar Anne K. Mellor suggests that, from a feminist viewpoint, it is a story "about what happens when a man tries to have a baby without a woman ... [Frankenstein] is profoundly concerned with natural as opposed to unnatural modes of production and reproduction". Victor Frankenstein's failure as a "parent" in the novel has been read as an expression of the anxieties which accompany pregnancy, giving birth, and particularly maternity. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue in their seminal book The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) that in Frankenstein in particular, Shelley responded to the masculine literary tradition represented by John Milton's Paradise Lost. In their interpretation, Shelley reaffirms this masculine tradition, including the misogyny inherent in it, but at the same time "conceal[s] fantasies of equality that occasionally erupt in monstrous images of rage". Mary Poovey reads the first edition of Frankenstein as part of a larger pattern in Shelley's writing, which begins with literary self-assertion and ends with conventional femininity. Poovey suggests that Frankenstein's multiple narratives enable Shelley to split her artistic persona: she can "express and efface herself at the same time". Shelley's fear of self-assertion is reflected in the fate of Frankenstein, who is punished for his egotism by losing all his domestic ties. Feminist critics often focus on how authorship itself, particularly female authorship, is represented in and through Shelley's novels. As Mellor explains, Shelley uses the Gothic style not only to explore repressed female sexual desire but also as way to "censor her own speech in Frankenstein". According to Poovey and Mellor, Shelley did not want to promote her own authorial persona and felt deeply inadequate as a writer, and "this shame contributed to the generation of her fictional images of abnormality, perversion, and destruction". Shelley's writings focus on the role of the family in society and women's role within that family. She celebrates the "feminine affections and compassion" associated with the family and suggests that civil society will fail without them. Shelley was "profoundly committed to an ethic of cooperation, mutual dependence, and self-sacrifice". In Lodore, for example, the central story follows the fortunes of the wife and daughter of the title character, Lord Lodore, who is killed in a duel at the end of the first volume, leaving a trail of legal, financial, and familial obstacles for the two "heroines" to negotiate. The novel is engaged with political and ideological issues, particularly the education and social role of women. It dissects a patriarchal culture that separated the sexes and pressured women into dependence on men. In the view of Shelley scholar Betty T. Bennett, "the novel proposes egalitarian educational paradigms for women and men, which would bring social justice as well as the spiritual and intellectual means by which to meet the challenges life invariably brings". However, Falkner is the only one of Mary Shelley's novels in which the heroine's agenda triumphs. The novel's resolution proposes that when female values triumph over violent and destructive masculinity, men will be freed to express the "compassion, sympathy, and generosity" of their better natures. Enlightenment and Romanticism Frankenstein, like much Gothic fiction of the period, mixes a visceral and alienating subject matter with speculative and thought-provoking themes. Rather than focusing on the twists and turns of the plot, however, the novel foregrounds the mental and moral struggles of the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, and Shelley imbues the text with her own brand of politicised Romanticism, one that criticised the individualism and egotism of traditional Romanticism. Victor Frankenstein is like Satan in Paradise Lost, and Prometheus: he rebels against tradition; he creates life; and he shapes his own destiny. These traits are not portrayed positively; as Blumberg writes, "his relentless ambition is a self-delusion, clothed as quest for truth". He must abandon his family to fulfill his ambition. Mary Shelley believed in the Enlightenment idea that people could improve society through the responsible exercise of political power, but she feared that the irresponsible exercise of power would lead to chaos. In practice, her works largely criticise the way 18th-century thinkers such as her parents believed such change could be brought about. The creature in Frankenstein, for example, reads books associated with radical ideals but the education he gains from them is ultimately useless. Shelley's works reveal her as less optimistic than Godwin and Wollstonecraft; she lacks faith in Godwin's theory that humanity could eventually be perfected. As literary scholar Kari Lokke writes, The Last Man, more so than Frankenstein, "in its refusal to place humanity at the centre of the universe, its questioning of our privileged position in relation to nature ... constitutes a profound and prophetic challenge to Western humanism." Specifically, Mary Shelley's allusions to what radicals believed was a failed revolution in France and the Godwinian, Wollstonecraftian, and Burkean responses to it, challenge "Enlightenment faith in the inevitability of progress through collective efforts". As in Frankenstein, Shelley "offers a profoundly disenchanted commentary on the age of revolution, which ends in a total rejection of the progressive ideals of her own generation". Not only does she reject these Enlightenment political ideals, but she also rejects the Romantic notion that the poetic or literary imagination can offer an alternative. Politics There is a new scholarly emphasis on Shelley as a lifelong reformer, deeply engaged in the liberal and feminist concerns of her day. In 1820, she was thrilled by the Liberal uprising in Spain which forced the king to grant a constitution. In 1823, she wrote articles for Leigh Hunt's periodical The Liberal and played an active role in the formulation of its outlook. She was delighted when the Whigs came back to power in 1830 and at the prospect of the 1832 Reform Act. Critics have until recently cited Lodore and Falkner as evidence of increasing conservatism in Mary Shelley's later works. In 1984, Mary Poovey influentially identified the retreat of Mary Shelley's reformist politics into the "separate sphere" of the domestic. Poovey suggested that Mary Shelley wrote Falkner to resolve her conflicted response to her father's combination of libertarian radicalism and stern insistence on social decorum. Mellor largely agreed, arguing that "Mary Shelley grounded her alternative political ideology on the metaphor of the peaceful, loving, bourgeois family. She thereby implicitly endorsed a conservative vision of gradual evolutionary reform." This vision allowed women to participate in the public sphere but it inherited the inequalities inherent in the bourgeois family. However, in the last decade or so this view has been challenged. For example, Bennett claims that Mary Shelley's works reveal a consistent commitment to Romantic idealism and political reform and Jane Blumberg's study of Shelley's early novels argues that her career cannot be easily divided into radical and conservative halves. She contends that "Shelley was never a passionate radical like her husband and her later lifestyle was not abruptly assumed nor was it a betrayal. She was in fact challenging the political and literary influences of her circle in her first work." In this reading, Shelley's early works are interpreted as a challenge to Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley's radicalism. Victor Frankenstein's "thoughtless rejection of family", for example, is seen as evidence of Shelley's constant concern for the domestic. Short stories In the 1820s and 1830s, Mary Shelley frequently wrote short stories for gift books or annuals, including sixteen for The Keepsake, which was aimed at middle-class women and bound in silk, with gilt-edged pages. Mary Shelley's work in this genre has been described as that of a "hack writer" and "wordy and pedestrian". However, critic Charlotte Sussman points out that other leading writers of the day, such as the Romantic poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, also took advantage of this profitable market. She explains that "the annuals were a major mode of literary production in the 1820s and 1830s", with The Keepsake the most successful. Many of Shelley's stories are set in places or times far removed from early 19th-century Britain, such as Greece and the reign of Henry IV of France. Shelley was particularly interested in "the fragility of individual identity" and often depicted "the way a person's role in the world can be cataclysmically altered either by an internal emotional upheaval, or by some supernatural occurrence that mirrors an internal schism". In her stories, female identity is tied to a woman's short-lived value in the marriage market while male identity can be sustained and transformed through the use of money. Although Mary Shelley wrote twenty-one short stories for the annuals between 1823 and 1839, she always saw herself, above all, as a novelist. She wrote to Leigh Hunt, "I write bad articles which help to make me miserable—but I am going to plunge into a novel and hope that its clear water will wash off the mud of the magazines." Travelogues When they ran off to France in the summer of 1814, Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley began a joint journal, which they published in 1817 under the title History of a Six Weeks' Tour, adding four letters, two by each of them, based on their visit to Geneva in 1816, along with Percy Shelley's poem "Mont Blanc". The work celebrates youthful love and political idealism and consciously follows the example of Mary Wollstonecraft and others who had combined travelling with writing. The perspective of the History is philosophical and reformist rather than that of a conventional travelogue; in particular, it addresses the effects of politics and war on France. The letters the couple wrote on the second journey confront the "great and extraordinary events" of the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo after his "Hundred Days" return in 1815. They also explore the sublimity of Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc as well as the revolutionary legacy of the philosopher and novelist Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Mary Shelley's last full-length book, written in the form of letters and published in 1844, was Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843, which recorded her travels with her son Percy Florence and his university friends. In Rambles, Shelley follows the tradition of Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark and her own A History of a Six Weeks' Tour in mapping her personal and political landscape through the discourse of sensibility and sympathy. For Shelley, building sympathetic connections between people is the way to build civil society and to increase knowledge: "knowledge, to enlighten and free the mind from clinging deadening prejudices—a wider circle of sympathy with our fellow-creatures;—these are the uses of travel". Between observations on scenery, culture, and "the people, especially in a political point of view", she uses the travelogue form to explore her roles as a widow and mother and to reflect on revolutionary nationalism in Italy. She also records her "pilgrimage" to scenes associated with Percy Shelley. According to critic Clarissa Orr, Mary Shelley's adoption of a persona of philosophical motherhood gives Rambles the unity of a prose poem, with "death and memory as central themes". At the same time, Shelley makes an egalitarian case against monarchy, class distinctions, slavery, and war. Biographies Between 1832 and 1839, Mary Shelley wrote many biographies of notable Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French men and a few women for Dionysius Lardner's Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men. These formed part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia, one of the best of many such series produced in the 1820s and 1830s in response to growing middle-class demand for self-education. Until the republication of these essays in 2002, their significance within her body of work was not appreciated. In the view of literary scholar Greg Kucich, they reveal Mary Shelley's "prodigious research across several centuries and in multiple languages", her gift for biographical narrative, and her interest in the "emerging forms of feminist historiography". Shelley wrote in a biographical style popularised by the 18th-century critic Samuel Johnson in his Lives of the Poets (1779–81), combining secondary sources, memoir and anecdote, and authorial evaluation. She records details of each writer's life and character, quotes their writing in the original as well as in translation, and ends with a critical assessment of their achievement. For Shelley, biographical writing was supposed to, in her words, "form as it were a school in which to study the philosophy of history", and to teach "lessons". Most frequently and importantly, these lessons consisted of criticisms of male-dominated institutions such as primogeniture. Shelley emphasises domesticity, romance, family, sympathy, and compassion in the lives of her subjects. Her conviction that such forces could improve society connects her biographical approach with that of other early feminist historians such as Mary Hays and Anna Jameson. Unlike her novels, most of which had an original print run of several hundred copies, the Lives had a print run of about 4,000 for each volume: thus, according to Kucich, Mary Shelley's "use of biography to forward the social agenda of women's historiography became one of her most influential political interventions". Editorial work Soon after Percy Shelley's death, Mary Shelley determined to write his biography. In a letter of 17 November 1822, she announced: "I shall write his life—& thus occupy myself in the only manner from which I can derive consolation." However, her father-in-law, Sir Timothy Shelley, effectively banned her from doing so. Mary began her fostering of Percy's poetic reputation in 1824 with the publication of his Posthumous Poems. In 1839, while she was working on the Lives, she prepared a new edition of his poetry, which became, in the words of literary scholar Susan J. Wolfson, "the canonizing event" in the history of her husband's reputation. The following year, Mary Shelley edited a volume of her husband's essays, letters, translations, and fragments, and throughout the 1830s, she introduced his poetry to a wider audience by publishing assorted works in the annual The Keepsake. Evading Sir Timothy's ban on a biography, Mary Shelley often included in these editions her own annotations and reflections on her husband's life and work. "I am to justify his ways," she had declared in 1824; "I am to make him beloved to all posterity." It was this goal, argues Blumberg, that led her to present Percy's work to the public in the "most popular form possible". To tailor his works for a Victorian audience, she cast Percy Shelley as a lyrical rather than a political poet. As Mary Favret writes, "the disembodied Percy identifies the spirit of poetry itself". Mary glossed Percy's political radicalism as a form of sentimentalism, arguing that his republicanism arose from sympathy for those who were suffering. She inserted romantic anecdotes of his benevolence, domesticity, and love of the natural world. Portraying herself as Percy's "practical muse", she also noted how she had suggested revisions as he wrote. Despite the emotions stirred by this task, Mary Shelley arguably proved herself in many respects a professional and scholarly editor. Working from Percy's messy, sometimes indecipherable, notebooks, she attempted to form a chronology for his writings, and she included poems, such as Epipsychidion, addressed to Emilia Viviani, which she would rather have left out. She was forced, however, into several compromises, and, as Blumberg notes, "modern critics have found fault with the edition and claim variously that she miscopied, misinterpreted, purposely obscured, and attempted to turn the poet into something he was not". According to Wolfson, Donald Reiman, a modern editor of Percy Bysshe Shelley's works, still refers to Mary Shelley's editions, while acknowledging that her editing style belongs "to an age of editing when the aim was not to establish accurate texts and scholarly apparatus but to present a full record of a writer's career for the general reader". In principle, Mary Shelley believed in publishing every last word of her husband's work; but she found herself obliged to omit certain passages, either by pressure from her publisher, Edward Moxon, or in deference to public propriety. For example, she removed the atheistic passages from Queen Mab for the first edition. After she restored them in the second edition, Moxon was prosecuted and convicted of blasphemous libel, though the prosecution was brought out of principle by the Chartist publisher Henry Hetherington, and no punishment was sought. Mary Shelley's omissions provoked criticism, often stinging, from members of Percy Shelley's former circle, and reviewers accused her of, among other things, indiscriminate inclusions. Her notes have nevertheless remained an essential source for the study of Percy Shelley's work. As Bennett explains, "biographers and critics agree that Mary Shelley's commitment to bring Shelley the notice she believed his works merited was the single, major force that established Shelley's reputation during a period when he almost certainly would have faded from public view". Reputation In her own lifetime, Mary Shelley was taken seriously as a writer, though reviewers often missed her writings' political edge. After her death, however, she was chiefly remembered as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of Frankenstein. In fact, in the introduction to her letters published in 1945, editor Frederick Jones wrote, "a collection of the present size could not be justified by the general quality of the letters or by Mary Shelley's importance as a writer. It is as the wife of [Percy Bysshe Shelley] that she excites our interest." This attitude had not disappeared by 1980 when Betty T. Bennett published the first volume of Mary Shelley's complete letters. As she explains, "the fact is that until recent years scholars have generally regarded Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley as a result: William Godwin's and Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter who became Shelley's Pygmalion." It was not until Emily Sunstein's Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality in 1989 that a full-length scholarly biography was published. The attempts of Mary Shelley's son and daughter-in-law to "Victorianise" her memory by censoring biographical documents contributed to a perception of Mary Shelley as a more conventional, less reformist figure than her works suggest. Her own timid omissions from Percy Shelley's works and her quiet avoidance of public controversy in her later years added to this impression. Commentary by Hogg, Trelawny, and other admirers of Percy Shelley also tended to downplay Mary Shelley's radicalism. Trelawny's Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author (1878) praised Percy Shelley at the expense of Mary, questioning her intelligence and even her authorship of Frankenstein. Lady Shelley, Percy Florence's wife, responded in part by presenting a severely edited collection of letters she had inherited, published privately as Shelley and Mary in 1882. From Frankenstein'''s first theatrical adaptation in 1823 to the cinematic adaptations of the 20th century, including the first cinematic version in 1910 and now-famous versions such as James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein, Mel Brooks' satirical 1974 Young Frankenstein, and Kenneth Branagh's 1994 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, many audiences first encounter the work of Mary Shelley through adaptation. Over the course of the 19th century, Mary Shelley came to be seen as a one-novel author at best, rather than as the professional writer she was; most of her works have remained out of print until the last thirty years, obstructing a larger view of her achievement. In recent decades, the republication of almost all her writing has stimulated a new recognition of its value. Her habit of intensive reading and study, revealed in her journals and letters and reflected in her works, is now better appreciated. Shelley's conception of herself as an author has also been recognised; after Percy's death, she wrote of her authorial ambitions: "I think that I can maintain myself, and there is something inspiriting in the idea." Scholars now consider Mary Shelley to be a major Romantic figure, significant for her literary achievement and her political voice as a woman and a liberal. Selected works History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817) Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) Mathilda (1819) Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823) Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1824) The Last Man (1826) The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830) Lodore (1835) Falkner (1837) The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1839) Contributions to Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men (1835–39), part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 (1844) Collections of Mary Shelley's papers are housed in Lord Abinger's Shelley Collection on deposit at the Bodleian Library, the New York Public Library (particularly The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle), the Huntington Library, the British Library, and in the John Murray Collection. See also Mary Shelley (2017 film) Godwin–Shelley family tree Map of 1814 and 1816 European journeys Map of 1840s European journeys Notes References All essays from The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley are marked with a "(CC)" and those from The Other Mary Shelley with an "(OMS)". Bibliography Primary sources Shelley, Mary. Collected Tales and Stories. Ed. Charles E. Robinson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. . Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Ed. Susan J. Wolfson. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. . Shelley, Mary. The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814–44. Ed. Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. The Last Man. Ed. Morton D. Paley. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1998. . Shelley, Mary. Lodore. Ed. Lisa Vargo. Ontario: Broadview Press, 1997. . Shelley, Mary. Mary Shelley's Literary Lives and Other Writings. 4 vols. Ed. Tilar J. Mazzeo. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2002. . Shelley, Mary. Mathilda . Ed. Elizabeth Nitchie. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 16 February 2008. Shelley, Mary. Matilda; with Mary and Maria, by Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd. London: Penguin, 1992. . Shelley, Mary, ed. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley . London: Edward Moxon, 1840. Google Books. Retrieved 6 April 2008. Shelley, Mary. Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca. Ed. Michael Rossington. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 2000. . Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Shelley's Poetry and Prose. Eds. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2002. . Secondary sources Bennett, Betty T. "Finding Mary Shelley in her Letters". Romantic Revisions. Ed. Robert Brinkley and Keith Hanley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. . Bennett, Betty T., ed. Mary Shelley in her Times. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Bennett, Betty T. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. . Bennett, Betty T. "The Political Philosophy of Mary Shelley's Historical Novels: Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". The Evidence of the Imagination. Ed. Donald H. Reiman, Michael C. Jaye, and Betty T. Bennett. New York: New York University Press, 1978. . Bieri, James. Percy Bysshe Shelley, a Biography: Exile of Unfulfilled Renown, 1816–1822. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005. . Blumberg, Jane. Mary Shelley's Early Novels: "This Child of Imagination and Misery". Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993. . Bunnell, Charlene E. "All the World's a Stage": Dramatic Sensibility in Mary Shelley's Novels. New York: Routledge, 2002. . Carlson, J. A. England's First Family of Writers: Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Shelley. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. . Clemit, Pamela. "From The Fields of Fancy to Matilda." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Clemit, Pamela. The Godwinian Novel: The Rational Fictions of Godwin, Brockden Brown, Mary Shelley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. . Conger, Syndy M., Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea, eds. Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Eberle-Sinatra, Michael, ed. Mary Shelley's Fictions: From Frankenstein to Falkner. New York: St. Martin's Press/Palgrave, 2000. . Fisch, Audrey A., Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schorr, eds. The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond "Frankenstein". New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. . Frank, Frederick S. "Mary Shelley's Other Fictions: A Bibliographic Consensus". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Garrett, Martin Mary Shelley. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. 1979. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. . Gittings, Robert and Jo Manton. Claire Clairmont and the Shelleys. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. . Holmes, Richard. Shelley: The Pursuit. 1974. London: Harper Perennial, 2003. . Jones, Steven. "Charles E. Robinson, Ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two)". (Book Review). Romantic Circles website, 1 January 1998. Retrieved 15 September 2016. Jump, Harriet Devine, Pamela Clemit, and Betty T. Bennett, eds. Lives of the Great Romantics III: Godwin, Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley by Their Contemporaries. London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999. . Levine, George and U. C. Knoepflmacher, eds. The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley's novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. . Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, her Fiction, Her Monsters. London: Routledge, 1990. . Myers, Mitzi. "Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley: The Female Author between Public and Private Spheres." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Orr, Clarissa Campbell. "Mary Shelley's Rambles in Germany and Italy, the Celebrity Author, and the Undiscovered Country of the Human Heart". Romanticism on the Net 11 (August 1998). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. . Robinson, Charles E., ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two). The Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics, Volume IX, Donald H. Reiman, general ed. Garland Publishing, 1996. . Schor, Esther, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. . Seymour, Miranda. Mary Shelley. London: John Murray, 2000. . Sites, Melissa. "Re/membering Home: Utopian Domesticity in Mary Shelley's Lodore". A Brighter Morn: The Shelley Circle's Utopian Project. Ed. Darby Lewes. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003. . Smith, Johanna M. "A Critical History of Frankenstein". Frankenstein. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. . Spark, Muriel. Mary Shelley. London: Cardinal, 1987. . St Clair, William. The Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography of a Family. London: Faber & Faber, 1989. . Sterrenburg, Lee. "The Last Man: Anatomy of Failed Revolutions". Nineteenth Century Fiction 33 (1978): 324–47. Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. 1989. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. . Townsend, William C. Modern State Trials. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1850. Wake, Ann M Frank. "Women in the Active Voice: Recovering Female History in Mary Shelley's Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . White, Daniel E. "'The god undeified': Mary Shelley's Valperga, Italy, and the Aesthetic of Desire ". Romanticism on the Net 6 (May 1997). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Further reading Goulding, Christopher. "The Real Doctor Frankenstein?" Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. The Royal Society of Medicine, May 2002. Richard Holmes, "Out of Control" (review of Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds, edited by David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Jason Scott Robert, MIT Press, 277 pp.; and Mary Shelley, The New Annotated Frankenstein, edited and with a foreword and notes by Leslie S. Klinger, Liveright, 352 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 20 (21 December 2017), pp. 38, 40–41. Gordon, Charlotte (2016). Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley'', Random House. External links Mary Shelley chronology and bibliography – part of Romantic Circles Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley manuscript material, 1815–1850, held by the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, New York Public Library Mary Shelley at the British Library Exhibits relating to Mary Shelley at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford 1797 births 1851 deaths 19th-century English women writers 19th-century English novelists 19th-century British short story writers British expatriates in Italy British expatriates in Switzerland British feminists British horror writers British science fiction writers Deaths from brain tumor Deaths from cancer in England English expatriates in Italy English expatriates in Switzerland English feminists English horror writers English science fiction writers English travel writers English women novelists Frankenstein Godwin family People from Bournemouth People from Somers Town, London Romanticism Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees Victorian novelists Women historical novelists Women horror writers Women of the Regency era Women science fiction and fantasy writers British women travel writers Writers of Gothic fiction Shelley family Weird fiction writers
false
[ "\"How Come, How Long\" is a song written, produced and performed by Babyface (Kenneth Edmonds). It was released as the third single from his album The Day. It is a duet with American singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder.\n\nThe lyrics deal with physical abuse, regarding a woman killed by her husband after tremendous physical abuse. This release met with mixed reaction by critics and did not chart on any major charts in United States, finding a better chart performance in United Kingdom, where it became a top ten hit for the performers. This song was nominated twice for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.\n\nSong information\nThe track was written, produced and performed by Babyface as a duet with American singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder, who also co-wrote the song. The lyrics deal with domestic violence and is inspired by the Nicole Brown Simpson case. On the Entertainment Weekly review of The Day, David Browne wrote that this \"domestic-abuse saga\" needed \"tougher music to make its point.\" At the 40th Grammy Awards this song received a nomination for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, which it lost to \"Don't Look Back\" by John Lee Hooker and Van Morrison. The following year, the song received the same nomination with the live version included on Babyface's Unplugged album, losing this time to Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach with their rendition of \"I Still Have That Other Girl\".\n\nMusic video\nThe music video for this song, directed by F. Gary Gray, shows several residents of an apartment building ignoring the shouts, screams, and arguments between a married couple, ending with a twist, showing that the woman killed her abusive husband, ending with her being arrested. This video received a nomination for Best R&B Video at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards, which was awarded to \"I'll Be Missing You\" by Puff Daddy (Sean Combs) featuring Faith Evans and 112. It also was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video, losing to \"Got 'til It's Gone\" by Janet Jackson.\n\nTrack listing\nUS CD single\n\"How Come, How Long\" – 5:11\n\"Every Time I Close My Eyes\" (Timbaland remix) – 4:23\n\nUK CD single (XPCD2161)\n\"How Come, How Long\" (Radio edit) – 4:12\n\nCD maxi single (EPC 664402 2)\n\"How Come, How Long\" (radio edit) – 4:12\n\"How Come, How Long\" (Natty & Slaps remix) – 5:08\n\"How Come, How Long\" (Laws & Craigie remix) – 6:28\n\"Every Time I Close My Eyes\" (Timbaland remix) – 4:55\n\nChart\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nCertifications\n\nPersonnel\nThe following people contributed to \"How Come, How Long\":\nBabyface — main performer and producer\nStevie Wonder — vocals, harmonica\nTimbaland — producer, remixing\nJimmy Douglas — remixing\nJon Gass — mixing\nBenny Medina — management\nAnton Corbijn — photography\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nSong Lyrics on Rhapsody\nListen to the song\n\n1997 singles\nBabyface (musician) songs\nStevie Wonder songs\nMusic videos directed by F. Gary Gray\nSongs written by Babyface (musician)\nSongs written by Stevie Wonder\nSong recordings produced by Babyface (musician)\nSongs about domestic violence\nContemporary R&B ballads\nVocal duets\nAmerican soft rock songs", "\"How Do I Get There\" is a song written by Chris Farren, and co-written and recorded by American country music artist Deana Carter.\n\nIt was released in 1996 as a 7\" jukebox single along with the song \"Did I Shave My Legs for This?\", and in 1997 as a promotional CD single. The song became her third single to reach the top of the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart. The song was Carter's last Number One hit on the country chart.\n\nTrack listing\n\nChart performance \n\"How Do I Get There\" debuted at number 52 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks for the chart week of August 2, 1997.\n\nYear-end charts\n\nReferences\n\nDeana Carter songs\nSongs written by Deana Carter\nSongs written by Chris Farren (country musician)\nSong recordings produced by Chris Farren (country musician)\n1996 songs" ]
[ "Mary Shelley", "Lake Geneva and Frankenstein", "When did Mary Shelley write Frankenstein?", "Mary Shelley remembered in 1831,", "What did she have to do with Lake Geneva?", "close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis", "what did they do while they were there?", "They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. \"", "What did they write while they were there?", "Byron to propose that they \"each write a ghost story\".", "Did they write the ghost story?", "she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her \"waking dream\", her ghost story:", "how did that end for her?", "She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein:" ]
C_fcd11261399c4441ac5c013381bf1e1d_1
was Frankenstein successful?
7
Was Frankenstein successful?
Mary Shelley
In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. The party arrived at Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted, "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. CANNOTANSWER
The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and feminist activist Mary Wollstonecraft. Shelley's mother died less than a month after giving birth to her. She was raised by her father, who provided her with a rich if informal education, encouraging her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories. When she was four, her father married a neighbour, Mary Jane Clairmont, with whom Shelley came to have a troubled relationship. In 1814, Shelley began a romance with one of her father's political followers, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. Together with her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, she and Percy left for France and travelled through Europe. Upon their return to England, Shelley was pregnant with Percy's child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet. In 1816, the couple and Mary's stepsister famously spent a summer with Lord Byron and John William Polidori near Geneva, Switzerland, where Shelley conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, most likely caused by the brain tumour which killed her at age 53. Until the 1970s, Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish her husband's works and for her novel Frankenstein, which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Shelley's achievements. Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826) and her final two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). Studies of her lesser-known works, such as the travel book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–1846), support the growing view that Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life. Shelley's works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practised by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin. Life and career Early life Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, in 1797. She was the second child of the feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the first child of the philosopher, novelist, and journalist William Godwin. Wollstonecraft died of puerperal fever shortly after Mary was born. Godwin was left to bring up Mary, along with her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, Wollstonecraft's child by the American speculator Gilbert Imlay. A year after Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798), which he intended as a sincere and compassionate tribute. However, because the Memoirs revealed Wollstonecraft's affairs and her illegitimate child, they were seen as shocking. Mary Godwin read these memoirs and her mother's books, and was brought up to cherish her mother's memory. Mary's earliest years were happy, judging from the letters of William Godwin's housekeeper and nurse, Louisa Jones. But Godwin was often deeply in debt; feeling that he could not raise the children by himself, he cast about for a second wife. In December 1801, he married Mary Jane Clairmont, a well-educated woman with two young children of her own—Charles and Claire. Most of Godwin's friends disliked his new wife, describing her as quick-tempered and quarrelsome; but Godwin was devoted to her, and the marriage was a success. Mary Godwin, on the other hand, came to detest her stepmother. William Godwin's 19th-century biographer Charles Kegan Paul later suggested that Mrs Godwin had favoured her own children over those of Mary Wollstonecraft. Together, the Godwins started a publishing firm called M. J. Godwin, which sold children's books as well as stationery, maps, and games. However, the business did not turn a profit, and Godwin was forced to borrow substantial sums to keep it going. He continued to borrow to pay off earlier loans, compounding his problems. By 1809, Godwin's business was close to failure, and he was "near to despair". Godwin was saved from debtor's prison by philosophical devotees such as Francis Place, who lent him further money. Though Mary Godwin received little formal education, her father tutored her in a broad range of subjects. He often took the children on educational outings, and they had access to his library and to the many intellectuals who visited him, including the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the former vice-president of the United States Aaron Burr. Godwin admitted he was not educating the children according to Mary Wollstonecraft's philosophy as outlined in works such as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), but Mary Godwin nonetheless received an unusual and advanced education for a girl of the time. She had a governess, a daily tutor, and read many of her father's children's books on Roman and Greek history in manuscript. For six months in 1811, she also attended a boarding school in Ramsgate. Her father described her at age 15 as "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible." In June 1812, Mary's father sent her to stay with the dissenting family of the radical William Baxter, near Dundee, Scotland. To Baxter, he wrote, "I am anxious that she should be brought up ... like a philosopher, even like a cynic." Scholars have speculated that she may have been sent away for her health, to remove her from the seamy side of the business, or to introduce her to radical politics. Mary Godwin revelled in the spacious surroundings of Baxter's house and in the companionship of his four daughters, and she returned north in the summer of 1813 for a further stay of 10 months. In the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein, she recalled: "I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered." Percy Bysshe Shelley Mary Godwin may have first met the radical poet-philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley in the interval between her two stays in Scotland. By the time she returned home for a second time on 30 March 1814, Percy Shelley had become estranged from his wife and was regularly visiting William Godwin, whom he had agreed to bail out of debt. Percy Shelley's radicalism, particularly his economic views, which he had imbibed from William Godwin's Political Justice (1793), had alienated him from his wealthy aristocratic family: they wanted him to follow traditional models of the landed aristocracy, and he wanted to donate large amounts of the family's money to schemes intended to help the disadvantaged. Percy Shelley, therefore, had difficulty gaining access to money until he inherited his estate because his family did not want him wasting it on projects of "political justice". After several months of promises, Shelley announced that he either could not or would not pay off all of Godwin's debts. Godwin was angry and felt betrayed. Mary and Percy began meeting each other secretly at her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's grave in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, and they fell in love—she was 16, and he was 21. On 26 June 1814, Shelley and Godwin declared their love for one another as Shelley announced he could not hide his "ardent passion", leading her in a "sublime and rapturous moment" to say she felt the same way; on either that day or the next, Godwin lost her virginity to Shelley, which tradition claims happened in the churchyard. Godwin described herself as attracted to Shelley's "wild, intellectual, unearthly looks". To Mary's dismay, her father disapproved, and tried to thwart the relationship and salvage the "spotless fame" of his daughter. At about the same time, Mary's father learned of Shelley's inability to pay off the father's debts. Mary, who later wrote of "my excessive and romantic attachment to my father", was confused. She saw Percy Shelley as an embodiment of her parents' liberal and reformist ideas of the 1790s, particularly Godwin's view that marriage was a repressive monopoly, which he had argued in his 1793 edition of Political Justice but later retracted. On 28 July 1814, the couple eloped and secretly left for France, taking Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with them. After convincing Mary Jane Godwin, who had pursued them to Calais, that they did not wish to return, the trio travelled to Paris, and then, by donkey, mule, carriage, and foot, through a France recently ravaged by war, to Switzerland. "It was acting in a novel, being an incarnate romance," Mary Shelley recalled in 1826. Godwin wrote about France in 1814: "The distress of the inhabitants, whose houses had been burned, their cattle killed and all their wealth destroyed, has given a sting to my detestation of war...". As they travelled, Mary and Percy read works by Mary Wollstonecraft and others, kept a joint journal, and continued their own writing. At Lucerne, lack of money forced the three to turn back. They travelled down the Rhine and by land to the Dutch port of Maassluis, arriving at Gravesend, Kent, on 13 September 1814. The situation awaiting Mary Godwin in England was fraught with complications, some of which she had not foreseen. Either before or during the journey, she had become pregnant. She and Percy now found themselves penniless, and, to Mary's genuine surprise, her father refused to have anything to do with her. The couple moved with Claire into lodgings at Somers Town, and later, Nelson Square. They maintained their intense programme of reading and writing, and entertained Percy Shelley's friends, such as Thomas Jefferson Hogg and the writer Thomas Love Peacock. Percy Shelley sometimes left home for short periods to dodge creditors. The couple's distraught letters reveal their pain at these separations. Pregnant and often ill, Mary Godwin had to cope with Percy's joy at the birth of his son by Harriet Shelley in late 1814 and his constant outings with Claire Clairmont. Shelley and Clairmont were almost certainly lovers, which caused much jealousy on Godwin's part. Shelley greatly offended Godwin at one point when during a walk in the French countryside he suggested that they both take the plunge into a stream naked as it offended her principles. She was partly consoled by the visits of Hogg, whom she disliked at first but soon considered a close friend. Percy Shelley seems to have wanted Mary Godwin and Hogg to become lovers; Mary did not dismiss the idea, since in principle she believed in free love. In practice, however, she loved only Percy Shelley and seems to have ventured no further than flirting with Hogg. On 22 February 1815, she gave birth to a two-month premature baby girl, who was not expected to survive. On 6 March, she wrote to Hogg: My dearest Hogg my baby is dead—will you come to see me as soon as you can. I wish to see you—It was perfectly well when I went to bed—I awoke in the night to give it suck it appeared to be sleeping so quietly that I would not awake it. It was dead then, but we did not find that out till morning—from its appearance it evidently died of convulsions—Will you come—you are so calm a creature & Shelley is afraid of a fever from the milk—for I am no longer a mother now. The loss of her child induced acute depression in Mary Godwin, who was haunted by visions of the baby; but she conceived again and had recovered by the summer. With a revival in Percy Shelley's finances after the death of his grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, the couple holidayed in Torquay and then rented a two-storey cottage at Bishopsgate, on the edge of Windsor Great Park. Little is known about this period in Mary Godwin's life, since her journal from May 1815 to July 1816 is lost. At Bishopsgate, Percy wrote his poem Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude; and on 24 January 1816, Mary gave birth to a second child, William, named after her father, and soon nicknamed "Willmouse". In her novel The Last Man, she later imagined Windsor as a Garden of Eden. Lake Geneva and Frankenstein In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. In History of a Six Weeks’ Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland (1817), she describes the particularly desolate landscape in crossing from France into Switzerland. The party arrived in Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted; "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. Authorship of Frankenstein While her husband Percy encouraged her writing, the extent of Percy's contribution to the novel is unknown and has been argued over by readers and critics. Mary Shelley wrote, "I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement, it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world." She wrote that the preface to the first edition was Percy's work "as far as I can recollect." There are differences in the 1818, 1823 and 1831 editions, which have been attributed to Percy's editing. James Rieger concluded Percy's "assistance at every point in the book's manufacture was so extensive that one hardly knows whether to regard him as editor or minor collaborator", while Anne K. Mellor later argued Percy only "made many technical corrections and several times clarified the narrative and thematic continuity of the text." Charles E. Robinson, editor of a facsimile edition of the Frankenstein manuscripts, concluded that Percy's contributions to the book "were no more than what most publishers' editors have provided new (or old) authors or, in fact, what colleagues have provided to each other after reading each other's works in progress." Writing on the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein, literary scholar and poet Fiona Sampson asked, "Why hasn't Mary Shelley gotten the respect she deserves?" She noted that "In recent years Percy's corrections, visible in the Frankenstein notebooks held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, have been seized on as evidence that he must have at least co-authored the novel. In fact, when I examined the notebooks myself, I realized that Percy did rather less than any line editor working in publishing today." Sampson published her findings in In Search of Mary Shelley (2018), one of many biographies written about Shelley. Bath and Marlow On their return to England in September, Mary and Percy moved—with Claire Clairmont, who took lodgings nearby—to Bath, where they hoped to keep Claire's pregnancy secret. At Cologny, Mary Godwin had received two letters from her half-sister, Fanny Imlay, who alluded to her "unhappy life"; on 9 October, Fanny wrote an "alarming letter" from Bristol that sent Percy Shelley racing off to search for her, without success. On the morning of 10 October, Fanny Imlay was found dead in a room at a Swansea inn, along with a suicide note and a laudanum bottle. On 10 December, Percy Shelley's wife, Harriet, was discovered drowned in the Serpentine, a lake in Hyde Park, London. Both suicides were hushed up. Harriet's family obstructed Percy Shelley's efforts—fully supported by Mary Godwin—to assume custody of his two children by Harriet. His lawyers advised him to improve his case by marrying; so he and Mary, who was pregnant again, married on 30 December 1816 at St Mildred's Church, Bread Street, London. Mr and Mrs Godwin were present and the marriage ended the family rift. Claire Clairmont gave birth to a baby girl on 13 January, at first called Alba, later Allegra. In March of that year, the Chancery Court ruled Percy Shelley morally unfit to assume custody of his children and later placed them with a clergyman's family. Also in March, the Shelleys moved with Claire and Alba to Albion House at Marlow, Buckinghamshire, a large, damp building on the river Thames. There Mary Shelley gave birth to her third child, Clara, on 2 September. At Marlow, they entertained their new friends Marianne and Leigh Hunt, worked hard at their writing, and often discussed politics. Early in the summer of 1817, Mary Shelley finished Frankenstein, which was published anonymously in January 1818. Reviewers and readers assumed that Percy Shelley was the author, since the book was published with his preface and dedicated to his political hero William Godwin. At Marlow, Mary edited the joint journal of the group's 1814 Continental journey, adding material written in Switzerland in 1816, along with Percy's poem "Mont Blanc". The result was the History of a Six Weeks' Tour, published in November 1817. That autumn, Percy Shelley often lived away from home in London to evade creditors. The threat of a debtor's prison, combined with their ill health and fears of losing custody of their children, contributed to the couple's decision to leave England for Italy on 12 March 1818, taking Claire Clairmont and Alba with them. They had no intention of returning. Italy One of the party's first tasks on arriving in Italy was to hand Alba over to Byron, who was living in Venice. He had agreed to raise her so long as Claire had nothing more to do with her. The Shelleys then embarked on a roving existence, never settling in any one place for long. Along the way, they accumulated a circle of friends and acquaintances who often moved with them. The couple devoted their time to writing, reading, learning, sightseeing, and socialising. The Italian adventure was, however, blighted for Mary Shelley by the deaths of both her children—Clara, in September 1818 in Venice, and William, in June 1819 in Rome. These losses left her in a deep depression that isolated her from Percy Shelley, who wrote in his notebook: My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone, And left me in this dreary world alone? Thy form is here indeed—a lovely one— But thou art fled, gone down a dreary road That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode. For thine own sake I cannot follow thee Do thou return for mine. For a time, Mary Shelley found comfort only in her writing. The birth of her fourth child, Percy Florence, on 12 November 1819, finally lifted her spirits, though she nursed the memory of her lost children till the end of her life. Italy provided the Shelleys, Byron, and other exiles with political freedom unattainable at home. Despite its associations with personal loss, Italy became for Mary Shelley "a country which memory painted as paradise". Their Italian years were a time of intense intellectual and creative activity for both Shelleys. While Percy composed a series of major poems, Mary wrote the novel Matilda, the historical novel Valperga, and the plays Proserpine and Midas. Mary wrote Valperga to help alleviate her father's financial difficulties, as Percy refused to assist him further. She was often physically ill, however, and prone to depressions. She also had to cope with Percy's interest in other women, such as Sophia Stacey, Emilia Viviani, and Jane Williams. Since Mary Shelley shared his belief in the non-exclusivity of marriage, she formed emotional ties of her own among the men and women of their circle. She became particularly fond of the Greek revolutionary Prince Alexandros Mavrokordatos and of Jane and Edward Williams. In December 1818, the Shelleys travelled south with Claire Clairmont and their servants to Naples, where they stayed for three months, receiving only one visitor, a physician. In 1820, they found themselves plagued by accusations and threats from Paolo and Elise Foggi, former servants whom Percy Shelley had dismissed in Naples shortly after the Foggis had married. The pair revealed that on 27 February 1819 in Naples, Percy Shelley had registered as his child by Mary Shelley a two-month-old baby girl named Elena Adelaide Shelley. The Foggis also claimed that Claire Clairmont was the baby's mother. Biographers have offered various interpretations of these events: that Percy Shelley decided to adopt a local child; that the baby was his by Elise, Claire, or an unknown woman; or that she was Elise's by Byron. Mary Shelley insisted she would have known if Claire had been pregnant, but it is unclear how much she really knew. The events in Naples, a city Mary Shelley later called a paradise inhabited by devils, remain shrouded in mystery. The only certainty is that she herself was not the child's mother. Elena Adelaide Shelley died in Naples on 9 June 1820. After leaving Naples, the Shelleys settled in Rome, the city where her husband wrote where "the meanest streets were strewed with truncated columns, broken capitals...and sparkling fragments of granite or porphyry...The voice of dead time, in still vibrations, is breathed from these dumb things, animated and glorified as they were by man". Rome inspired her to begin writing the unfinished novel Valerius, the Reanimated Roman, where the eponymous hero resists the decay of Rome and the machinations of "superstitious" Catholicism. The writing of her novel was broken off when her son William died of malaria. Shelley bitterly commented that she had come to Italy to improve her husband's health, and instead the Italian climate had just killed her two children, leading her to write: "May you my dear Marianne never know what it is to lose two only and lovely children in one year—to watch their dying moments—and then at last to be left childless and forever miserable". To deal with her grief, Shelley wrote the novella The Fields of Fancy, which became Matilda, dealing with a young woman whose beauty inspired incestuous love in her father, who ultimately commits suicide to stop himself from acting on his passion for his daughter, while she spends the rest of her life full of despair about "the unnatural love I had inspired". The novella offered a feminist critique of a patriarchal society as Matilda is punished in the afterlife, though she did nothing to encourage her father's feelings. In the summer of 1822, a pregnant Mary moved with Percy, Claire, and Edward and Jane Williams to the isolated Villa Magni, at the sea's edge near the hamlet of San Terenzo in the Bay of Lerici. Once they were settled in, Percy broke the "evil news" to Claire that her daughter Allegra had died of typhus in a convent at Bagnacavallo. Mary Shelley was distracted and unhappy in the cramped and remote Villa Magni, which she came to regard as a dungeon. On 16 June, she miscarried, losing so much blood that she nearly died. Rather than wait for a doctor, Percy sat her in a bath of ice to stanch the bleeding, an act the doctor later told him saved her life. All was not well between the couple that summer, however, and Percy spent more time with Jane Williams than with his depressed and debilitated wife. Much of the short poetry Shelley wrote at San Terenzo involved Jane rather than Mary. The coast offered Percy Shelley and Edward Williams the chance to enjoy their "perfect plaything for the summer", a new sailing boat. The boat had been designed by Daniel Roberts and Edward Trelawny, an admirer of Byron's who had joined the party in January 1822. On 1 July 1822, Percy Shelley, Edward Ellerker Williams, and Captain Daniel Roberts sailed south down the coast to Livorno. There Percy Shelley discussed with Byron and Leigh Hunt the launch of a radical magazine called The Liberal. On 8 July, he and Edward Williams set out on the return journey to Lerici with their eighteen-year-old boat boy, Charles Vivian. They never reached their destination. A letter arrived at Villa Magni from Hunt to Percy Shelley, dated 8 July, saying, "pray write to tell us how you got home, for they say you had bad weather after you sailed Monday & we are anxious". "The paper fell from me," Mary told a friend later. "I trembled all over." She and Jane Williams rushed desperately to Livorno and then to Pisa in the fading hope that their husbands were still alive. Ten days after the storm, three bodies washed up on the coast near Viareggio, midway between Livorno and Lerici. Trelawny, Byron, and Hunt cremated Percy Shelley's corpse on the beach at Viareggio. Return to England and writing career After her husband's death, Mary Shelley lived for a year with Leigh Hunt and his family in Genoa, where she often saw Byron and transcribed his poems. She resolved to live by her pen and for her son, but her financial situation was precarious. On 23 July 1823, she left Genoa for England and stayed with her father and stepmother in the Strand until a small advance from her father-in-law enabled her to lodge nearby. Sir Timothy Shelley had at first agreed to support his grandson, Percy Florence, only if he were handed over to an appointed guardian. Mary Shelley rejected this idea instantly. She managed instead to wring out of Sir Timothy a limited annual allowance (which she had to repay when Percy Florence inherited the estate), but to the end of his days, he refused to meet her in person and dealt with her only through lawyers. Mary Shelley busied herself with editing her husband's poems, among other literary endeavours, but concern for her son restricted her options. Sir Timothy threatened to stop the allowance if any biography of the poet were published. In 1826, Percy Florence became the legal heir of the Shelley estate after the death of his half-brother Charles Shelley, his father's son by Harriet Shelley. Sir Timothy raised Mary's allowance from £100 a year to £250 but remained as difficult as ever. Mary Shelley enjoyed the stimulating society of William Godwin's circle, but poverty prevented her from socialising as she wished. She also felt ostracised by those who, like Sir Timothy, still disapproved of her relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley. In the summer of 1824, Mary Shelley moved to Kentish Town in north London to be near Jane Williams. She may have been, in the words of her biographer Muriel Spark, "a little in love" with Jane. Jane later disillusioned her by gossiping that Percy had preferred her to Mary, owing to Mary's inadequacy as a wife. At around this time, Mary Shelley was working on her novel, The Last Man (1826); and she assisted a series of friends who were writing memoirs of Byron and Percy Shelley—the beginnings of her attempts to immortalise her husband. She also met the American actor John Howard Payne and the American writer Washington Irving, who intrigued her. Payne fell in love with her and in 1826 asked her to marry him. She refused, saying that after being married to one genius, she could only marry another. Payne accepted the rejection and tried without success to talk his friend Irving into proposing himself. Mary Shelley was aware of Payne's plan, but how seriously she took it is unclear. In 1827, Mary Shelley was party to a scheme that enabled her friend Isabel Robinson and Isabel's lover, Mary Diana Dods, who wrote under the name David Lyndsay, to embark on a life together in France as husband and wife. With the help of Payne, whom she kept in the dark about the details, Mary Shelley obtained false passports for the couple. In 1828, she fell ill with smallpox while visiting them in Paris. Weeks later she recovered, unscarred but without her youthful beauty. During the period 1827–40, Mary Shelley was busy as an editor and writer. She wrote the novels The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835), and Falkner (1837). She contributed five volumes of Lives of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French authors to Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia. She also wrote stories for ladies' magazines. She was still helping to support her father, and they looked out for publishers for each other. In 1830, she sold the copyright for a new edition of Frankenstein for £60 to Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley for their new Standard Novels series. After her father's death in 1836 at the age of eighty, she began assembling his letters and a memoir for publication, as he had requested in his will; but after two years of work, she abandoned the project. Throughout this period, she also championed Percy Shelley's poetry, promoting its publication and quoting it in her writing. By 1837, Percy's works were well-known and increasingly admired. In the summer of 1838 Edward Moxon, the publisher of Tennyson and the son-in-law of Charles Lamb, proposed publishing a collected works of Percy Shelley. Mary was paid £500 to edit the Poetical Works (1838), which Sir Timothy insisted should not include a biography. Mary found a way to tell the story of Percy's life, nonetheless: she included extensive biographical notes about the poems. Shelley continued to practice her mother's feminist principles by extending aid to women whom society disapproved of. For instance, Shelley extended financial aid to Mary Diana Dods, a single mother and illegitimate herself who appears to have been a lesbian and gave her the new identity of Walter Sholto Douglas, husband of her lover Isabel Robinson. Shelley also assisted Georgiana Paul, a woman disallowed for by her husband for alleged adultery. Shelley in her diary about her assistance to the latter: "I do not make a boast-I do not say aloud-behold my generosity and greatness of mind-for in truth it is simple justice I perform-and so I am still reviled for being worldly". Mary Shelley continued to treat potential romantic partners with caution. In 1828, she met and flirted with the French writer Prosper Mérimée, but her one surviving letter to him appears to be a deflection of his declaration of love. She was delighted when her old friend from Italy, Edward Trelawny, returned to England, and they joked about marriage in their letters. Their friendship had altered, however, following her refusal to cooperate with his proposed biography of Percy Shelley; and he later reacted angrily to her omission of the atheistic section of Queen Mab from Percy Shelley's poems. Oblique references in her journals, from the early 1830s until the early 1840s, suggest that Mary Shelley had feelings for the radical politician Aubrey Beauclerk, who may have disappointed her by twice marrying others. Mary Shelley's first concern during these years was the welfare of Percy Florence. She honoured her late husband's wish that his son attend public school and, with Sir Timothy's grudging help, had him educated at Harrow. To avoid boarding fees, she moved to Harrow on the Hill herself so that Percy could attend as a day scholar. Though Percy went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, and dabbled in politics and the law, he showed no sign of his parents' gifts. He was devoted to his mother, and after he left university in 1841, he came to live with her. Final years and death In 1840 and 1842, mother and son travelled together on the continent, journeys that Mary Shelley recorded in Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843 (1844). In 1844, Sir Timothy Shelley finally died at the age of ninety, "falling from the stalk like an overblown flower", as Mary put it. For the first time, she and her son were financially independent, though the estate proved less valuable than they had hoped. In the mid-1840s, Mary Shelley found herself the target of three separate blackmailers. In 1845, an Italian political exile called Gatteschi, whom she had met in Paris, threatened to publish letters she had sent him. A friend of her son's bribed a police chief into seizing Gatteschi's papers, including the letters, which were then destroyed. Shortly afterwards, Mary Shelley bought some letters written by herself and Percy Bysshe Shelley from a man calling himself G. Byron and posing as the illegitimate son of the late Lord Byron. Also in 1845, Percy Bysshe Shelley's cousin Thomas Medwin approached her claiming to have written a damaging biography of Percy Shelley. He said he would suppress it in return for £250, but Mary Shelley refused. In 1848, Percy Florence married Jane Gibson St John. The marriage proved a happy one, and Mary Shelley and Jane were fond of each other. Mary lived with her son and daughter-in-law at Field Place, Sussex, the Shelleys' ancestral home, and at Chester Square, London, and accompanied them on travels abroad. Mary Shelley's last years were blighted by illness. From 1839, she suffered from headaches and bouts of paralysis in parts of her body, which sometimes prevented her from reading and writing. On 1 February 1851, at Chester Square, she died at the age of fifty-three from what her physician suspected was a brain tumour. According to Jane Shelley, Mary Shelley had asked to be buried with her mother and father; but Percy and Jane, judging the graveyard at St Pancras to be "dreadful", chose to bury her instead at St Peter's Church, Bournemouth, near their new home at Boscombe. On the first anniversary of Mary Shelley's death, the Shelleys opened her box-desk. Inside they found locks of her dead children's hair, a notebook she had shared with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a copy of his poem Adonaïs with one page folded round a silk parcel containing some of his ashes and the remains of his heart. Literary themes and styles Mary Shelley lived a literary life. Her father encouraged her to learn to write by composing letters, and her favourite occupation as a child was writing stories. Unfortunately, all of Mary's juvenilia were lost when she ran off with Percy in 1814, and none of her surviving manuscripts can be definitively dated before that year. Her first published work is often thought to have been Mounseer Nongtongpaw, comic verses written for Godwin's Juvenile Library when she was ten and a half; however, the poem is attributed to another writer in the most recent authoritative collection of her works. Percy Shelley enthusiastically encouraged Mary Shelley's writing: "My husband was, from the first, very anxious that I should prove myself worthy of my parentage, and enrol myself on the page of fame. He was forever inciting me to obtain literary reputation." Novels Autobiographical elements Certain sections of Mary Shelley's novels are often interpreted as masked rewritings of her life. Critics have pointed to the recurrence of the father–daughter motif in particular as evidence of this autobiographical style. For example, commentators frequently read Mathilda (1820) autobiographically, identifying the three central characters as versions of Mary Shelley, William Godwin, and Percy Shelley. Mary Shelley herself confided that she modelled the central characters of The Last Man on her Italian circle. Lord Raymond, who leaves England to fight for the Greeks and dies in Constantinople, is based on Lord Byron; and the utopian Adrian, Earl of Windsor, who leads his followers in search of a natural paradise and dies when his boat sinks in a storm, is a fictional portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley. However, as she wrote in her review of Godwin's novel Cloudesley (1830), she did not believe that authors "were merely copying from our own hearts". William Godwin regarded his daughter's characters as types rather than portraits from real life. Some modern critics, such as Patricia Clemit and Jane Blumberg, have taken the same view, resisting autobiographical readings of Mary Shelley's works. Novelistic genres Mary Shelley employed the techniques of many different novelistic genres, most vividly the Godwinian novel, Walter Scott's new historical novel, and the Gothic novel. The Godwinian novel, made popular during the 1790s with works such as Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794), "employed a Rousseauvian confessional form to explore the contradictory relations between the self and society", and Frankenstein exhibits many of the same themes and literary devices as Godwin's novel. However, Shelley critiques those Enlightenment ideals that Godwin promotes in his works. In The Last Man, she uses the philosophical form of the Godwinian novel to demonstrate the ultimate meaninglessness of the world. While earlier Godwinian novels had shown how rational individuals could slowly improve society, The Last Man and Frankenstein demonstrate the individual's lack of control over history. Shelley uses the historical novel to comment on gender relations; for example, Valperga is a feminist version of Scott's masculinist genre. Introducing women into the story who are not part of the historical record, Shelley uses their narratives to question established theological and political institutions. Shelley sets the male protagonist's compulsive greed for conquest in opposition to a female alternative: reason and sensibility. In Perkin Warbeck, Shelley's other historical novel, Lady Gordon stands for the values of friendship, domesticity, and equality. Through her, Shelley offers a feminine alternative to the masculine power politics that destroy the male characters. The novel provides a more inclusive historical narrative to challenge the one which usually relates only masculine events. Gender With the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1970s, Mary Shelley's works, particularly Frankenstein, began to attract much more attention from scholars. Feminist and psychoanalytic critics were largely responsible for the recovery from neglect of Shelley as a writer. Ellen Moers was one of the first to claim that Shelley's loss of a baby was a crucial influence on the writing of Frankenstein. She argues that the novel is a "birth myth" in which Shelley comes to terms with her guilt for causing her mother's death as well as for failing as a parent. Shelley scholar Anne K. Mellor suggests that, from a feminist viewpoint, it is a story "about what happens when a man tries to have a baby without a woman ... [Frankenstein] is profoundly concerned with natural as opposed to unnatural modes of production and reproduction". Victor Frankenstein's failure as a "parent" in the novel has been read as an expression of the anxieties which accompany pregnancy, giving birth, and particularly maternity. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue in their seminal book The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) that in Frankenstein in particular, Shelley responded to the masculine literary tradition represented by John Milton's Paradise Lost. In their interpretation, Shelley reaffirms this masculine tradition, including the misogyny inherent in it, but at the same time "conceal[s] fantasies of equality that occasionally erupt in monstrous images of rage". Mary Poovey reads the first edition of Frankenstein as part of a larger pattern in Shelley's writing, which begins with literary self-assertion and ends with conventional femininity. Poovey suggests that Frankenstein's multiple narratives enable Shelley to split her artistic persona: she can "express and efface herself at the same time". Shelley's fear of self-assertion is reflected in the fate of Frankenstein, who is punished for his egotism by losing all his domestic ties. Feminist critics often focus on how authorship itself, particularly female authorship, is represented in and through Shelley's novels. As Mellor explains, Shelley uses the Gothic style not only to explore repressed female sexual desire but also as way to "censor her own speech in Frankenstein". According to Poovey and Mellor, Shelley did not want to promote her own authorial persona and felt deeply inadequate as a writer, and "this shame contributed to the generation of her fictional images of abnormality, perversion, and destruction". Shelley's writings focus on the role of the family in society and women's role within that family. She celebrates the "feminine affections and compassion" associated with the family and suggests that civil society will fail without them. Shelley was "profoundly committed to an ethic of cooperation, mutual dependence, and self-sacrifice". In Lodore, for example, the central story follows the fortunes of the wife and daughter of the title character, Lord Lodore, who is killed in a duel at the end of the first volume, leaving a trail of legal, financial, and familial obstacles for the two "heroines" to negotiate. The novel is engaged with political and ideological issues, particularly the education and social role of women. It dissects a patriarchal culture that separated the sexes and pressured women into dependence on men. In the view of Shelley scholar Betty T. Bennett, "the novel proposes egalitarian educational paradigms for women and men, which would bring social justice as well as the spiritual and intellectual means by which to meet the challenges life invariably brings". However, Falkner is the only one of Mary Shelley's novels in which the heroine's agenda triumphs. The novel's resolution proposes that when female values triumph over violent and destructive masculinity, men will be freed to express the "compassion, sympathy, and generosity" of their better natures. Enlightenment and Romanticism Frankenstein, like much Gothic fiction of the period, mixes a visceral and alienating subject matter with speculative and thought-provoking themes. Rather than focusing on the twists and turns of the plot, however, the novel foregrounds the mental and moral struggles of the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, and Shelley imbues the text with her own brand of politicised Romanticism, one that criticised the individualism and egotism of traditional Romanticism. Victor Frankenstein is like Satan in Paradise Lost, and Prometheus: he rebels against tradition; he creates life; and he shapes his own destiny. These traits are not portrayed positively; as Blumberg writes, "his relentless ambition is a self-delusion, clothed as quest for truth". He must abandon his family to fulfill his ambition. Mary Shelley believed in the Enlightenment idea that people could improve society through the responsible exercise of political power, but she feared that the irresponsible exercise of power would lead to chaos. In practice, her works largely criticise the way 18th-century thinkers such as her parents believed such change could be brought about. The creature in Frankenstein, for example, reads books associated with radical ideals but the education he gains from them is ultimately useless. Shelley's works reveal her as less optimistic than Godwin and Wollstonecraft; she lacks faith in Godwin's theory that humanity could eventually be perfected. As literary scholar Kari Lokke writes, The Last Man, more so than Frankenstein, "in its refusal to place humanity at the centre of the universe, its questioning of our privileged position in relation to nature ... constitutes a profound and prophetic challenge to Western humanism." Specifically, Mary Shelley's allusions to what radicals believed was a failed revolution in France and the Godwinian, Wollstonecraftian, and Burkean responses to it, challenge "Enlightenment faith in the inevitability of progress through collective efforts". As in Frankenstein, Shelley "offers a profoundly disenchanted commentary on the age of revolution, which ends in a total rejection of the progressive ideals of her own generation". Not only does she reject these Enlightenment political ideals, but she also rejects the Romantic notion that the poetic or literary imagination can offer an alternative. Politics There is a new scholarly emphasis on Shelley as a lifelong reformer, deeply engaged in the liberal and feminist concerns of her day. In 1820, she was thrilled by the Liberal uprising in Spain which forced the king to grant a constitution. In 1823, she wrote articles for Leigh Hunt's periodical The Liberal and played an active role in the formulation of its outlook. She was delighted when the Whigs came back to power in 1830 and at the prospect of the 1832 Reform Act. Critics have until recently cited Lodore and Falkner as evidence of increasing conservatism in Mary Shelley's later works. In 1984, Mary Poovey influentially identified the retreat of Mary Shelley's reformist politics into the "separate sphere" of the domestic. Poovey suggested that Mary Shelley wrote Falkner to resolve her conflicted response to her father's combination of libertarian radicalism and stern insistence on social decorum. Mellor largely agreed, arguing that "Mary Shelley grounded her alternative political ideology on the metaphor of the peaceful, loving, bourgeois family. She thereby implicitly endorsed a conservative vision of gradual evolutionary reform." This vision allowed women to participate in the public sphere but it inherited the inequalities inherent in the bourgeois family. However, in the last decade or so this view has been challenged. For example, Bennett claims that Mary Shelley's works reveal a consistent commitment to Romantic idealism and political reform and Jane Blumberg's study of Shelley's early novels argues that her career cannot be easily divided into radical and conservative halves. She contends that "Shelley was never a passionate radical like her husband and her later lifestyle was not abruptly assumed nor was it a betrayal. She was in fact challenging the political and literary influences of her circle in her first work." In this reading, Shelley's early works are interpreted as a challenge to Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley's radicalism. Victor Frankenstein's "thoughtless rejection of family", for example, is seen as evidence of Shelley's constant concern for the domestic. Short stories In the 1820s and 1830s, Mary Shelley frequently wrote short stories for gift books or annuals, including sixteen for The Keepsake, which was aimed at middle-class women and bound in silk, with gilt-edged pages. Mary Shelley's work in this genre has been described as that of a "hack writer" and "wordy and pedestrian". However, critic Charlotte Sussman points out that other leading writers of the day, such as the Romantic poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, also took advantage of this profitable market. She explains that "the annuals were a major mode of literary production in the 1820s and 1830s", with The Keepsake the most successful. Many of Shelley's stories are set in places or times far removed from early 19th-century Britain, such as Greece and the reign of Henry IV of France. Shelley was particularly interested in "the fragility of individual identity" and often depicted "the way a person's role in the world can be cataclysmically altered either by an internal emotional upheaval, or by some supernatural occurrence that mirrors an internal schism". In her stories, female identity is tied to a woman's short-lived value in the marriage market while male identity can be sustained and transformed through the use of money. Although Mary Shelley wrote twenty-one short stories for the annuals between 1823 and 1839, she always saw herself, above all, as a novelist. She wrote to Leigh Hunt, "I write bad articles which help to make me miserable—but I am going to plunge into a novel and hope that its clear water will wash off the mud of the magazines." Travelogues When they ran off to France in the summer of 1814, Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley began a joint journal, which they published in 1817 under the title History of a Six Weeks' Tour, adding four letters, two by each of them, based on their visit to Geneva in 1816, along with Percy Shelley's poem "Mont Blanc". The work celebrates youthful love and political idealism and consciously follows the example of Mary Wollstonecraft and others who had combined travelling with writing. The perspective of the History is philosophical and reformist rather than that of a conventional travelogue; in particular, it addresses the effects of politics and war on France. The letters the couple wrote on the second journey confront the "great and extraordinary events" of the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo after his "Hundred Days" return in 1815. They also explore the sublimity of Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc as well as the revolutionary legacy of the philosopher and novelist Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Mary Shelley's last full-length book, written in the form of letters and published in 1844, was Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843, which recorded her travels with her son Percy Florence and his university friends. In Rambles, Shelley follows the tradition of Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark and her own A History of a Six Weeks' Tour in mapping her personal and political landscape through the discourse of sensibility and sympathy. For Shelley, building sympathetic connections between people is the way to build civil society and to increase knowledge: "knowledge, to enlighten and free the mind from clinging deadening prejudices—a wider circle of sympathy with our fellow-creatures;—these are the uses of travel". Between observations on scenery, culture, and "the people, especially in a political point of view", she uses the travelogue form to explore her roles as a widow and mother and to reflect on revolutionary nationalism in Italy. She also records her "pilgrimage" to scenes associated with Percy Shelley. According to critic Clarissa Orr, Mary Shelley's adoption of a persona of philosophical motherhood gives Rambles the unity of a prose poem, with "death and memory as central themes". At the same time, Shelley makes an egalitarian case against monarchy, class distinctions, slavery, and war. Biographies Between 1832 and 1839, Mary Shelley wrote many biographies of notable Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French men and a few women for Dionysius Lardner's Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men. These formed part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia, one of the best of many such series produced in the 1820s and 1830s in response to growing middle-class demand for self-education. Until the republication of these essays in 2002, their significance within her body of work was not appreciated. In the view of literary scholar Greg Kucich, they reveal Mary Shelley's "prodigious research across several centuries and in multiple languages", her gift for biographical narrative, and her interest in the "emerging forms of feminist historiography". Shelley wrote in a biographical style popularised by the 18th-century critic Samuel Johnson in his Lives of the Poets (1779–81), combining secondary sources, memoir and anecdote, and authorial evaluation. She records details of each writer's life and character, quotes their writing in the original as well as in translation, and ends with a critical assessment of their achievement. For Shelley, biographical writing was supposed to, in her words, "form as it were a school in which to study the philosophy of history", and to teach "lessons". Most frequently and importantly, these lessons consisted of criticisms of male-dominated institutions such as primogeniture. Shelley emphasises domesticity, romance, family, sympathy, and compassion in the lives of her subjects. Her conviction that such forces could improve society connects her biographical approach with that of other early feminist historians such as Mary Hays and Anna Jameson. Unlike her novels, most of which had an original print run of several hundred copies, the Lives had a print run of about 4,000 for each volume: thus, according to Kucich, Mary Shelley's "use of biography to forward the social agenda of women's historiography became one of her most influential political interventions". Editorial work Soon after Percy Shelley's death, Mary Shelley determined to write his biography. In a letter of 17 November 1822, she announced: "I shall write his life—& thus occupy myself in the only manner from which I can derive consolation." However, her father-in-law, Sir Timothy Shelley, effectively banned her from doing so. Mary began her fostering of Percy's poetic reputation in 1824 with the publication of his Posthumous Poems. In 1839, while she was working on the Lives, she prepared a new edition of his poetry, which became, in the words of literary scholar Susan J. Wolfson, "the canonizing event" in the history of her husband's reputation. The following year, Mary Shelley edited a volume of her husband's essays, letters, translations, and fragments, and throughout the 1830s, she introduced his poetry to a wider audience by publishing assorted works in the annual The Keepsake. Evading Sir Timothy's ban on a biography, Mary Shelley often included in these editions her own annotations and reflections on her husband's life and work. "I am to justify his ways," she had declared in 1824; "I am to make him beloved to all posterity." It was this goal, argues Blumberg, that led her to present Percy's work to the public in the "most popular form possible". To tailor his works for a Victorian audience, she cast Percy Shelley as a lyrical rather than a political poet. As Mary Favret writes, "the disembodied Percy identifies the spirit of poetry itself". Mary glossed Percy's political radicalism as a form of sentimentalism, arguing that his republicanism arose from sympathy for those who were suffering. She inserted romantic anecdotes of his benevolence, domesticity, and love of the natural world. Portraying herself as Percy's "practical muse", she also noted how she had suggested revisions as he wrote. Despite the emotions stirred by this task, Mary Shelley arguably proved herself in many respects a professional and scholarly editor. Working from Percy's messy, sometimes indecipherable, notebooks, she attempted to form a chronology for his writings, and she included poems, such as Epipsychidion, addressed to Emilia Viviani, which she would rather have left out. She was forced, however, into several compromises, and, as Blumberg notes, "modern critics have found fault with the edition and claim variously that she miscopied, misinterpreted, purposely obscured, and attempted to turn the poet into something he was not". According to Wolfson, Donald Reiman, a modern editor of Percy Bysshe Shelley's works, still refers to Mary Shelley's editions, while acknowledging that her editing style belongs "to an age of editing when the aim was not to establish accurate texts and scholarly apparatus but to present a full record of a writer's career for the general reader". In principle, Mary Shelley believed in publishing every last word of her husband's work; but she found herself obliged to omit certain passages, either by pressure from her publisher, Edward Moxon, or in deference to public propriety. For example, she removed the atheistic passages from Queen Mab for the first edition. After she restored them in the second edition, Moxon was prosecuted and convicted of blasphemous libel, though the prosecution was brought out of principle by the Chartist publisher Henry Hetherington, and no punishment was sought. Mary Shelley's omissions provoked criticism, often stinging, from members of Percy Shelley's former circle, and reviewers accused her of, among other things, indiscriminate inclusions. Her notes have nevertheless remained an essential source for the study of Percy Shelley's work. As Bennett explains, "biographers and critics agree that Mary Shelley's commitment to bring Shelley the notice she believed his works merited was the single, major force that established Shelley's reputation during a period when he almost certainly would have faded from public view". Reputation In her own lifetime, Mary Shelley was taken seriously as a writer, though reviewers often missed her writings' political edge. After her death, however, she was chiefly remembered as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of Frankenstein. In fact, in the introduction to her letters published in 1945, editor Frederick Jones wrote, "a collection of the present size could not be justified by the general quality of the letters or by Mary Shelley's importance as a writer. It is as the wife of [Percy Bysshe Shelley] that she excites our interest." This attitude had not disappeared by 1980 when Betty T. Bennett published the first volume of Mary Shelley's complete letters. As she explains, "the fact is that until recent years scholars have generally regarded Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley as a result: William Godwin's and Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter who became Shelley's Pygmalion." It was not until Emily Sunstein's Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality in 1989 that a full-length scholarly biography was published. The attempts of Mary Shelley's son and daughter-in-law to "Victorianise" her memory by censoring biographical documents contributed to a perception of Mary Shelley as a more conventional, less reformist figure than her works suggest. Her own timid omissions from Percy Shelley's works and her quiet avoidance of public controversy in her later years added to this impression. Commentary by Hogg, Trelawny, and other admirers of Percy Shelley also tended to downplay Mary Shelley's radicalism. Trelawny's Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author (1878) praised Percy Shelley at the expense of Mary, questioning her intelligence and even her authorship of Frankenstein. Lady Shelley, Percy Florence's wife, responded in part by presenting a severely edited collection of letters she had inherited, published privately as Shelley and Mary in 1882. From Frankenstein'''s first theatrical adaptation in 1823 to the cinematic adaptations of the 20th century, including the first cinematic version in 1910 and now-famous versions such as James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein, Mel Brooks' satirical 1974 Young Frankenstein, and Kenneth Branagh's 1994 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, many audiences first encounter the work of Mary Shelley through adaptation. Over the course of the 19th century, Mary Shelley came to be seen as a one-novel author at best, rather than as the professional writer she was; most of her works have remained out of print until the last thirty years, obstructing a larger view of her achievement. In recent decades, the republication of almost all her writing has stimulated a new recognition of its value. Her habit of intensive reading and study, revealed in her journals and letters and reflected in her works, is now better appreciated. Shelley's conception of herself as an author has also been recognised; after Percy's death, she wrote of her authorial ambitions: "I think that I can maintain myself, and there is something inspiriting in the idea." Scholars now consider Mary Shelley to be a major Romantic figure, significant for her literary achievement and her political voice as a woman and a liberal. Selected works History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817) Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) Mathilda (1819) Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823) Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1824) The Last Man (1826) The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830) Lodore (1835) Falkner (1837) The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1839) Contributions to Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men (1835–39), part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 (1844) Collections of Mary Shelley's papers are housed in Lord Abinger's Shelley Collection on deposit at the Bodleian Library, the New York Public Library (particularly The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle), the Huntington Library, the British Library, and in the John Murray Collection. See also Mary Shelley (2017 film) Godwin–Shelley family tree Map of 1814 and 1816 European journeys Map of 1840s European journeys Notes References All essays from The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley are marked with a "(CC)" and those from The Other Mary Shelley with an "(OMS)". Bibliography Primary sources Shelley, Mary. Collected Tales and Stories. Ed. Charles E. Robinson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. . Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Ed. Susan J. Wolfson. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. . Shelley, Mary. The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814–44. Ed. Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. The Last Man. Ed. Morton D. Paley. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1998. . Shelley, Mary. Lodore. Ed. Lisa Vargo. Ontario: Broadview Press, 1997. . Shelley, Mary. Mary Shelley's Literary Lives and Other Writings. 4 vols. Ed. Tilar J. Mazzeo. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2002. . Shelley, Mary. Mathilda . Ed. Elizabeth Nitchie. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 16 February 2008. Shelley, Mary. Matilda; with Mary and Maria, by Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd. London: Penguin, 1992. . Shelley, Mary, ed. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley . London: Edward Moxon, 1840. Google Books. Retrieved 6 April 2008. Shelley, Mary. Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca. Ed. Michael Rossington. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 2000. . Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Shelley's Poetry and Prose. Eds. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2002. . Secondary sources Bennett, Betty T. "Finding Mary Shelley in her Letters". Romantic Revisions. Ed. Robert Brinkley and Keith Hanley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. . Bennett, Betty T., ed. Mary Shelley in her Times. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Bennett, Betty T. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. . Bennett, Betty T. "The Political Philosophy of Mary Shelley's Historical Novels: Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". The Evidence of the Imagination. Ed. Donald H. Reiman, Michael C. Jaye, and Betty T. Bennett. New York: New York University Press, 1978. . Bieri, James. Percy Bysshe Shelley, a Biography: Exile of Unfulfilled Renown, 1816–1822. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005. . Blumberg, Jane. Mary Shelley's Early Novels: "This Child of Imagination and Misery". Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993. . Bunnell, Charlene E. "All the World's a Stage": Dramatic Sensibility in Mary Shelley's Novels. New York: Routledge, 2002. . Carlson, J. A. England's First Family of Writers: Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Shelley. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. . Clemit, Pamela. "From The Fields of Fancy to Matilda." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Clemit, Pamela. The Godwinian Novel: The Rational Fictions of Godwin, Brockden Brown, Mary Shelley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. . Conger, Syndy M., Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea, eds. Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Eberle-Sinatra, Michael, ed. Mary Shelley's Fictions: From Frankenstein to Falkner. New York: St. Martin's Press/Palgrave, 2000. . Fisch, Audrey A., Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schorr, eds. The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond "Frankenstein". New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. . Frank, Frederick S. "Mary Shelley's Other Fictions: A Bibliographic Consensus". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Garrett, Martin Mary Shelley. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. 1979. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. . Gittings, Robert and Jo Manton. Claire Clairmont and the Shelleys. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. . Holmes, Richard. Shelley: The Pursuit. 1974. London: Harper Perennial, 2003. . Jones, Steven. "Charles E. Robinson, Ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two)". (Book Review). Romantic Circles website, 1 January 1998. Retrieved 15 September 2016. Jump, Harriet Devine, Pamela Clemit, and Betty T. Bennett, eds. Lives of the Great Romantics III: Godwin, Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley by Their Contemporaries. London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999. . Levine, George and U. C. Knoepflmacher, eds. The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley's novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. . Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, her Fiction, Her Monsters. London: Routledge, 1990. . Myers, Mitzi. "Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley: The Female Author between Public and Private Spheres." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Orr, Clarissa Campbell. "Mary Shelley's Rambles in Germany and Italy, the Celebrity Author, and the Undiscovered Country of the Human Heart". Romanticism on the Net 11 (August 1998). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. . Robinson, Charles E., ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two). The Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics, Volume IX, Donald H. Reiman, general ed. Garland Publishing, 1996. . Schor, Esther, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. . Seymour, Miranda. Mary Shelley. London: John Murray, 2000. . Sites, Melissa. "Re/membering Home: Utopian Domesticity in Mary Shelley's Lodore". A Brighter Morn: The Shelley Circle's Utopian Project. Ed. Darby Lewes. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003. . Smith, Johanna M. "A Critical History of Frankenstein". Frankenstein. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. . Spark, Muriel. Mary Shelley. London: Cardinal, 1987. . St Clair, William. The Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography of a Family. London: Faber & Faber, 1989. . Sterrenburg, Lee. "The Last Man: Anatomy of Failed Revolutions". Nineteenth Century Fiction 33 (1978): 324–47. Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. 1989. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. . Townsend, William C. Modern State Trials. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1850. Wake, Ann M Frank. "Women in the Active Voice: Recovering Female History in Mary Shelley's Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . White, Daniel E. "'The god undeified': Mary Shelley's Valperga, Italy, and the Aesthetic of Desire ". Romanticism on the Net 6 (May 1997). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Further reading Goulding, Christopher. "The Real Doctor Frankenstein?" Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. The Royal Society of Medicine, May 2002. Richard Holmes, "Out of Control" (review of Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds, edited by David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Jason Scott Robert, MIT Press, 277 pp.; and Mary Shelley, The New Annotated Frankenstein, edited and with a foreword and notes by Leslie S. Klinger, Liveright, 352 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 20 (21 December 2017), pp. 38, 40–41. Gordon, Charlotte (2016). Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley'', Random House. External links Mary Shelley chronology and bibliography – part of Romantic Circles Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley manuscript material, 1815–1850, held by the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, New York Public Library Mary Shelley at the British Library Exhibits relating to Mary Shelley at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford 1797 births 1851 deaths 19th-century English women writers 19th-century English novelists 19th-century British short story writers British expatriates in Italy British expatriates in Switzerland British feminists British horror writers British science fiction writers Deaths from brain tumor Deaths from cancer in England English expatriates in Italy English expatriates in Switzerland English feminists English horror writers English science fiction writers English travel writers English women novelists Frankenstein Godwin family People from Bournemouth People from Somers Town, London Romanticism Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees Victorian novelists Women historical novelists Women horror writers Women of the Regency era Women science fiction and fantasy writers British women travel writers Writers of Gothic fiction Shelley family Weird fiction writers
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[ "Frankenstein Day is an annual holiday celebrated on August 30, Mary Shelley's birthday, in celebration of her 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.\n\nHistory \nMary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born on August 30, 1797. She wrote the novel Frankenstein in 1816, and published it in 1818. The holiday Frankenstein Day was created to honor Mary Shelley and Frankenstein, every year on the anniversary of her birthday. Frankenstein Day has also been known as National Frankenstein Day.\n\nSee also \n\n Frankenstein: Day of the Beast\n\nReferences \n\nHolidays\nFrankenstein\nBirthdays\nMary Shelley", "Henry M. Milner was a 19th-century British playwright and author of melodramas and popular tragedies. Milner wrote numerous plays, including two popular equestrian dramas/hippodramas featuring live horses on stage. These are: Mazeppa; or, the Wild Horse of Tartary (which was based on Lord Byron's 1819 poem), which kicked off a wave of interest in the legend and Dick Turpin's Ride to York; or, Bonny black Bess, about the famous highwayman and his horse. Both of these plays included great spectacle in performance and enjoyed great popular success during the mid to late nineteenth century. ' 'Mazeppa' ' was extremely popular and often produced; it is recalled as one of, if not the most, significant and popular equestrian drama of all time.\n\nAnother of Milner's noteworthy and successful works is, The Man and The Monster; or The Fate of Frankenstein, opened on 3 July 1826 at the Royal Coburg Theatre (now known as The Old Vic), eight years after Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was published. subsequent film adaptations follow Milner's example, in making Frankenstein's monstrous creation a pivotal scene.\n\nSee also\nDick Turpin's Ride to York, 1922 film\n\nPartial list of works\n\n \n \n (See Cultural legacy of Mazeppa#The 1830s-1860s)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \"Frankenstein: or The Man and the Monster.\" A Romantic Melo-Drama, in Two Acts. FOUNDED PRINCIPALLY ON MRS. SHELLEY'S SINGULAR WORK ENTITLED \"FRANKENSTEIN; OR, THE MODERN PROMETHEUS\" And partly on the French piece, \"Le Magicien et le Monstre.\"- at University of Pennsylvania\n\nBritish dramatists and playwrights\nYear of birth missing\nYear of death missing\nBritish male dramatists and playwrights" ]
[ "Mary Shelley", "Lake Geneva and Frankenstein", "When did Mary Shelley write Frankenstein?", "Mary Shelley remembered in 1831,", "What did she have to do with Lake Geneva?", "close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis", "what did they do while they were there?", "They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. \"", "What did they write while they were there?", "Byron to propose that they \"each write a ghost story\".", "Did they write the ghost story?", "she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her \"waking dream\", her ghost story:", "how did that end for her?", "She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein:", "was Frankenstein successful?", "The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films." ]
C_fcd11261399c4441ac5c013381bf1e1d_1
how many films?
8
How many films were formed on the basis of Frankenstein?
Mary Shelley
In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. The party arrived at Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted, "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. CANNOTANSWER
a number of films.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and feminist activist Mary Wollstonecraft. Shelley's mother died less than a month after giving birth to her. She was raised by her father, who provided her with a rich if informal education, encouraging her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories. When she was four, her father married a neighbour, Mary Jane Clairmont, with whom Shelley came to have a troubled relationship. In 1814, Shelley began a romance with one of her father's political followers, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. Together with her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, she and Percy left for France and travelled through Europe. Upon their return to England, Shelley was pregnant with Percy's child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet. In 1816, the couple and Mary's stepsister famously spent a summer with Lord Byron and John William Polidori near Geneva, Switzerland, where Shelley conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, most likely caused by the brain tumour which killed her at age 53. Until the 1970s, Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish her husband's works and for her novel Frankenstein, which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Shelley's achievements. Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826) and her final two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). Studies of her lesser-known works, such as the travel book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–1846), support the growing view that Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life. Shelley's works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practised by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin. Life and career Early life Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, in 1797. She was the second child of the feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the first child of the philosopher, novelist, and journalist William Godwin. Wollstonecraft died of puerperal fever shortly after Mary was born. Godwin was left to bring up Mary, along with her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, Wollstonecraft's child by the American speculator Gilbert Imlay. A year after Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798), which he intended as a sincere and compassionate tribute. However, because the Memoirs revealed Wollstonecraft's affairs and her illegitimate child, they were seen as shocking. Mary Godwin read these memoirs and her mother's books, and was brought up to cherish her mother's memory. Mary's earliest years were happy, judging from the letters of William Godwin's housekeeper and nurse, Louisa Jones. But Godwin was often deeply in debt; feeling that he could not raise the children by himself, he cast about for a second wife. In December 1801, he married Mary Jane Clairmont, a well-educated woman with two young children of her own—Charles and Claire. Most of Godwin's friends disliked his new wife, describing her as quick-tempered and quarrelsome; but Godwin was devoted to her, and the marriage was a success. Mary Godwin, on the other hand, came to detest her stepmother. William Godwin's 19th-century biographer Charles Kegan Paul later suggested that Mrs Godwin had favoured her own children over those of Mary Wollstonecraft. Together, the Godwins started a publishing firm called M. J. Godwin, which sold children's books as well as stationery, maps, and games. However, the business did not turn a profit, and Godwin was forced to borrow substantial sums to keep it going. He continued to borrow to pay off earlier loans, compounding his problems. By 1809, Godwin's business was close to failure, and he was "near to despair". Godwin was saved from debtor's prison by philosophical devotees such as Francis Place, who lent him further money. Though Mary Godwin received little formal education, her father tutored her in a broad range of subjects. He often took the children on educational outings, and they had access to his library and to the many intellectuals who visited him, including the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the former vice-president of the United States Aaron Burr. Godwin admitted he was not educating the children according to Mary Wollstonecraft's philosophy as outlined in works such as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), but Mary Godwin nonetheless received an unusual and advanced education for a girl of the time. She had a governess, a daily tutor, and read many of her father's children's books on Roman and Greek history in manuscript. For six months in 1811, she also attended a boarding school in Ramsgate. Her father described her at age 15 as "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible." In June 1812, Mary's father sent her to stay with the dissenting family of the radical William Baxter, near Dundee, Scotland. To Baxter, he wrote, "I am anxious that she should be brought up ... like a philosopher, even like a cynic." Scholars have speculated that she may have been sent away for her health, to remove her from the seamy side of the business, or to introduce her to radical politics. Mary Godwin revelled in the spacious surroundings of Baxter's house and in the companionship of his four daughters, and she returned north in the summer of 1813 for a further stay of 10 months. In the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein, she recalled: "I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered." Percy Bysshe Shelley Mary Godwin may have first met the radical poet-philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley in the interval between her two stays in Scotland. By the time she returned home for a second time on 30 March 1814, Percy Shelley had become estranged from his wife and was regularly visiting William Godwin, whom he had agreed to bail out of debt. Percy Shelley's radicalism, particularly his economic views, which he had imbibed from William Godwin's Political Justice (1793), had alienated him from his wealthy aristocratic family: they wanted him to follow traditional models of the landed aristocracy, and he wanted to donate large amounts of the family's money to schemes intended to help the disadvantaged. Percy Shelley, therefore, had difficulty gaining access to money until he inherited his estate because his family did not want him wasting it on projects of "political justice". After several months of promises, Shelley announced that he either could not or would not pay off all of Godwin's debts. Godwin was angry and felt betrayed. Mary and Percy began meeting each other secretly at her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's grave in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, and they fell in love—she was 16, and he was 21. On 26 June 1814, Shelley and Godwin declared their love for one another as Shelley announced he could not hide his "ardent passion", leading her in a "sublime and rapturous moment" to say she felt the same way; on either that day or the next, Godwin lost her virginity to Shelley, which tradition claims happened in the churchyard. Godwin described herself as attracted to Shelley's "wild, intellectual, unearthly looks". To Mary's dismay, her father disapproved, and tried to thwart the relationship and salvage the "spotless fame" of his daughter. At about the same time, Mary's father learned of Shelley's inability to pay off the father's debts. Mary, who later wrote of "my excessive and romantic attachment to my father", was confused. She saw Percy Shelley as an embodiment of her parents' liberal and reformist ideas of the 1790s, particularly Godwin's view that marriage was a repressive monopoly, which he had argued in his 1793 edition of Political Justice but later retracted. On 28 July 1814, the couple eloped and secretly left for France, taking Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with them. After convincing Mary Jane Godwin, who had pursued them to Calais, that they did not wish to return, the trio travelled to Paris, and then, by donkey, mule, carriage, and foot, through a France recently ravaged by war, to Switzerland. "It was acting in a novel, being an incarnate romance," Mary Shelley recalled in 1826. Godwin wrote about France in 1814: "The distress of the inhabitants, whose houses had been burned, their cattle killed and all their wealth destroyed, has given a sting to my detestation of war...". As they travelled, Mary and Percy read works by Mary Wollstonecraft and others, kept a joint journal, and continued their own writing. At Lucerne, lack of money forced the three to turn back. They travelled down the Rhine and by land to the Dutch port of Maassluis, arriving at Gravesend, Kent, on 13 September 1814. The situation awaiting Mary Godwin in England was fraught with complications, some of which she had not foreseen. Either before or during the journey, she had become pregnant. She and Percy now found themselves penniless, and, to Mary's genuine surprise, her father refused to have anything to do with her. The couple moved with Claire into lodgings at Somers Town, and later, Nelson Square. They maintained their intense programme of reading and writing, and entertained Percy Shelley's friends, such as Thomas Jefferson Hogg and the writer Thomas Love Peacock. Percy Shelley sometimes left home for short periods to dodge creditors. The couple's distraught letters reveal their pain at these separations. Pregnant and often ill, Mary Godwin had to cope with Percy's joy at the birth of his son by Harriet Shelley in late 1814 and his constant outings with Claire Clairmont. Shelley and Clairmont were almost certainly lovers, which caused much jealousy on Godwin's part. Shelley greatly offended Godwin at one point when during a walk in the French countryside he suggested that they both take the plunge into a stream naked as it offended her principles. She was partly consoled by the visits of Hogg, whom she disliked at first but soon considered a close friend. Percy Shelley seems to have wanted Mary Godwin and Hogg to become lovers; Mary did not dismiss the idea, since in principle she believed in free love. In practice, however, she loved only Percy Shelley and seems to have ventured no further than flirting with Hogg. On 22 February 1815, she gave birth to a two-month premature baby girl, who was not expected to survive. On 6 March, she wrote to Hogg: My dearest Hogg my baby is dead—will you come to see me as soon as you can. I wish to see you—It was perfectly well when I went to bed—I awoke in the night to give it suck it appeared to be sleeping so quietly that I would not awake it. It was dead then, but we did not find that out till morning—from its appearance it evidently died of convulsions—Will you come—you are so calm a creature & Shelley is afraid of a fever from the milk—for I am no longer a mother now. The loss of her child induced acute depression in Mary Godwin, who was haunted by visions of the baby; but she conceived again and had recovered by the summer. With a revival in Percy Shelley's finances after the death of his grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, the couple holidayed in Torquay and then rented a two-storey cottage at Bishopsgate, on the edge of Windsor Great Park. Little is known about this period in Mary Godwin's life, since her journal from May 1815 to July 1816 is lost. At Bishopsgate, Percy wrote his poem Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude; and on 24 January 1816, Mary gave birth to a second child, William, named after her father, and soon nicknamed "Willmouse". In her novel The Last Man, she later imagined Windsor as a Garden of Eden. Lake Geneva and Frankenstein In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. In History of a Six Weeks’ Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland (1817), she describes the particularly desolate landscape in crossing from France into Switzerland. The party arrived in Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted; "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. Authorship of Frankenstein While her husband Percy encouraged her writing, the extent of Percy's contribution to the novel is unknown and has been argued over by readers and critics. Mary Shelley wrote, "I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement, it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world." She wrote that the preface to the first edition was Percy's work "as far as I can recollect." There are differences in the 1818, 1823 and 1831 editions, which have been attributed to Percy's editing. James Rieger concluded Percy's "assistance at every point in the book's manufacture was so extensive that one hardly knows whether to regard him as editor or minor collaborator", while Anne K. Mellor later argued Percy only "made many technical corrections and several times clarified the narrative and thematic continuity of the text." Charles E. Robinson, editor of a facsimile edition of the Frankenstein manuscripts, concluded that Percy's contributions to the book "were no more than what most publishers' editors have provided new (or old) authors or, in fact, what colleagues have provided to each other after reading each other's works in progress." Writing on the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein, literary scholar and poet Fiona Sampson asked, "Why hasn't Mary Shelley gotten the respect she deserves?" She noted that "In recent years Percy's corrections, visible in the Frankenstein notebooks held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, have been seized on as evidence that he must have at least co-authored the novel. In fact, when I examined the notebooks myself, I realized that Percy did rather less than any line editor working in publishing today." Sampson published her findings in In Search of Mary Shelley (2018), one of many biographies written about Shelley. Bath and Marlow On their return to England in September, Mary and Percy moved—with Claire Clairmont, who took lodgings nearby—to Bath, where they hoped to keep Claire's pregnancy secret. At Cologny, Mary Godwin had received two letters from her half-sister, Fanny Imlay, who alluded to her "unhappy life"; on 9 October, Fanny wrote an "alarming letter" from Bristol that sent Percy Shelley racing off to search for her, without success. On the morning of 10 October, Fanny Imlay was found dead in a room at a Swansea inn, along with a suicide note and a laudanum bottle. On 10 December, Percy Shelley's wife, Harriet, was discovered drowned in the Serpentine, a lake in Hyde Park, London. Both suicides were hushed up. Harriet's family obstructed Percy Shelley's efforts—fully supported by Mary Godwin—to assume custody of his two children by Harriet. His lawyers advised him to improve his case by marrying; so he and Mary, who was pregnant again, married on 30 December 1816 at St Mildred's Church, Bread Street, London. Mr and Mrs Godwin were present and the marriage ended the family rift. Claire Clairmont gave birth to a baby girl on 13 January, at first called Alba, later Allegra. In March of that year, the Chancery Court ruled Percy Shelley morally unfit to assume custody of his children and later placed them with a clergyman's family. Also in March, the Shelleys moved with Claire and Alba to Albion House at Marlow, Buckinghamshire, a large, damp building on the river Thames. There Mary Shelley gave birth to her third child, Clara, on 2 September. At Marlow, they entertained their new friends Marianne and Leigh Hunt, worked hard at their writing, and often discussed politics. Early in the summer of 1817, Mary Shelley finished Frankenstein, which was published anonymously in January 1818. Reviewers and readers assumed that Percy Shelley was the author, since the book was published with his preface and dedicated to his political hero William Godwin. At Marlow, Mary edited the joint journal of the group's 1814 Continental journey, adding material written in Switzerland in 1816, along with Percy's poem "Mont Blanc". The result was the History of a Six Weeks' Tour, published in November 1817. That autumn, Percy Shelley often lived away from home in London to evade creditors. The threat of a debtor's prison, combined with their ill health and fears of losing custody of their children, contributed to the couple's decision to leave England for Italy on 12 March 1818, taking Claire Clairmont and Alba with them. They had no intention of returning. Italy One of the party's first tasks on arriving in Italy was to hand Alba over to Byron, who was living in Venice. He had agreed to raise her so long as Claire had nothing more to do with her. The Shelleys then embarked on a roving existence, never settling in any one place for long. Along the way, they accumulated a circle of friends and acquaintances who often moved with them. The couple devoted their time to writing, reading, learning, sightseeing, and socialising. The Italian adventure was, however, blighted for Mary Shelley by the deaths of both her children—Clara, in September 1818 in Venice, and William, in June 1819 in Rome. These losses left her in a deep depression that isolated her from Percy Shelley, who wrote in his notebook: My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone, And left me in this dreary world alone? Thy form is here indeed—a lovely one— But thou art fled, gone down a dreary road That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode. For thine own sake I cannot follow thee Do thou return for mine. For a time, Mary Shelley found comfort only in her writing. The birth of her fourth child, Percy Florence, on 12 November 1819, finally lifted her spirits, though she nursed the memory of her lost children till the end of her life. Italy provided the Shelleys, Byron, and other exiles with political freedom unattainable at home. Despite its associations with personal loss, Italy became for Mary Shelley "a country which memory painted as paradise". Their Italian years were a time of intense intellectual and creative activity for both Shelleys. While Percy composed a series of major poems, Mary wrote the novel Matilda, the historical novel Valperga, and the plays Proserpine and Midas. Mary wrote Valperga to help alleviate her father's financial difficulties, as Percy refused to assist him further. She was often physically ill, however, and prone to depressions. She also had to cope with Percy's interest in other women, such as Sophia Stacey, Emilia Viviani, and Jane Williams. Since Mary Shelley shared his belief in the non-exclusivity of marriage, she formed emotional ties of her own among the men and women of their circle. She became particularly fond of the Greek revolutionary Prince Alexandros Mavrokordatos and of Jane and Edward Williams. In December 1818, the Shelleys travelled south with Claire Clairmont and their servants to Naples, where they stayed for three months, receiving only one visitor, a physician. In 1820, they found themselves plagued by accusations and threats from Paolo and Elise Foggi, former servants whom Percy Shelley had dismissed in Naples shortly after the Foggis had married. The pair revealed that on 27 February 1819 in Naples, Percy Shelley had registered as his child by Mary Shelley a two-month-old baby girl named Elena Adelaide Shelley. The Foggis also claimed that Claire Clairmont was the baby's mother. Biographers have offered various interpretations of these events: that Percy Shelley decided to adopt a local child; that the baby was his by Elise, Claire, or an unknown woman; or that she was Elise's by Byron. Mary Shelley insisted she would have known if Claire had been pregnant, but it is unclear how much she really knew. The events in Naples, a city Mary Shelley later called a paradise inhabited by devils, remain shrouded in mystery. The only certainty is that she herself was not the child's mother. Elena Adelaide Shelley died in Naples on 9 June 1820. After leaving Naples, the Shelleys settled in Rome, the city where her husband wrote where "the meanest streets were strewed with truncated columns, broken capitals...and sparkling fragments of granite or porphyry...The voice of dead time, in still vibrations, is breathed from these dumb things, animated and glorified as they were by man". Rome inspired her to begin writing the unfinished novel Valerius, the Reanimated Roman, where the eponymous hero resists the decay of Rome and the machinations of "superstitious" Catholicism. The writing of her novel was broken off when her son William died of malaria. Shelley bitterly commented that she had come to Italy to improve her husband's health, and instead the Italian climate had just killed her two children, leading her to write: "May you my dear Marianne never know what it is to lose two only and lovely children in one year—to watch their dying moments—and then at last to be left childless and forever miserable". To deal with her grief, Shelley wrote the novella The Fields of Fancy, which became Matilda, dealing with a young woman whose beauty inspired incestuous love in her father, who ultimately commits suicide to stop himself from acting on his passion for his daughter, while she spends the rest of her life full of despair about "the unnatural love I had inspired". The novella offered a feminist critique of a patriarchal society as Matilda is punished in the afterlife, though she did nothing to encourage her father's feelings. In the summer of 1822, a pregnant Mary moved with Percy, Claire, and Edward and Jane Williams to the isolated Villa Magni, at the sea's edge near the hamlet of San Terenzo in the Bay of Lerici. Once they were settled in, Percy broke the "evil news" to Claire that her daughter Allegra had died of typhus in a convent at Bagnacavallo. Mary Shelley was distracted and unhappy in the cramped and remote Villa Magni, which she came to regard as a dungeon. On 16 June, she miscarried, losing so much blood that she nearly died. Rather than wait for a doctor, Percy sat her in a bath of ice to stanch the bleeding, an act the doctor later told him saved her life. All was not well between the couple that summer, however, and Percy spent more time with Jane Williams than with his depressed and debilitated wife. Much of the short poetry Shelley wrote at San Terenzo involved Jane rather than Mary. The coast offered Percy Shelley and Edward Williams the chance to enjoy their "perfect plaything for the summer", a new sailing boat. The boat had been designed by Daniel Roberts and Edward Trelawny, an admirer of Byron's who had joined the party in January 1822. On 1 July 1822, Percy Shelley, Edward Ellerker Williams, and Captain Daniel Roberts sailed south down the coast to Livorno. There Percy Shelley discussed with Byron and Leigh Hunt the launch of a radical magazine called The Liberal. On 8 July, he and Edward Williams set out on the return journey to Lerici with their eighteen-year-old boat boy, Charles Vivian. They never reached their destination. A letter arrived at Villa Magni from Hunt to Percy Shelley, dated 8 July, saying, "pray write to tell us how you got home, for they say you had bad weather after you sailed Monday & we are anxious". "The paper fell from me," Mary told a friend later. "I trembled all over." She and Jane Williams rushed desperately to Livorno and then to Pisa in the fading hope that their husbands were still alive. Ten days after the storm, three bodies washed up on the coast near Viareggio, midway between Livorno and Lerici. Trelawny, Byron, and Hunt cremated Percy Shelley's corpse on the beach at Viareggio. Return to England and writing career After her husband's death, Mary Shelley lived for a year with Leigh Hunt and his family in Genoa, where she often saw Byron and transcribed his poems. She resolved to live by her pen and for her son, but her financial situation was precarious. On 23 July 1823, she left Genoa for England and stayed with her father and stepmother in the Strand until a small advance from her father-in-law enabled her to lodge nearby. Sir Timothy Shelley had at first agreed to support his grandson, Percy Florence, only if he were handed over to an appointed guardian. Mary Shelley rejected this idea instantly. She managed instead to wring out of Sir Timothy a limited annual allowance (which she had to repay when Percy Florence inherited the estate), but to the end of his days, he refused to meet her in person and dealt with her only through lawyers. Mary Shelley busied herself with editing her husband's poems, among other literary endeavours, but concern for her son restricted her options. Sir Timothy threatened to stop the allowance if any biography of the poet were published. In 1826, Percy Florence became the legal heir of the Shelley estate after the death of his half-brother Charles Shelley, his father's son by Harriet Shelley. Sir Timothy raised Mary's allowance from £100 a year to £250 but remained as difficult as ever. Mary Shelley enjoyed the stimulating society of William Godwin's circle, but poverty prevented her from socialising as she wished. She also felt ostracised by those who, like Sir Timothy, still disapproved of her relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley. In the summer of 1824, Mary Shelley moved to Kentish Town in north London to be near Jane Williams. She may have been, in the words of her biographer Muriel Spark, "a little in love" with Jane. Jane later disillusioned her by gossiping that Percy had preferred her to Mary, owing to Mary's inadequacy as a wife. At around this time, Mary Shelley was working on her novel, The Last Man (1826); and she assisted a series of friends who were writing memoirs of Byron and Percy Shelley—the beginnings of her attempts to immortalise her husband. She also met the American actor John Howard Payne and the American writer Washington Irving, who intrigued her. Payne fell in love with her and in 1826 asked her to marry him. She refused, saying that after being married to one genius, she could only marry another. Payne accepted the rejection and tried without success to talk his friend Irving into proposing himself. Mary Shelley was aware of Payne's plan, but how seriously she took it is unclear. In 1827, Mary Shelley was party to a scheme that enabled her friend Isabel Robinson and Isabel's lover, Mary Diana Dods, who wrote under the name David Lyndsay, to embark on a life together in France as husband and wife. With the help of Payne, whom she kept in the dark about the details, Mary Shelley obtained false passports for the couple. In 1828, she fell ill with smallpox while visiting them in Paris. Weeks later she recovered, unscarred but without her youthful beauty. During the period 1827–40, Mary Shelley was busy as an editor and writer. She wrote the novels The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835), and Falkner (1837). She contributed five volumes of Lives of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French authors to Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia. She also wrote stories for ladies' magazines. She was still helping to support her father, and they looked out for publishers for each other. In 1830, she sold the copyright for a new edition of Frankenstein for £60 to Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley for their new Standard Novels series. After her father's death in 1836 at the age of eighty, she began assembling his letters and a memoir for publication, as he had requested in his will; but after two years of work, she abandoned the project. Throughout this period, she also championed Percy Shelley's poetry, promoting its publication and quoting it in her writing. By 1837, Percy's works were well-known and increasingly admired. In the summer of 1838 Edward Moxon, the publisher of Tennyson and the son-in-law of Charles Lamb, proposed publishing a collected works of Percy Shelley. Mary was paid £500 to edit the Poetical Works (1838), which Sir Timothy insisted should not include a biography. Mary found a way to tell the story of Percy's life, nonetheless: she included extensive biographical notes about the poems. Shelley continued to practice her mother's feminist principles by extending aid to women whom society disapproved of. For instance, Shelley extended financial aid to Mary Diana Dods, a single mother and illegitimate herself who appears to have been a lesbian and gave her the new identity of Walter Sholto Douglas, husband of her lover Isabel Robinson. Shelley also assisted Georgiana Paul, a woman disallowed for by her husband for alleged adultery. Shelley in her diary about her assistance to the latter: "I do not make a boast-I do not say aloud-behold my generosity and greatness of mind-for in truth it is simple justice I perform-and so I am still reviled for being worldly". Mary Shelley continued to treat potential romantic partners with caution. In 1828, she met and flirted with the French writer Prosper Mérimée, but her one surviving letter to him appears to be a deflection of his declaration of love. She was delighted when her old friend from Italy, Edward Trelawny, returned to England, and they joked about marriage in their letters. Their friendship had altered, however, following her refusal to cooperate with his proposed biography of Percy Shelley; and he later reacted angrily to her omission of the atheistic section of Queen Mab from Percy Shelley's poems. Oblique references in her journals, from the early 1830s until the early 1840s, suggest that Mary Shelley had feelings for the radical politician Aubrey Beauclerk, who may have disappointed her by twice marrying others. Mary Shelley's first concern during these years was the welfare of Percy Florence. She honoured her late husband's wish that his son attend public school and, with Sir Timothy's grudging help, had him educated at Harrow. To avoid boarding fees, she moved to Harrow on the Hill herself so that Percy could attend as a day scholar. Though Percy went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, and dabbled in politics and the law, he showed no sign of his parents' gifts. He was devoted to his mother, and after he left university in 1841, he came to live with her. Final years and death In 1840 and 1842, mother and son travelled together on the continent, journeys that Mary Shelley recorded in Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843 (1844). In 1844, Sir Timothy Shelley finally died at the age of ninety, "falling from the stalk like an overblown flower", as Mary put it. For the first time, she and her son were financially independent, though the estate proved less valuable than they had hoped. In the mid-1840s, Mary Shelley found herself the target of three separate blackmailers. In 1845, an Italian political exile called Gatteschi, whom she had met in Paris, threatened to publish letters she had sent him. A friend of her son's bribed a police chief into seizing Gatteschi's papers, including the letters, which were then destroyed. Shortly afterwards, Mary Shelley bought some letters written by herself and Percy Bysshe Shelley from a man calling himself G. Byron and posing as the illegitimate son of the late Lord Byron. Also in 1845, Percy Bysshe Shelley's cousin Thomas Medwin approached her claiming to have written a damaging biography of Percy Shelley. He said he would suppress it in return for £250, but Mary Shelley refused. In 1848, Percy Florence married Jane Gibson St John. The marriage proved a happy one, and Mary Shelley and Jane were fond of each other. Mary lived with her son and daughter-in-law at Field Place, Sussex, the Shelleys' ancestral home, and at Chester Square, London, and accompanied them on travels abroad. Mary Shelley's last years were blighted by illness. From 1839, she suffered from headaches and bouts of paralysis in parts of her body, which sometimes prevented her from reading and writing. On 1 February 1851, at Chester Square, she died at the age of fifty-three from what her physician suspected was a brain tumour. According to Jane Shelley, Mary Shelley had asked to be buried with her mother and father; but Percy and Jane, judging the graveyard at St Pancras to be "dreadful", chose to bury her instead at St Peter's Church, Bournemouth, near their new home at Boscombe. On the first anniversary of Mary Shelley's death, the Shelleys opened her box-desk. Inside they found locks of her dead children's hair, a notebook she had shared with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a copy of his poem Adonaïs with one page folded round a silk parcel containing some of his ashes and the remains of his heart. Literary themes and styles Mary Shelley lived a literary life. Her father encouraged her to learn to write by composing letters, and her favourite occupation as a child was writing stories. Unfortunately, all of Mary's juvenilia were lost when she ran off with Percy in 1814, and none of her surviving manuscripts can be definitively dated before that year. Her first published work is often thought to have been Mounseer Nongtongpaw, comic verses written for Godwin's Juvenile Library when she was ten and a half; however, the poem is attributed to another writer in the most recent authoritative collection of her works. Percy Shelley enthusiastically encouraged Mary Shelley's writing: "My husband was, from the first, very anxious that I should prove myself worthy of my parentage, and enrol myself on the page of fame. He was forever inciting me to obtain literary reputation." Novels Autobiographical elements Certain sections of Mary Shelley's novels are often interpreted as masked rewritings of her life. Critics have pointed to the recurrence of the father–daughter motif in particular as evidence of this autobiographical style. For example, commentators frequently read Mathilda (1820) autobiographically, identifying the three central characters as versions of Mary Shelley, William Godwin, and Percy Shelley. Mary Shelley herself confided that she modelled the central characters of The Last Man on her Italian circle. Lord Raymond, who leaves England to fight for the Greeks and dies in Constantinople, is based on Lord Byron; and the utopian Adrian, Earl of Windsor, who leads his followers in search of a natural paradise and dies when his boat sinks in a storm, is a fictional portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley. However, as she wrote in her review of Godwin's novel Cloudesley (1830), she did not believe that authors "were merely copying from our own hearts". William Godwin regarded his daughter's characters as types rather than portraits from real life. Some modern critics, such as Patricia Clemit and Jane Blumberg, have taken the same view, resisting autobiographical readings of Mary Shelley's works. Novelistic genres Mary Shelley employed the techniques of many different novelistic genres, most vividly the Godwinian novel, Walter Scott's new historical novel, and the Gothic novel. The Godwinian novel, made popular during the 1790s with works such as Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794), "employed a Rousseauvian confessional form to explore the contradictory relations between the self and society", and Frankenstein exhibits many of the same themes and literary devices as Godwin's novel. However, Shelley critiques those Enlightenment ideals that Godwin promotes in his works. In The Last Man, she uses the philosophical form of the Godwinian novel to demonstrate the ultimate meaninglessness of the world. While earlier Godwinian novels had shown how rational individuals could slowly improve society, The Last Man and Frankenstein demonstrate the individual's lack of control over history. Shelley uses the historical novel to comment on gender relations; for example, Valperga is a feminist version of Scott's masculinist genre. Introducing women into the story who are not part of the historical record, Shelley uses their narratives to question established theological and political institutions. Shelley sets the male protagonist's compulsive greed for conquest in opposition to a female alternative: reason and sensibility. In Perkin Warbeck, Shelley's other historical novel, Lady Gordon stands for the values of friendship, domesticity, and equality. Through her, Shelley offers a feminine alternative to the masculine power politics that destroy the male characters. The novel provides a more inclusive historical narrative to challenge the one which usually relates only masculine events. Gender With the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1970s, Mary Shelley's works, particularly Frankenstein, began to attract much more attention from scholars. Feminist and psychoanalytic critics were largely responsible for the recovery from neglect of Shelley as a writer. Ellen Moers was one of the first to claim that Shelley's loss of a baby was a crucial influence on the writing of Frankenstein. She argues that the novel is a "birth myth" in which Shelley comes to terms with her guilt for causing her mother's death as well as for failing as a parent. Shelley scholar Anne K. Mellor suggests that, from a feminist viewpoint, it is a story "about what happens when a man tries to have a baby without a woman ... [Frankenstein] is profoundly concerned with natural as opposed to unnatural modes of production and reproduction". Victor Frankenstein's failure as a "parent" in the novel has been read as an expression of the anxieties which accompany pregnancy, giving birth, and particularly maternity. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue in their seminal book The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) that in Frankenstein in particular, Shelley responded to the masculine literary tradition represented by John Milton's Paradise Lost. In their interpretation, Shelley reaffirms this masculine tradition, including the misogyny inherent in it, but at the same time "conceal[s] fantasies of equality that occasionally erupt in monstrous images of rage". Mary Poovey reads the first edition of Frankenstein as part of a larger pattern in Shelley's writing, which begins with literary self-assertion and ends with conventional femininity. Poovey suggests that Frankenstein's multiple narratives enable Shelley to split her artistic persona: she can "express and efface herself at the same time". Shelley's fear of self-assertion is reflected in the fate of Frankenstein, who is punished for his egotism by losing all his domestic ties. Feminist critics often focus on how authorship itself, particularly female authorship, is represented in and through Shelley's novels. As Mellor explains, Shelley uses the Gothic style not only to explore repressed female sexual desire but also as way to "censor her own speech in Frankenstein". According to Poovey and Mellor, Shelley did not want to promote her own authorial persona and felt deeply inadequate as a writer, and "this shame contributed to the generation of her fictional images of abnormality, perversion, and destruction". Shelley's writings focus on the role of the family in society and women's role within that family. She celebrates the "feminine affections and compassion" associated with the family and suggests that civil society will fail without them. Shelley was "profoundly committed to an ethic of cooperation, mutual dependence, and self-sacrifice". In Lodore, for example, the central story follows the fortunes of the wife and daughter of the title character, Lord Lodore, who is killed in a duel at the end of the first volume, leaving a trail of legal, financial, and familial obstacles for the two "heroines" to negotiate. The novel is engaged with political and ideological issues, particularly the education and social role of women. It dissects a patriarchal culture that separated the sexes and pressured women into dependence on men. In the view of Shelley scholar Betty T. Bennett, "the novel proposes egalitarian educational paradigms for women and men, which would bring social justice as well as the spiritual and intellectual means by which to meet the challenges life invariably brings". However, Falkner is the only one of Mary Shelley's novels in which the heroine's agenda triumphs. The novel's resolution proposes that when female values triumph over violent and destructive masculinity, men will be freed to express the "compassion, sympathy, and generosity" of their better natures. Enlightenment and Romanticism Frankenstein, like much Gothic fiction of the period, mixes a visceral and alienating subject matter with speculative and thought-provoking themes. Rather than focusing on the twists and turns of the plot, however, the novel foregrounds the mental and moral struggles of the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, and Shelley imbues the text with her own brand of politicised Romanticism, one that criticised the individualism and egotism of traditional Romanticism. Victor Frankenstein is like Satan in Paradise Lost, and Prometheus: he rebels against tradition; he creates life; and he shapes his own destiny. These traits are not portrayed positively; as Blumberg writes, "his relentless ambition is a self-delusion, clothed as quest for truth". He must abandon his family to fulfill his ambition. Mary Shelley believed in the Enlightenment idea that people could improve society through the responsible exercise of political power, but she feared that the irresponsible exercise of power would lead to chaos. In practice, her works largely criticise the way 18th-century thinkers such as her parents believed such change could be brought about. The creature in Frankenstein, for example, reads books associated with radical ideals but the education he gains from them is ultimately useless. Shelley's works reveal her as less optimistic than Godwin and Wollstonecraft; she lacks faith in Godwin's theory that humanity could eventually be perfected. As literary scholar Kari Lokke writes, The Last Man, more so than Frankenstein, "in its refusal to place humanity at the centre of the universe, its questioning of our privileged position in relation to nature ... constitutes a profound and prophetic challenge to Western humanism." Specifically, Mary Shelley's allusions to what radicals believed was a failed revolution in France and the Godwinian, Wollstonecraftian, and Burkean responses to it, challenge "Enlightenment faith in the inevitability of progress through collective efforts". As in Frankenstein, Shelley "offers a profoundly disenchanted commentary on the age of revolution, which ends in a total rejection of the progressive ideals of her own generation". Not only does she reject these Enlightenment political ideals, but she also rejects the Romantic notion that the poetic or literary imagination can offer an alternative. Politics There is a new scholarly emphasis on Shelley as a lifelong reformer, deeply engaged in the liberal and feminist concerns of her day. In 1820, she was thrilled by the Liberal uprising in Spain which forced the king to grant a constitution. In 1823, she wrote articles for Leigh Hunt's periodical The Liberal and played an active role in the formulation of its outlook. She was delighted when the Whigs came back to power in 1830 and at the prospect of the 1832 Reform Act. Critics have until recently cited Lodore and Falkner as evidence of increasing conservatism in Mary Shelley's later works. In 1984, Mary Poovey influentially identified the retreat of Mary Shelley's reformist politics into the "separate sphere" of the domestic. Poovey suggested that Mary Shelley wrote Falkner to resolve her conflicted response to her father's combination of libertarian radicalism and stern insistence on social decorum. Mellor largely agreed, arguing that "Mary Shelley grounded her alternative political ideology on the metaphor of the peaceful, loving, bourgeois family. She thereby implicitly endorsed a conservative vision of gradual evolutionary reform." This vision allowed women to participate in the public sphere but it inherited the inequalities inherent in the bourgeois family. However, in the last decade or so this view has been challenged. For example, Bennett claims that Mary Shelley's works reveal a consistent commitment to Romantic idealism and political reform and Jane Blumberg's study of Shelley's early novels argues that her career cannot be easily divided into radical and conservative halves. She contends that "Shelley was never a passionate radical like her husband and her later lifestyle was not abruptly assumed nor was it a betrayal. She was in fact challenging the political and literary influences of her circle in her first work." In this reading, Shelley's early works are interpreted as a challenge to Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley's radicalism. Victor Frankenstein's "thoughtless rejection of family", for example, is seen as evidence of Shelley's constant concern for the domestic. Short stories In the 1820s and 1830s, Mary Shelley frequently wrote short stories for gift books or annuals, including sixteen for The Keepsake, which was aimed at middle-class women and bound in silk, with gilt-edged pages. Mary Shelley's work in this genre has been described as that of a "hack writer" and "wordy and pedestrian". However, critic Charlotte Sussman points out that other leading writers of the day, such as the Romantic poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, also took advantage of this profitable market. She explains that "the annuals were a major mode of literary production in the 1820s and 1830s", with The Keepsake the most successful. Many of Shelley's stories are set in places or times far removed from early 19th-century Britain, such as Greece and the reign of Henry IV of France. Shelley was particularly interested in "the fragility of individual identity" and often depicted "the way a person's role in the world can be cataclysmically altered either by an internal emotional upheaval, or by some supernatural occurrence that mirrors an internal schism". In her stories, female identity is tied to a woman's short-lived value in the marriage market while male identity can be sustained and transformed through the use of money. Although Mary Shelley wrote twenty-one short stories for the annuals between 1823 and 1839, she always saw herself, above all, as a novelist. She wrote to Leigh Hunt, "I write bad articles which help to make me miserable—but I am going to plunge into a novel and hope that its clear water will wash off the mud of the magazines." Travelogues When they ran off to France in the summer of 1814, Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley began a joint journal, which they published in 1817 under the title History of a Six Weeks' Tour, adding four letters, two by each of them, based on their visit to Geneva in 1816, along with Percy Shelley's poem "Mont Blanc". The work celebrates youthful love and political idealism and consciously follows the example of Mary Wollstonecraft and others who had combined travelling with writing. The perspective of the History is philosophical and reformist rather than that of a conventional travelogue; in particular, it addresses the effects of politics and war on France. The letters the couple wrote on the second journey confront the "great and extraordinary events" of the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo after his "Hundred Days" return in 1815. They also explore the sublimity of Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc as well as the revolutionary legacy of the philosopher and novelist Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Mary Shelley's last full-length book, written in the form of letters and published in 1844, was Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843, which recorded her travels with her son Percy Florence and his university friends. In Rambles, Shelley follows the tradition of Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark and her own A History of a Six Weeks' Tour in mapping her personal and political landscape through the discourse of sensibility and sympathy. For Shelley, building sympathetic connections between people is the way to build civil society and to increase knowledge: "knowledge, to enlighten and free the mind from clinging deadening prejudices—a wider circle of sympathy with our fellow-creatures;—these are the uses of travel". Between observations on scenery, culture, and "the people, especially in a political point of view", she uses the travelogue form to explore her roles as a widow and mother and to reflect on revolutionary nationalism in Italy. She also records her "pilgrimage" to scenes associated with Percy Shelley. According to critic Clarissa Orr, Mary Shelley's adoption of a persona of philosophical motherhood gives Rambles the unity of a prose poem, with "death and memory as central themes". At the same time, Shelley makes an egalitarian case against monarchy, class distinctions, slavery, and war. Biographies Between 1832 and 1839, Mary Shelley wrote many biographies of notable Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French men and a few women for Dionysius Lardner's Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men. These formed part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia, one of the best of many such series produced in the 1820s and 1830s in response to growing middle-class demand for self-education. Until the republication of these essays in 2002, their significance within her body of work was not appreciated. In the view of literary scholar Greg Kucich, they reveal Mary Shelley's "prodigious research across several centuries and in multiple languages", her gift for biographical narrative, and her interest in the "emerging forms of feminist historiography". Shelley wrote in a biographical style popularised by the 18th-century critic Samuel Johnson in his Lives of the Poets (1779–81), combining secondary sources, memoir and anecdote, and authorial evaluation. She records details of each writer's life and character, quotes their writing in the original as well as in translation, and ends with a critical assessment of their achievement. For Shelley, biographical writing was supposed to, in her words, "form as it were a school in which to study the philosophy of history", and to teach "lessons". Most frequently and importantly, these lessons consisted of criticisms of male-dominated institutions such as primogeniture. Shelley emphasises domesticity, romance, family, sympathy, and compassion in the lives of her subjects. Her conviction that such forces could improve society connects her biographical approach with that of other early feminist historians such as Mary Hays and Anna Jameson. Unlike her novels, most of which had an original print run of several hundred copies, the Lives had a print run of about 4,000 for each volume: thus, according to Kucich, Mary Shelley's "use of biography to forward the social agenda of women's historiography became one of her most influential political interventions". Editorial work Soon after Percy Shelley's death, Mary Shelley determined to write his biography. In a letter of 17 November 1822, she announced: "I shall write his life—& thus occupy myself in the only manner from which I can derive consolation." However, her father-in-law, Sir Timothy Shelley, effectively banned her from doing so. Mary began her fostering of Percy's poetic reputation in 1824 with the publication of his Posthumous Poems. In 1839, while she was working on the Lives, she prepared a new edition of his poetry, which became, in the words of literary scholar Susan J. Wolfson, "the canonizing event" in the history of her husband's reputation. The following year, Mary Shelley edited a volume of her husband's essays, letters, translations, and fragments, and throughout the 1830s, she introduced his poetry to a wider audience by publishing assorted works in the annual The Keepsake. Evading Sir Timothy's ban on a biography, Mary Shelley often included in these editions her own annotations and reflections on her husband's life and work. "I am to justify his ways," she had declared in 1824; "I am to make him beloved to all posterity." It was this goal, argues Blumberg, that led her to present Percy's work to the public in the "most popular form possible". To tailor his works for a Victorian audience, she cast Percy Shelley as a lyrical rather than a political poet. As Mary Favret writes, "the disembodied Percy identifies the spirit of poetry itself". Mary glossed Percy's political radicalism as a form of sentimentalism, arguing that his republicanism arose from sympathy for those who were suffering. She inserted romantic anecdotes of his benevolence, domesticity, and love of the natural world. Portraying herself as Percy's "practical muse", she also noted how she had suggested revisions as he wrote. Despite the emotions stirred by this task, Mary Shelley arguably proved herself in many respects a professional and scholarly editor. Working from Percy's messy, sometimes indecipherable, notebooks, she attempted to form a chronology for his writings, and she included poems, such as Epipsychidion, addressed to Emilia Viviani, which she would rather have left out. She was forced, however, into several compromises, and, as Blumberg notes, "modern critics have found fault with the edition and claim variously that she miscopied, misinterpreted, purposely obscured, and attempted to turn the poet into something he was not". According to Wolfson, Donald Reiman, a modern editor of Percy Bysshe Shelley's works, still refers to Mary Shelley's editions, while acknowledging that her editing style belongs "to an age of editing when the aim was not to establish accurate texts and scholarly apparatus but to present a full record of a writer's career for the general reader". In principle, Mary Shelley believed in publishing every last word of her husband's work; but she found herself obliged to omit certain passages, either by pressure from her publisher, Edward Moxon, or in deference to public propriety. For example, she removed the atheistic passages from Queen Mab for the first edition. After she restored them in the second edition, Moxon was prosecuted and convicted of blasphemous libel, though the prosecution was brought out of principle by the Chartist publisher Henry Hetherington, and no punishment was sought. Mary Shelley's omissions provoked criticism, often stinging, from members of Percy Shelley's former circle, and reviewers accused her of, among other things, indiscriminate inclusions. Her notes have nevertheless remained an essential source for the study of Percy Shelley's work. As Bennett explains, "biographers and critics agree that Mary Shelley's commitment to bring Shelley the notice she believed his works merited was the single, major force that established Shelley's reputation during a period when he almost certainly would have faded from public view". Reputation In her own lifetime, Mary Shelley was taken seriously as a writer, though reviewers often missed her writings' political edge. After her death, however, she was chiefly remembered as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of Frankenstein. In fact, in the introduction to her letters published in 1945, editor Frederick Jones wrote, "a collection of the present size could not be justified by the general quality of the letters or by Mary Shelley's importance as a writer. It is as the wife of [Percy Bysshe Shelley] that she excites our interest." This attitude had not disappeared by 1980 when Betty T. Bennett published the first volume of Mary Shelley's complete letters. As she explains, "the fact is that until recent years scholars have generally regarded Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley as a result: William Godwin's and Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter who became Shelley's Pygmalion." It was not until Emily Sunstein's Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality in 1989 that a full-length scholarly biography was published. The attempts of Mary Shelley's son and daughter-in-law to "Victorianise" her memory by censoring biographical documents contributed to a perception of Mary Shelley as a more conventional, less reformist figure than her works suggest. Her own timid omissions from Percy Shelley's works and her quiet avoidance of public controversy in her later years added to this impression. Commentary by Hogg, Trelawny, and other admirers of Percy Shelley also tended to downplay Mary Shelley's radicalism. Trelawny's Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author (1878) praised Percy Shelley at the expense of Mary, questioning her intelligence and even her authorship of Frankenstein. Lady Shelley, Percy Florence's wife, responded in part by presenting a severely edited collection of letters she had inherited, published privately as Shelley and Mary in 1882. From Frankenstein'''s first theatrical adaptation in 1823 to the cinematic adaptations of the 20th century, including the first cinematic version in 1910 and now-famous versions such as James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein, Mel Brooks' satirical 1974 Young Frankenstein, and Kenneth Branagh's 1994 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, many audiences first encounter the work of Mary Shelley through adaptation. Over the course of the 19th century, Mary Shelley came to be seen as a one-novel author at best, rather than as the professional writer she was; most of her works have remained out of print until the last thirty years, obstructing a larger view of her achievement. In recent decades, the republication of almost all her writing has stimulated a new recognition of its value. Her habit of intensive reading and study, revealed in her journals and letters and reflected in her works, is now better appreciated. Shelley's conception of herself as an author has also been recognised; after Percy's death, she wrote of her authorial ambitions: "I think that I can maintain myself, and there is something inspiriting in the idea." Scholars now consider Mary Shelley to be a major Romantic figure, significant for her literary achievement and her political voice as a woman and a liberal. Selected works History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817) Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) Mathilda (1819) Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823) Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1824) The Last Man (1826) The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830) Lodore (1835) Falkner (1837) The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1839) Contributions to Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men (1835–39), part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 (1844) Collections of Mary Shelley's papers are housed in Lord Abinger's Shelley Collection on deposit at the Bodleian Library, the New York Public Library (particularly The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle), the Huntington Library, the British Library, and in the John Murray Collection. See also Mary Shelley (2017 film) Godwin–Shelley family tree Map of 1814 and 1816 European journeys Map of 1840s European journeys Notes References All essays from The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley are marked with a "(CC)" and those from The Other Mary Shelley with an "(OMS)". Bibliography Primary sources Shelley, Mary. Collected Tales and Stories. Ed. Charles E. Robinson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. . Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Ed. Susan J. Wolfson. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. . Shelley, Mary. The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814–44. Ed. Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. The Last Man. Ed. Morton D. Paley. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1998. . Shelley, Mary. Lodore. Ed. Lisa Vargo. Ontario: Broadview Press, 1997. . Shelley, Mary. Mary Shelley's Literary Lives and Other Writings. 4 vols. Ed. Tilar J. Mazzeo. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2002. . Shelley, Mary. Mathilda . Ed. Elizabeth Nitchie. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 16 February 2008. Shelley, Mary. Matilda; with Mary and Maria, by Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd. London: Penguin, 1992. . Shelley, Mary, ed. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley . London: Edward Moxon, 1840. Google Books. Retrieved 6 April 2008. Shelley, Mary. Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca. Ed. Michael Rossington. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 2000. . Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Shelley's Poetry and Prose. Eds. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2002. . Secondary sources Bennett, Betty T. "Finding Mary Shelley in her Letters". Romantic Revisions. Ed. Robert Brinkley and Keith Hanley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. . Bennett, Betty T., ed. Mary Shelley in her Times. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Bennett, Betty T. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. . Bennett, Betty T. "The Political Philosophy of Mary Shelley's Historical Novels: Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". The Evidence of the Imagination. Ed. Donald H. Reiman, Michael C. Jaye, and Betty T. Bennett. New York: New York University Press, 1978. . Bieri, James. Percy Bysshe Shelley, a Biography: Exile of Unfulfilled Renown, 1816–1822. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005. . Blumberg, Jane. Mary Shelley's Early Novels: "This Child of Imagination and Misery". Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993. . Bunnell, Charlene E. "All the World's a Stage": Dramatic Sensibility in Mary Shelley's Novels. New York: Routledge, 2002. . Carlson, J. A. England's First Family of Writers: Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Shelley. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. . Clemit, Pamela. "From The Fields of Fancy to Matilda." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Clemit, Pamela. The Godwinian Novel: The Rational Fictions of Godwin, Brockden Brown, Mary Shelley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. . Conger, Syndy M., Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea, eds. Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Eberle-Sinatra, Michael, ed. Mary Shelley's Fictions: From Frankenstein to Falkner. New York: St. Martin's Press/Palgrave, 2000. . Fisch, Audrey A., Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schorr, eds. The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond "Frankenstein". New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. . Frank, Frederick S. "Mary Shelley's Other Fictions: A Bibliographic Consensus". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Garrett, Martin Mary Shelley. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. 1979. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. . Gittings, Robert and Jo Manton. Claire Clairmont and the Shelleys. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. . Holmes, Richard. Shelley: The Pursuit. 1974. London: Harper Perennial, 2003. . Jones, Steven. "Charles E. Robinson, Ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two)". (Book Review). Romantic Circles website, 1 January 1998. Retrieved 15 September 2016. Jump, Harriet Devine, Pamela Clemit, and Betty T. Bennett, eds. Lives of the Great Romantics III: Godwin, Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley by Their Contemporaries. London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999. . Levine, George and U. C. Knoepflmacher, eds. The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley's novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. . Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, her Fiction, Her Monsters. London: Routledge, 1990. . Myers, Mitzi. "Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley: The Female Author between Public and Private Spheres." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Orr, Clarissa Campbell. "Mary Shelley's Rambles in Germany and Italy, the Celebrity Author, and the Undiscovered Country of the Human Heart". Romanticism on the Net 11 (August 1998). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. . Robinson, Charles E., ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two). The Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics, Volume IX, Donald H. Reiman, general ed. Garland Publishing, 1996. . Schor, Esther, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. . Seymour, Miranda. Mary Shelley. London: John Murray, 2000. . Sites, Melissa. "Re/membering Home: Utopian Domesticity in Mary Shelley's Lodore". A Brighter Morn: The Shelley Circle's Utopian Project. Ed. Darby Lewes. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003. . Smith, Johanna M. "A Critical History of Frankenstein". Frankenstein. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. . Spark, Muriel. Mary Shelley. London: Cardinal, 1987. . St Clair, William. The Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography of a Family. London: Faber & Faber, 1989. . Sterrenburg, Lee. "The Last Man: Anatomy of Failed Revolutions". Nineteenth Century Fiction 33 (1978): 324–47. Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. 1989. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. . Townsend, William C. Modern State Trials. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1850. Wake, Ann M Frank. "Women in the Active Voice: Recovering Female History in Mary Shelley's Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . White, Daniel E. "'The god undeified': Mary Shelley's Valperga, Italy, and the Aesthetic of Desire ". Romanticism on the Net 6 (May 1997). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Further reading Goulding, Christopher. "The Real Doctor Frankenstein?" Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. The Royal Society of Medicine, May 2002. Richard Holmes, "Out of Control" (review of Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds, edited by David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Jason Scott Robert, MIT Press, 277 pp.; and Mary Shelley, The New Annotated Frankenstein, edited and with a foreword and notes by Leslie S. Klinger, Liveright, 352 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 20 (21 December 2017), pp. 38, 40–41. Gordon, Charlotte (2016). Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley'', Random House. External links Mary Shelley chronology and bibliography – part of Romantic Circles Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley manuscript material, 1815–1850, held by the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, New York Public Library Mary Shelley at the British Library Exhibits relating to Mary Shelley at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford 1797 births 1851 deaths 19th-century English women writers 19th-century English novelists 19th-century British short story writers British expatriates in Italy British expatriates in Switzerland British feminists British horror writers British science fiction writers Deaths from brain tumor Deaths from cancer in England English expatriates in Italy English expatriates in Switzerland English feminists English horror writers English science fiction writers English travel writers English women novelists Frankenstein Godwin family People from Bournemouth People from Somers Town, London Romanticism Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees Victorian novelists Women historical novelists Women horror writers Women of the Regency era Women science fiction and fantasy writers British women travel writers Writers of Gothic fiction Shelley family Weird fiction writers
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[ "Do Women Have a Higher Sex Drive? is a 2018 documentary film by Dutch media producer Jan-Willem Breure. It is presented by Cheyenne Löhnen and covers the topics of female sexuality, gender and feminism.\n\nSynopsis\nThe documentary explores female sexuality and challenges many long had beliefs society has had about women. The film also explores the polarization and growing tensions between men and women and the fundamental reasons behind these problems. How to rise of women has impacted society and how this new power has transformed mate selection. The film also goes into great detail examining issues such as female orgasms, lust, women's pornography, female sex toys, evolutionary biology and the many misconceptions both genders have about each other. It looks had how society conditions women from a young age to act and behave a certain way and looks at the consequences of this conditioning. How women navigate in these contradicting environments, where on the one hand the media encourage sexual freedom for women, but on the other hand family encourages abstinence.\n\nSee also\n Feminism\nHuman female sexuality\n Sex drive \nSexual arousal\nVibrator (sex toy)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n \n\nDutch documentary films\nDutch films\n2018 films\nEnglish-language films\nDocumentary films about sexuality\nCinema of the Netherlands\nAmsterdam\n2018 documentary films", "Anita B. is a 2014 Italian drama film directed by Roberto Faenza. It is loosely based on the 2009 autobiographic novel Quanta stella c'è nel cielo (How Many Stars Twinkle in the Sky) by Edith Bruck.\n\nCast \n Eline Powell: Anita\n Robert Sheehan: Eli\n Andrea Osvárt: Monica\n Antonio Cupo: Aron\n Nico Mirallegro: David \n Moni Ovadia: Uncle Jacob\n Jane Alexander: Sarah\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n2014 films\n2014 drama films\nEnglish-language Italian films\nFilms directed by Roberto Faenza\nItalian films\nItalian drama films" ]
[ "Mary Shelley", "Lake Geneva and Frankenstein", "When did Mary Shelley write Frankenstein?", "Mary Shelley remembered in 1831,", "What did she have to do with Lake Geneva?", "close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis", "what did they do while they were there?", "They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. \"", "What did they write while they were there?", "Byron to propose that they \"each write a ghost story\".", "Did they write the ghost story?", "she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her \"waking dream\", her ghost story:", "how did that end for her?", "She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein:", "was Frankenstein successful?", "The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films.", "how many films?", "a number of films." ]
C_fcd11261399c4441ac5c013381bf1e1d_1
did percy also publish a ghost story?
9
Did percy also publish a ghost story?
Mary Shelley
In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. The party arrived at Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted, "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. CANNOTANSWER
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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and feminist activist Mary Wollstonecraft. Shelley's mother died less than a month after giving birth to her. She was raised by her father, who provided her with a rich if informal education, encouraging her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories. When she was four, her father married a neighbour, Mary Jane Clairmont, with whom Shelley came to have a troubled relationship. In 1814, Shelley began a romance with one of her father's political followers, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. Together with her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, she and Percy left for France and travelled through Europe. Upon their return to England, Shelley was pregnant with Percy's child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet. In 1816, the couple and Mary's stepsister famously spent a summer with Lord Byron and John William Polidori near Geneva, Switzerland, where Shelley conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, most likely caused by the brain tumour which killed her at age 53. Until the 1970s, Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish her husband's works and for her novel Frankenstein, which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Shelley's achievements. Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826) and her final two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). Studies of her lesser-known works, such as the travel book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–1846), support the growing view that Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life. Shelley's works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practised by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin. Life and career Early life Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, in 1797. She was the second child of the feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the first child of the philosopher, novelist, and journalist William Godwin. Wollstonecraft died of puerperal fever shortly after Mary was born. Godwin was left to bring up Mary, along with her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, Wollstonecraft's child by the American speculator Gilbert Imlay. A year after Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798), which he intended as a sincere and compassionate tribute. However, because the Memoirs revealed Wollstonecraft's affairs and her illegitimate child, they were seen as shocking. Mary Godwin read these memoirs and her mother's books, and was brought up to cherish her mother's memory. Mary's earliest years were happy, judging from the letters of William Godwin's housekeeper and nurse, Louisa Jones. But Godwin was often deeply in debt; feeling that he could not raise the children by himself, he cast about for a second wife. In December 1801, he married Mary Jane Clairmont, a well-educated woman with two young children of her own—Charles and Claire. Most of Godwin's friends disliked his new wife, describing her as quick-tempered and quarrelsome; but Godwin was devoted to her, and the marriage was a success. Mary Godwin, on the other hand, came to detest her stepmother. William Godwin's 19th-century biographer Charles Kegan Paul later suggested that Mrs Godwin had favoured her own children over those of Mary Wollstonecraft. Together, the Godwins started a publishing firm called M. J. Godwin, which sold children's books as well as stationery, maps, and games. However, the business did not turn a profit, and Godwin was forced to borrow substantial sums to keep it going. He continued to borrow to pay off earlier loans, compounding his problems. By 1809, Godwin's business was close to failure, and he was "near to despair". Godwin was saved from debtor's prison by philosophical devotees such as Francis Place, who lent him further money. Though Mary Godwin received little formal education, her father tutored her in a broad range of subjects. He often took the children on educational outings, and they had access to his library and to the many intellectuals who visited him, including the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the former vice-president of the United States Aaron Burr. Godwin admitted he was not educating the children according to Mary Wollstonecraft's philosophy as outlined in works such as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), but Mary Godwin nonetheless received an unusual and advanced education for a girl of the time. She had a governess, a daily tutor, and read many of her father's children's books on Roman and Greek history in manuscript. For six months in 1811, she also attended a boarding school in Ramsgate. Her father described her at age 15 as "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible." In June 1812, Mary's father sent her to stay with the dissenting family of the radical William Baxter, near Dundee, Scotland. To Baxter, he wrote, "I am anxious that she should be brought up ... like a philosopher, even like a cynic." Scholars have speculated that she may have been sent away for her health, to remove her from the seamy side of the business, or to introduce her to radical politics. Mary Godwin revelled in the spacious surroundings of Baxter's house and in the companionship of his four daughters, and she returned north in the summer of 1813 for a further stay of 10 months. In the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein, she recalled: "I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered." Percy Bysshe Shelley Mary Godwin may have first met the radical poet-philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley in the interval between her two stays in Scotland. By the time she returned home for a second time on 30 March 1814, Percy Shelley had become estranged from his wife and was regularly visiting William Godwin, whom he had agreed to bail out of debt. Percy Shelley's radicalism, particularly his economic views, which he had imbibed from William Godwin's Political Justice (1793), had alienated him from his wealthy aristocratic family: they wanted him to follow traditional models of the landed aristocracy, and he wanted to donate large amounts of the family's money to schemes intended to help the disadvantaged. Percy Shelley, therefore, had difficulty gaining access to money until he inherited his estate because his family did not want him wasting it on projects of "political justice". After several months of promises, Shelley announced that he either could not or would not pay off all of Godwin's debts. Godwin was angry and felt betrayed. Mary and Percy began meeting each other secretly at her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's grave in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, and they fell in love—she was 16, and he was 21. On 26 June 1814, Shelley and Godwin declared their love for one another as Shelley announced he could not hide his "ardent passion", leading her in a "sublime and rapturous moment" to say she felt the same way; on either that day or the next, Godwin lost her virginity to Shelley, which tradition claims happened in the churchyard. Godwin described herself as attracted to Shelley's "wild, intellectual, unearthly looks". To Mary's dismay, her father disapproved, and tried to thwart the relationship and salvage the "spotless fame" of his daughter. At about the same time, Mary's father learned of Shelley's inability to pay off the father's debts. Mary, who later wrote of "my excessive and romantic attachment to my father", was confused. She saw Percy Shelley as an embodiment of her parents' liberal and reformist ideas of the 1790s, particularly Godwin's view that marriage was a repressive monopoly, which he had argued in his 1793 edition of Political Justice but later retracted. On 28 July 1814, the couple eloped and secretly left for France, taking Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with them. After convincing Mary Jane Godwin, who had pursued them to Calais, that they did not wish to return, the trio travelled to Paris, and then, by donkey, mule, carriage, and foot, through a France recently ravaged by war, to Switzerland. "It was acting in a novel, being an incarnate romance," Mary Shelley recalled in 1826. Godwin wrote about France in 1814: "The distress of the inhabitants, whose houses had been burned, their cattle killed and all their wealth destroyed, has given a sting to my detestation of war...". As they travelled, Mary and Percy read works by Mary Wollstonecraft and others, kept a joint journal, and continued their own writing. At Lucerne, lack of money forced the three to turn back. They travelled down the Rhine and by land to the Dutch port of Maassluis, arriving at Gravesend, Kent, on 13 September 1814. The situation awaiting Mary Godwin in England was fraught with complications, some of which she had not foreseen. Either before or during the journey, she had become pregnant. She and Percy now found themselves penniless, and, to Mary's genuine surprise, her father refused to have anything to do with her. The couple moved with Claire into lodgings at Somers Town, and later, Nelson Square. They maintained their intense programme of reading and writing, and entertained Percy Shelley's friends, such as Thomas Jefferson Hogg and the writer Thomas Love Peacock. Percy Shelley sometimes left home for short periods to dodge creditors. The couple's distraught letters reveal their pain at these separations. Pregnant and often ill, Mary Godwin had to cope with Percy's joy at the birth of his son by Harriet Shelley in late 1814 and his constant outings with Claire Clairmont. Shelley and Clairmont were almost certainly lovers, which caused much jealousy on Godwin's part. Shelley greatly offended Godwin at one point when during a walk in the French countryside he suggested that they both take the plunge into a stream naked as it offended her principles. She was partly consoled by the visits of Hogg, whom she disliked at first but soon considered a close friend. Percy Shelley seems to have wanted Mary Godwin and Hogg to become lovers; Mary did not dismiss the idea, since in principle she believed in free love. In practice, however, she loved only Percy Shelley and seems to have ventured no further than flirting with Hogg. On 22 February 1815, she gave birth to a two-month premature baby girl, who was not expected to survive. On 6 March, she wrote to Hogg: My dearest Hogg my baby is dead—will you come to see me as soon as you can. I wish to see you—It was perfectly well when I went to bed—I awoke in the night to give it suck it appeared to be sleeping so quietly that I would not awake it. It was dead then, but we did not find that out till morning—from its appearance it evidently died of convulsions—Will you come—you are so calm a creature & Shelley is afraid of a fever from the milk—for I am no longer a mother now. The loss of her child induced acute depression in Mary Godwin, who was haunted by visions of the baby; but she conceived again and had recovered by the summer. With a revival in Percy Shelley's finances after the death of his grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, the couple holidayed in Torquay and then rented a two-storey cottage at Bishopsgate, on the edge of Windsor Great Park. Little is known about this period in Mary Godwin's life, since her journal from May 1815 to July 1816 is lost. At Bishopsgate, Percy wrote his poem Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude; and on 24 January 1816, Mary gave birth to a second child, William, named after her father, and soon nicknamed "Willmouse". In her novel The Last Man, she later imagined Windsor as a Garden of Eden. Lake Geneva and Frankenstein In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. In History of a Six Weeks’ Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland (1817), she describes the particularly desolate landscape in crossing from France into Switzerland. The party arrived in Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted; "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. Authorship of Frankenstein While her husband Percy encouraged her writing, the extent of Percy's contribution to the novel is unknown and has been argued over by readers and critics. Mary Shelley wrote, "I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement, it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world." She wrote that the preface to the first edition was Percy's work "as far as I can recollect." There are differences in the 1818, 1823 and 1831 editions, which have been attributed to Percy's editing. James Rieger concluded Percy's "assistance at every point in the book's manufacture was so extensive that one hardly knows whether to regard him as editor or minor collaborator", while Anne K. Mellor later argued Percy only "made many technical corrections and several times clarified the narrative and thematic continuity of the text." Charles E. Robinson, editor of a facsimile edition of the Frankenstein manuscripts, concluded that Percy's contributions to the book "were no more than what most publishers' editors have provided new (or old) authors or, in fact, what colleagues have provided to each other after reading each other's works in progress." Writing on the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein, literary scholar and poet Fiona Sampson asked, "Why hasn't Mary Shelley gotten the respect she deserves?" She noted that "In recent years Percy's corrections, visible in the Frankenstein notebooks held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, have been seized on as evidence that he must have at least co-authored the novel. In fact, when I examined the notebooks myself, I realized that Percy did rather less than any line editor working in publishing today." Sampson published her findings in In Search of Mary Shelley (2018), one of many biographies written about Shelley. Bath and Marlow On their return to England in September, Mary and Percy moved—with Claire Clairmont, who took lodgings nearby—to Bath, where they hoped to keep Claire's pregnancy secret. At Cologny, Mary Godwin had received two letters from her half-sister, Fanny Imlay, who alluded to her "unhappy life"; on 9 October, Fanny wrote an "alarming letter" from Bristol that sent Percy Shelley racing off to search for her, without success. On the morning of 10 October, Fanny Imlay was found dead in a room at a Swansea inn, along with a suicide note and a laudanum bottle. On 10 December, Percy Shelley's wife, Harriet, was discovered drowned in the Serpentine, a lake in Hyde Park, London. Both suicides were hushed up. Harriet's family obstructed Percy Shelley's efforts—fully supported by Mary Godwin—to assume custody of his two children by Harriet. His lawyers advised him to improve his case by marrying; so he and Mary, who was pregnant again, married on 30 December 1816 at St Mildred's Church, Bread Street, London. Mr and Mrs Godwin were present and the marriage ended the family rift. Claire Clairmont gave birth to a baby girl on 13 January, at first called Alba, later Allegra. In March of that year, the Chancery Court ruled Percy Shelley morally unfit to assume custody of his children and later placed them with a clergyman's family. Also in March, the Shelleys moved with Claire and Alba to Albion House at Marlow, Buckinghamshire, a large, damp building on the river Thames. There Mary Shelley gave birth to her third child, Clara, on 2 September. At Marlow, they entertained their new friends Marianne and Leigh Hunt, worked hard at their writing, and often discussed politics. Early in the summer of 1817, Mary Shelley finished Frankenstein, which was published anonymously in January 1818. Reviewers and readers assumed that Percy Shelley was the author, since the book was published with his preface and dedicated to his political hero William Godwin. At Marlow, Mary edited the joint journal of the group's 1814 Continental journey, adding material written in Switzerland in 1816, along with Percy's poem "Mont Blanc". The result was the History of a Six Weeks' Tour, published in November 1817. That autumn, Percy Shelley often lived away from home in London to evade creditors. The threat of a debtor's prison, combined with their ill health and fears of losing custody of their children, contributed to the couple's decision to leave England for Italy on 12 March 1818, taking Claire Clairmont and Alba with them. They had no intention of returning. Italy One of the party's first tasks on arriving in Italy was to hand Alba over to Byron, who was living in Venice. He had agreed to raise her so long as Claire had nothing more to do with her. The Shelleys then embarked on a roving existence, never settling in any one place for long. Along the way, they accumulated a circle of friends and acquaintances who often moved with them. The couple devoted their time to writing, reading, learning, sightseeing, and socialising. The Italian adventure was, however, blighted for Mary Shelley by the deaths of both her children—Clara, in September 1818 in Venice, and William, in June 1819 in Rome. These losses left her in a deep depression that isolated her from Percy Shelley, who wrote in his notebook: My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone, And left me in this dreary world alone? Thy form is here indeed—a lovely one— But thou art fled, gone down a dreary road That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode. For thine own sake I cannot follow thee Do thou return for mine. For a time, Mary Shelley found comfort only in her writing. The birth of her fourth child, Percy Florence, on 12 November 1819, finally lifted her spirits, though she nursed the memory of her lost children till the end of her life. Italy provided the Shelleys, Byron, and other exiles with political freedom unattainable at home. Despite its associations with personal loss, Italy became for Mary Shelley "a country which memory painted as paradise". Their Italian years were a time of intense intellectual and creative activity for both Shelleys. While Percy composed a series of major poems, Mary wrote the novel Matilda, the historical novel Valperga, and the plays Proserpine and Midas. Mary wrote Valperga to help alleviate her father's financial difficulties, as Percy refused to assist him further. She was often physically ill, however, and prone to depressions. She also had to cope with Percy's interest in other women, such as Sophia Stacey, Emilia Viviani, and Jane Williams. Since Mary Shelley shared his belief in the non-exclusivity of marriage, she formed emotional ties of her own among the men and women of their circle. She became particularly fond of the Greek revolutionary Prince Alexandros Mavrokordatos and of Jane and Edward Williams. In December 1818, the Shelleys travelled south with Claire Clairmont and their servants to Naples, where they stayed for three months, receiving only one visitor, a physician. In 1820, they found themselves plagued by accusations and threats from Paolo and Elise Foggi, former servants whom Percy Shelley had dismissed in Naples shortly after the Foggis had married. The pair revealed that on 27 February 1819 in Naples, Percy Shelley had registered as his child by Mary Shelley a two-month-old baby girl named Elena Adelaide Shelley. The Foggis also claimed that Claire Clairmont was the baby's mother. Biographers have offered various interpretations of these events: that Percy Shelley decided to adopt a local child; that the baby was his by Elise, Claire, or an unknown woman; or that she was Elise's by Byron. Mary Shelley insisted she would have known if Claire had been pregnant, but it is unclear how much she really knew. The events in Naples, a city Mary Shelley later called a paradise inhabited by devils, remain shrouded in mystery. The only certainty is that she herself was not the child's mother. Elena Adelaide Shelley died in Naples on 9 June 1820. After leaving Naples, the Shelleys settled in Rome, the city where her husband wrote where "the meanest streets were strewed with truncated columns, broken capitals...and sparkling fragments of granite or porphyry...The voice of dead time, in still vibrations, is breathed from these dumb things, animated and glorified as they were by man". Rome inspired her to begin writing the unfinished novel Valerius, the Reanimated Roman, where the eponymous hero resists the decay of Rome and the machinations of "superstitious" Catholicism. The writing of her novel was broken off when her son William died of malaria. Shelley bitterly commented that she had come to Italy to improve her husband's health, and instead the Italian climate had just killed her two children, leading her to write: "May you my dear Marianne never know what it is to lose two only and lovely children in one year—to watch their dying moments—and then at last to be left childless and forever miserable". To deal with her grief, Shelley wrote the novella The Fields of Fancy, which became Matilda, dealing with a young woman whose beauty inspired incestuous love in her father, who ultimately commits suicide to stop himself from acting on his passion for his daughter, while she spends the rest of her life full of despair about "the unnatural love I had inspired". The novella offered a feminist critique of a patriarchal society as Matilda is punished in the afterlife, though she did nothing to encourage her father's feelings. In the summer of 1822, a pregnant Mary moved with Percy, Claire, and Edward and Jane Williams to the isolated Villa Magni, at the sea's edge near the hamlet of San Terenzo in the Bay of Lerici. Once they were settled in, Percy broke the "evil news" to Claire that her daughter Allegra had died of typhus in a convent at Bagnacavallo. Mary Shelley was distracted and unhappy in the cramped and remote Villa Magni, which she came to regard as a dungeon. On 16 June, she miscarried, losing so much blood that she nearly died. Rather than wait for a doctor, Percy sat her in a bath of ice to stanch the bleeding, an act the doctor later told him saved her life. All was not well between the couple that summer, however, and Percy spent more time with Jane Williams than with his depressed and debilitated wife. Much of the short poetry Shelley wrote at San Terenzo involved Jane rather than Mary. The coast offered Percy Shelley and Edward Williams the chance to enjoy their "perfect plaything for the summer", a new sailing boat. The boat had been designed by Daniel Roberts and Edward Trelawny, an admirer of Byron's who had joined the party in January 1822. On 1 July 1822, Percy Shelley, Edward Ellerker Williams, and Captain Daniel Roberts sailed south down the coast to Livorno. There Percy Shelley discussed with Byron and Leigh Hunt the launch of a radical magazine called The Liberal. On 8 July, he and Edward Williams set out on the return journey to Lerici with their eighteen-year-old boat boy, Charles Vivian. They never reached their destination. A letter arrived at Villa Magni from Hunt to Percy Shelley, dated 8 July, saying, "pray write to tell us how you got home, for they say you had bad weather after you sailed Monday & we are anxious". "The paper fell from me," Mary told a friend later. "I trembled all over." She and Jane Williams rushed desperately to Livorno and then to Pisa in the fading hope that their husbands were still alive. Ten days after the storm, three bodies washed up on the coast near Viareggio, midway between Livorno and Lerici. Trelawny, Byron, and Hunt cremated Percy Shelley's corpse on the beach at Viareggio. Return to England and writing career After her husband's death, Mary Shelley lived for a year with Leigh Hunt and his family in Genoa, where she often saw Byron and transcribed his poems. She resolved to live by her pen and for her son, but her financial situation was precarious. On 23 July 1823, she left Genoa for England and stayed with her father and stepmother in the Strand until a small advance from her father-in-law enabled her to lodge nearby. Sir Timothy Shelley had at first agreed to support his grandson, Percy Florence, only if he were handed over to an appointed guardian. Mary Shelley rejected this idea instantly. She managed instead to wring out of Sir Timothy a limited annual allowance (which she had to repay when Percy Florence inherited the estate), but to the end of his days, he refused to meet her in person and dealt with her only through lawyers. Mary Shelley busied herself with editing her husband's poems, among other literary endeavours, but concern for her son restricted her options. Sir Timothy threatened to stop the allowance if any biography of the poet were published. In 1826, Percy Florence became the legal heir of the Shelley estate after the death of his half-brother Charles Shelley, his father's son by Harriet Shelley. Sir Timothy raised Mary's allowance from £100 a year to £250 but remained as difficult as ever. Mary Shelley enjoyed the stimulating society of William Godwin's circle, but poverty prevented her from socialising as she wished. She also felt ostracised by those who, like Sir Timothy, still disapproved of her relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley. In the summer of 1824, Mary Shelley moved to Kentish Town in north London to be near Jane Williams. She may have been, in the words of her biographer Muriel Spark, "a little in love" with Jane. Jane later disillusioned her by gossiping that Percy had preferred her to Mary, owing to Mary's inadequacy as a wife. At around this time, Mary Shelley was working on her novel, The Last Man (1826); and she assisted a series of friends who were writing memoirs of Byron and Percy Shelley—the beginnings of her attempts to immortalise her husband. She also met the American actor John Howard Payne and the American writer Washington Irving, who intrigued her. Payne fell in love with her and in 1826 asked her to marry him. She refused, saying that after being married to one genius, she could only marry another. Payne accepted the rejection and tried without success to talk his friend Irving into proposing himself. Mary Shelley was aware of Payne's plan, but how seriously she took it is unclear. In 1827, Mary Shelley was party to a scheme that enabled her friend Isabel Robinson and Isabel's lover, Mary Diana Dods, who wrote under the name David Lyndsay, to embark on a life together in France as husband and wife. With the help of Payne, whom she kept in the dark about the details, Mary Shelley obtained false passports for the couple. In 1828, she fell ill with smallpox while visiting them in Paris. Weeks later she recovered, unscarred but without her youthful beauty. During the period 1827–40, Mary Shelley was busy as an editor and writer. She wrote the novels The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835), and Falkner (1837). She contributed five volumes of Lives of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French authors to Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia. She also wrote stories for ladies' magazines. She was still helping to support her father, and they looked out for publishers for each other. In 1830, she sold the copyright for a new edition of Frankenstein for £60 to Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley for their new Standard Novels series. After her father's death in 1836 at the age of eighty, she began assembling his letters and a memoir for publication, as he had requested in his will; but after two years of work, she abandoned the project. Throughout this period, she also championed Percy Shelley's poetry, promoting its publication and quoting it in her writing. By 1837, Percy's works were well-known and increasingly admired. In the summer of 1838 Edward Moxon, the publisher of Tennyson and the son-in-law of Charles Lamb, proposed publishing a collected works of Percy Shelley. Mary was paid £500 to edit the Poetical Works (1838), which Sir Timothy insisted should not include a biography. Mary found a way to tell the story of Percy's life, nonetheless: she included extensive biographical notes about the poems. Shelley continued to practice her mother's feminist principles by extending aid to women whom society disapproved of. For instance, Shelley extended financial aid to Mary Diana Dods, a single mother and illegitimate herself who appears to have been a lesbian and gave her the new identity of Walter Sholto Douglas, husband of her lover Isabel Robinson. Shelley also assisted Georgiana Paul, a woman disallowed for by her husband for alleged adultery. Shelley in her diary about her assistance to the latter: "I do not make a boast-I do not say aloud-behold my generosity and greatness of mind-for in truth it is simple justice I perform-and so I am still reviled for being worldly". Mary Shelley continued to treat potential romantic partners with caution. In 1828, she met and flirted with the French writer Prosper Mérimée, but her one surviving letter to him appears to be a deflection of his declaration of love. She was delighted when her old friend from Italy, Edward Trelawny, returned to England, and they joked about marriage in their letters. Their friendship had altered, however, following her refusal to cooperate with his proposed biography of Percy Shelley; and he later reacted angrily to her omission of the atheistic section of Queen Mab from Percy Shelley's poems. Oblique references in her journals, from the early 1830s until the early 1840s, suggest that Mary Shelley had feelings for the radical politician Aubrey Beauclerk, who may have disappointed her by twice marrying others. Mary Shelley's first concern during these years was the welfare of Percy Florence. She honoured her late husband's wish that his son attend public school and, with Sir Timothy's grudging help, had him educated at Harrow. To avoid boarding fees, she moved to Harrow on the Hill herself so that Percy could attend as a day scholar. Though Percy went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, and dabbled in politics and the law, he showed no sign of his parents' gifts. He was devoted to his mother, and after he left university in 1841, he came to live with her. Final years and death In 1840 and 1842, mother and son travelled together on the continent, journeys that Mary Shelley recorded in Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843 (1844). In 1844, Sir Timothy Shelley finally died at the age of ninety, "falling from the stalk like an overblown flower", as Mary put it. For the first time, she and her son were financially independent, though the estate proved less valuable than they had hoped. In the mid-1840s, Mary Shelley found herself the target of three separate blackmailers. In 1845, an Italian political exile called Gatteschi, whom she had met in Paris, threatened to publish letters she had sent him. A friend of her son's bribed a police chief into seizing Gatteschi's papers, including the letters, which were then destroyed. Shortly afterwards, Mary Shelley bought some letters written by herself and Percy Bysshe Shelley from a man calling himself G. Byron and posing as the illegitimate son of the late Lord Byron. Also in 1845, Percy Bysshe Shelley's cousin Thomas Medwin approached her claiming to have written a damaging biography of Percy Shelley. He said he would suppress it in return for £250, but Mary Shelley refused. In 1848, Percy Florence married Jane Gibson St John. The marriage proved a happy one, and Mary Shelley and Jane were fond of each other. Mary lived with her son and daughter-in-law at Field Place, Sussex, the Shelleys' ancestral home, and at Chester Square, London, and accompanied them on travels abroad. Mary Shelley's last years were blighted by illness. From 1839, she suffered from headaches and bouts of paralysis in parts of her body, which sometimes prevented her from reading and writing. On 1 February 1851, at Chester Square, she died at the age of fifty-three from what her physician suspected was a brain tumour. According to Jane Shelley, Mary Shelley had asked to be buried with her mother and father; but Percy and Jane, judging the graveyard at St Pancras to be "dreadful", chose to bury her instead at St Peter's Church, Bournemouth, near their new home at Boscombe. On the first anniversary of Mary Shelley's death, the Shelleys opened her box-desk. Inside they found locks of her dead children's hair, a notebook she had shared with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a copy of his poem Adonaïs with one page folded round a silk parcel containing some of his ashes and the remains of his heart. Literary themes and styles Mary Shelley lived a literary life. Her father encouraged her to learn to write by composing letters, and her favourite occupation as a child was writing stories. Unfortunately, all of Mary's juvenilia were lost when she ran off with Percy in 1814, and none of her surviving manuscripts can be definitively dated before that year. Her first published work is often thought to have been Mounseer Nongtongpaw, comic verses written for Godwin's Juvenile Library when she was ten and a half; however, the poem is attributed to another writer in the most recent authoritative collection of her works. Percy Shelley enthusiastically encouraged Mary Shelley's writing: "My husband was, from the first, very anxious that I should prove myself worthy of my parentage, and enrol myself on the page of fame. He was forever inciting me to obtain literary reputation." Novels Autobiographical elements Certain sections of Mary Shelley's novels are often interpreted as masked rewritings of her life. Critics have pointed to the recurrence of the father–daughter motif in particular as evidence of this autobiographical style. For example, commentators frequently read Mathilda (1820) autobiographically, identifying the three central characters as versions of Mary Shelley, William Godwin, and Percy Shelley. Mary Shelley herself confided that she modelled the central characters of The Last Man on her Italian circle. Lord Raymond, who leaves England to fight for the Greeks and dies in Constantinople, is based on Lord Byron; and the utopian Adrian, Earl of Windsor, who leads his followers in search of a natural paradise and dies when his boat sinks in a storm, is a fictional portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley. However, as she wrote in her review of Godwin's novel Cloudesley (1830), she did not believe that authors "were merely copying from our own hearts". William Godwin regarded his daughter's characters as types rather than portraits from real life. Some modern critics, such as Patricia Clemit and Jane Blumberg, have taken the same view, resisting autobiographical readings of Mary Shelley's works. Novelistic genres Mary Shelley employed the techniques of many different novelistic genres, most vividly the Godwinian novel, Walter Scott's new historical novel, and the Gothic novel. The Godwinian novel, made popular during the 1790s with works such as Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794), "employed a Rousseauvian confessional form to explore the contradictory relations between the self and society", and Frankenstein exhibits many of the same themes and literary devices as Godwin's novel. However, Shelley critiques those Enlightenment ideals that Godwin promotes in his works. In The Last Man, she uses the philosophical form of the Godwinian novel to demonstrate the ultimate meaninglessness of the world. While earlier Godwinian novels had shown how rational individuals could slowly improve society, The Last Man and Frankenstein demonstrate the individual's lack of control over history. Shelley uses the historical novel to comment on gender relations; for example, Valperga is a feminist version of Scott's masculinist genre. Introducing women into the story who are not part of the historical record, Shelley uses their narratives to question established theological and political institutions. Shelley sets the male protagonist's compulsive greed for conquest in opposition to a female alternative: reason and sensibility. In Perkin Warbeck, Shelley's other historical novel, Lady Gordon stands for the values of friendship, domesticity, and equality. Through her, Shelley offers a feminine alternative to the masculine power politics that destroy the male characters. The novel provides a more inclusive historical narrative to challenge the one which usually relates only masculine events. Gender With the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1970s, Mary Shelley's works, particularly Frankenstein, began to attract much more attention from scholars. Feminist and psychoanalytic critics were largely responsible for the recovery from neglect of Shelley as a writer. Ellen Moers was one of the first to claim that Shelley's loss of a baby was a crucial influence on the writing of Frankenstein. She argues that the novel is a "birth myth" in which Shelley comes to terms with her guilt for causing her mother's death as well as for failing as a parent. Shelley scholar Anne K. Mellor suggests that, from a feminist viewpoint, it is a story "about what happens when a man tries to have a baby without a woman ... [Frankenstein] is profoundly concerned with natural as opposed to unnatural modes of production and reproduction". Victor Frankenstein's failure as a "parent" in the novel has been read as an expression of the anxieties which accompany pregnancy, giving birth, and particularly maternity. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue in their seminal book The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) that in Frankenstein in particular, Shelley responded to the masculine literary tradition represented by John Milton's Paradise Lost. In their interpretation, Shelley reaffirms this masculine tradition, including the misogyny inherent in it, but at the same time "conceal[s] fantasies of equality that occasionally erupt in monstrous images of rage". Mary Poovey reads the first edition of Frankenstein as part of a larger pattern in Shelley's writing, which begins with literary self-assertion and ends with conventional femininity. Poovey suggests that Frankenstein's multiple narratives enable Shelley to split her artistic persona: she can "express and efface herself at the same time". Shelley's fear of self-assertion is reflected in the fate of Frankenstein, who is punished for his egotism by losing all his domestic ties. Feminist critics often focus on how authorship itself, particularly female authorship, is represented in and through Shelley's novels. As Mellor explains, Shelley uses the Gothic style not only to explore repressed female sexual desire but also as way to "censor her own speech in Frankenstein". According to Poovey and Mellor, Shelley did not want to promote her own authorial persona and felt deeply inadequate as a writer, and "this shame contributed to the generation of her fictional images of abnormality, perversion, and destruction". Shelley's writings focus on the role of the family in society and women's role within that family. She celebrates the "feminine affections and compassion" associated with the family and suggests that civil society will fail without them. Shelley was "profoundly committed to an ethic of cooperation, mutual dependence, and self-sacrifice". In Lodore, for example, the central story follows the fortunes of the wife and daughter of the title character, Lord Lodore, who is killed in a duel at the end of the first volume, leaving a trail of legal, financial, and familial obstacles for the two "heroines" to negotiate. The novel is engaged with political and ideological issues, particularly the education and social role of women. It dissects a patriarchal culture that separated the sexes and pressured women into dependence on men. In the view of Shelley scholar Betty T. Bennett, "the novel proposes egalitarian educational paradigms for women and men, which would bring social justice as well as the spiritual and intellectual means by which to meet the challenges life invariably brings". However, Falkner is the only one of Mary Shelley's novels in which the heroine's agenda triumphs. The novel's resolution proposes that when female values triumph over violent and destructive masculinity, men will be freed to express the "compassion, sympathy, and generosity" of their better natures. Enlightenment and Romanticism Frankenstein, like much Gothic fiction of the period, mixes a visceral and alienating subject matter with speculative and thought-provoking themes. Rather than focusing on the twists and turns of the plot, however, the novel foregrounds the mental and moral struggles of the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, and Shelley imbues the text with her own brand of politicised Romanticism, one that criticised the individualism and egotism of traditional Romanticism. Victor Frankenstein is like Satan in Paradise Lost, and Prometheus: he rebels against tradition; he creates life; and he shapes his own destiny. These traits are not portrayed positively; as Blumberg writes, "his relentless ambition is a self-delusion, clothed as quest for truth". He must abandon his family to fulfill his ambition. Mary Shelley believed in the Enlightenment idea that people could improve society through the responsible exercise of political power, but she feared that the irresponsible exercise of power would lead to chaos. In practice, her works largely criticise the way 18th-century thinkers such as her parents believed such change could be brought about. The creature in Frankenstein, for example, reads books associated with radical ideals but the education he gains from them is ultimately useless. Shelley's works reveal her as less optimistic than Godwin and Wollstonecraft; she lacks faith in Godwin's theory that humanity could eventually be perfected. As literary scholar Kari Lokke writes, The Last Man, more so than Frankenstein, "in its refusal to place humanity at the centre of the universe, its questioning of our privileged position in relation to nature ... constitutes a profound and prophetic challenge to Western humanism." Specifically, Mary Shelley's allusions to what radicals believed was a failed revolution in France and the Godwinian, Wollstonecraftian, and Burkean responses to it, challenge "Enlightenment faith in the inevitability of progress through collective efforts". As in Frankenstein, Shelley "offers a profoundly disenchanted commentary on the age of revolution, which ends in a total rejection of the progressive ideals of her own generation". Not only does she reject these Enlightenment political ideals, but she also rejects the Romantic notion that the poetic or literary imagination can offer an alternative. Politics There is a new scholarly emphasis on Shelley as a lifelong reformer, deeply engaged in the liberal and feminist concerns of her day. In 1820, she was thrilled by the Liberal uprising in Spain which forced the king to grant a constitution. In 1823, she wrote articles for Leigh Hunt's periodical The Liberal and played an active role in the formulation of its outlook. She was delighted when the Whigs came back to power in 1830 and at the prospect of the 1832 Reform Act. Critics have until recently cited Lodore and Falkner as evidence of increasing conservatism in Mary Shelley's later works. In 1984, Mary Poovey influentially identified the retreat of Mary Shelley's reformist politics into the "separate sphere" of the domestic. Poovey suggested that Mary Shelley wrote Falkner to resolve her conflicted response to her father's combination of libertarian radicalism and stern insistence on social decorum. Mellor largely agreed, arguing that "Mary Shelley grounded her alternative political ideology on the metaphor of the peaceful, loving, bourgeois family. She thereby implicitly endorsed a conservative vision of gradual evolutionary reform." This vision allowed women to participate in the public sphere but it inherited the inequalities inherent in the bourgeois family. However, in the last decade or so this view has been challenged. For example, Bennett claims that Mary Shelley's works reveal a consistent commitment to Romantic idealism and political reform and Jane Blumberg's study of Shelley's early novels argues that her career cannot be easily divided into radical and conservative halves. She contends that "Shelley was never a passionate radical like her husband and her later lifestyle was not abruptly assumed nor was it a betrayal. She was in fact challenging the political and literary influences of her circle in her first work." In this reading, Shelley's early works are interpreted as a challenge to Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley's radicalism. Victor Frankenstein's "thoughtless rejection of family", for example, is seen as evidence of Shelley's constant concern for the domestic. Short stories In the 1820s and 1830s, Mary Shelley frequently wrote short stories for gift books or annuals, including sixteen for The Keepsake, which was aimed at middle-class women and bound in silk, with gilt-edged pages. Mary Shelley's work in this genre has been described as that of a "hack writer" and "wordy and pedestrian". However, critic Charlotte Sussman points out that other leading writers of the day, such as the Romantic poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, also took advantage of this profitable market. She explains that "the annuals were a major mode of literary production in the 1820s and 1830s", with The Keepsake the most successful. Many of Shelley's stories are set in places or times far removed from early 19th-century Britain, such as Greece and the reign of Henry IV of France. Shelley was particularly interested in "the fragility of individual identity" and often depicted "the way a person's role in the world can be cataclysmically altered either by an internal emotional upheaval, or by some supernatural occurrence that mirrors an internal schism". In her stories, female identity is tied to a woman's short-lived value in the marriage market while male identity can be sustained and transformed through the use of money. Although Mary Shelley wrote twenty-one short stories for the annuals between 1823 and 1839, she always saw herself, above all, as a novelist. She wrote to Leigh Hunt, "I write bad articles which help to make me miserable—but I am going to plunge into a novel and hope that its clear water will wash off the mud of the magazines." Travelogues When they ran off to France in the summer of 1814, Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley began a joint journal, which they published in 1817 under the title History of a Six Weeks' Tour, adding four letters, two by each of them, based on their visit to Geneva in 1816, along with Percy Shelley's poem "Mont Blanc". The work celebrates youthful love and political idealism and consciously follows the example of Mary Wollstonecraft and others who had combined travelling with writing. The perspective of the History is philosophical and reformist rather than that of a conventional travelogue; in particular, it addresses the effects of politics and war on France. The letters the couple wrote on the second journey confront the "great and extraordinary events" of the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo after his "Hundred Days" return in 1815. They also explore the sublimity of Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc as well as the revolutionary legacy of the philosopher and novelist Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Mary Shelley's last full-length book, written in the form of letters and published in 1844, was Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843, which recorded her travels with her son Percy Florence and his university friends. In Rambles, Shelley follows the tradition of Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark and her own A History of a Six Weeks' Tour in mapping her personal and political landscape through the discourse of sensibility and sympathy. For Shelley, building sympathetic connections between people is the way to build civil society and to increase knowledge: "knowledge, to enlighten and free the mind from clinging deadening prejudices—a wider circle of sympathy with our fellow-creatures;—these are the uses of travel". Between observations on scenery, culture, and "the people, especially in a political point of view", she uses the travelogue form to explore her roles as a widow and mother and to reflect on revolutionary nationalism in Italy. She also records her "pilgrimage" to scenes associated with Percy Shelley. According to critic Clarissa Orr, Mary Shelley's adoption of a persona of philosophical motherhood gives Rambles the unity of a prose poem, with "death and memory as central themes". At the same time, Shelley makes an egalitarian case against monarchy, class distinctions, slavery, and war. Biographies Between 1832 and 1839, Mary Shelley wrote many biographies of notable Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French men and a few women for Dionysius Lardner's Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men. These formed part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia, one of the best of many such series produced in the 1820s and 1830s in response to growing middle-class demand for self-education. Until the republication of these essays in 2002, their significance within her body of work was not appreciated. In the view of literary scholar Greg Kucich, they reveal Mary Shelley's "prodigious research across several centuries and in multiple languages", her gift for biographical narrative, and her interest in the "emerging forms of feminist historiography". Shelley wrote in a biographical style popularised by the 18th-century critic Samuel Johnson in his Lives of the Poets (1779–81), combining secondary sources, memoir and anecdote, and authorial evaluation. She records details of each writer's life and character, quotes their writing in the original as well as in translation, and ends with a critical assessment of their achievement. For Shelley, biographical writing was supposed to, in her words, "form as it were a school in which to study the philosophy of history", and to teach "lessons". Most frequently and importantly, these lessons consisted of criticisms of male-dominated institutions such as primogeniture. Shelley emphasises domesticity, romance, family, sympathy, and compassion in the lives of her subjects. Her conviction that such forces could improve society connects her biographical approach with that of other early feminist historians such as Mary Hays and Anna Jameson. Unlike her novels, most of which had an original print run of several hundred copies, the Lives had a print run of about 4,000 for each volume: thus, according to Kucich, Mary Shelley's "use of biography to forward the social agenda of women's historiography became one of her most influential political interventions". Editorial work Soon after Percy Shelley's death, Mary Shelley determined to write his biography. In a letter of 17 November 1822, she announced: "I shall write his life—& thus occupy myself in the only manner from which I can derive consolation." However, her father-in-law, Sir Timothy Shelley, effectively banned her from doing so. Mary began her fostering of Percy's poetic reputation in 1824 with the publication of his Posthumous Poems. In 1839, while she was working on the Lives, she prepared a new edition of his poetry, which became, in the words of literary scholar Susan J. Wolfson, "the canonizing event" in the history of her husband's reputation. The following year, Mary Shelley edited a volume of her husband's essays, letters, translations, and fragments, and throughout the 1830s, she introduced his poetry to a wider audience by publishing assorted works in the annual The Keepsake. Evading Sir Timothy's ban on a biography, Mary Shelley often included in these editions her own annotations and reflections on her husband's life and work. "I am to justify his ways," she had declared in 1824; "I am to make him beloved to all posterity." It was this goal, argues Blumberg, that led her to present Percy's work to the public in the "most popular form possible". To tailor his works for a Victorian audience, she cast Percy Shelley as a lyrical rather than a political poet. As Mary Favret writes, "the disembodied Percy identifies the spirit of poetry itself". Mary glossed Percy's political radicalism as a form of sentimentalism, arguing that his republicanism arose from sympathy for those who were suffering. She inserted romantic anecdotes of his benevolence, domesticity, and love of the natural world. Portraying herself as Percy's "practical muse", she also noted how she had suggested revisions as he wrote. Despite the emotions stirred by this task, Mary Shelley arguably proved herself in many respects a professional and scholarly editor. Working from Percy's messy, sometimes indecipherable, notebooks, she attempted to form a chronology for his writings, and she included poems, such as Epipsychidion, addressed to Emilia Viviani, which she would rather have left out. She was forced, however, into several compromises, and, as Blumberg notes, "modern critics have found fault with the edition and claim variously that she miscopied, misinterpreted, purposely obscured, and attempted to turn the poet into something he was not". According to Wolfson, Donald Reiman, a modern editor of Percy Bysshe Shelley's works, still refers to Mary Shelley's editions, while acknowledging that her editing style belongs "to an age of editing when the aim was not to establish accurate texts and scholarly apparatus but to present a full record of a writer's career for the general reader". In principle, Mary Shelley believed in publishing every last word of her husband's work; but she found herself obliged to omit certain passages, either by pressure from her publisher, Edward Moxon, or in deference to public propriety. For example, she removed the atheistic passages from Queen Mab for the first edition. After she restored them in the second edition, Moxon was prosecuted and convicted of blasphemous libel, though the prosecution was brought out of principle by the Chartist publisher Henry Hetherington, and no punishment was sought. Mary Shelley's omissions provoked criticism, often stinging, from members of Percy Shelley's former circle, and reviewers accused her of, among other things, indiscriminate inclusions. Her notes have nevertheless remained an essential source for the study of Percy Shelley's work. As Bennett explains, "biographers and critics agree that Mary Shelley's commitment to bring Shelley the notice she believed his works merited was the single, major force that established Shelley's reputation during a period when he almost certainly would have faded from public view". Reputation In her own lifetime, Mary Shelley was taken seriously as a writer, though reviewers often missed her writings' political edge. After her death, however, she was chiefly remembered as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of Frankenstein. In fact, in the introduction to her letters published in 1945, editor Frederick Jones wrote, "a collection of the present size could not be justified by the general quality of the letters or by Mary Shelley's importance as a writer. It is as the wife of [Percy Bysshe Shelley] that she excites our interest." This attitude had not disappeared by 1980 when Betty T. Bennett published the first volume of Mary Shelley's complete letters. As she explains, "the fact is that until recent years scholars have generally regarded Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley as a result: William Godwin's and Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter who became Shelley's Pygmalion." It was not until Emily Sunstein's Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality in 1989 that a full-length scholarly biography was published. The attempts of Mary Shelley's son and daughter-in-law to "Victorianise" her memory by censoring biographical documents contributed to a perception of Mary Shelley as a more conventional, less reformist figure than her works suggest. Her own timid omissions from Percy Shelley's works and her quiet avoidance of public controversy in her later years added to this impression. Commentary by Hogg, Trelawny, and other admirers of Percy Shelley also tended to downplay Mary Shelley's radicalism. Trelawny's Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author (1878) praised Percy Shelley at the expense of Mary, questioning her intelligence and even her authorship of Frankenstein. Lady Shelley, Percy Florence's wife, responded in part by presenting a severely edited collection of letters she had inherited, published privately as Shelley and Mary in 1882. From Frankenstein'''s first theatrical adaptation in 1823 to the cinematic adaptations of the 20th century, including the first cinematic version in 1910 and now-famous versions such as James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein, Mel Brooks' satirical 1974 Young Frankenstein, and Kenneth Branagh's 1994 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, many audiences first encounter the work of Mary Shelley through adaptation. Over the course of the 19th century, Mary Shelley came to be seen as a one-novel author at best, rather than as the professional writer she was; most of her works have remained out of print until the last thirty years, obstructing a larger view of her achievement. In recent decades, the republication of almost all her writing has stimulated a new recognition of its value. Her habit of intensive reading and study, revealed in her journals and letters and reflected in her works, is now better appreciated. Shelley's conception of herself as an author has also been recognised; after Percy's death, she wrote of her authorial ambitions: "I think that I can maintain myself, and there is something inspiriting in the idea." Scholars now consider Mary Shelley to be a major Romantic figure, significant for her literary achievement and her political voice as a woman and a liberal. Selected works History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817) Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) Mathilda (1819) Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823) Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1824) The Last Man (1826) The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830) Lodore (1835) Falkner (1837) The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1839) Contributions to Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men (1835–39), part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 (1844) Collections of Mary Shelley's papers are housed in Lord Abinger's Shelley Collection on deposit at the Bodleian Library, the New York Public Library (particularly The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle), the Huntington Library, the British Library, and in the John Murray Collection. See also Mary Shelley (2017 film) Godwin–Shelley family tree Map of 1814 and 1816 European journeys Map of 1840s European journeys Notes References All essays from The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley are marked with a "(CC)" and those from The Other Mary Shelley with an "(OMS)". Bibliography Primary sources Shelley, Mary. Collected Tales and Stories. Ed. Charles E. Robinson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. . Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Ed. Susan J. Wolfson. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. . Shelley, Mary. The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814–44. Ed. Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. The Last Man. Ed. Morton D. Paley. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1998. . Shelley, Mary. Lodore. Ed. Lisa Vargo. Ontario: Broadview Press, 1997. . Shelley, Mary. Mary Shelley's Literary Lives and Other Writings. 4 vols. Ed. Tilar J. Mazzeo. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2002. . Shelley, Mary. Mathilda . Ed. Elizabeth Nitchie. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 16 February 2008. Shelley, Mary. Matilda; with Mary and Maria, by Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd. London: Penguin, 1992. . Shelley, Mary, ed. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley . London: Edward Moxon, 1840. Google Books. Retrieved 6 April 2008. Shelley, Mary. Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca. Ed. Michael Rossington. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 2000. . Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Shelley's Poetry and Prose. Eds. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2002. . Secondary sources Bennett, Betty T. "Finding Mary Shelley in her Letters". Romantic Revisions. Ed. Robert Brinkley and Keith Hanley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. . Bennett, Betty T., ed. Mary Shelley in her Times. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Bennett, Betty T. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. . Bennett, Betty T. "The Political Philosophy of Mary Shelley's Historical Novels: Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". The Evidence of the Imagination. Ed. Donald H. Reiman, Michael C. Jaye, and Betty T. Bennett. New York: New York University Press, 1978. . Bieri, James. Percy Bysshe Shelley, a Biography: Exile of Unfulfilled Renown, 1816–1822. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005. . Blumberg, Jane. Mary Shelley's Early Novels: "This Child of Imagination and Misery". Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993. . Bunnell, Charlene E. "All the World's a Stage": Dramatic Sensibility in Mary Shelley's Novels. New York: Routledge, 2002. . Carlson, J. A. England's First Family of Writers: Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Shelley. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. . Clemit, Pamela. "From The Fields of Fancy to Matilda." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Clemit, Pamela. The Godwinian Novel: The Rational Fictions of Godwin, Brockden Brown, Mary Shelley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. . Conger, Syndy M., Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea, eds. Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Eberle-Sinatra, Michael, ed. Mary Shelley's Fictions: From Frankenstein to Falkner. New York: St. Martin's Press/Palgrave, 2000. . Fisch, Audrey A., Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schorr, eds. The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond "Frankenstein". New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. . Frank, Frederick S. "Mary Shelley's Other Fictions: A Bibliographic Consensus". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Garrett, Martin Mary Shelley. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. 1979. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. . Gittings, Robert and Jo Manton. Claire Clairmont and the Shelleys. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. . Holmes, Richard. Shelley: The Pursuit. 1974. London: Harper Perennial, 2003. . Jones, Steven. "Charles E. Robinson, Ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two)". (Book Review). Romantic Circles website, 1 January 1998. Retrieved 15 September 2016. Jump, Harriet Devine, Pamela Clemit, and Betty T. Bennett, eds. Lives of the Great Romantics III: Godwin, Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley by Their Contemporaries. London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999. . Levine, George and U. C. Knoepflmacher, eds. The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley's novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. . Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, her Fiction, Her Monsters. London: Routledge, 1990. . Myers, Mitzi. "Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley: The Female Author between Public and Private Spheres." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Orr, Clarissa Campbell. "Mary Shelley's Rambles in Germany and Italy, the Celebrity Author, and the Undiscovered Country of the Human Heart". Romanticism on the Net 11 (August 1998). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. . Robinson, Charles E., ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two). The Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics, Volume IX, Donald H. Reiman, general ed. Garland Publishing, 1996. . Schor, Esther, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. . Seymour, Miranda. Mary Shelley. London: John Murray, 2000. . Sites, Melissa. "Re/membering Home: Utopian Domesticity in Mary Shelley's Lodore". A Brighter Morn: The Shelley Circle's Utopian Project. Ed. Darby Lewes. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003. . Smith, Johanna M. "A Critical History of Frankenstein". Frankenstein. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. . Spark, Muriel. Mary Shelley. London: Cardinal, 1987. . St Clair, William. The Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography of a Family. London: Faber & Faber, 1989. . Sterrenburg, Lee. "The Last Man: Anatomy of Failed Revolutions". Nineteenth Century Fiction 33 (1978): 324–47. Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. 1989. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. . Townsend, William C. Modern State Trials. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1850. Wake, Ann M Frank. "Women in the Active Voice: Recovering Female History in Mary Shelley's Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . White, Daniel E. "'The god undeified': Mary Shelley's Valperga, Italy, and the Aesthetic of Desire ". Romanticism on the Net 6 (May 1997). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Further reading Goulding, Christopher. "The Real Doctor Frankenstein?" Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. The Royal Society of Medicine, May 2002. Richard Holmes, "Out of Control" (review of Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds, edited by David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Jason Scott Robert, MIT Press, 277 pp.; and Mary Shelley, The New Annotated Frankenstein, edited and with a foreword and notes by Leslie S. Klinger, Liveright, 352 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 20 (21 December 2017), pp. 38, 40–41. Gordon, Charlotte (2016). Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley'', Random House. External links Mary Shelley chronology and bibliography – part of Romantic Circles Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley manuscript material, 1815–1850, held by the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, New York Public Library Mary Shelley at the British Library Exhibits relating to Mary Shelley at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford 1797 births 1851 deaths 19th-century English women writers 19th-century English novelists 19th-century British short story writers British expatriates in Italy British expatriates in Switzerland British feminists British horror writers British science fiction writers Deaths from brain tumor Deaths from cancer in England English expatriates in Italy English expatriates in Switzerland English feminists English horror writers English science fiction writers English travel writers English women novelists Frankenstein Godwin family People from Bournemouth People from Somers Town, London Romanticism Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees Victorian novelists Women historical novelists Women horror writers Women of the Regency era Women science fiction and fantasy writers British women travel writers Writers of Gothic fiction Shelley family Weird fiction writers
false
[ "Percy Verwayne (March 10, 1895 – November, 1968), sometimes spelled Percy Verwayen,\nwas an American stage and film actor. He featured in several films with African American casts including the 1921 REOL Productions film The Simp and Oscar Micheaux films. He played \"Sporting Life\" in Porgy, when it was first produced in 1927. He was also in the 1946 Toddy Pictures production Fight That Ghost. \n\nHe was born in British Guyana.\n\nTheater\nPorgy (1927)\nConfidence (1930), by and starring Frank Wilson\n\nFilmography\n\nThe Simp (1921)\nA Daughter of the Congo (1930) as Pidgy Muffy\nParadise in Harlem (1939) as Spanish\nFight that Ghost (1946)\nSepia Cinderella (1947) as MacMillan\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n \n\n1895 births\n1968 deaths", "Couchville, Tennessee was a community and U.S. Post Office founded on Stones River prior to 1880 in Davidson County, Tennessee. Couchville was inundated when J. Percy Priest Lake was formed by impounding Stones River in the mid-1960s. The community's identity is preserved in the name of adjacent Couchville Cedar Glade State Natural Area.\n\nSee also\nList of ghost towns in Tennessee\n\nReferences\n\nGhost towns in Tennessee" ]
[ "Mary Shelley", "Lake Geneva and Frankenstein", "When did Mary Shelley write Frankenstein?", "Mary Shelley remembered in 1831,", "What did she have to do with Lake Geneva?", "close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis", "what did they do while they were there?", "They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. \"", "What did they write while they were there?", "Byron to propose that they \"each write a ghost story\".", "Did they write the ghost story?", "she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her \"waking dream\", her ghost story:", "how did that end for her?", "She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein:", "was Frankenstein successful?", "The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films.", "how many films?", "a number of films.", "did percy also publish a ghost story?", "I don't know." ]
C_fcd11261399c4441ac5c013381bf1e1d_1
Was she famous for writing anything else?
10
Was Mary Shelley famous for writing anything else besides Frankenstein?
Mary Shelley
In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. The party arrived at Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted, "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. CANNOTANSWER
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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and feminist activist Mary Wollstonecraft. Shelley's mother died less than a month after giving birth to her. She was raised by her father, who provided her with a rich if informal education, encouraging her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories. When she was four, her father married a neighbour, Mary Jane Clairmont, with whom Shelley came to have a troubled relationship. In 1814, Shelley began a romance with one of her father's political followers, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. Together with her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, she and Percy left for France and travelled through Europe. Upon their return to England, Shelley was pregnant with Percy's child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet. In 1816, the couple and Mary's stepsister famously spent a summer with Lord Byron and John William Polidori near Geneva, Switzerland, where Shelley conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, most likely caused by the brain tumour which killed her at age 53. Until the 1970s, Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish her husband's works and for her novel Frankenstein, which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Shelley's achievements. Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826) and her final two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). Studies of her lesser-known works, such as the travel book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–1846), support the growing view that Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life. Shelley's works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practised by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin. Life and career Early life Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, in 1797. She was the second child of the feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the first child of the philosopher, novelist, and journalist William Godwin. Wollstonecraft died of puerperal fever shortly after Mary was born. Godwin was left to bring up Mary, along with her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, Wollstonecraft's child by the American speculator Gilbert Imlay. A year after Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798), which he intended as a sincere and compassionate tribute. However, because the Memoirs revealed Wollstonecraft's affairs and her illegitimate child, they were seen as shocking. Mary Godwin read these memoirs and her mother's books, and was brought up to cherish her mother's memory. Mary's earliest years were happy, judging from the letters of William Godwin's housekeeper and nurse, Louisa Jones. But Godwin was often deeply in debt; feeling that he could not raise the children by himself, he cast about for a second wife. In December 1801, he married Mary Jane Clairmont, a well-educated woman with two young children of her own—Charles and Claire. Most of Godwin's friends disliked his new wife, describing her as quick-tempered and quarrelsome; but Godwin was devoted to her, and the marriage was a success. Mary Godwin, on the other hand, came to detest her stepmother. William Godwin's 19th-century biographer Charles Kegan Paul later suggested that Mrs Godwin had favoured her own children over those of Mary Wollstonecraft. Together, the Godwins started a publishing firm called M. J. Godwin, which sold children's books as well as stationery, maps, and games. However, the business did not turn a profit, and Godwin was forced to borrow substantial sums to keep it going. He continued to borrow to pay off earlier loans, compounding his problems. By 1809, Godwin's business was close to failure, and he was "near to despair". Godwin was saved from debtor's prison by philosophical devotees such as Francis Place, who lent him further money. Though Mary Godwin received little formal education, her father tutored her in a broad range of subjects. He often took the children on educational outings, and they had access to his library and to the many intellectuals who visited him, including the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the former vice-president of the United States Aaron Burr. Godwin admitted he was not educating the children according to Mary Wollstonecraft's philosophy as outlined in works such as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), but Mary Godwin nonetheless received an unusual and advanced education for a girl of the time. She had a governess, a daily tutor, and read many of her father's children's books on Roman and Greek history in manuscript. For six months in 1811, she also attended a boarding school in Ramsgate. Her father described her at age 15 as "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible." In June 1812, Mary's father sent her to stay with the dissenting family of the radical William Baxter, near Dundee, Scotland. To Baxter, he wrote, "I am anxious that she should be brought up ... like a philosopher, even like a cynic." Scholars have speculated that she may have been sent away for her health, to remove her from the seamy side of the business, or to introduce her to radical politics. Mary Godwin revelled in the spacious surroundings of Baxter's house and in the companionship of his four daughters, and she returned north in the summer of 1813 for a further stay of 10 months. In the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein, she recalled: "I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered." Percy Bysshe Shelley Mary Godwin may have first met the radical poet-philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley in the interval between her two stays in Scotland. By the time she returned home for a second time on 30 March 1814, Percy Shelley had become estranged from his wife and was regularly visiting William Godwin, whom he had agreed to bail out of debt. Percy Shelley's radicalism, particularly his economic views, which he had imbibed from William Godwin's Political Justice (1793), had alienated him from his wealthy aristocratic family: they wanted him to follow traditional models of the landed aristocracy, and he wanted to donate large amounts of the family's money to schemes intended to help the disadvantaged. Percy Shelley, therefore, had difficulty gaining access to money until he inherited his estate because his family did not want him wasting it on projects of "political justice". After several months of promises, Shelley announced that he either could not or would not pay off all of Godwin's debts. Godwin was angry and felt betrayed. Mary and Percy began meeting each other secretly at her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's grave in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, and they fell in love—she was 16, and he was 21. On 26 June 1814, Shelley and Godwin declared their love for one another as Shelley announced he could not hide his "ardent passion", leading her in a "sublime and rapturous moment" to say she felt the same way; on either that day or the next, Godwin lost her virginity to Shelley, which tradition claims happened in the churchyard. Godwin described herself as attracted to Shelley's "wild, intellectual, unearthly looks". To Mary's dismay, her father disapproved, and tried to thwart the relationship and salvage the "spotless fame" of his daughter. At about the same time, Mary's father learned of Shelley's inability to pay off the father's debts. Mary, who later wrote of "my excessive and romantic attachment to my father", was confused. She saw Percy Shelley as an embodiment of her parents' liberal and reformist ideas of the 1790s, particularly Godwin's view that marriage was a repressive monopoly, which he had argued in his 1793 edition of Political Justice but later retracted. On 28 July 1814, the couple eloped and secretly left for France, taking Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with them. After convincing Mary Jane Godwin, who had pursued them to Calais, that they did not wish to return, the trio travelled to Paris, and then, by donkey, mule, carriage, and foot, through a France recently ravaged by war, to Switzerland. "It was acting in a novel, being an incarnate romance," Mary Shelley recalled in 1826. Godwin wrote about France in 1814: "The distress of the inhabitants, whose houses had been burned, their cattle killed and all their wealth destroyed, has given a sting to my detestation of war...". As they travelled, Mary and Percy read works by Mary Wollstonecraft and others, kept a joint journal, and continued their own writing. At Lucerne, lack of money forced the three to turn back. They travelled down the Rhine and by land to the Dutch port of Maassluis, arriving at Gravesend, Kent, on 13 September 1814. The situation awaiting Mary Godwin in England was fraught with complications, some of which she had not foreseen. Either before or during the journey, she had become pregnant. She and Percy now found themselves penniless, and, to Mary's genuine surprise, her father refused to have anything to do with her. The couple moved with Claire into lodgings at Somers Town, and later, Nelson Square. They maintained their intense programme of reading and writing, and entertained Percy Shelley's friends, such as Thomas Jefferson Hogg and the writer Thomas Love Peacock. Percy Shelley sometimes left home for short periods to dodge creditors. The couple's distraught letters reveal their pain at these separations. Pregnant and often ill, Mary Godwin had to cope with Percy's joy at the birth of his son by Harriet Shelley in late 1814 and his constant outings with Claire Clairmont. Shelley and Clairmont were almost certainly lovers, which caused much jealousy on Godwin's part. Shelley greatly offended Godwin at one point when during a walk in the French countryside he suggested that they both take the plunge into a stream naked as it offended her principles. She was partly consoled by the visits of Hogg, whom she disliked at first but soon considered a close friend. Percy Shelley seems to have wanted Mary Godwin and Hogg to become lovers; Mary did not dismiss the idea, since in principle she believed in free love. In practice, however, she loved only Percy Shelley and seems to have ventured no further than flirting with Hogg. On 22 February 1815, she gave birth to a two-month premature baby girl, who was not expected to survive. On 6 March, she wrote to Hogg: My dearest Hogg my baby is dead—will you come to see me as soon as you can. I wish to see you—It was perfectly well when I went to bed—I awoke in the night to give it suck it appeared to be sleeping so quietly that I would not awake it. It was dead then, but we did not find that out till morning—from its appearance it evidently died of convulsions—Will you come—you are so calm a creature & Shelley is afraid of a fever from the milk—for I am no longer a mother now. The loss of her child induced acute depression in Mary Godwin, who was haunted by visions of the baby; but she conceived again and had recovered by the summer. With a revival in Percy Shelley's finances after the death of his grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, the couple holidayed in Torquay and then rented a two-storey cottage at Bishopsgate, on the edge of Windsor Great Park. Little is known about this period in Mary Godwin's life, since her journal from May 1815 to July 1816 is lost. At Bishopsgate, Percy wrote his poem Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude; and on 24 January 1816, Mary gave birth to a second child, William, named after her father, and soon nicknamed "Willmouse". In her novel The Last Man, she later imagined Windsor as a Garden of Eden. Lake Geneva and Frankenstein In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. In History of a Six Weeks’ Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland (1817), she describes the particularly desolate landscape in crossing from France into Switzerland. The party arrived in Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted; "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. Authorship of Frankenstein While her husband Percy encouraged her writing, the extent of Percy's contribution to the novel is unknown and has been argued over by readers and critics. Mary Shelley wrote, "I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement, it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world." She wrote that the preface to the first edition was Percy's work "as far as I can recollect." There are differences in the 1818, 1823 and 1831 editions, which have been attributed to Percy's editing. James Rieger concluded Percy's "assistance at every point in the book's manufacture was so extensive that one hardly knows whether to regard him as editor or minor collaborator", while Anne K. Mellor later argued Percy only "made many technical corrections and several times clarified the narrative and thematic continuity of the text." Charles E. Robinson, editor of a facsimile edition of the Frankenstein manuscripts, concluded that Percy's contributions to the book "were no more than what most publishers' editors have provided new (or old) authors or, in fact, what colleagues have provided to each other after reading each other's works in progress." Writing on the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein, literary scholar and poet Fiona Sampson asked, "Why hasn't Mary Shelley gotten the respect she deserves?" She noted that "In recent years Percy's corrections, visible in the Frankenstein notebooks held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, have been seized on as evidence that he must have at least co-authored the novel. In fact, when I examined the notebooks myself, I realized that Percy did rather less than any line editor working in publishing today." Sampson published her findings in In Search of Mary Shelley (2018), one of many biographies written about Shelley. Bath and Marlow On their return to England in September, Mary and Percy moved—with Claire Clairmont, who took lodgings nearby—to Bath, where they hoped to keep Claire's pregnancy secret. At Cologny, Mary Godwin had received two letters from her half-sister, Fanny Imlay, who alluded to her "unhappy life"; on 9 October, Fanny wrote an "alarming letter" from Bristol that sent Percy Shelley racing off to search for her, without success. On the morning of 10 October, Fanny Imlay was found dead in a room at a Swansea inn, along with a suicide note and a laudanum bottle. On 10 December, Percy Shelley's wife, Harriet, was discovered drowned in the Serpentine, a lake in Hyde Park, London. Both suicides were hushed up. Harriet's family obstructed Percy Shelley's efforts—fully supported by Mary Godwin—to assume custody of his two children by Harriet. His lawyers advised him to improve his case by marrying; so he and Mary, who was pregnant again, married on 30 December 1816 at St Mildred's Church, Bread Street, London. Mr and Mrs Godwin were present and the marriage ended the family rift. Claire Clairmont gave birth to a baby girl on 13 January, at first called Alba, later Allegra. In March of that year, the Chancery Court ruled Percy Shelley morally unfit to assume custody of his children and later placed them with a clergyman's family. Also in March, the Shelleys moved with Claire and Alba to Albion House at Marlow, Buckinghamshire, a large, damp building on the river Thames. There Mary Shelley gave birth to her third child, Clara, on 2 September. At Marlow, they entertained their new friends Marianne and Leigh Hunt, worked hard at their writing, and often discussed politics. Early in the summer of 1817, Mary Shelley finished Frankenstein, which was published anonymously in January 1818. Reviewers and readers assumed that Percy Shelley was the author, since the book was published with his preface and dedicated to his political hero William Godwin. At Marlow, Mary edited the joint journal of the group's 1814 Continental journey, adding material written in Switzerland in 1816, along with Percy's poem "Mont Blanc". The result was the History of a Six Weeks' Tour, published in November 1817. That autumn, Percy Shelley often lived away from home in London to evade creditors. The threat of a debtor's prison, combined with their ill health and fears of losing custody of their children, contributed to the couple's decision to leave England for Italy on 12 March 1818, taking Claire Clairmont and Alba with them. They had no intention of returning. Italy One of the party's first tasks on arriving in Italy was to hand Alba over to Byron, who was living in Venice. He had agreed to raise her so long as Claire had nothing more to do with her. The Shelleys then embarked on a roving existence, never settling in any one place for long. Along the way, they accumulated a circle of friends and acquaintances who often moved with them. The couple devoted their time to writing, reading, learning, sightseeing, and socialising. The Italian adventure was, however, blighted for Mary Shelley by the deaths of both her children—Clara, in September 1818 in Venice, and William, in June 1819 in Rome. These losses left her in a deep depression that isolated her from Percy Shelley, who wrote in his notebook: My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone, And left me in this dreary world alone? Thy form is here indeed—a lovely one— But thou art fled, gone down a dreary road That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode. For thine own sake I cannot follow thee Do thou return for mine. For a time, Mary Shelley found comfort only in her writing. The birth of her fourth child, Percy Florence, on 12 November 1819, finally lifted her spirits, though she nursed the memory of her lost children till the end of her life. Italy provided the Shelleys, Byron, and other exiles with political freedom unattainable at home. Despite its associations with personal loss, Italy became for Mary Shelley "a country which memory painted as paradise". Their Italian years were a time of intense intellectual and creative activity for both Shelleys. While Percy composed a series of major poems, Mary wrote the novel Matilda, the historical novel Valperga, and the plays Proserpine and Midas. Mary wrote Valperga to help alleviate her father's financial difficulties, as Percy refused to assist him further. She was often physically ill, however, and prone to depressions. She also had to cope with Percy's interest in other women, such as Sophia Stacey, Emilia Viviani, and Jane Williams. Since Mary Shelley shared his belief in the non-exclusivity of marriage, she formed emotional ties of her own among the men and women of their circle. She became particularly fond of the Greek revolutionary Prince Alexandros Mavrokordatos and of Jane and Edward Williams. In December 1818, the Shelleys travelled south with Claire Clairmont and their servants to Naples, where they stayed for three months, receiving only one visitor, a physician. In 1820, they found themselves plagued by accusations and threats from Paolo and Elise Foggi, former servants whom Percy Shelley had dismissed in Naples shortly after the Foggis had married. The pair revealed that on 27 February 1819 in Naples, Percy Shelley had registered as his child by Mary Shelley a two-month-old baby girl named Elena Adelaide Shelley. The Foggis also claimed that Claire Clairmont was the baby's mother. Biographers have offered various interpretations of these events: that Percy Shelley decided to adopt a local child; that the baby was his by Elise, Claire, or an unknown woman; or that she was Elise's by Byron. Mary Shelley insisted she would have known if Claire had been pregnant, but it is unclear how much she really knew. The events in Naples, a city Mary Shelley later called a paradise inhabited by devils, remain shrouded in mystery. The only certainty is that she herself was not the child's mother. Elena Adelaide Shelley died in Naples on 9 June 1820. After leaving Naples, the Shelleys settled in Rome, the city where her husband wrote where "the meanest streets were strewed with truncated columns, broken capitals...and sparkling fragments of granite or porphyry...The voice of dead time, in still vibrations, is breathed from these dumb things, animated and glorified as they were by man". Rome inspired her to begin writing the unfinished novel Valerius, the Reanimated Roman, where the eponymous hero resists the decay of Rome and the machinations of "superstitious" Catholicism. The writing of her novel was broken off when her son William died of malaria. Shelley bitterly commented that she had come to Italy to improve her husband's health, and instead the Italian climate had just killed her two children, leading her to write: "May you my dear Marianne never know what it is to lose two only and lovely children in one year—to watch their dying moments—and then at last to be left childless and forever miserable". To deal with her grief, Shelley wrote the novella The Fields of Fancy, which became Matilda, dealing with a young woman whose beauty inspired incestuous love in her father, who ultimately commits suicide to stop himself from acting on his passion for his daughter, while she spends the rest of her life full of despair about "the unnatural love I had inspired". The novella offered a feminist critique of a patriarchal society as Matilda is punished in the afterlife, though she did nothing to encourage her father's feelings. In the summer of 1822, a pregnant Mary moved with Percy, Claire, and Edward and Jane Williams to the isolated Villa Magni, at the sea's edge near the hamlet of San Terenzo in the Bay of Lerici. Once they were settled in, Percy broke the "evil news" to Claire that her daughter Allegra had died of typhus in a convent at Bagnacavallo. Mary Shelley was distracted and unhappy in the cramped and remote Villa Magni, which she came to regard as a dungeon. On 16 June, she miscarried, losing so much blood that she nearly died. Rather than wait for a doctor, Percy sat her in a bath of ice to stanch the bleeding, an act the doctor later told him saved her life. All was not well between the couple that summer, however, and Percy spent more time with Jane Williams than with his depressed and debilitated wife. Much of the short poetry Shelley wrote at San Terenzo involved Jane rather than Mary. The coast offered Percy Shelley and Edward Williams the chance to enjoy their "perfect plaything for the summer", a new sailing boat. The boat had been designed by Daniel Roberts and Edward Trelawny, an admirer of Byron's who had joined the party in January 1822. On 1 July 1822, Percy Shelley, Edward Ellerker Williams, and Captain Daniel Roberts sailed south down the coast to Livorno. There Percy Shelley discussed with Byron and Leigh Hunt the launch of a radical magazine called The Liberal. On 8 July, he and Edward Williams set out on the return journey to Lerici with their eighteen-year-old boat boy, Charles Vivian. They never reached their destination. A letter arrived at Villa Magni from Hunt to Percy Shelley, dated 8 July, saying, "pray write to tell us how you got home, for they say you had bad weather after you sailed Monday & we are anxious". "The paper fell from me," Mary told a friend later. "I trembled all over." She and Jane Williams rushed desperately to Livorno and then to Pisa in the fading hope that their husbands were still alive. Ten days after the storm, three bodies washed up on the coast near Viareggio, midway between Livorno and Lerici. Trelawny, Byron, and Hunt cremated Percy Shelley's corpse on the beach at Viareggio. Return to England and writing career After her husband's death, Mary Shelley lived for a year with Leigh Hunt and his family in Genoa, where she often saw Byron and transcribed his poems. She resolved to live by her pen and for her son, but her financial situation was precarious. On 23 July 1823, she left Genoa for England and stayed with her father and stepmother in the Strand until a small advance from her father-in-law enabled her to lodge nearby. Sir Timothy Shelley had at first agreed to support his grandson, Percy Florence, only if he were handed over to an appointed guardian. Mary Shelley rejected this idea instantly. She managed instead to wring out of Sir Timothy a limited annual allowance (which she had to repay when Percy Florence inherited the estate), but to the end of his days, he refused to meet her in person and dealt with her only through lawyers. Mary Shelley busied herself with editing her husband's poems, among other literary endeavours, but concern for her son restricted her options. Sir Timothy threatened to stop the allowance if any biography of the poet were published. In 1826, Percy Florence became the legal heir of the Shelley estate after the death of his half-brother Charles Shelley, his father's son by Harriet Shelley. Sir Timothy raised Mary's allowance from £100 a year to £250 but remained as difficult as ever. Mary Shelley enjoyed the stimulating society of William Godwin's circle, but poverty prevented her from socialising as she wished. She also felt ostracised by those who, like Sir Timothy, still disapproved of her relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley. In the summer of 1824, Mary Shelley moved to Kentish Town in north London to be near Jane Williams. She may have been, in the words of her biographer Muriel Spark, "a little in love" with Jane. Jane later disillusioned her by gossiping that Percy had preferred her to Mary, owing to Mary's inadequacy as a wife. At around this time, Mary Shelley was working on her novel, The Last Man (1826); and she assisted a series of friends who were writing memoirs of Byron and Percy Shelley—the beginnings of her attempts to immortalise her husband. She also met the American actor John Howard Payne and the American writer Washington Irving, who intrigued her. Payne fell in love with her and in 1826 asked her to marry him. She refused, saying that after being married to one genius, she could only marry another. Payne accepted the rejection and tried without success to talk his friend Irving into proposing himself. Mary Shelley was aware of Payne's plan, but how seriously she took it is unclear. In 1827, Mary Shelley was party to a scheme that enabled her friend Isabel Robinson and Isabel's lover, Mary Diana Dods, who wrote under the name David Lyndsay, to embark on a life together in France as husband and wife. With the help of Payne, whom she kept in the dark about the details, Mary Shelley obtained false passports for the couple. In 1828, she fell ill with smallpox while visiting them in Paris. Weeks later she recovered, unscarred but without her youthful beauty. During the period 1827–40, Mary Shelley was busy as an editor and writer. She wrote the novels The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835), and Falkner (1837). She contributed five volumes of Lives of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French authors to Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia. She also wrote stories for ladies' magazines. She was still helping to support her father, and they looked out for publishers for each other. In 1830, she sold the copyright for a new edition of Frankenstein for £60 to Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley for their new Standard Novels series. After her father's death in 1836 at the age of eighty, she began assembling his letters and a memoir for publication, as he had requested in his will; but after two years of work, she abandoned the project. Throughout this period, she also championed Percy Shelley's poetry, promoting its publication and quoting it in her writing. By 1837, Percy's works were well-known and increasingly admired. In the summer of 1838 Edward Moxon, the publisher of Tennyson and the son-in-law of Charles Lamb, proposed publishing a collected works of Percy Shelley. Mary was paid £500 to edit the Poetical Works (1838), which Sir Timothy insisted should not include a biography. Mary found a way to tell the story of Percy's life, nonetheless: she included extensive biographical notes about the poems. Shelley continued to practice her mother's feminist principles by extending aid to women whom society disapproved of. For instance, Shelley extended financial aid to Mary Diana Dods, a single mother and illegitimate herself who appears to have been a lesbian and gave her the new identity of Walter Sholto Douglas, husband of her lover Isabel Robinson. Shelley also assisted Georgiana Paul, a woman disallowed for by her husband for alleged adultery. Shelley in her diary about her assistance to the latter: "I do not make a boast-I do not say aloud-behold my generosity and greatness of mind-for in truth it is simple justice I perform-and so I am still reviled for being worldly". Mary Shelley continued to treat potential romantic partners with caution. In 1828, she met and flirted with the French writer Prosper Mérimée, but her one surviving letter to him appears to be a deflection of his declaration of love. She was delighted when her old friend from Italy, Edward Trelawny, returned to England, and they joked about marriage in their letters. Their friendship had altered, however, following her refusal to cooperate with his proposed biography of Percy Shelley; and he later reacted angrily to her omission of the atheistic section of Queen Mab from Percy Shelley's poems. Oblique references in her journals, from the early 1830s until the early 1840s, suggest that Mary Shelley had feelings for the radical politician Aubrey Beauclerk, who may have disappointed her by twice marrying others. Mary Shelley's first concern during these years was the welfare of Percy Florence. She honoured her late husband's wish that his son attend public school and, with Sir Timothy's grudging help, had him educated at Harrow. To avoid boarding fees, she moved to Harrow on the Hill herself so that Percy could attend as a day scholar. Though Percy went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, and dabbled in politics and the law, he showed no sign of his parents' gifts. He was devoted to his mother, and after he left university in 1841, he came to live with her. Final years and death In 1840 and 1842, mother and son travelled together on the continent, journeys that Mary Shelley recorded in Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843 (1844). In 1844, Sir Timothy Shelley finally died at the age of ninety, "falling from the stalk like an overblown flower", as Mary put it. For the first time, she and her son were financially independent, though the estate proved less valuable than they had hoped. In the mid-1840s, Mary Shelley found herself the target of three separate blackmailers. In 1845, an Italian political exile called Gatteschi, whom she had met in Paris, threatened to publish letters she had sent him. A friend of her son's bribed a police chief into seizing Gatteschi's papers, including the letters, which were then destroyed. Shortly afterwards, Mary Shelley bought some letters written by herself and Percy Bysshe Shelley from a man calling himself G. Byron and posing as the illegitimate son of the late Lord Byron. Also in 1845, Percy Bysshe Shelley's cousin Thomas Medwin approached her claiming to have written a damaging biography of Percy Shelley. He said he would suppress it in return for £250, but Mary Shelley refused. In 1848, Percy Florence married Jane Gibson St John. The marriage proved a happy one, and Mary Shelley and Jane were fond of each other. Mary lived with her son and daughter-in-law at Field Place, Sussex, the Shelleys' ancestral home, and at Chester Square, London, and accompanied them on travels abroad. Mary Shelley's last years were blighted by illness. From 1839, she suffered from headaches and bouts of paralysis in parts of her body, which sometimes prevented her from reading and writing. On 1 February 1851, at Chester Square, she died at the age of fifty-three from what her physician suspected was a brain tumour. According to Jane Shelley, Mary Shelley had asked to be buried with her mother and father; but Percy and Jane, judging the graveyard at St Pancras to be "dreadful", chose to bury her instead at St Peter's Church, Bournemouth, near their new home at Boscombe. On the first anniversary of Mary Shelley's death, the Shelleys opened her box-desk. Inside they found locks of her dead children's hair, a notebook she had shared with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a copy of his poem Adonaïs with one page folded round a silk parcel containing some of his ashes and the remains of his heart. Literary themes and styles Mary Shelley lived a literary life. Her father encouraged her to learn to write by composing letters, and her favourite occupation as a child was writing stories. Unfortunately, all of Mary's juvenilia were lost when she ran off with Percy in 1814, and none of her surviving manuscripts can be definitively dated before that year. Her first published work is often thought to have been Mounseer Nongtongpaw, comic verses written for Godwin's Juvenile Library when she was ten and a half; however, the poem is attributed to another writer in the most recent authoritative collection of her works. Percy Shelley enthusiastically encouraged Mary Shelley's writing: "My husband was, from the first, very anxious that I should prove myself worthy of my parentage, and enrol myself on the page of fame. He was forever inciting me to obtain literary reputation." Novels Autobiographical elements Certain sections of Mary Shelley's novels are often interpreted as masked rewritings of her life. Critics have pointed to the recurrence of the father–daughter motif in particular as evidence of this autobiographical style. For example, commentators frequently read Mathilda (1820) autobiographically, identifying the three central characters as versions of Mary Shelley, William Godwin, and Percy Shelley. Mary Shelley herself confided that she modelled the central characters of The Last Man on her Italian circle. Lord Raymond, who leaves England to fight for the Greeks and dies in Constantinople, is based on Lord Byron; and the utopian Adrian, Earl of Windsor, who leads his followers in search of a natural paradise and dies when his boat sinks in a storm, is a fictional portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley. However, as she wrote in her review of Godwin's novel Cloudesley (1830), she did not believe that authors "were merely copying from our own hearts". William Godwin regarded his daughter's characters as types rather than portraits from real life. Some modern critics, such as Patricia Clemit and Jane Blumberg, have taken the same view, resisting autobiographical readings of Mary Shelley's works. Novelistic genres Mary Shelley employed the techniques of many different novelistic genres, most vividly the Godwinian novel, Walter Scott's new historical novel, and the Gothic novel. The Godwinian novel, made popular during the 1790s with works such as Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794), "employed a Rousseauvian confessional form to explore the contradictory relations between the self and society", and Frankenstein exhibits many of the same themes and literary devices as Godwin's novel. However, Shelley critiques those Enlightenment ideals that Godwin promotes in his works. In The Last Man, she uses the philosophical form of the Godwinian novel to demonstrate the ultimate meaninglessness of the world. While earlier Godwinian novels had shown how rational individuals could slowly improve society, The Last Man and Frankenstein demonstrate the individual's lack of control over history. Shelley uses the historical novel to comment on gender relations; for example, Valperga is a feminist version of Scott's masculinist genre. Introducing women into the story who are not part of the historical record, Shelley uses their narratives to question established theological and political institutions. Shelley sets the male protagonist's compulsive greed for conquest in opposition to a female alternative: reason and sensibility. In Perkin Warbeck, Shelley's other historical novel, Lady Gordon stands for the values of friendship, domesticity, and equality. Through her, Shelley offers a feminine alternative to the masculine power politics that destroy the male characters. The novel provides a more inclusive historical narrative to challenge the one which usually relates only masculine events. Gender With the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1970s, Mary Shelley's works, particularly Frankenstein, began to attract much more attention from scholars. Feminist and psychoanalytic critics were largely responsible for the recovery from neglect of Shelley as a writer. Ellen Moers was one of the first to claim that Shelley's loss of a baby was a crucial influence on the writing of Frankenstein. She argues that the novel is a "birth myth" in which Shelley comes to terms with her guilt for causing her mother's death as well as for failing as a parent. Shelley scholar Anne K. Mellor suggests that, from a feminist viewpoint, it is a story "about what happens when a man tries to have a baby without a woman ... [Frankenstein] is profoundly concerned with natural as opposed to unnatural modes of production and reproduction". Victor Frankenstein's failure as a "parent" in the novel has been read as an expression of the anxieties which accompany pregnancy, giving birth, and particularly maternity. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue in their seminal book The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) that in Frankenstein in particular, Shelley responded to the masculine literary tradition represented by John Milton's Paradise Lost. In their interpretation, Shelley reaffirms this masculine tradition, including the misogyny inherent in it, but at the same time "conceal[s] fantasies of equality that occasionally erupt in monstrous images of rage". Mary Poovey reads the first edition of Frankenstein as part of a larger pattern in Shelley's writing, which begins with literary self-assertion and ends with conventional femininity. Poovey suggests that Frankenstein's multiple narratives enable Shelley to split her artistic persona: she can "express and efface herself at the same time". Shelley's fear of self-assertion is reflected in the fate of Frankenstein, who is punished for his egotism by losing all his domestic ties. Feminist critics often focus on how authorship itself, particularly female authorship, is represented in and through Shelley's novels. As Mellor explains, Shelley uses the Gothic style not only to explore repressed female sexual desire but also as way to "censor her own speech in Frankenstein". According to Poovey and Mellor, Shelley did not want to promote her own authorial persona and felt deeply inadequate as a writer, and "this shame contributed to the generation of her fictional images of abnormality, perversion, and destruction". Shelley's writings focus on the role of the family in society and women's role within that family. She celebrates the "feminine affections and compassion" associated with the family and suggests that civil society will fail without them. Shelley was "profoundly committed to an ethic of cooperation, mutual dependence, and self-sacrifice". In Lodore, for example, the central story follows the fortunes of the wife and daughter of the title character, Lord Lodore, who is killed in a duel at the end of the first volume, leaving a trail of legal, financial, and familial obstacles for the two "heroines" to negotiate. The novel is engaged with political and ideological issues, particularly the education and social role of women. It dissects a patriarchal culture that separated the sexes and pressured women into dependence on men. In the view of Shelley scholar Betty T. Bennett, "the novel proposes egalitarian educational paradigms for women and men, which would bring social justice as well as the spiritual and intellectual means by which to meet the challenges life invariably brings". However, Falkner is the only one of Mary Shelley's novels in which the heroine's agenda triumphs. The novel's resolution proposes that when female values triumph over violent and destructive masculinity, men will be freed to express the "compassion, sympathy, and generosity" of their better natures. Enlightenment and Romanticism Frankenstein, like much Gothic fiction of the period, mixes a visceral and alienating subject matter with speculative and thought-provoking themes. Rather than focusing on the twists and turns of the plot, however, the novel foregrounds the mental and moral struggles of the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, and Shelley imbues the text with her own brand of politicised Romanticism, one that criticised the individualism and egotism of traditional Romanticism. Victor Frankenstein is like Satan in Paradise Lost, and Prometheus: he rebels against tradition; he creates life; and he shapes his own destiny. These traits are not portrayed positively; as Blumberg writes, "his relentless ambition is a self-delusion, clothed as quest for truth". He must abandon his family to fulfill his ambition. Mary Shelley believed in the Enlightenment idea that people could improve society through the responsible exercise of political power, but she feared that the irresponsible exercise of power would lead to chaos. In practice, her works largely criticise the way 18th-century thinkers such as her parents believed such change could be brought about. The creature in Frankenstein, for example, reads books associated with radical ideals but the education he gains from them is ultimately useless. Shelley's works reveal her as less optimistic than Godwin and Wollstonecraft; she lacks faith in Godwin's theory that humanity could eventually be perfected. As literary scholar Kari Lokke writes, The Last Man, more so than Frankenstein, "in its refusal to place humanity at the centre of the universe, its questioning of our privileged position in relation to nature ... constitutes a profound and prophetic challenge to Western humanism." Specifically, Mary Shelley's allusions to what radicals believed was a failed revolution in France and the Godwinian, Wollstonecraftian, and Burkean responses to it, challenge "Enlightenment faith in the inevitability of progress through collective efforts". As in Frankenstein, Shelley "offers a profoundly disenchanted commentary on the age of revolution, which ends in a total rejection of the progressive ideals of her own generation". Not only does she reject these Enlightenment political ideals, but she also rejects the Romantic notion that the poetic or literary imagination can offer an alternative. Politics There is a new scholarly emphasis on Shelley as a lifelong reformer, deeply engaged in the liberal and feminist concerns of her day. In 1820, she was thrilled by the Liberal uprising in Spain which forced the king to grant a constitution. In 1823, she wrote articles for Leigh Hunt's periodical The Liberal and played an active role in the formulation of its outlook. She was delighted when the Whigs came back to power in 1830 and at the prospect of the 1832 Reform Act. Critics have until recently cited Lodore and Falkner as evidence of increasing conservatism in Mary Shelley's later works. In 1984, Mary Poovey influentially identified the retreat of Mary Shelley's reformist politics into the "separate sphere" of the domestic. Poovey suggested that Mary Shelley wrote Falkner to resolve her conflicted response to her father's combination of libertarian radicalism and stern insistence on social decorum. Mellor largely agreed, arguing that "Mary Shelley grounded her alternative political ideology on the metaphor of the peaceful, loving, bourgeois family. She thereby implicitly endorsed a conservative vision of gradual evolutionary reform." This vision allowed women to participate in the public sphere but it inherited the inequalities inherent in the bourgeois family. However, in the last decade or so this view has been challenged. For example, Bennett claims that Mary Shelley's works reveal a consistent commitment to Romantic idealism and political reform and Jane Blumberg's study of Shelley's early novels argues that her career cannot be easily divided into radical and conservative halves. She contends that "Shelley was never a passionate radical like her husband and her later lifestyle was not abruptly assumed nor was it a betrayal. She was in fact challenging the political and literary influences of her circle in her first work." In this reading, Shelley's early works are interpreted as a challenge to Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley's radicalism. Victor Frankenstein's "thoughtless rejection of family", for example, is seen as evidence of Shelley's constant concern for the domestic. Short stories In the 1820s and 1830s, Mary Shelley frequently wrote short stories for gift books or annuals, including sixteen for The Keepsake, which was aimed at middle-class women and bound in silk, with gilt-edged pages. Mary Shelley's work in this genre has been described as that of a "hack writer" and "wordy and pedestrian". However, critic Charlotte Sussman points out that other leading writers of the day, such as the Romantic poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, also took advantage of this profitable market. She explains that "the annuals were a major mode of literary production in the 1820s and 1830s", with The Keepsake the most successful. Many of Shelley's stories are set in places or times far removed from early 19th-century Britain, such as Greece and the reign of Henry IV of France. Shelley was particularly interested in "the fragility of individual identity" and often depicted "the way a person's role in the world can be cataclysmically altered either by an internal emotional upheaval, or by some supernatural occurrence that mirrors an internal schism". In her stories, female identity is tied to a woman's short-lived value in the marriage market while male identity can be sustained and transformed through the use of money. Although Mary Shelley wrote twenty-one short stories for the annuals between 1823 and 1839, she always saw herself, above all, as a novelist. She wrote to Leigh Hunt, "I write bad articles which help to make me miserable—but I am going to plunge into a novel and hope that its clear water will wash off the mud of the magazines." Travelogues When they ran off to France in the summer of 1814, Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley began a joint journal, which they published in 1817 under the title History of a Six Weeks' Tour, adding four letters, two by each of them, based on their visit to Geneva in 1816, along with Percy Shelley's poem "Mont Blanc". The work celebrates youthful love and political idealism and consciously follows the example of Mary Wollstonecraft and others who had combined travelling with writing. The perspective of the History is philosophical and reformist rather than that of a conventional travelogue; in particular, it addresses the effects of politics and war on France. The letters the couple wrote on the second journey confront the "great and extraordinary events" of the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo after his "Hundred Days" return in 1815. They also explore the sublimity of Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc as well as the revolutionary legacy of the philosopher and novelist Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Mary Shelley's last full-length book, written in the form of letters and published in 1844, was Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843, which recorded her travels with her son Percy Florence and his university friends. In Rambles, Shelley follows the tradition of Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark and her own A History of a Six Weeks' Tour in mapping her personal and political landscape through the discourse of sensibility and sympathy. For Shelley, building sympathetic connections between people is the way to build civil society and to increase knowledge: "knowledge, to enlighten and free the mind from clinging deadening prejudices—a wider circle of sympathy with our fellow-creatures;—these are the uses of travel". Between observations on scenery, culture, and "the people, especially in a political point of view", she uses the travelogue form to explore her roles as a widow and mother and to reflect on revolutionary nationalism in Italy. She also records her "pilgrimage" to scenes associated with Percy Shelley. According to critic Clarissa Orr, Mary Shelley's adoption of a persona of philosophical motherhood gives Rambles the unity of a prose poem, with "death and memory as central themes". At the same time, Shelley makes an egalitarian case against monarchy, class distinctions, slavery, and war. Biographies Between 1832 and 1839, Mary Shelley wrote many biographies of notable Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French men and a few women for Dionysius Lardner's Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men. These formed part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia, one of the best of many such series produced in the 1820s and 1830s in response to growing middle-class demand for self-education. Until the republication of these essays in 2002, their significance within her body of work was not appreciated. In the view of literary scholar Greg Kucich, they reveal Mary Shelley's "prodigious research across several centuries and in multiple languages", her gift for biographical narrative, and her interest in the "emerging forms of feminist historiography". Shelley wrote in a biographical style popularised by the 18th-century critic Samuel Johnson in his Lives of the Poets (1779–81), combining secondary sources, memoir and anecdote, and authorial evaluation. She records details of each writer's life and character, quotes their writing in the original as well as in translation, and ends with a critical assessment of their achievement. For Shelley, biographical writing was supposed to, in her words, "form as it were a school in which to study the philosophy of history", and to teach "lessons". Most frequently and importantly, these lessons consisted of criticisms of male-dominated institutions such as primogeniture. Shelley emphasises domesticity, romance, family, sympathy, and compassion in the lives of her subjects. Her conviction that such forces could improve society connects her biographical approach with that of other early feminist historians such as Mary Hays and Anna Jameson. Unlike her novels, most of which had an original print run of several hundred copies, the Lives had a print run of about 4,000 for each volume: thus, according to Kucich, Mary Shelley's "use of biography to forward the social agenda of women's historiography became one of her most influential political interventions". Editorial work Soon after Percy Shelley's death, Mary Shelley determined to write his biography. In a letter of 17 November 1822, she announced: "I shall write his life—& thus occupy myself in the only manner from which I can derive consolation." However, her father-in-law, Sir Timothy Shelley, effectively banned her from doing so. Mary began her fostering of Percy's poetic reputation in 1824 with the publication of his Posthumous Poems. In 1839, while she was working on the Lives, she prepared a new edition of his poetry, which became, in the words of literary scholar Susan J. Wolfson, "the canonizing event" in the history of her husband's reputation. The following year, Mary Shelley edited a volume of her husband's essays, letters, translations, and fragments, and throughout the 1830s, she introduced his poetry to a wider audience by publishing assorted works in the annual The Keepsake. Evading Sir Timothy's ban on a biography, Mary Shelley often included in these editions her own annotations and reflections on her husband's life and work. "I am to justify his ways," she had declared in 1824; "I am to make him beloved to all posterity." It was this goal, argues Blumberg, that led her to present Percy's work to the public in the "most popular form possible". To tailor his works for a Victorian audience, she cast Percy Shelley as a lyrical rather than a political poet. As Mary Favret writes, "the disembodied Percy identifies the spirit of poetry itself". Mary glossed Percy's political radicalism as a form of sentimentalism, arguing that his republicanism arose from sympathy for those who were suffering. She inserted romantic anecdotes of his benevolence, domesticity, and love of the natural world. Portraying herself as Percy's "practical muse", she also noted how she had suggested revisions as he wrote. Despite the emotions stirred by this task, Mary Shelley arguably proved herself in many respects a professional and scholarly editor. Working from Percy's messy, sometimes indecipherable, notebooks, she attempted to form a chronology for his writings, and she included poems, such as Epipsychidion, addressed to Emilia Viviani, which she would rather have left out. She was forced, however, into several compromises, and, as Blumberg notes, "modern critics have found fault with the edition and claim variously that she miscopied, misinterpreted, purposely obscured, and attempted to turn the poet into something he was not". According to Wolfson, Donald Reiman, a modern editor of Percy Bysshe Shelley's works, still refers to Mary Shelley's editions, while acknowledging that her editing style belongs "to an age of editing when the aim was not to establish accurate texts and scholarly apparatus but to present a full record of a writer's career for the general reader". In principle, Mary Shelley believed in publishing every last word of her husband's work; but she found herself obliged to omit certain passages, either by pressure from her publisher, Edward Moxon, or in deference to public propriety. For example, she removed the atheistic passages from Queen Mab for the first edition. After she restored them in the second edition, Moxon was prosecuted and convicted of blasphemous libel, though the prosecution was brought out of principle by the Chartist publisher Henry Hetherington, and no punishment was sought. Mary Shelley's omissions provoked criticism, often stinging, from members of Percy Shelley's former circle, and reviewers accused her of, among other things, indiscriminate inclusions. Her notes have nevertheless remained an essential source for the study of Percy Shelley's work. As Bennett explains, "biographers and critics agree that Mary Shelley's commitment to bring Shelley the notice she believed his works merited was the single, major force that established Shelley's reputation during a period when he almost certainly would have faded from public view". Reputation In her own lifetime, Mary Shelley was taken seriously as a writer, though reviewers often missed her writings' political edge. After her death, however, she was chiefly remembered as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of Frankenstein. In fact, in the introduction to her letters published in 1945, editor Frederick Jones wrote, "a collection of the present size could not be justified by the general quality of the letters or by Mary Shelley's importance as a writer. It is as the wife of [Percy Bysshe Shelley] that she excites our interest." This attitude had not disappeared by 1980 when Betty T. Bennett published the first volume of Mary Shelley's complete letters. As she explains, "the fact is that until recent years scholars have generally regarded Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley as a result: William Godwin's and Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter who became Shelley's Pygmalion." It was not until Emily Sunstein's Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality in 1989 that a full-length scholarly biography was published. The attempts of Mary Shelley's son and daughter-in-law to "Victorianise" her memory by censoring biographical documents contributed to a perception of Mary Shelley as a more conventional, less reformist figure than her works suggest. Her own timid omissions from Percy Shelley's works and her quiet avoidance of public controversy in her later years added to this impression. Commentary by Hogg, Trelawny, and other admirers of Percy Shelley also tended to downplay Mary Shelley's radicalism. Trelawny's Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author (1878) praised Percy Shelley at the expense of Mary, questioning her intelligence and even her authorship of Frankenstein. Lady Shelley, Percy Florence's wife, responded in part by presenting a severely edited collection of letters she had inherited, published privately as Shelley and Mary in 1882. From Frankenstein'''s first theatrical adaptation in 1823 to the cinematic adaptations of the 20th century, including the first cinematic version in 1910 and now-famous versions such as James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein, Mel Brooks' satirical 1974 Young Frankenstein, and Kenneth Branagh's 1994 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, many audiences first encounter the work of Mary Shelley through adaptation. Over the course of the 19th century, Mary Shelley came to be seen as a one-novel author at best, rather than as the professional writer she was; most of her works have remained out of print until the last thirty years, obstructing a larger view of her achievement. In recent decades, the republication of almost all her writing has stimulated a new recognition of its value. Her habit of intensive reading and study, revealed in her journals and letters and reflected in her works, is now better appreciated. Shelley's conception of herself as an author has also been recognised; after Percy's death, she wrote of her authorial ambitions: "I think that I can maintain myself, and there is something inspiriting in the idea." Scholars now consider Mary Shelley to be a major Romantic figure, significant for her literary achievement and her political voice as a woman and a liberal. Selected works History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817) Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) Mathilda (1819) Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823) Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1824) The Last Man (1826) The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830) Lodore (1835) Falkner (1837) The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1839) Contributions to Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men (1835–39), part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 (1844) Collections of Mary Shelley's papers are housed in Lord Abinger's Shelley Collection on deposit at the Bodleian Library, the New York Public Library (particularly The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle), the Huntington Library, the British Library, and in the John Murray Collection. See also Mary Shelley (2017 film) Godwin–Shelley family tree Map of 1814 and 1816 European journeys Map of 1840s European journeys Notes References All essays from The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley are marked with a "(CC)" and those from The Other Mary Shelley with an "(OMS)". Bibliography Primary sources Shelley, Mary. Collected Tales and Stories. Ed. Charles E. Robinson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. . Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Ed. Susan J. Wolfson. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. . Shelley, Mary. The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814–44. Ed. Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. The Last Man. Ed. Morton D. Paley. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1998. . Shelley, Mary. Lodore. Ed. Lisa Vargo. Ontario: Broadview Press, 1997. . Shelley, Mary. Mary Shelley's Literary Lives and Other Writings. 4 vols. Ed. Tilar J. Mazzeo. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2002. . Shelley, Mary. Mathilda . Ed. Elizabeth Nitchie. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 16 February 2008. Shelley, Mary. Matilda; with Mary and Maria, by Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd. London: Penguin, 1992. . Shelley, Mary, ed. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley . London: Edward Moxon, 1840. Google Books. Retrieved 6 April 2008. Shelley, Mary. Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca. Ed. Michael Rossington. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 2000. . Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Shelley's Poetry and Prose. Eds. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2002. . Secondary sources Bennett, Betty T. "Finding Mary Shelley in her Letters". Romantic Revisions. Ed. Robert Brinkley and Keith Hanley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. . Bennett, Betty T., ed. Mary Shelley in her Times. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Bennett, Betty T. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. . Bennett, Betty T. "The Political Philosophy of Mary Shelley's Historical Novels: Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". The Evidence of the Imagination. Ed. Donald H. Reiman, Michael C. Jaye, and Betty T. Bennett. New York: New York University Press, 1978. . Bieri, James. Percy Bysshe Shelley, a Biography: Exile of Unfulfilled Renown, 1816–1822. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005. . Blumberg, Jane. Mary Shelley's Early Novels: "This Child of Imagination and Misery". Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993. . Bunnell, Charlene E. "All the World's a Stage": Dramatic Sensibility in Mary Shelley's Novels. New York: Routledge, 2002. . Carlson, J. A. England's First Family of Writers: Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Shelley. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. . Clemit, Pamela. "From The Fields of Fancy to Matilda." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Clemit, Pamela. The Godwinian Novel: The Rational Fictions of Godwin, Brockden Brown, Mary Shelley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. . Conger, Syndy M., Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea, eds. Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Eberle-Sinatra, Michael, ed. Mary Shelley's Fictions: From Frankenstein to Falkner. New York: St. Martin's Press/Palgrave, 2000. . Fisch, Audrey A., Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schorr, eds. The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond "Frankenstein". New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. . Frank, Frederick S. "Mary Shelley's Other Fictions: A Bibliographic Consensus". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Garrett, Martin Mary Shelley. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. 1979. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. . Gittings, Robert and Jo Manton. Claire Clairmont and the Shelleys. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. . Holmes, Richard. Shelley: The Pursuit. 1974. London: Harper Perennial, 2003. . Jones, Steven. "Charles E. Robinson, Ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two)". (Book Review). Romantic Circles website, 1 January 1998. Retrieved 15 September 2016. Jump, Harriet Devine, Pamela Clemit, and Betty T. Bennett, eds. Lives of the Great Romantics III: Godwin, Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley by Their Contemporaries. London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999. . Levine, George and U. C. Knoepflmacher, eds. The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley's novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. . Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, her Fiction, Her Monsters. London: Routledge, 1990. . Myers, Mitzi. "Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley: The Female Author between Public and Private Spheres." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Orr, Clarissa Campbell. "Mary Shelley's Rambles in Germany and Italy, the Celebrity Author, and the Undiscovered Country of the Human Heart". Romanticism on the Net 11 (August 1998). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. . Robinson, Charles E., ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two). The Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics, Volume IX, Donald H. Reiman, general ed. Garland Publishing, 1996. . Schor, Esther, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. . Seymour, Miranda. Mary Shelley. London: John Murray, 2000. . Sites, Melissa. "Re/membering Home: Utopian Domesticity in Mary Shelley's Lodore". A Brighter Morn: The Shelley Circle's Utopian Project. Ed. Darby Lewes. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003. . Smith, Johanna M. "A Critical History of Frankenstein". Frankenstein. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. . Spark, Muriel. Mary Shelley. London: Cardinal, 1987. . St Clair, William. The Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography of a Family. London: Faber & Faber, 1989. . Sterrenburg, Lee. "The Last Man: Anatomy of Failed Revolutions". Nineteenth Century Fiction 33 (1978): 324–47. Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. 1989. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. . Townsend, William C. Modern State Trials. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1850. Wake, Ann M Frank. "Women in the Active Voice: Recovering Female History in Mary Shelley's Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . White, Daniel E. "'The god undeified': Mary Shelley's Valperga, Italy, and the Aesthetic of Desire ". Romanticism on the Net 6 (May 1997). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Further reading Goulding, Christopher. "The Real Doctor Frankenstein?" Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. The Royal Society of Medicine, May 2002. Richard Holmes, "Out of Control" (review of Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds, edited by David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Jason Scott Robert, MIT Press, 277 pp.; and Mary Shelley, The New Annotated Frankenstein, edited and with a foreword and notes by Leslie S. Klinger, Liveright, 352 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 20 (21 December 2017), pp. 38, 40–41. Gordon, Charlotte (2016). Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley'', Random House. External links Mary Shelley chronology and bibliography – part of Romantic Circles Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley manuscript material, 1815–1850, held by the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, New York Public Library Mary Shelley at the British Library Exhibits relating to Mary Shelley at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford 1797 births 1851 deaths 19th-century English women writers 19th-century English novelists 19th-century British short story writers British expatriates in Italy British expatriates in Switzerland British feminists British horror writers British science fiction writers Deaths from brain tumor Deaths from cancer in England English expatriates in Italy English expatriates in Switzerland English feminists English horror writers English science fiction writers English travel writers English women novelists Frankenstein Godwin family People from Bournemouth People from Somers Town, London Romanticism Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees Victorian novelists Women historical novelists Women horror writers Women of the Regency era Women science fiction and fantasy writers British women travel writers Writers of Gothic fiction Shelley family Weird fiction writers
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[ "Carlene Hatcher Polite (August 28, 1932 – December 7, 2009) was an American writer. She was avid fan of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Gabriel Garcia-Marquez's work. She was a cousin of Toni Morrison.\n\nEarly life\nCarlene Hatcher trained at the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance and then danced professionally from 1955 to 1963 in New York and Detroit. She also worked for civil rights organizations, including the Detroit Council for Human Rights and the NAACP.\n\nWriter\nIn 1964, Polite moved to Paris where her first book The Flagellants was published in French in 1966, and was subsequently published in English in 1967. The book received critical acclaim, with Mel Watkins in The New York Times Book Review stating it was \"a complex, scathing and often brilliant depiction of the disintegration of a black couple’s relationship,\" and that it \"was among the first fictional works by a black woman to focus directly on the theme of the sometimes bitter antagonism between black men and women.\"\n\nPolite published her second book Sister X and the Victims of Foul Play, about the investigation into the death of a black nightclub dancer in Paris, in 1975. After two novels, Polite decided that she had said all that she needed to say in fiction, and purposefully did not publish anything else though she continued to write.\n\nLater years\nPolite joined the University at Buffalo in 1971, where she taught creative writing, African American history and literature until her retirement in 2000. She became tenured and served on several notable committees, as well as chairing the American Studies Department for a short while. She was famous at the University for her teaching style. She possessed a near-encyclopedic knowledge of a variety of subjects that included race, gender, history, sexuality, spirituality, religion, quantum mechanics, sports and theater. She was notable for wearing unique and stylish garments.\n\nHer classroom assignments often centered on books such as The African Origin of Civilization by Cheikh Anta Diop, Stolen Legacy by George G.M. James and other Afrocentric works.\n\nHer writing assignments included four standard papers, one page each that served as mid-term and final papers—centering on being in love, falling out of love, and being the opposite gender. In her tenure at the university, she only used two teaching assistants (John Ransom and Kyle Phoenix (née Brian Kyle Doyle) both later published and highly regarded authors), feeling that their personal abilities, writing interests and knowledge were sufficient for her classroom needs.\n\nShe died December 7, 2009.\n\nSelected works\n\nReferences\n\n1932 births\n2009 deaths\n20th-century American novelists\nAfrican-American novelists\nAfrican-American women writers\nAmerican women novelists\nNovelists from Michigan\n20th-century American women writers\nUniversity at Buffalo faculty\nAmerican women academics\n20th-century African-American women\n20th-century African-American writers\n21st-century African-American people\n21st-century African-American women", "Findlay (born 7 June 1991), real name Natalie Rose Findlay, is an English musician originally from Stockport, England.\n\nEarly life\nFindlay started playing the guitar when she was around 15 and after about a year began writing songs. She took up music for the simple fact that she wasn't into anything else growing up. She joked that \"(she) can't really do anything else.\"\n\nMusic career\n\n2008–2014: Polydor\nOn 24 November 2013, Findlay released her second EP Greasy Love. However, after disagreements with her record label, Polydor, Findlay was granted a release from her contract with the company.\n\n2015–2016: BMG\nFindlay soon created her own label Mint Records and signed with BMG. On 9 February 2015 the video for the single \"Electric Bones\" was released online and the Electric Bones EP was released digitally on 4 September 2015. In March 2015 Findlay released the single \"Wolfback\" which samples from the Ratatat song \"Loud Pipes\". The video for \"Junk Food\" premiered on 4 November 2015 on Clash.\n\n2017–2018: Forgotten Pleasures\nTo start off 2017, the single \"Waste My Time\" was released in January, followed by the release of Findlay's debut studio album Forgotten Pleasures on 3 March 2017.\n\n2019–present: Second studio album and Ttrruuces\nIn June 2019, Findlay announced she was working on her second studio album via Instagram post. In 2019, she also started a new project called Ttrruuces along with her debut album's co-producer Jules Apollinaire. Their self-titled debut album was released on 26 June 2020.\n\nOn September 2021, Findlay released her new single \"Life is but a Dream\".\n\nDiscography\n\nStudio albums\n\nEPs\n\nSingles\n\nFeatured Artist\n\nTouring \nAlong with performing at major festival stages, Findlay has toured in support of such notable acts as Jake Bugg, the Courteeners, Brandon Flowers and Miles Kane.\n\nFindlay made her United States debut on 12 March 2018 in Los Angeles. She also played at several 2018 SXSW showcases.\n\nIn other media \n\n \n 2015: \"Greasy Love\", featured in season three premiere episode of the Cinemax drama, Banshee.\n\n \n 2018: \"Waste My Time\", featured in an episode of Stan's TV series Younger\n 2018: \"Stoned and Alone\", featured in \"The Precious Blood of Jesus\", an episode of Netflix's Ozark\n 2018: \"Off & On\", As part of the soundtrack for the Konami Sports-related videogame Pro Evolution Soccer\n\nOfficial Videos\n\nPersonal life\nFindlay's current residence is in Hackney, East London. She is a vegetarian and speaks French. She has been in a relationship with her TTRRUUCES bandmate Jules Apollinaire since 2014.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nOfficial Site\n\n1991 births\nLiving people\nEnglish women singer-songwriters\nMusicians from Manchester\n21st-century English women singers\n21st-century English singers" ]
[ "Mary Shelley", "Lake Geneva and Frankenstein", "When did Mary Shelley write Frankenstein?", "Mary Shelley remembered in 1831,", "What did she have to do with Lake Geneva?", "close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis", "what did they do while they were there?", "They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. \"", "What did they write while they were there?", "Byron to propose that they \"each write a ghost story\".", "Did they write the ghost story?", "she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her \"waking dream\", her ghost story:", "how did that end for her?", "She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein:", "was Frankenstein successful?", "The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films.", "how many films?", "a number of films.", "did percy also publish a ghost story?", "I don't know.", "Was she famous for writing anything else?", "I don't know." ]
C_fcd11261399c4441ac5c013381bf1e1d_1
what else was interesting about this article?
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What else was interesting about this article aside from Frankenstein?
Mary Shelley
In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. The party arrived at Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted, "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. CANNOTANSWER
astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars,
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and feminist activist Mary Wollstonecraft. Shelley's mother died less than a month after giving birth to her. She was raised by her father, who provided her with a rich if informal education, encouraging her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories. When she was four, her father married a neighbour, Mary Jane Clairmont, with whom Shelley came to have a troubled relationship. In 1814, Shelley began a romance with one of her father's political followers, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. Together with her stepsister, Claire Clairmont, she and Percy left for France and travelled through Europe. Upon their return to England, Shelley was pregnant with Percy's child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet. In 1816, the couple and Mary's stepsister famously spent a summer with Lord Byron and John William Polidori near Geneva, Switzerland, where Shelley conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, most likely caused by the brain tumour which killed her at age 53. Until the 1970s, Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish her husband's works and for her novel Frankenstein, which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Shelley's achievements. Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826) and her final two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). Studies of her lesser-known works, such as the travel book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–1846), support the growing view that Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life. Shelley's works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practised by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin. Life and career Early life Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, in 1797. She was the second child of the feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the first child of the philosopher, novelist, and journalist William Godwin. Wollstonecraft died of puerperal fever shortly after Mary was born. Godwin was left to bring up Mary, along with her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, Wollstonecraft's child by the American speculator Gilbert Imlay. A year after Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798), which he intended as a sincere and compassionate tribute. However, because the Memoirs revealed Wollstonecraft's affairs and her illegitimate child, they were seen as shocking. Mary Godwin read these memoirs and her mother's books, and was brought up to cherish her mother's memory. Mary's earliest years were happy, judging from the letters of William Godwin's housekeeper and nurse, Louisa Jones. But Godwin was often deeply in debt; feeling that he could not raise the children by himself, he cast about for a second wife. In December 1801, he married Mary Jane Clairmont, a well-educated woman with two young children of her own—Charles and Claire. Most of Godwin's friends disliked his new wife, describing her as quick-tempered and quarrelsome; but Godwin was devoted to her, and the marriage was a success. Mary Godwin, on the other hand, came to detest her stepmother. William Godwin's 19th-century biographer Charles Kegan Paul later suggested that Mrs Godwin had favoured her own children over those of Mary Wollstonecraft. Together, the Godwins started a publishing firm called M. J. Godwin, which sold children's books as well as stationery, maps, and games. However, the business did not turn a profit, and Godwin was forced to borrow substantial sums to keep it going. He continued to borrow to pay off earlier loans, compounding his problems. By 1809, Godwin's business was close to failure, and he was "near to despair". Godwin was saved from debtor's prison by philosophical devotees such as Francis Place, who lent him further money. Though Mary Godwin received little formal education, her father tutored her in a broad range of subjects. He often took the children on educational outings, and they had access to his library and to the many intellectuals who visited him, including the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the former vice-president of the United States Aaron Burr. Godwin admitted he was not educating the children according to Mary Wollstonecraft's philosophy as outlined in works such as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), but Mary Godwin nonetheless received an unusual and advanced education for a girl of the time. She had a governess, a daily tutor, and read many of her father's children's books on Roman and Greek history in manuscript. For six months in 1811, she also attended a boarding school in Ramsgate. Her father described her at age 15 as "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible." In June 1812, Mary's father sent her to stay with the dissenting family of the radical William Baxter, near Dundee, Scotland. To Baxter, he wrote, "I am anxious that she should be brought up ... like a philosopher, even like a cynic." Scholars have speculated that she may have been sent away for her health, to remove her from the seamy side of the business, or to introduce her to radical politics. Mary Godwin revelled in the spacious surroundings of Baxter's house and in the companionship of his four daughters, and she returned north in the summer of 1813 for a further stay of 10 months. In the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein, she recalled: "I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered." Percy Bysshe Shelley Mary Godwin may have first met the radical poet-philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley in the interval between her two stays in Scotland. By the time she returned home for a second time on 30 March 1814, Percy Shelley had become estranged from his wife and was regularly visiting William Godwin, whom he had agreed to bail out of debt. Percy Shelley's radicalism, particularly his economic views, which he had imbibed from William Godwin's Political Justice (1793), had alienated him from his wealthy aristocratic family: they wanted him to follow traditional models of the landed aristocracy, and he wanted to donate large amounts of the family's money to schemes intended to help the disadvantaged. Percy Shelley, therefore, had difficulty gaining access to money until he inherited his estate because his family did not want him wasting it on projects of "political justice". After several months of promises, Shelley announced that he either could not or would not pay off all of Godwin's debts. Godwin was angry and felt betrayed. Mary and Percy began meeting each other secretly at her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's grave in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, and they fell in love—she was 16, and he was 21. On 26 June 1814, Shelley and Godwin declared their love for one another as Shelley announced he could not hide his "ardent passion", leading her in a "sublime and rapturous moment" to say she felt the same way; on either that day or the next, Godwin lost her virginity to Shelley, which tradition claims happened in the churchyard. Godwin described herself as attracted to Shelley's "wild, intellectual, unearthly looks". To Mary's dismay, her father disapproved, and tried to thwart the relationship and salvage the "spotless fame" of his daughter. At about the same time, Mary's father learned of Shelley's inability to pay off the father's debts. Mary, who later wrote of "my excessive and romantic attachment to my father", was confused. She saw Percy Shelley as an embodiment of her parents' liberal and reformist ideas of the 1790s, particularly Godwin's view that marriage was a repressive monopoly, which he had argued in his 1793 edition of Political Justice but later retracted. On 28 July 1814, the couple eloped and secretly left for France, taking Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with them. After convincing Mary Jane Godwin, who had pursued them to Calais, that they did not wish to return, the trio travelled to Paris, and then, by donkey, mule, carriage, and foot, through a France recently ravaged by war, to Switzerland. "It was acting in a novel, being an incarnate romance," Mary Shelley recalled in 1826. Godwin wrote about France in 1814: "The distress of the inhabitants, whose houses had been burned, their cattle killed and all their wealth destroyed, has given a sting to my detestation of war...". As they travelled, Mary and Percy read works by Mary Wollstonecraft and others, kept a joint journal, and continued their own writing. At Lucerne, lack of money forced the three to turn back. They travelled down the Rhine and by land to the Dutch port of Maassluis, arriving at Gravesend, Kent, on 13 September 1814. The situation awaiting Mary Godwin in England was fraught with complications, some of which she had not foreseen. Either before or during the journey, she had become pregnant. She and Percy now found themselves penniless, and, to Mary's genuine surprise, her father refused to have anything to do with her. The couple moved with Claire into lodgings at Somers Town, and later, Nelson Square. They maintained their intense programme of reading and writing, and entertained Percy Shelley's friends, such as Thomas Jefferson Hogg and the writer Thomas Love Peacock. Percy Shelley sometimes left home for short periods to dodge creditors. The couple's distraught letters reveal their pain at these separations. Pregnant and often ill, Mary Godwin had to cope with Percy's joy at the birth of his son by Harriet Shelley in late 1814 and his constant outings with Claire Clairmont. Shelley and Clairmont were almost certainly lovers, which caused much jealousy on Godwin's part. Shelley greatly offended Godwin at one point when during a walk in the French countryside he suggested that they both take the plunge into a stream naked as it offended her principles. She was partly consoled by the visits of Hogg, whom she disliked at first but soon considered a close friend. Percy Shelley seems to have wanted Mary Godwin and Hogg to become lovers; Mary did not dismiss the idea, since in principle she believed in free love. In practice, however, she loved only Percy Shelley and seems to have ventured no further than flirting with Hogg. On 22 February 1815, she gave birth to a two-month premature baby girl, who was not expected to survive. On 6 March, she wrote to Hogg: My dearest Hogg my baby is dead—will you come to see me as soon as you can. I wish to see you—It was perfectly well when I went to bed—I awoke in the night to give it suck it appeared to be sleeping so quietly that I would not awake it. It was dead then, but we did not find that out till morning—from its appearance it evidently died of convulsions—Will you come—you are so calm a creature & Shelley is afraid of a fever from the milk—for I am no longer a mother now. The loss of her child induced acute depression in Mary Godwin, who was haunted by visions of the baby; but she conceived again and had recovered by the summer. With a revival in Percy Shelley's finances after the death of his grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, the couple holidayed in Torquay and then rented a two-storey cottage at Bishopsgate, on the edge of Windsor Great Park. Little is known about this period in Mary Godwin's life, since her journal from May 1815 to July 1816 is lost. At Bishopsgate, Percy wrote his poem Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude; and on 24 January 1816, Mary gave birth to a second child, William, named after her father, and soon nicknamed "Willmouse". In her novel The Last Man, she later imagined Windsor as a Garden of Eden. Lake Geneva and Frankenstein In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. In History of a Six Weeks’ Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland (1817), she describes the particularly desolate landscape in crossing from France into Switzerland. The party arrived in Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley". Byron joined them on 25 May, with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy Shelley rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night. "It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted; "galvanism had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life". The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalised several times and formed the basis for a number of films. In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year, and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2am and 3am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story. Authorship of Frankenstein While her husband Percy encouraged her writing, the extent of Percy's contribution to the novel is unknown and has been argued over by readers and critics. Mary Shelley wrote, "I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement, it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world." She wrote that the preface to the first edition was Percy's work "as far as I can recollect." There are differences in the 1818, 1823 and 1831 editions, which have been attributed to Percy's editing. James Rieger concluded Percy's "assistance at every point in the book's manufacture was so extensive that one hardly knows whether to regard him as editor or minor collaborator", while Anne K. Mellor later argued Percy only "made many technical corrections and several times clarified the narrative and thematic continuity of the text." Charles E. Robinson, editor of a facsimile edition of the Frankenstein manuscripts, concluded that Percy's contributions to the book "were no more than what most publishers' editors have provided new (or old) authors or, in fact, what colleagues have provided to each other after reading each other's works in progress." Writing on the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein, literary scholar and poet Fiona Sampson asked, "Why hasn't Mary Shelley gotten the respect she deserves?" She noted that "In recent years Percy's corrections, visible in the Frankenstein notebooks held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, have been seized on as evidence that he must have at least co-authored the novel. In fact, when I examined the notebooks myself, I realized that Percy did rather less than any line editor working in publishing today." Sampson published her findings in In Search of Mary Shelley (2018), one of many biographies written about Shelley. Bath and Marlow On their return to England in September, Mary and Percy moved—with Claire Clairmont, who took lodgings nearby—to Bath, where they hoped to keep Claire's pregnancy secret. At Cologny, Mary Godwin had received two letters from her half-sister, Fanny Imlay, who alluded to her "unhappy life"; on 9 October, Fanny wrote an "alarming letter" from Bristol that sent Percy Shelley racing off to search for her, without success. On the morning of 10 October, Fanny Imlay was found dead in a room at a Swansea inn, along with a suicide note and a laudanum bottle. On 10 December, Percy Shelley's wife, Harriet, was discovered drowned in the Serpentine, a lake in Hyde Park, London. Both suicides were hushed up. Harriet's family obstructed Percy Shelley's efforts—fully supported by Mary Godwin—to assume custody of his two children by Harriet. His lawyers advised him to improve his case by marrying; so he and Mary, who was pregnant again, married on 30 December 1816 at St Mildred's Church, Bread Street, London. Mr and Mrs Godwin were present and the marriage ended the family rift. Claire Clairmont gave birth to a baby girl on 13 January, at first called Alba, later Allegra. In March of that year, the Chancery Court ruled Percy Shelley morally unfit to assume custody of his children and later placed them with a clergyman's family. Also in March, the Shelleys moved with Claire and Alba to Albion House at Marlow, Buckinghamshire, a large, damp building on the river Thames. There Mary Shelley gave birth to her third child, Clara, on 2 September. At Marlow, they entertained their new friends Marianne and Leigh Hunt, worked hard at their writing, and often discussed politics. Early in the summer of 1817, Mary Shelley finished Frankenstein, which was published anonymously in January 1818. Reviewers and readers assumed that Percy Shelley was the author, since the book was published with his preface and dedicated to his political hero William Godwin. At Marlow, Mary edited the joint journal of the group's 1814 Continental journey, adding material written in Switzerland in 1816, along with Percy's poem "Mont Blanc". The result was the History of a Six Weeks' Tour, published in November 1817. That autumn, Percy Shelley often lived away from home in London to evade creditors. The threat of a debtor's prison, combined with their ill health and fears of losing custody of their children, contributed to the couple's decision to leave England for Italy on 12 March 1818, taking Claire Clairmont and Alba with them. They had no intention of returning. Italy One of the party's first tasks on arriving in Italy was to hand Alba over to Byron, who was living in Venice. He had agreed to raise her so long as Claire had nothing more to do with her. The Shelleys then embarked on a roving existence, never settling in any one place for long. Along the way, they accumulated a circle of friends and acquaintances who often moved with them. The couple devoted their time to writing, reading, learning, sightseeing, and socialising. The Italian adventure was, however, blighted for Mary Shelley by the deaths of both her children—Clara, in September 1818 in Venice, and William, in June 1819 in Rome. These losses left her in a deep depression that isolated her from Percy Shelley, who wrote in his notebook: My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone, And left me in this dreary world alone? Thy form is here indeed—a lovely one— But thou art fled, gone down a dreary road That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode. For thine own sake I cannot follow thee Do thou return for mine. For a time, Mary Shelley found comfort only in her writing. The birth of her fourth child, Percy Florence, on 12 November 1819, finally lifted her spirits, though she nursed the memory of her lost children till the end of her life. Italy provided the Shelleys, Byron, and other exiles with political freedom unattainable at home. Despite its associations with personal loss, Italy became for Mary Shelley "a country which memory painted as paradise". Their Italian years were a time of intense intellectual and creative activity for both Shelleys. While Percy composed a series of major poems, Mary wrote the novel Matilda, the historical novel Valperga, and the plays Proserpine and Midas. Mary wrote Valperga to help alleviate her father's financial difficulties, as Percy refused to assist him further. She was often physically ill, however, and prone to depressions. She also had to cope with Percy's interest in other women, such as Sophia Stacey, Emilia Viviani, and Jane Williams. Since Mary Shelley shared his belief in the non-exclusivity of marriage, she formed emotional ties of her own among the men and women of their circle. She became particularly fond of the Greek revolutionary Prince Alexandros Mavrokordatos and of Jane and Edward Williams. In December 1818, the Shelleys travelled south with Claire Clairmont and their servants to Naples, where they stayed for three months, receiving only one visitor, a physician. In 1820, they found themselves plagued by accusations and threats from Paolo and Elise Foggi, former servants whom Percy Shelley had dismissed in Naples shortly after the Foggis had married. The pair revealed that on 27 February 1819 in Naples, Percy Shelley had registered as his child by Mary Shelley a two-month-old baby girl named Elena Adelaide Shelley. The Foggis also claimed that Claire Clairmont was the baby's mother. Biographers have offered various interpretations of these events: that Percy Shelley decided to adopt a local child; that the baby was his by Elise, Claire, or an unknown woman; or that she was Elise's by Byron. Mary Shelley insisted she would have known if Claire had been pregnant, but it is unclear how much she really knew. The events in Naples, a city Mary Shelley later called a paradise inhabited by devils, remain shrouded in mystery. The only certainty is that she herself was not the child's mother. Elena Adelaide Shelley died in Naples on 9 June 1820. After leaving Naples, the Shelleys settled in Rome, the city where her husband wrote where "the meanest streets were strewed with truncated columns, broken capitals...and sparkling fragments of granite or porphyry...The voice of dead time, in still vibrations, is breathed from these dumb things, animated and glorified as they were by man". Rome inspired her to begin writing the unfinished novel Valerius, the Reanimated Roman, where the eponymous hero resists the decay of Rome and the machinations of "superstitious" Catholicism. The writing of her novel was broken off when her son William died of malaria. Shelley bitterly commented that she had come to Italy to improve her husband's health, and instead the Italian climate had just killed her two children, leading her to write: "May you my dear Marianne never know what it is to lose two only and lovely children in one year—to watch their dying moments—and then at last to be left childless and forever miserable". To deal with her grief, Shelley wrote the novella The Fields of Fancy, which became Matilda, dealing with a young woman whose beauty inspired incestuous love in her father, who ultimately commits suicide to stop himself from acting on his passion for his daughter, while she spends the rest of her life full of despair about "the unnatural love I had inspired". The novella offered a feminist critique of a patriarchal society as Matilda is punished in the afterlife, though she did nothing to encourage her father's feelings. In the summer of 1822, a pregnant Mary moved with Percy, Claire, and Edward and Jane Williams to the isolated Villa Magni, at the sea's edge near the hamlet of San Terenzo in the Bay of Lerici. Once they were settled in, Percy broke the "evil news" to Claire that her daughter Allegra had died of typhus in a convent at Bagnacavallo. Mary Shelley was distracted and unhappy in the cramped and remote Villa Magni, which she came to regard as a dungeon. On 16 June, she miscarried, losing so much blood that she nearly died. Rather than wait for a doctor, Percy sat her in a bath of ice to stanch the bleeding, an act the doctor later told him saved her life. All was not well between the couple that summer, however, and Percy spent more time with Jane Williams than with his depressed and debilitated wife. Much of the short poetry Shelley wrote at San Terenzo involved Jane rather than Mary. The coast offered Percy Shelley and Edward Williams the chance to enjoy their "perfect plaything for the summer", a new sailing boat. The boat had been designed by Daniel Roberts and Edward Trelawny, an admirer of Byron's who had joined the party in January 1822. On 1 July 1822, Percy Shelley, Edward Ellerker Williams, and Captain Daniel Roberts sailed south down the coast to Livorno. There Percy Shelley discussed with Byron and Leigh Hunt the launch of a radical magazine called The Liberal. On 8 July, he and Edward Williams set out on the return journey to Lerici with their eighteen-year-old boat boy, Charles Vivian. They never reached their destination. A letter arrived at Villa Magni from Hunt to Percy Shelley, dated 8 July, saying, "pray write to tell us how you got home, for they say you had bad weather after you sailed Monday & we are anxious". "The paper fell from me," Mary told a friend later. "I trembled all over." She and Jane Williams rushed desperately to Livorno and then to Pisa in the fading hope that their husbands were still alive. Ten days after the storm, three bodies washed up on the coast near Viareggio, midway between Livorno and Lerici. Trelawny, Byron, and Hunt cremated Percy Shelley's corpse on the beach at Viareggio. Return to England and writing career After her husband's death, Mary Shelley lived for a year with Leigh Hunt and his family in Genoa, where she often saw Byron and transcribed his poems. She resolved to live by her pen and for her son, but her financial situation was precarious. On 23 July 1823, she left Genoa for England and stayed with her father and stepmother in the Strand until a small advance from her father-in-law enabled her to lodge nearby. Sir Timothy Shelley had at first agreed to support his grandson, Percy Florence, only if he were handed over to an appointed guardian. Mary Shelley rejected this idea instantly. She managed instead to wring out of Sir Timothy a limited annual allowance (which she had to repay when Percy Florence inherited the estate), but to the end of his days, he refused to meet her in person and dealt with her only through lawyers. Mary Shelley busied herself with editing her husband's poems, among other literary endeavours, but concern for her son restricted her options. Sir Timothy threatened to stop the allowance if any biography of the poet were published. In 1826, Percy Florence became the legal heir of the Shelley estate after the death of his half-brother Charles Shelley, his father's son by Harriet Shelley. Sir Timothy raised Mary's allowance from £100 a year to £250 but remained as difficult as ever. Mary Shelley enjoyed the stimulating society of William Godwin's circle, but poverty prevented her from socialising as she wished. She also felt ostracised by those who, like Sir Timothy, still disapproved of her relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley. In the summer of 1824, Mary Shelley moved to Kentish Town in north London to be near Jane Williams. She may have been, in the words of her biographer Muriel Spark, "a little in love" with Jane. Jane later disillusioned her by gossiping that Percy had preferred her to Mary, owing to Mary's inadequacy as a wife. At around this time, Mary Shelley was working on her novel, The Last Man (1826); and she assisted a series of friends who were writing memoirs of Byron and Percy Shelley—the beginnings of her attempts to immortalise her husband. She also met the American actor John Howard Payne and the American writer Washington Irving, who intrigued her. Payne fell in love with her and in 1826 asked her to marry him. She refused, saying that after being married to one genius, she could only marry another. Payne accepted the rejection and tried without success to talk his friend Irving into proposing himself. Mary Shelley was aware of Payne's plan, but how seriously she took it is unclear. In 1827, Mary Shelley was party to a scheme that enabled her friend Isabel Robinson and Isabel's lover, Mary Diana Dods, who wrote under the name David Lyndsay, to embark on a life together in France as husband and wife. With the help of Payne, whom she kept in the dark about the details, Mary Shelley obtained false passports for the couple. In 1828, she fell ill with smallpox while visiting them in Paris. Weeks later she recovered, unscarred but without her youthful beauty. During the period 1827–40, Mary Shelley was busy as an editor and writer. She wrote the novels The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835), and Falkner (1837). She contributed five volumes of Lives of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French authors to Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia. She also wrote stories for ladies' magazines. She was still helping to support her father, and they looked out for publishers for each other. In 1830, she sold the copyright for a new edition of Frankenstein for £60 to Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley for their new Standard Novels series. After her father's death in 1836 at the age of eighty, she began assembling his letters and a memoir for publication, as he had requested in his will; but after two years of work, she abandoned the project. Throughout this period, she also championed Percy Shelley's poetry, promoting its publication and quoting it in her writing. By 1837, Percy's works were well-known and increasingly admired. In the summer of 1838 Edward Moxon, the publisher of Tennyson and the son-in-law of Charles Lamb, proposed publishing a collected works of Percy Shelley. Mary was paid £500 to edit the Poetical Works (1838), which Sir Timothy insisted should not include a biography. Mary found a way to tell the story of Percy's life, nonetheless: she included extensive biographical notes about the poems. Shelley continued to practice her mother's feminist principles by extending aid to women whom society disapproved of. For instance, Shelley extended financial aid to Mary Diana Dods, a single mother and illegitimate herself who appears to have been a lesbian and gave her the new identity of Walter Sholto Douglas, husband of her lover Isabel Robinson. Shelley also assisted Georgiana Paul, a woman disallowed for by her husband for alleged adultery. Shelley in her diary about her assistance to the latter: "I do not make a boast-I do not say aloud-behold my generosity and greatness of mind-for in truth it is simple justice I perform-and so I am still reviled for being worldly". Mary Shelley continued to treat potential romantic partners with caution. In 1828, she met and flirted with the French writer Prosper Mérimée, but her one surviving letter to him appears to be a deflection of his declaration of love. She was delighted when her old friend from Italy, Edward Trelawny, returned to England, and they joked about marriage in their letters. Their friendship had altered, however, following her refusal to cooperate with his proposed biography of Percy Shelley; and he later reacted angrily to her omission of the atheistic section of Queen Mab from Percy Shelley's poems. Oblique references in her journals, from the early 1830s until the early 1840s, suggest that Mary Shelley had feelings for the radical politician Aubrey Beauclerk, who may have disappointed her by twice marrying others. Mary Shelley's first concern during these years was the welfare of Percy Florence. She honoured her late husband's wish that his son attend public school and, with Sir Timothy's grudging help, had him educated at Harrow. To avoid boarding fees, she moved to Harrow on the Hill herself so that Percy could attend as a day scholar. Though Percy went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, and dabbled in politics and the law, he showed no sign of his parents' gifts. He was devoted to his mother, and after he left university in 1841, he came to live with her. Final years and death In 1840 and 1842, mother and son travelled together on the continent, journeys that Mary Shelley recorded in Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843 (1844). In 1844, Sir Timothy Shelley finally died at the age of ninety, "falling from the stalk like an overblown flower", as Mary put it. For the first time, she and her son were financially independent, though the estate proved less valuable than they had hoped. In the mid-1840s, Mary Shelley found herself the target of three separate blackmailers. In 1845, an Italian political exile called Gatteschi, whom she had met in Paris, threatened to publish letters she had sent him. A friend of her son's bribed a police chief into seizing Gatteschi's papers, including the letters, which were then destroyed. Shortly afterwards, Mary Shelley bought some letters written by herself and Percy Bysshe Shelley from a man calling himself G. Byron and posing as the illegitimate son of the late Lord Byron. Also in 1845, Percy Bysshe Shelley's cousin Thomas Medwin approached her claiming to have written a damaging biography of Percy Shelley. He said he would suppress it in return for £250, but Mary Shelley refused. In 1848, Percy Florence married Jane Gibson St John. The marriage proved a happy one, and Mary Shelley and Jane were fond of each other. Mary lived with her son and daughter-in-law at Field Place, Sussex, the Shelleys' ancestral home, and at Chester Square, London, and accompanied them on travels abroad. Mary Shelley's last years were blighted by illness. From 1839, she suffered from headaches and bouts of paralysis in parts of her body, which sometimes prevented her from reading and writing. On 1 February 1851, at Chester Square, she died at the age of fifty-three from what her physician suspected was a brain tumour. According to Jane Shelley, Mary Shelley had asked to be buried with her mother and father; but Percy and Jane, judging the graveyard at St Pancras to be "dreadful", chose to bury her instead at St Peter's Church, Bournemouth, near their new home at Boscombe. On the first anniversary of Mary Shelley's death, the Shelleys opened her box-desk. Inside they found locks of her dead children's hair, a notebook she had shared with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a copy of his poem Adonaïs with one page folded round a silk parcel containing some of his ashes and the remains of his heart. Literary themes and styles Mary Shelley lived a literary life. Her father encouraged her to learn to write by composing letters, and her favourite occupation as a child was writing stories. Unfortunately, all of Mary's juvenilia were lost when she ran off with Percy in 1814, and none of her surviving manuscripts can be definitively dated before that year. Her first published work is often thought to have been Mounseer Nongtongpaw, comic verses written for Godwin's Juvenile Library when she was ten and a half; however, the poem is attributed to another writer in the most recent authoritative collection of her works. Percy Shelley enthusiastically encouraged Mary Shelley's writing: "My husband was, from the first, very anxious that I should prove myself worthy of my parentage, and enrol myself on the page of fame. He was forever inciting me to obtain literary reputation." Novels Autobiographical elements Certain sections of Mary Shelley's novels are often interpreted as masked rewritings of her life. Critics have pointed to the recurrence of the father–daughter motif in particular as evidence of this autobiographical style. For example, commentators frequently read Mathilda (1820) autobiographically, identifying the three central characters as versions of Mary Shelley, William Godwin, and Percy Shelley. Mary Shelley herself confided that she modelled the central characters of The Last Man on her Italian circle. Lord Raymond, who leaves England to fight for the Greeks and dies in Constantinople, is based on Lord Byron; and the utopian Adrian, Earl of Windsor, who leads his followers in search of a natural paradise and dies when his boat sinks in a storm, is a fictional portrait of Percy Bysshe Shelley. However, as she wrote in her review of Godwin's novel Cloudesley (1830), she did not believe that authors "were merely copying from our own hearts". William Godwin regarded his daughter's characters as types rather than portraits from real life. Some modern critics, such as Patricia Clemit and Jane Blumberg, have taken the same view, resisting autobiographical readings of Mary Shelley's works. Novelistic genres Mary Shelley employed the techniques of many different novelistic genres, most vividly the Godwinian novel, Walter Scott's new historical novel, and the Gothic novel. The Godwinian novel, made popular during the 1790s with works such as Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794), "employed a Rousseauvian confessional form to explore the contradictory relations between the self and society", and Frankenstein exhibits many of the same themes and literary devices as Godwin's novel. However, Shelley critiques those Enlightenment ideals that Godwin promotes in his works. In The Last Man, she uses the philosophical form of the Godwinian novel to demonstrate the ultimate meaninglessness of the world. While earlier Godwinian novels had shown how rational individuals could slowly improve society, The Last Man and Frankenstein demonstrate the individual's lack of control over history. Shelley uses the historical novel to comment on gender relations; for example, Valperga is a feminist version of Scott's masculinist genre. Introducing women into the story who are not part of the historical record, Shelley uses their narratives to question established theological and political institutions. Shelley sets the male protagonist's compulsive greed for conquest in opposition to a female alternative: reason and sensibility. In Perkin Warbeck, Shelley's other historical novel, Lady Gordon stands for the values of friendship, domesticity, and equality. Through her, Shelley offers a feminine alternative to the masculine power politics that destroy the male characters. The novel provides a more inclusive historical narrative to challenge the one which usually relates only masculine events. Gender With the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1970s, Mary Shelley's works, particularly Frankenstein, began to attract much more attention from scholars. Feminist and psychoanalytic critics were largely responsible for the recovery from neglect of Shelley as a writer. Ellen Moers was one of the first to claim that Shelley's loss of a baby was a crucial influence on the writing of Frankenstein. She argues that the novel is a "birth myth" in which Shelley comes to terms with her guilt for causing her mother's death as well as for failing as a parent. Shelley scholar Anne K. Mellor suggests that, from a feminist viewpoint, it is a story "about what happens when a man tries to have a baby without a woman ... [Frankenstein] is profoundly concerned with natural as opposed to unnatural modes of production and reproduction". Victor Frankenstein's failure as a "parent" in the novel has been read as an expression of the anxieties which accompany pregnancy, giving birth, and particularly maternity. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue in their seminal book The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) that in Frankenstein in particular, Shelley responded to the masculine literary tradition represented by John Milton's Paradise Lost. In their interpretation, Shelley reaffirms this masculine tradition, including the misogyny inherent in it, but at the same time "conceal[s] fantasies of equality that occasionally erupt in monstrous images of rage". Mary Poovey reads the first edition of Frankenstein as part of a larger pattern in Shelley's writing, which begins with literary self-assertion and ends with conventional femininity. Poovey suggests that Frankenstein's multiple narratives enable Shelley to split her artistic persona: she can "express and efface herself at the same time". Shelley's fear of self-assertion is reflected in the fate of Frankenstein, who is punished for his egotism by losing all his domestic ties. Feminist critics often focus on how authorship itself, particularly female authorship, is represented in and through Shelley's novels. As Mellor explains, Shelley uses the Gothic style not only to explore repressed female sexual desire but also as way to "censor her own speech in Frankenstein". According to Poovey and Mellor, Shelley did not want to promote her own authorial persona and felt deeply inadequate as a writer, and "this shame contributed to the generation of her fictional images of abnormality, perversion, and destruction". Shelley's writings focus on the role of the family in society and women's role within that family. She celebrates the "feminine affections and compassion" associated with the family and suggests that civil society will fail without them. Shelley was "profoundly committed to an ethic of cooperation, mutual dependence, and self-sacrifice". In Lodore, for example, the central story follows the fortunes of the wife and daughter of the title character, Lord Lodore, who is killed in a duel at the end of the first volume, leaving a trail of legal, financial, and familial obstacles for the two "heroines" to negotiate. The novel is engaged with political and ideological issues, particularly the education and social role of women. It dissects a patriarchal culture that separated the sexes and pressured women into dependence on men. In the view of Shelley scholar Betty T. Bennett, "the novel proposes egalitarian educational paradigms for women and men, which would bring social justice as well as the spiritual and intellectual means by which to meet the challenges life invariably brings". However, Falkner is the only one of Mary Shelley's novels in which the heroine's agenda triumphs. The novel's resolution proposes that when female values triumph over violent and destructive masculinity, men will be freed to express the "compassion, sympathy, and generosity" of their better natures. Enlightenment and Romanticism Frankenstein, like much Gothic fiction of the period, mixes a visceral and alienating subject matter with speculative and thought-provoking themes. Rather than focusing on the twists and turns of the plot, however, the novel foregrounds the mental and moral struggles of the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, and Shelley imbues the text with her own brand of politicised Romanticism, one that criticised the individualism and egotism of traditional Romanticism. Victor Frankenstein is like Satan in Paradise Lost, and Prometheus: he rebels against tradition; he creates life; and he shapes his own destiny. These traits are not portrayed positively; as Blumberg writes, "his relentless ambition is a self-delusion, clothed as quest for truth". He must abandon his family to fulfill his ambition. Mary Shelley believed in the Enlightenment idea that people could improve society through the responsible exercise of political power, but she feared that the irresponsible exercise of power would lead to chaos. In practice, her works largely criticise the way 18th-century thinkers such as her parents believed such change could be brought about. The creature in Frankenstein, for example, reads books associated with radical ideals but the education he gains from them is ultimately useless. Shelley's works reveal her as less optimistic than Godwin and Wollstonecraft; she lacks faith in Godwin's theory that humanity could eventually be perfected. As literary scholar Kari Lokke writes, The Last Man, more so than Frankenstein, "in its refusal to place humanity at the centre of the universe, its questioning of our privileged position in relation to nature ... constitutes a profound and prophetic challenge to Western humanism." Specifically, Mary Shelley's allusions to what radicals believed was a failed revolution in France and the Godwinian, Wollstonecraftian, and Burkean responses to it, challenge "Enlightenment faith in the inevitability of progress through collective efforts". As in Frankenstein, Shelley "offers a profoundly disenchanted commentary on the age of revolution, which ends in a total rejection of the progressive ideals of her own generation". Not only does she reject these Enlightenment political ideals, but she also rejects the Romantic notion that the poetic or literary imagination can offer an alternative. Politics There is a new scholarly emphasis on Shelley as a lifelong reformer, deeply engaged in the liberal and feminist concerns of her day. In 1820, she was thrilled by the Liberal uprising in Spain which forced the king to grant a constitution. In 1823, she wrote articles for Leigh Hunt's periodical The Liberal and played an active role in the formulation of its outlook. She was delighted when the Whigs came back to power in 1830 and at the prospect of the 1832 Reform Act. Critics have until recently cited Lodore and Falkner as evidence of increasing conservatism in Mary Shelley's later works. In 1984, Mary Poovey influentially identified the retreat of Mary Shelley's reformist politics into the "separate sphere" of the domestic. Poovey suggested that Mary Shelley wrote Falkner to resolve her conflicted response to her father's combination of libertarian radicalism and stern insistence on social decorum. Mellor largely agreed, arguing that "Mary Shelley grounded her alternative political ideology on the metaphor of the peaceful, loving, bourgeois family. She thereby implicitly endorsed a conservative vision of gradual evolutionary reform." This vision allowed women to participate in the public sphere but it inherited the inequalities inherent in the bourgeois family. However, in the last decade or so this view has been challenged. For example, Bennett claims that Mary Shelley's works reveal a consistent commitment to Romantic idealism and political reform and Jane Blumberg's study of Shelley's early novels argues that her career cannot be easily divided into radical and conservative halves. She contends that "Shelley was never a passionate radical like her husband and her later lifestyle was not abruptly assumed nor was it a betrayal. She was in fact challenging the political and literary influences of her circle in her first work." In this reading, Shelley's early works are interpreted as a challenge to Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley's radicalism. Victor Frankenstein's "thoughtless rejection of family", for example, is seen as evidence of Shelley's constant concern for the domestic. Short stories In the 1820s and 1830s, Mary Shelley frequently wrote short stories for gift books or annuals, including sixteen for The Keepsake, which was aimed at middle-class women and bound in silk, with gilt-edged pages. Mary Shelley's work in this genre has been described as that of a "hack writer" and "wordy and pedestrian". However, critic Charlotte Sussman points out that other leading writers of the day, such as the Romantic poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, also took advantage of this profitable market. She explains that "the annuals were a major mode of literary production in the 1820s and 1830s", with The Keepsake the most successful. Many of Shelley's stories are set in places or times far removed from early 19th-century Britain, such as Greece and the reign of Henry IV of France. Shelley was particularly interested in "the fragility of individual identity" and often depicted "the way a person's role in the world can be cataclysmically altered either by an internal emotional upheaval, or by some supernatural occurrence that mirrors an internal schism". In her stories, female identity is tied to a woman's short-lived value in the marriage market while male identity can be sustained and transformed through the use of money. Although Mary Shelley wrote twenty-one short stories for the annuals between 1823 and 1839, she always saw herself, above all, as a novelist. She wrote to Leigh Hunt, "I write bad articles which help to make me miserable—but I am going to plunge into a novel and hope that its clear water will wash off the mud of the magazines." Travelogues When they ran off to France in the summer of 1814, Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley began a joint journal, which they published in 1817 under the title History of a Six Weeks' Tour, adding four letters, two by each of them, based on their visit to Geneva in 1816, along with Percy Shelley's poem "Mont Blanc". The work celebrates youthful love and political idealism and consciously follows the example of Mary Wollstonecraft and others who had combined travelling with writing. The perspective of the History is philosophical and reformist rather than that of a conventional travelogue; in particular, it addresses the effects of politics and war on France. The letters the couple wrote on the second journey confront the "great and extraordinary events" of the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo after his "Hundred Days" return in 1815. They also explore the sublimity of Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc as well as the revolutionary legacy of the philosopher and novelist Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Mary Shelley's last full-length book, written in the form of letters and published in 1844, was Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843, which recorded her travels with her son Percy Florence and his university friends. In Rambles, Shelley follows the tradition of Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark and her own A History of a Six Weeks' Tour in mapping her personal and political landscape through the discourse of sensibility and sympathy. For Shelley, building sympathetic connections between people is the way to build civil society and to increase knowledge: "knowledge, to enlighten and free the mind from clinging deadening prejudices—a wider circle of sympathy with our fellow-creatures;—these are the uses of travel". Between observations on scenery, culture, and "the people, especially in a political point of view", she uses the travelogue form to explore her roles as a widow and mother and to reflect on revolutionary nationalism in Italy. She also records her "pilgrimage" to scenes associated with Percy Shelley. According to critic Clarissa Orr, Mary Shelley's adoption of a persona of philosophical motherhood gives Rambles the unity of a prose poem, with "death and memory as central themes". At the same time, Shelley makes an egalitarian case against monarchy, class distinctions, slavery, and war. Biographies Between 1832 and 1839, Mary Shelley wrote many biographies of notable Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French men and a few women for Dionysius Lardner's Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men. These formed part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia, one of the best of many such series produced in the 1820s and 1830s in response to growing middle-class demand for self-education. Until the republication of these essays in 2002, their significance within her body of work was not appreciated. In the view of literary scholar Greg Kucich, they reveal Mary Shelley's "prodigious research across several centuries and in multiple languages", her gift for biographical narrative, and her interest in the "emerging forms of feminist historiography". Shelley wrote in a biographical style popularised by the 18th-century critic Samuel Johnson in his Lives of the Poets (1779–81), combining secondary sources, memoir and anecdote, and authorial evaluation. She records details of each writer's life and character, quotes their writing in the original as well as in translation, and ends with a critical assessment of their achievement. For Shelley, biographical writing was supposed to, in her words, "form as it were a school in which to study the philosophy of history", and to teach "lessons". Most frequently and importantly, these lessons consisted of criticisms of male-dominated institutions such as primogeniture. Shelley emphasises domesticity, romance, family, sympathy, and compassion in the lives of her subjects. Her conviction that such forces could improve society connects her biographical approach with that of other early feminist historians such as Mary Hays and Anna Jameson. Unlike her novels, most of which had an original print run of several hundred copies, the Lives had a print run of about 4,000 for each volume: thus, according to Kucich, Mary Shelley's "use of biography to forward the social agenda of women's historiography became one of her most influential political interventions". Editorial work Soon after Percy Shelley's death, Mary Shelley determined to write his biography. In a letter of 17 November 1822, she announced: "I shall write his life—& thus occupy myself in the only manner from which I can derive consolation." However, her father-in-law, Sir Timothy Shelley, effectively banned her from doing so. Mary began her fostering of Percy's poetic reputation in 1824 with the publication of his Posthumous Poems. In 1839, while she was working on the Lives, she prepared a new edition of his poetry, which became, in the words of literary scholar Susan J. Wolfson, "the canonizing event" in the history of her husband's reputation. The following year, Mary Shelley edited a volume of her husband's essays, letters, translations, and fragments, and throughout the 1830s, she introduced his poetry to a wider audience by publishing assorted works in the annual The Keepsake. Evading Sir Timothy's ban on a biography, Mary Shelley often included in these editions her own annotations and reflections on her husband's life and work. "I am to justify his ways," she had declared in 1824; "I am to make him beloved to all posterity." It was this goal, argues Blumberg, that led her to present Percy's work to the public in the "most popular form possible". To tailor his works for a Victorian audience, she cast Percy Shelley as a lyrical rather than a political poet. As Mary Favret writes, "the disembodied Percy identifies the spirit of poetry itself". Mary glossed Percy's political radicalism as a form of sentimentalism, arguing that his republicanism arose from sympathy for those who were suffering. She inserted romantic anecdotes of his benevolence, domesticity, and love of the natural world. Portraying herself as Percy's "practical muse", she also noted how she had suggested revisions as he wrote. Despite the emotions stirred by this task, Mary Shelley arguably proved herself in many respects a professional and scholarly editor. Working from Percy's messy, sometimes indecipherable, notebooks, she attempted to form a chronology for his writings, and she included poems, such as Epipsychidion, addressed to Emilia Viviani, which she would rather have left out. She was forced, however, into several compromises, and, as Blumberg notes, "modern critics have found fault with the edition and claim variously that she miscopied, misinterpreted, purposely obscured, and attempted to turn the poet into something he was not". According to Wolfson, Donald Reiman, a modern editor of Percy Bysshe Shelley's works, still refers to Mary Shelley's editions, while acknowledging that her editing style belongs "to an age of editing when the aim was not to establish accurate texts and scholarly apparatus but to present a full record of a writer's career for the general reader". In principle, Mary Shelley believed in publishing every last word of her husband's work; but she found herself obliged to omit certain passages, either by pressure from her publisher, Edward Moxon, or in deference to public propriety. For example, she removed the atheistic passages from Queen Mab for the first edition. After she restored them in the second edition, Moxon was prosecuted and convicted of blasphemous libel, though the prosecution was brought out of principle by the Chartist publisher Henry Hetherington, and no punishment was sought. Mary Shelley's omissions provoked criticism, often stinging, from members of Percy Shelley's former circle, and reviewers accused her of, among other things, indiscriminate inclusions. Her notes have nevertheless remained an essential source for the study of Percy Shelley's work. As Bennett explains, "biographers and critics agree that Mary Shelley's commitment to bring Shelley the notice she believed his works merited was the single, major force that established Shelley's reputation during a period when he almost certainly would have faded from public view". Reputation In her own lifetime, Mary Shelley was taken seriously as a writer, though reviewers often missed her writings' political edge. After her death, however, she was chiefly remembered as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of Frankenstein. In fact, in the introduction to her letters published in 1945, editor Frederick Jones wrote, "a collection of the present size could not be justified by the general quality of the letters or by Mary Shelley's importance as a writer. It is as the wife of [Percy Bysshe Shelley] that she excites our interest." This attitude had not disappeared by 1980 when Betty T. Bennett published the first volume of Mary Shelley's complete letters. As she explains, "the fact is that until recent years scholars have generally regarded Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley as a result: William Godwin's and Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter who became Shelley's Pygmalion." It was not until Emily Sunstein's Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality in 1989 that a full-length scholarly biography was published. The attempts of Mary Shelley's son and daughter-in-law to "Victorianise" her memory by censoring biographical documents contributed to a perception of Mary Shelley as a more conventional, less reformist figure than her works suggest. Her own timid omissions from Percy Shelley's works and her quiet avoidance of public controversy in her later years added to this impression. Commentary by Hogg, Trelawny, and other admirers of Percy Shelley also tended to downplay Mary Shelley's radicalism. Trelawny's Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author (1878) praised Percy Shelley at the expense of Mary, questioning her intelligence and even her authorship of Frankenstein. Lady Shelley, Percy Florence's wife, responded in part by presenting a severely edited collection of letters she had inherited, published privately as Shelley and Mary in 1882. From Frankenstein'''s first theatrical adaptation in 1823 to the cinematic adaptations of the 20th century, including the first cinematic version in 1910 and now-famous versions such as James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein, Mel Brooks' satirical 1974 Young Frankenstein, and Kenneth Branagh's 1994 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, many audiences first encounter the work of Mary Shelley through adaptation. Over the course of the 19th century, Mary Shelley came to be seen as a one-novel author at best, rather than as the professional writer she was; most of her works have remained out of print until the last thirty years, obstructing a larger view of her achievement. In recent decades, the republication of almost all her writing has stimulated a new recognition of its value. Her habit of intensive reading and study, revealed in her journals and letters and reflected in her works, is now better appreciated. Shelley's conception of herself as an author has also been recognised; after Percy's death, she wrote of her authorial ambitions: "I think that I can maintain myself, and there is something inspiriting in the idea." Scholars now consider Mary Shelley to be a major Romantic figure, significant for her literary achievement and her political voice as a woman and a liberal. Selected works History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817) Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) Mathilda (1819) Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823) Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1824) The Last Man (1826) The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830) Lodore (1835) Falkner (1837) The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1839) Contributions to Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men (1835–39), part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 (1844) Collections of Mary Shelley's papers are housed in Lord Abinger's Shelley Collection on deposit at the Bodleian Library, the New York Public Library (particularly The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle), the Huntington Library, the British Library, and in the John Murray Collection. See also Mary Shelley (2017 film) Godwin–Shelley family tree Map of 1814 and 1816 European journeys Map of 1840s European journeys Notes References All essays from The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley are marked with a "(CC)" and those from The Other Mary Shelley with an "(OMS)". Bibliography Primary sources Shelley, Mary. Collected Tales and Stories. Ed. Charles E. Robinson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. . Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Ed. Susan J. Wolfson. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. . Shelley, Mary. The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814–44. Ed. Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. The Last Man. Ed. Morton D. Paley. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1998. . Shelley, Mary. Lodore. Ed. Lisa Vargo. Ontario: Broadview Press, 1997. . Shelley, Mary. Mary Shelley's Literary Lives and Other Writings. 4 vols. Ed. Tilar J. Mazzeo. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2002. . Shelley, Mary. Mathilda . Ed. Elizabeth Nitchie. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 16 February 2008. Shelley, Mary. Matilda; with Mary and Maria, by Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd. London: Penguin, 1992. . Shelley, Mary, ed. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley . London: Edward Moxon, 1840. Google Books. Retrieved 6 April 2008. Shelley, Mary. Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. . Shelley, Mary. Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca. Ed. Michael Rossington. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 2000. . Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Shelley's Poetry and Prose. Eds. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2002. . Secondary sources Bennett, Betty T. "Finding Mary Shelley in her Letters". Romantic Revisions. Ed. Robert Brinkley and Keith Hanley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. . Bennett, Betty T., ed. Mary Shelley in her Times. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Bennett, Betty T. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. . Bennett, Betty T. "The Political Philosophy of Mary Shelley's Historical Novels: Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". The Evidence of the Imagination. Ed. Donald H. Reiman, Michael C. Jaye, and Betty T. Bennett. New York: New York University Press, 1978. . Bieri, James. Percy Bysshe Shelley, a Biography: Exile of Unfulfilled Renown, 1816–1822. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005. . Blumberg, Jane. Mary Shelley's Early Novels: "This Child of Imagination and Misery". Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993. . Bunnell, Charlene E. "All the World's a Stage": Dramatic Sensibility in Mary Shelley's Novels. New York: Routledge, 2002. . Carlson, J. A. England's First Family of Writers: Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Shelley. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. . Clemit, Pamela. "From The Fields of Fancy to Matilda." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Clemit, Pamela. The Godwinian Novel: The Rational Fictions of Godwin, Brockden Brown, Mary Shelley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. . Conger, Syndy M., Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea, eds. Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Eberle-Sinatra, Michael, ed. Mary Shelley's Fictions: From Frankenstein to Falkner. New York: St. Martin's Press/Palgrave, 2000. . Fisch, Audrey A., Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schorr, eds. The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond "Frankenstein". New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. . Frank, Frederick S. "Mary Shelley's Other Fictions: A Bibliographic Consensus". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . Garrett, Martin Mary Shelley. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. 1979. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. . Gittings, Robert and Jo Manton. Claire Clairmont and the Shelleys. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. . Holmes, Richard. Shelley: The Pursuit. 1974. London: Harper Perennial, 2003. . Jones, Steven. "Charles E. Robinson, Ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two)". (Book Review). Romantic Circles website, 1 January 1998. Retrieved 15 September 2016. Jump, Harriet Devine, Pamela Clemit, and Betty T. Bennett, eds. Lives of the Great Romantics III: Godwin, Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley by Their Contemporaries. London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999. . Levine, George and U. C. Knoepflmacher, eds. The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley's novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. . Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, her Fiction, Her Monsters. London: Routledge, 1990. . Myers, Mitzi. "Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley: The Female Author between Public and Private Spheres." Mary Shelley in her Times. Ed. Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. . Orr, Clarissa Campbell. "Mary Shelley's Rambles in Germany and Italy, the Celebrity Author, and the Undiscovered Country of the Human Heart". Romanticism on the Net 11 (August 1998). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. . Robinson, Charles E., ed. The Frankenstein Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Novel, 1816–17 (Parts One and Two). The Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics, Volume IX, Donald H. Reiman, general ed. Garland Publishing, 1996. . Schor, Esther, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. . Seymour, Miranda. Mary Shelley. London: John Murray, 2000. . Sites, Melissa. "Re/membering Home: Utopian Domesticity in Mary Shelley's Lodore". A Brighter Morn: The Shelley Circle's Utopian Project. Ed. Darby Lewes. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003. . Smith, Johanna M. "A Critical History of Frankenstein". Frankenstein. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. . Spark, Muriel. Mary Shelley. London: Cardinal, 1987. . St Clair, William. The Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography of a Family. London: Faber & Faber, 1989. . Sterrenburg, Lee. "The Last Man: Anatomy of Failed Revolutions". Nineteenth Century Fiction 33 (1978): 324–47. Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. 1989. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. . Townsend, William C. Modern State Trials. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1850. Wake, Ann M Frank. "Women in the Active Voice: Recovering Female History in Mary Shelley's Valperga and Perkin Warbeck". Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley after "Frankenstein". Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth. Ed. Syndy M. Conger, Frederick S. Frank, and Gregory O'Dea. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. . White, Daniel E. "'The god undeified': Mary Shelley's Valperga, Italy, and the Aesthetic of Desire ". Romanticism on the Net 6 (May 1997). Retrieved 22 February 2008. Further reading Goulding, Christopher. "The Real Doctor Frankenstein?" Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. The Royal Society of Medicine, May 2002. Richard Holmes, "Out of Control" (review of Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds, edited by David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Jason Scott Robert, MIT Press, 277 pp.; and Mary Shelley, The New Annotated Frankenstein, edited and with a foreword and notes by Leslie S. Klinger, Liveright, 352 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 20 (21 December 2017), pp. 38, 40–41. Gordon, Charlotte (2016). Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley'', Random House. External links Mary Shelley chronology and bibliography – part of Romantic Circles Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley manuscript material, 1815–1850, held by the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, New York Public Library Mary Shelley at the British Library Exhibits relating to Mary Shelley at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford 1797 births 1851 deaths 19th-century English women writers 19th-century English novelists 19th-century British short story writers British expatriates in Italy British expatriates in Switzerland British feminists British horror writers British science fiction writers Deaths from brain tumor Deaths from cancer in England English expatriates in Italy English expatriates in Switzerland English feminists English horror writers English science fiction writers English travel writers English women novelists Frankenstein Godwin family People from Bournemouth People from Somers Town, London Romanticism Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees Victorian novelists Women historical novelists Women horror writers Women of the Regency era Women science fiction and fantasy writers British women travel writers Writers of Gothic fiction Shelley family Weird fiction writers
true
[ "Damn Interesting is an independent website founded by Alan Bellows in 2005. The website presents true stories from science, history, and psychology, primarily as long-form articles, often illustrated with original artwork. Works are written by various authors, and published at irregular intervals. The website openly rejects advertising, relying on reader and listener donations to cover operating costs.\n\nAs of October 2012, each article is also published as a podcast under the same name. In November 2019, a second podcast was launched under the title Damn Interesting Week, featuring unscripted commentary on an assortment of news articles featured on the website's \"Curated Links\" section that week. In mid-2020, a third podcast called Damn Interesting Curio Cabinet began highlighting the website's periodic short-form articles in the same radioplay format as the original podcast.\n\nIn July 2009, Damn Interesting published the print book Alien Hand Syndrome through Workman Publishing. It contains some favorites from the site and some exclusive content.\n\nAwards and recognition \nIn August 2007, PC Magazine named Damn Interesting one of the \"Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites\".\nThe article \"The Zero-Armed Bandit\" by Alan Bellows won a 2015 Sidney Award from David Brooks in The New York Times.\nThe article \"Ghoulish Acts and Dastardly Deeds\" by Alan Bellows was cited as \"nonfiction journalism from 2017 that will stand the test of time\" by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.\nThe article \"Dupes and Duplicity\" by Jennifer Lee Noonan won a 2020 Sidney Award from David Brooks in the New York Times.\n\nAccusing The Dollop of plagiarism \n\nOn July 9, 2015, Bellows posted an open letter accusing The Dollop, a comedy podcast about history, of plagiarism due to their repeated use of verbatim text from Damn Interesting articles without permission or attribution. Dave Anthony, the writer of The Dollop, responded on reddit, admitting to using Damn Interesting content, but claiming that the use was protected by fair use, and that \"historical facts are not copyrightable.\" In an article about the controversy on Plagiarism Today, Jonathan Bailey concluded, \"Any way one looks at it, The Dollop failed its ethical obligations to all of the people, not just those writing for Damn Interesting, who put in the time, energy and expertise into writing the original content upon which their show is based.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n\n2005 podcast debuts", "\"What Else Is There?\" is the third single from the Norwegian duo Röyksopp's second album The Understanding. It features the vocals of Karin Dreijer from the Swedish electronica duo The Knife. The album was released in the UK with the help of Astralwerks.\n\nThe single was used in an O2 television advertisement in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia during 2008. It was also used in the 2006 film Cashback and the 2007 film, Meet Bill. Trentemøller's remix of \"What Else is There?\" was featured in an episode of the HBO show Entourage.\n\nThe song was covered by extreme metal band Enslaved as a bonus track for their album E.\n\nThe song was listed as the 375th best song of the 2000s by Pitchfork Media.\n\nOfficial versions\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Album Version) – 5:17\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Radio Edit) – 3:38\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Jacques Lu Cont Radio Mix) – 3:46\n\"What Else Is There?\" (The Emperor Machine Vocal Version) – 8:03\n\"What Else Is There?\" (The Emperor Machine Dub Version) – 7:51\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Mix) – 8:25\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Edit) – 4:50\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Remix) (Radio Edit) – 3:06\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Trentemøller Remix) – 7:42\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Vitalic Remix) – 5:14\n\nResponse\nThe single was officially released on 5 December 2005 in the UK. The single had a limited release on 21 November 2005 to promote the upcoming album. On the UK Singles Chart, it peaked at number 32, while on the UK Dance Chart, it reached number one.\n\nMusic video\nThe music video was directed by Martin de Thurah. It features Norwegian model Marianne Schröder who is shown lip-syncing Dreijer's voice. Schröder is depicted as a floating woman traveling across stormy landscapes and within empty houses. Dreijer makes a cameo appearance as a woman wearing an Elizabethan ruff while dining alone at a festive table.\n\nMovie spots\n\nThe song is also featured in the movie Meet Bill as characters played by Jessica Alba and Aaron Eckhart smoke marijuana while listening to it. It is also part of the end credits music of the film Cashback.\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n2005 singles\nRöyksopp songs\nAstralwerks singles\nSongs written by Svein Berge\nSongs written by Torbjørn Brundtland\n2004 songs\nSongs written by Roger Greenaway\nSongs written by Olof Dreijer\nSongs written by Karin Dreijer" ]
[ "Babrak Karmal", "Communist politics" ]
C_d59d3bea17bf49e58c77e1132c5be2ec_1
How was Karmal involved in Communist politics?
1
How was Babrak Karmal involved in Communist politics?
Babrak Karmal
Imprisoned from 1953 to 1956, Karmal befriended fellow inmate Mir Akbar Khyber, who introduced Karmal to Marxism. Karmal changed his name from Sultan Hussein to Babrak Karmal, which means "Comrade of the Workers'" in Pashtun, to disassociate himself from his bourgeois background. When he was released from prison, he continued his activities in the student union, and began to promote Marxism. Karmal spent the rest of the 1950s and the early 1960s becoming involved with Marxist organizations, of which there were at least four in Afghanistan at the time; two of the four were established by Karmal. When the 1964 Afghan Provisional Constitution, which legalised the establishment of new political entities, was introduced several prominent Marxists agreed to establish a communist political party. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA, the Communist Party) was established in January 1965 in Nur Muhammad Taraki's home. Factionalism within the PDPA quickly became a problem; the party split into the Khalq led by Taraki alongside Hafizullah Amin, and the Parcham led by Karmal. During the 1965 parliamentary election Karmal was one of four PDPA members elected to the lower house of parliament; the three others were Anahita Ratebzad, Nur Ahmed Nur and Fezanul Haq Fezan. No Khalqists were elected; however, Amin was 50 votes short of being elected. The Parchamite victory may be explained by the simple fact that Karmal could contribute financially to the PDPA electoral campaign. Karmal became a leading figure within the student movement in the 1960s, electing Mohammad Hashim Maiwandwal as Prime Minister after a student demonstration (called for by Karmal) concluded with three deaths under the former leadership. In 1967, the PDPA unofficially split into two formal parties, one Khalqist and one Parchamist. The dissolution of the PDPA was initiated by the closing down of the Khalqist newspaper, Khalq. Karmal criticised the Khalq for being too communist, and believed that its leadership should have hidden its Marxist orientation instead of promoting it. According to the official version of events, the majority of the PDPA Central Committee rejected Karmal's criticism. The vote was a close one, and it is reported that Taraki expanded the Central Committee to win the vote; this plan resulted in eight of the new members becoming politically unaligned with and one switching to the Parchamite side. Karmal and half the PDPA Central Committee left the PDPA to establish a Parchamite-led PDPA. Officially the split was caused by ideological differences, but the party may have divided between the different leadership styles and plans of Taraki versus Karmal. Taraki wanted to model the party after Leninist norms while Karmal wanted to establish a democratic front. Other differences were socioeconomic. The majority of Khalqists came from rural areas; hence they were poorer, and were of Pashtun origin. The Parchamites were urban, richer, and spoke Dari more often than not. The Khalqists accused the Parchamites of having a connection with the monarchy, and because of it, referred to the Parchamite PDPA as the "Royal Communist Party". Both Karmal and Amin retained their seats in the lower house of parliament in the 1969 parliamentary election. CANNOTANSWER
befriended fellow inmate Mir Akbar Khyber,
Babrak Karmal (Dari/Pashto , born Sultan Hussein; 6 January 1929 – 1 or 3 December 1996) was an Afghan revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Afghanistan, serving in the post of General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan for seven years. Born in Kabul Province into a Tajikized family of Kashmiri origin, Karmal attended Kabul University and developed openly leftist views there, having been introduced to Marxism by Mir Akbar Khyber during his imprisonment for activities deemed too radical by the government. He became a founding member of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and eventually became the leader of the Parcham faction when the PDPA split in 1967, with their ideological nemesis being the Khalq faction. Karmal was elected to the Lower House after the 1965 parliamentary election, serving in parliament until losing his seat in the 1969 parliamentary election. Under Karmal's leadership, the Parchamite PDPA participated in Mohammad Daoud Khan's rise to power in 1973, and his subsequent regime. While relations were good at the beginning, Daoud began a major purge of leftist influence in the mid-1970s. This in turn led to the reformation of the PDPA in 1977, and Karmal played a role in the 1978 Saur Revolution when the PDPA took power. Karmal was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Council, synonymous with vice head of state, in the communist government. The Parchamite faction found itself under significant pressure by the Khalqists soon after taking power. In June 1978, a PDPA Central Committee meeting voted in favor of giving the Khalqist faction exclusive control over PDPA policy. This decision was followed by a failed Parchamite coup, after which Hafizullah Amin, a Khalqist, initiated a purge against the Parchamites. Karmal survived this purge but was exiled to Prague and eventually dismissed from his post. Instead of returning to Kabul, he feared for his life and lived with his family in the forests protected by the Czechoslovak secret police StB. The Afghan secret police KHAD had allegedly sent members to Czechoslovakia to assassinate Karmal. In late 1979 he was brought to Moscow by the KGB and eventually, in December 1979, the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan (with the consent of Amin's government) to stabilize the country. The Soviet troops staged a coup and assassinated Amin, replacing him with Karmal. Karmal was promoted to Chairman of the Revolutionary Council and Chairman of the Council of Ministers on 27 December 1979. He remained in the latter office until 1981, when he was succeeded by Sultan Ali Keshtmand. Throughout his term, Karmal worked to establish a support base for the PDPA by introducing several reforms. Among these were the "Fundamental Principles of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan", introducing a general amnesty for those people imprisoned during Nur Mohammad Taraki's and Amin's rule. He also replaced the red Khalqist flag with a more traditional one. These policies failed to increase the PDPA's legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghan people and the Afghan mujahideen rebels - he was widely seen as a Soviet puppet amongst the populace. These policy failures, and the stalemate that ensued after the Soviet intervention, led the Soviet leadership to become highly critical of Karmal's leadership. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union deposed Karmal in 1986 and replaced him with Mohammad Najibullah. Following his loss of power, he was again exiled, this time to Moscow. It was Anahita Ratebzad who persuaded Najibullah to allow Babrak Karmal to return to Afghanistan in 1991, where Karmal became an associate of Abdul Rashid Dostum and possibly helped remove the Najibullah government from power in 1992. He eventually left Afghanistan again for Moscow. Not long after, in 1996, Karmal died from liver cancer. Early life and career Karmal was born Sultan Hussein on 6 January 1929 in Kamari, a village close to Kabul. He was the son of Muhammad Hussein Hashem, a Major General in the Afghan Army and former governor of the province of Paktia, and was the second of five siblings. His family was one of the wealthier families in Kabul. His ethnic background was publicly disputed at the time, with many sources reporting he was a Tajik of Kabul. In 1986, Karmal declared that he and his brother Mahmud Baryalay were Pashtuns as their mother was a linguistically Persianized Pashtun of the Khilji tribe. This declaration was considered to be political as descent comes from the patriarchal line in Afghan society. Karmal's forefathers came to Kabul from Kashmir, and his original name Sultan Hussein (which is associated with Indian Muslims) reinforces his Kashmiri roots. He attended Nejat High School, a German-speaking school, and graduated from it in 1948, and applied to enter the Faculty of Law and Political Science of Kabul University. Karmal's application was initially denied admission to Kabul University because of his student political activist and his openly leftist views. He was always a charismatic speaker and became involved in the student union and the Wikh-i-Zalmayan (Awakened Youth Movement), a progressive and leftist organization. He studied at the College of Law and Political Science at Kabul University from 1951 to 1953. In 1953 Karmal was arrested because of his student union activities, but was released three years later in 1956 in an amnesty by Muhammad Daoud Khan. Shortly after, in 1957, Karmal found work as an English and German translator, before quitting and leaving for military training. Karmal graduated from the College of Law and Political Science in 1960, and in 1961, he found work as an employee in the Compilation and Translation Department of the Ministry of Education. From 1961 to 1963 he worked in the Ministry of Planning. When his mother died, Karmal left with his maternal aunt to live somewhere else. His father disowned him because of his leftist views. Karmal was involved in much debauchery, which was controversial in the mostly conservative Afghan society. Communist politics Imprisoned from 1953 to 1956, Karmal befriended fellow inmate Mir Akbar Khyber, who introduced Karmal to Marxism. Karmal changed his name from Sultan Hussein to Babrak Karmal, which means "Comrade of the Workers'" in Pashtun, to disassociate himself from his bourgeois background. When he was released from prison, he continued his activities in the student union, and began to promote Marxism. Karmal spent the rest of the 1950s and the early 1960s becoming involved with Marxist organizations, of which there were at least four in Afghanistan at the time; two of the four were established by Karmal. When the 1964 Afghan Provisional Constitution, which legalised the establishment of new political entities, was introduced several prominent Marxists agreed to establish a communist political party. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA, the Communist Party) was established in January 1965 in Nur Muhammad Taraki's home. Factionalism within the PDPA quickly became a problem; the party split into the Khalq led by Taraki alongside Hafizullah Amin, and the Parcham led by Karmal. During the 1965 parliamentary election Karmal was one of four PDPA members elected to the lower house of parliament; the three others were Anahita Ratebzad, Nur Ahmed Nur and Fezanul Haq Fezan. No Khalqists were elected; however, Amin was 50 votes short of being elected. The Parchamite victory may be explained by the simple fact that Karmal could contribute financially to the PDPA electoral campaign. Karmal became a leading figure within the student movement in the 1960s, electing Mohammad Hashim Maiwandwal as Prime Minister after a student demonstration (called for by Karmal) concluded with three deaths under the former leadership. In 1966 inside parliament, Karmal was physically assaulted by an Islamist MP, Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi. In 1967, the PDPA unofficially split into two formal parties, one Khalqist and one Parchamist. The dissolution of the PDPA was initiated by the closing down of the Khalqist newspaper, Khalq. Karmal criticised the Khalq for being too communist, and believed that its leadership should have hidden its Marxist orientation instead of promoting it. According to the official version of events, the majority of the PDPA Central Committee rejected Karmal's criticism. The vote was a close one, and it is reported that Taraki expanded the Central Committee to win the vote; this plan resulted in eight of the new members becoming politically unaligned with and one switching to the Parchamite side. Karmal and half the PDPA Central Committee left the PDPA to establish a Parchamite-led PDPA. Officially the split was caused by ideological differences, but the party may have divided between the different leadership styles and plans of Taraki versus Karmal. Taraki wanted to model the party after Leninist norms while Karmal wanted to establish a democratic front. Other differences were socioeconomic. The majority of Khalqists came from rural areas; hence they were poorer, and were of Pashtun origin. The Parchamites were urban, richer, and spoke Dari more often than not. The Khalqists accused the Parchamites of having a connection with the monarchy, and because of it, referred to the Parchamite PDPA as the "Royal Communist Party". Both Karmal and Amin retained their seats in the lower house of parliament in the 1969 parliamentary election. The Daoud era Mohammed Daoud Khan, in collaboration with the Parchamite PDPA and radical military officers, overthrew the monarchy and instituted the Republic of Afghanistan in 1973. After Daoud's seizure of power, an American embassy cable stated that the new government had established a Soviet-style Central Committee, in which Karmal and Mir Akbar Khyber were given leading positions. Most ministries were given to Parchamites; Hassan Sharq became Deputy Prime Minister, Major Faiz Mohammad became Minister of Internal Affairs and Niamatullah Pazhwak became Minister of Education. The Parchamites took control over the ministries of finance, agriculture, communications and border affairs. The new government quickly suppressed the opposition, and secured their power base. At first, the National Front government between Daoud and the Parchamites seemed to work. By 1975, Daoud had strengthened his position by enhancing the executive, legislative and judicial powers of the Presidency. To the dismay of the Parchamites, all parties other than the National Revolutionary Party (NRP, established by Daoud) were made illegal. Shortly after the ban on opposition to the NRP, Daoud began a massive purge of Parchamites in government. Mohammad lost his position as interior minister, Abdul Qadir was demoted, and Karmal was put under government surveillance. To mitigate Daoud's suddenly anti-communist directives, the Soviet Union reestablished the PDPA; Taraki was elected its General Secretary and Karmal, Second Secretary. While the Saur Revolution (literally the April Revolution) was planned for August, the assassination of Khyber led to a chain of events which ended with the communists seizing power. Karmal, when taking power in 1979, accused Amin of ordering the assassination of Khyber. Taraki–Amin rule Taraki was appointed Chairman of the Presidium of the Revolutionary Council and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, retaining his post as PDPA general secretary. Taraki initially formed a government which consisted of both Khalqists and Parchamites; Karmal became Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Council, while Amin became Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers.Mohammad Aslam Watanjar became Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers. The two Parchamites Abdul Qadir and Mohammad Rafi, became Minister of Defence and Minister of Public Works, respectively. The appointment of Amin, Karmal and Watanjar led to splits within the Council of Ministers: the Khalqists answered to Amin; Karmal led the civilian Parchamites; and the military officers (who were Parchamites) were answerable to Watanjar (a Khalqist). The first conflict arose when the Khalqists wanted to give PDPA Central Committee membership to military officers who had participated in the Saur Revolution; Karmal opposed such a move but was overruled. A PDPA Politburo meeting voted in favour of giving Central Committee membership to the officers. On 27 June, three months after the Saur Revolution, Amin outmaneuvered the Parchamites at a Central Committee meeting, giving the Khalqists exclusive right over formulating and deciding policy. A purge against the Parchamites was initiated by Amin and supported by Taraki on 1 July 1979. Karmal, fearing for his safety, went into hiding in one of his Soviet friends' homes. Karmal tried to contact Alexander Puzanov, the Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan, to talk about the situation. Puzanov refused, and revealed Karmal's location to Amin. The Soviets probably saved Karmal's life by sending him to the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia. In exile, Karmal established a network with the remaining Parchamites in government. A coup to overthrow Amin was planned for 4 September 1979. Its leading members in Afghanistan were Qadir and the Army Chief of Staff General Shahpur Ahmedzai. The coup was planned for the Festival of Eid, in anticipation of relaxed military vigilance. The conspiracy failed when the Afghan ambassador to India told the Afghan leadership about the plan. Another purge was initiated, and Parchamite ambassadors were recalled. Few returned to Afghanistan; Karmal and Mohammad Najibullah stayed in their respective countries. The Soviets decided that Amin should be removed to make way for a Karmal-Taraki coalition government. However Amin managed to order the arrest and later the murder of Taraki. Amin was informed of the Soviet decision to intervene in Afghanistan and was initially supportive, but was assassinated. Under the command of the Soviets, Karmal ascended to power. On 27 December 1979, Karmal's pre-recorded speech to the Afghan people was broadcast via Radio Kabul from Tashkent in the Uzbek SSR (the radio wavelength was changed to that of Kabul), saying: "Today the torture machine of Amin has been smashed, his accomplices – the primitive executioners, usurpers and murderers of tens of thousand of our fellow countrymen – fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters, children and old people ..." Karmal was not in Kabul when the speech was broadcast; he was in Bagram, protected by the KGB. That evening Yuri Andropov, the KGB Chairman, congratulated Karmal on his rise to the Chairmanship of the Presidium of the Revolutionary Council, some time before Karmal received an official appointment. Karmal returned to Kabul on 28 December. He travelled alongside a Soviet military column. For the next few days Karmal lived in a villa on the outskirts of Kabul under the protection of the KGB. On 1 January 1980 Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and Alexei Kosygin, the Soviet Chairman of the Council of Ministers, congratulated Karmal on his "election" as leader. Leadership Domestic policies Karmal's ascension was quickly troubled as he was effectively installed by the invading Soviet Union, delegitimizing him. Unrest in the country quickly escalated, and in Kabul two major uprisings, on 3 Hoot (22 February) and the months long students' protests were early signs of trouble. The "Fundamental Principles" and amnesty When he came to power, Karmal promised an end to executions, the establishment of democratic institutions and free elections, the creation of a constitution, and legalization of alternative political parties. Prisoners incarcerated under the two previous governments would be freed in a general amnesty (which occurred on 6 January). He promised the creation of a coalition government which would not espouse socialism. At the same time, he told the Afghan people that he had negotiated with the Soviet Union to give economic, military and political assistance. The mistrust most Afghans felt towards the government was a problem for Karmal. Many still remembered he had said he would protect private capital in 1978—a promise later proven to be a lie. Karmal's three most important promises were the general amnesty of prisoners, the promulgation of the Fundamental Principles of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the adoption of a new flag containing the traditional black, red and green (the flag of Taraki and Amin was red). His government granted concessions to religious leaders and the restoration of confiscated property. Some property, which was confiscated during earlier land reforms, was also partially restored. All these measures, with the exception of the general amnesty of prisoners, were introduced gradually. Of 2,700 prisoners, 2,600 were released from prison; 600 of these were Parchamites. The general amnesty was greatly publicized by the government. While the event was hailed with enthusiasm by some, many others greeted the event with disdain, since their loved ones or associates had died during earlier purges. Amin had planned to introduce a general amnesty on 1 January 1980, to coincide with the PDPA's sixteenth anniversary. Work on the Fundamental Principles had started under Amin: it guaranteed democratic rights such as freedom of speech, the right to security and life, the right to peaceful association, the right to demonstrate and the right that "no one would be accused of crime but in accord with the provisions of law" and that the accused had the right to a fair trial. The Fundamental Principles envisaged a democratic state led by the PDPA, the only party then permitted by law. The Revolutionary Council, the organ of supreme power, would convene twice every year. The Revolutionary Council in turn elected a Presidium which would take decisions on behalf of the Revolutionary Council when it was not in session. The Presidium consisted mostly of PDPA Politburo members. The state would safeguard three kinds of property: state, cooperative and private property. The Fundamental Principles said that the state had the right to change the Afghan economy from an economy where man was exploited to an economy where man was free. Another clause stated that the state had the right to take "families, both parents and children, under its supervision." While it looked democratic at the outset, the Fundamental Principles was based on contradictions. The Fundamental Principles led to the establishment of two important state organs: the Special Revolutionary Court, a specialized court for crimes against national security and territorial integrity, and the Institute for Legal and Scientific Research and Legislative Affairs, the supreme legislative organ of state, This body could amend and draft laws, and introduce regulations and decrees on behalf of the government. The introduction of more Soviet-style institutions led the Afghan people to distrust the communist government even more. The Fundamental Principles constitution came into power on 22 April 1980. Dividing power: Khalq–Parcham With Karmal's ascension to power, Parchamites began to "settle old scores". Revolutionary Troikas were created to arrest, sentence and execute people. Amin's guard were the first victims of the terror which ensued. Those commanders who had stayed loyal to Amin were arrested, filling the prisons. The Soviets protested, and Karmal replied, "As long as you keep my hands bound and do not let me deal with the Khalq faction there will be no unity in the PDPA and the government cannot become strong ... They tortured and killed us. They still hate us! They are the enemies of the party ..." Amin's daughter, along with her baby, was imprisoned for twelve years, until Mohammad Najibullah, then leader of the PDPA, released her. When Karmal took power, leading posts in the Party and Government bureaucracy were taken over by Parchamites. The Khalq faction was removed from power, and only technocrats, opportunists and individuals which the Soviets trusted would be appointed to the higher echelons of government. Khalqists remained in control of the Ministry of Interior, but Parchamites were given control over KHAD and the secret police. The Parchamites and the Khalqists controlled an equal share of the military. Two out of Karmal's three Council of Ministers deputy chairmen were Khalqists. Khalqists controlled the Ministry of Communications and the interior ministry. Parchamites, on the other hand, controlled the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defence. In addition to the changes in government, the Parchamites held clear majority in the PDPA Central Committee. Only one Khalqi, Saleh Mohammad Zeary, was a member of the PDPA Secretariat during Karmal's rule. Over 14 and 15 March 1982 the PDPA held a party conference at the Kabul Polytechnic Institute instead of a party congress, since a party congress would have given the Khalq faction a majority and could have led to a Khalqist takeover of the PDPA. The rules of holding a party conference were different, and the Parchamites had a three-fifths majority. This infuriated several Khalqists; the threat of expulsion did not lessen their anger. The conference was not successful, but it was portrayed as such by the official media. The conference broke up after one and a half days of a 3-day long program, because of the inter-party struggle for power between the Khalqists and the Parchamites. A "program of action" was introduced, and party rules were given minor changes. As an explanation of the low party membership, the official media also made it seem hard to become a member of the party. PDPA base When Karmal took power, he began expanding the support base of the PDPA. Karmal tried to persuade certain groups, which had been referred to class enemies of the revolution during Taraki and Amin's rule, to support the PDPA. Karmal appointed several non-communists to top positions. Between March and May 1980, 78 out of the 191 people appointed to government posts were not members of the PDPA. Karmal reintroduced the old Afghan custom of having an Islamic invocation every time the government issued a proclamation. In his first live speech to the Afghan people, Karmal called for the establishment of the National Fatherland Front (NFF); the NFF's founding congress was held in June 1981. Unfortunately for Karmal, his policies did not lead to a notable increase in support for his regime, and it did not help Karmal that most Afghans saw the Soviet intervention as an invasion. By 1981, the government gave up on political solutions to the conflict. At the fifth PDPA Central Committee plenum in June, Karmal resigned from his Council of Ministers chairmanship and was replaced by Sultan Ali Keshtmand, while Nur Ahmad Nur was given a bigger role in the Revolutionary Council. This was seen as "base broadening". The previous weight given to non-PDPA members in top positions ceased to be an important matter in the media by June 1981. This was significant, considering that up to five members of the Revolutionary Council were non-PDPA members. By the end of 1981, the previous contenders, who had been heavily presented in the media, were all gone; two were given ambassadorships, two ceased to be active in politics, and one continued as an advisor to the government. The other three changed sides, and began to work for the opposition. The national policy of reconciliation continued: in January 1984 the land reform introduced by Taraki and Amin was drastically modified, the limits of landholdings were increased to win the support of middle class peasants, the literacy programme was continued, and concessions to women were made. In 1985 the Loya Jirga was reconvened. The 1985 Loya Jirga was followed by a tribal jirga in September. In 1986 Abdul Rahim Hatef, a non-PDPA member, was elected to the NFF chairmanship. During the 1985–86 elections it was said that 60 percent of the elected officials were non-PDPA members. By the end of Karmal's rule, several non-PDPA members had high-level government positions. Civil war and military In March 1979, the military budget was 6.4 million US$, which was 8.3 percent of the government budget, but only 2.2 of gross national product. After the Soviet intervention, the defence budget increased to 208 million US$ in 1980, and 325 million US$ by 1981. In 1982 it was reported that the government spent around 22 percent of total expenditure. When the political solution failed (see "PDPA base" section), the Afghan government and the Soviet military decided to solve the conflict militarily. The change from a political to a military solution did not come suddenly. It began in January 1981, as Karmal doubled wages for military personnel, issued several promotions, and decorated one general and thirteen colonels. The draft age was lowered, the obligatory length of arms duty was extended and the age for reservists was increased to thirty-five years of age. In June 1981, Assadullah Sarwari lost his seat in the PDPA Politburo, replaced by Mohammad Aslam Watanjar, a former tank commander and Minister of Communications, Major General Mohammad Rafi was made Minister of Defence and Mohammad Najibullah appointed KHAD Chairman. These measures were introduced due to the collapse of the army during the Soviet intervention. Before the intervention the army could field 100,000 troops, after the intervention only 25,000. Desertions were pandemic, and the recruitment campaigns for young people often drove them to the opposition. To better organize the military, seven military zones were established, each with its own Defence Council. The Defence Councils were established at the national, provincial and district level to empower the local PDPA. It is estimated that the Afghan government spent as much as 40 percent of government revenue on defense. Karmal refused to recognize the rebels as genuine, saying in an interview: Economy During the civil war and the ensuing Soviet–Afghan War, most of the country's infrastructure was destroyed. Normal patterns of economic activity were disrupted. The Gross national product (GNP) fell substantially during Karmal's rule because of the conflict; trade and transport was disrupted with loss of labor and capital. In 1981 the Afghan GDP stood at 154.3 billion Afghan afghanis, a drop from 159.7 billion in 1978. GNP per capita decreased from 7,370 in 1978 to 6,852 in 1981. The dominant form of economic activity was in the agricultural sector. Agriculture accounted for 63 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1981; 56 percent of the labor force was working in agriculture in 1982. Industry accounted for 21 percent of GDP in 1982, and employed 10 percent of the labor force. All industrial enterprises were government-owned. The service sector, the smallest of the three, accounted for 10 percent of GDP in 1981, and employed an estimated one-third of the labour force. The balance of payments, which had grown in the pre-communist administration of Muhammad Daoud Khan, decreased, turning negative by 1982 at 70.3 million $US. The only economic activity which grew substantially during Karmal's rule was export and import. Foreign policy Karmal observed in early 1983 that without Soviet intervention, "It is unknown what the destiny of the Afghan Revolution would be ... We are realists and we clearly realize that in store for us yet lie trials and deprivations, losses and difficulties." Two weeks before this statement Sultan Ali Keshtmand, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, lamented the fact that half the schools and three-quarters of communications had been destroyed since 1979. The Soviet Union rejected several Western-made peace plans, such as the Carrington Plan, since they did not take into consideration the PDPA government. Most Western peace plans had been made in collaboration with the Afghan opposition forces. At the 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, stated; The stance of the Pakistani government was clear, demanding complete Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the establishment of a non-PDPA government. Karmal, summarizing his discussions with Iran and Pakistan, said "Iran and Pakistan have so far not opted for concrete and constructive positions." During Karmal's rule Afghan–Pakistani relations remained hostile; the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was the catalyst for the hostile relationship. The increasing numbers of Afghan refugees in Pakistan challenged the PDPA's legitimacy to rule. The Soviet Union threatened in 1985 that it would support the Baloch separatist movement in Pakistan if the Pakistani government continued to aid the Afghan mujahideen. Karmal, problematically for the Soviets, did not want a Soviet withdrawal, and he hampered attempts to improve relations with Pakistan since the Pakistani government had refused to recognise the PDPA government. Public image Because Karmal was put into power without a formal ceremony as in Afghan tradition, he was seen as an illegitimate leader in many eyes of his people. A poor performance in foreign interviews also didn't help his public image where he was noted to speak like an "exhibitionist" rather than a statesman. Karmal was widely viewed as a puppet leader of the Soviet Union by Afghans and the Western press. Despite his position, Karmal was apparently not permitted to make key decisions as he was following advice from Soviet advisers. The Soviet control of the Afghan state was apparently so much that Karmal himself admitted to a friend of his unfree life, telling him: “The Soviet comrades love me boundlessly, and for the sake of my personal safety, they don’t obey even my own orders.” Fall from power and succession Mikhail Gorbachev, then General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, said, "The main reason that there has been no national consolidation so far is that Comrade Karmal is hoping to continue sitting in Kabul with our help." Karmal's position became less secure when the Soviet leadership began blaming him for the failures in Afghanistan. Gorbachev, worried over the situation, told the Soviet Politburo "If we don't change approaches [to evacuate Afghanistan], we will be fighting there for another 20 or 30 years." It is not clear when the Soviet leadership began to campaign for Karmal's dismissal, but Andrei Gromyko discussed the possibility of Karmal's resignation with Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1982. While it was Gorbachev who would dismiss Karmal, there may have been a consensus within the Soviet leadership in 1983 that Karmal should resign. Gorbachev's own plan was to replace Karmal with Mohammad Najibullah, who had joined the PDPA at its creation. Najibullah was thought highly of by Yuri Andropov, Boris Ponomarev and Dmitriy Ustinov, and negotiations for his succession may have started in 1983. Najibullah was not the Soviet leadership's only choice for Karmal's succession; a GRU report noted that the majority of the PDPA leadership would support Assadullah Sarwari's ascension to leadership. According to the GRU, Sarwari was a better candidate as he could balance between the Pashtuns, Tajiks and Uzbeks; Najibullah was a Pashtun nationalist. Another viable candidate was Abdul Qadir, who had been a participant in the Saur Revolution. Najibullah was appointed to the PDPA Secretariat in November 1985. During Karmal's March 1986 visit to the Soviet Union, the Soviets tried to persuade Karmal that he was too ill to govern, and that he should resign. This backfired, as a Soviet doctor attending to Karmal told him he was in good health. Karmal asked to return home to Kabul, and said that he understood and would listen to the Soviet recommendations. Before leaving, Karmal promised he would step down as PDPA General Secretary. The Soviets did not trust him and sent Vladimir Kryuchkov, the head of intelligence (FCD) in the KGB, into Afghanistan. At a meeting in Kabul, Karmal confessed his undying love for the Soviet Union, comparing his ardor to his Muslim faith. Kryuchkov, concluding that he could not persuade Karmal to resign, left the meeting. After Kryuchkov left the room, the Afghan defence minister and the state security minister visited Karmal's office, telling him that he had to resign from one of his posts. Understanding that his Soviet support had been eliminated, Karmal resigned from the office of the General Secretary at the 18th PDPA Central Committee plenum. He was succeeded in his post by Najibullah. Karmal still had support within the party, and used his base to curb Najibullah's powers. He began spreading rumors that he would be reappointed General Secretary. Najibullah's power base was in the KHAD, the Afghan equivalent to the KGB, and not the party. Considering the fact that the Soviet Union had supported Karmal for over six years, the Soviet leadership wanted to ease him out of power gradually. Yuli Vorontsov, the Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan, told Najibullah to begin undermining Karmal's power slowly. Najibullah complained to the Soviet leadership that Karmal used most of his spare time looking for errors and "speaking against the National Reconciliation [programme]". At a meeting of the Soviet Politburo on 13 November 1986 it was decided that Najibullah should remove Karmal; this motion was supported by Gromyko, Vorontsov, Eduard Shevardnadze, Anatoly Dobrynin and Viktor Chebrikov. A PDPA meeting in November relieved Karmal of his Revolutionary Council chairmanship, and exiled him to Moscow where he was given a state-owned apartment and a dacha. Karmal was succeeded as Revolutionary Council chairman by Haji Mohammad Chamkani, who was not a member of the PDPA. Later life and death Many years after the end of his leadership, he denounced the Saur Revolution of 1978 in which he took part, taking aim at the Khalq governments of Taraki and Amin. He told a Soviet reporter: It was the greatest crime against the people of Afghanistan. Parcham's leaders were against armed actions because the country was not ready for a revolution... I knew that people would not support us if we decided to keep power without such support. For unknown reasons, Karmal was invited back to Kabul by Najibullah, and "for equally obscure reasons Karmal accepted", returning on 20 June 1991. (this could have been on the recommendation of Anahita Ratebzad who was very close to Karmal and also respected by Najibullah). If Najibullah's plan was to strengthen his position within the Watan Party (the renamed PDPA) by appeasing the pro-Karmal Parchamites, he failed – Karmal's apartment became a center for opposition to Najibullah's government. When Najibullah was toppled in 1992, Karmal became the most powerful politician in Kabul through leadership of the Parcham. However, his negotiations with the rebels collapsed quickly, and on 16 April 1992 the rebels, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, took Kabul. After the fall of Najibullah's government, Karmal was based in Hairatan. There, it is alleged, Karmal used most of his time either trying to establish a new party, or advising people to join the secular National Islamic Movement (Junbish-i-Milli). Abdul Rashid Dostum, the leader of Junbish-i-Milli, was a supporter of Karmal during his rule. It is unknown how much control Karmal had over Dostum, but there is little evidence that Karmal was in any commanding position. Karmal's influence over Dostum appeared indirect – some of his former associates supported Dostum. Those who spoke with Karmal during this period noted his lack of interest in politics. In June 1992 it was reported that he had died in a plane crash along with Dostum, although these reports later proved to be false. In early December 1996, Karmal died in Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital from liver cancer. The date of his death was reported by some sources as 1 December and by others as 3 December. The Taliban summed up his rule as follows: [he] committed all kinds of crimes during his illegitimate rule ... God inflicted on him various kinds of hardship and pain. Eventually he died of cancer in a hospital belonging to his paymasters, the Russians. Notes References Bibliography External links Biography of President Babrak Karmal 1929 births 1996 deaths 20th-century heads of state of Afghanistan Communist rulers of Afghanistan Afghan atheists Presidents of Afghanistan Prime Ministers of Afghanistan People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan politicians Afghan prisoners and detainees Prisoners and detainees of Afghanistan Afghan emigrants to the Soviet Union Collaborators with the Soviet Union Afghan emigrants to Russia People granted political asylum in the Soviet Union Deaths from cancer in Russia Deaths from liver cancer Democratic Republic of Afghanistan 1970s in Afghanistan 1980s in Afghanistan Afghan revolutionaries
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[ "Mir Akbar Khyber () (sometimes spelled Khaibar) (January 11, 1925 – April 17, 1978) was an Afghan left-wing intellectual and a leader of the Parcham faction of People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). His assassination by an unidentified person or people led to the overthrow of Mohammed Daoud Khan's republic, and to the advent of a socialist regime in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.\n\nHistory\nBorn on March 11, 1925 in Logar Province. Khyber graduated from Harbi Pohantoon Military University in 1947. In 1950, he was imprisoned for his revolutionary activities. Later he was employed by the Ministry of Education, until he was expelled from Paktia for taking part in a riot in 1965. After returning to Kabul, he became editor of the Parcham newspaper, Parcham, and oversaw the Parchams recruitment program in the Afghan Army. He was a close confidant of the Parcham leader Babrak Karmal.\n\nAssassination\nHe was assassinated outside his home on 17 April 1978. The Daoud regime attempted to put the blame for Khyber's death on Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezbi Islami, but Nur Mohammad Taraki of the PDPA charged that the government itself was responsible, a belief that was shared by much of the Kabul intelligentsia. Louis Dupree, an American historian and specialist of Afghanistan, concluded that interior minister Mohammed Issa Nuristani, a virulent anti-communist, had ordered the killing. However, several sources, including fellow Parchamites Babrak Karmal and Anahita Ratebzad, claimed that Hafizullah Amin, a leader of the rival Khalq faction, was the instigator of the assassination. But some former ministers of Khalq faction claim that the assassination was ordered by the Soviet Union and Karmal. Daoud's confidant, Abdul Samad Ghaus, suggested that a strong rivalry existed between Amin and Khyber as they both attempted to infiltrate the military for their respective factions. Also, Khyber's attempts to reunite Khalq and Parcham cells within the military would have undermined Amin's power, according to communist sources. Mr. Ghaus suggest that Amin's henchmen, Siddiq Alamyar and his brother, are responsible for assassination of both Khyber and Inamulhaq Gran (mistakenly thought to be Karmal) upon order from Amin. Alamyar became Amin's minister of planning and his brother president of the general transportation authority. \n\nAt Khyber's funeral on April 19, some 15,000 PDPA sympathizers gathered in Kabul, and paraded through the streets chanting slogans against the CIA and the SAVAK, the Shah of Iran's secret police. Alarmed by this demonstration of communist strength, Daoud ordered a crackdown on the PDPA leadership, which in turn prompted the PDPA to launch a military coup that became known as the Saur Revolution, during which Daoud was killed, and the PDPA took power.\n\nReferences\n\nPeople's Democratic Party of Afghanistan politicians\nAfghan communists\nAssassinated Afghan politicians\n1925 births\n1978 deaths\nPashtun people", "Sultan Ali Keshtmand (; born May 22, 1935 in Kabul), sometimes transliterated Kishtmand, was an Afghan politician. He served twice as Chairman of the Council of Ministers during the 1980s, from 1981 to 1988 and from 1989 to 1990 in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.\n\nEarly years\nKeshtmand was born in Kabul. He is a member of the Hazara ethnic group. He studied economics at Kabul University and became involved in the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. He joined the Parcham Faction of that party, which was led by Babrak Karmal. He sought and received political asylum from the British Prime Minister John Major. He lives in the UK.\n\nRole in politics\nImmediately after the April 1978 coup d'état in which the People's Democratic Party came to power, Keshtmand became the minister of planning in the newly formed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.\n\nHe lost that post in August 1978 when he was arrested for an alleged plot against President Nur Mohammad Taraki, a member of the rival Khalq faction of the party. The PDPA Politburo ordered the arrest of Keshtmand and Public Works Minister Muhammad Rafi'i for their part in the possible anti-regime conspiracy. He and the other inmates went through severe torture and long imprisonment. He remained in prison and was sentenced to death, but this decision was revoked and he was resentenced to 15 years in prison.\n\nOn December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, bringing Babrak Karmal and the Parcham faction to power. Keshtmand was released from jail, and was once again joined the Politburo.\n\nFriction among the People's Party members rose in 1980 when Karmal removed Assadullah Sarwari from his position as First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers and replaced him with Sultan Ali Keshtmand. Keshtmand, a Parchami, soon became one of the most important leaders of the regime. In June 1981, Karmal retained his other offices, but resigned as Council of Ministers chairman and was succeeded by Keshtmand. A 21-member Supreme Defense Council headed by Mohammad Najibullah effectively assumed power.\n\nThe rise in the deficit greatly concerned the government, and as Council of Ministers chairman Keshtmand noted in April 1983, the tax collections were inadequate in view of the increased state spending. The security situation in the country, however, prevented the government from improving its tax collections.\n\nIn September 1987, the Kabul government sponsored a large convocation of Hazaras from various parts of the country and offered them autonomy. In his speech to the group, Keshtmand said that the government was going to set up several new provinces in the Hazarajat that would be administered by the local inhabitants.\n\nRise and fall of power\nHe served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1981 to 1988 and 1989 to 1990, and as one of the vice presidents from May 1990 until April 1991, when he was dismissed shortly before the fall of the government.\n\nA mujaheddin radio station reports intra-Parcham (a faction of the PDPA) (P) clashes in Kabul between supporters of Najibullah and Keshtmand, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers.\n\nNon-PDPA member Mohammad Hassan Sharq was selected by President Najibullah to be the new Council of Ministers chairman, replacing Keshtmand. This move was made in order to free spaces in the new government for nonparty candidates.\n\nHe then left Afghanistan, first moving to Russia and then to England. There he became an outspoken defender of the rights of Hazaras and other minorities, claiming that the Pashtun majority in Afghanistan had had too much power in all of Afghanistan's regimes, past and present. After the communist Saur Revolution, which toppled Daud Khan's first Afghan Republic, he reportedly said, \"Brothers, today the five long centuries of Pashtun political domination has come to an end.\"\n\nReferences\n\n1935 births\nLiving people\nAfghan Muslims\nVice presidents of Afghanistan\nPrime Ministers of Afghanistan\nCommunist rulers of Afghanistan\nPeople's Democratic Party of Afghanistan politicians\nGovernment ministers of Afghanistan\nHazara politicians\nAfghan exiles\nAfghan emigrants to England\nAfghan expatriates in Russia" ]
[ "Babrak Karmal", "Communist politics", "How was Karmal involved in Communist politics?", "befriended fellow inmate Mir Akbar Khyber," ]
C_d59d3bea17bf49e58c77e1132c5be2ec_1
What was the significance of communist politics?
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What was the significance of communist politics?
Babrak Karmal
Imprisoned from 1953 to 1956, Karmal befriended fellow inmate Mir Akbar Khyber, who introduced Karmal to Marxism. Karmal changed his name from Sultan Hussein to Babrak Karmal, which means "Comrade of the Workers'" in Pashtun, to disassociate himself from his bourgeois background. When he was released from prison, he continued his activities in the student union, and began to promote Marxism. Karmal spent the rest of the 1950s and the early 1960s becoming involved with Marxist organizations, of which there were at least four in Afghanistan at the time; two of the four were established by Karmal. When the 1964 Afghan Provisional Constitution, which legalised the establishment of new political entities, was introduced several prominent Marxists agreed to establish a communist political party. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA, the Communist Party) was established in January 1965 in Nur Muhammad Taraki's home. Factionalism within the PDPA quickly became a problem; the party split into the Khalq led by Taraki alongside Hafizullah Amin, and the Parcham led by Karmal. During the 1965 parliamentary election Karmal was one of four PDPA members elected to the lower house of parliament; the three others were Anahita Ratebzad, Nur Ahmed Nur and Fezanul Haq Fezan. No Khalqists were elected; however, Amin was 50 votes short of being elected. The Parchamite victory may be explained by the simple fact that Karmal could contribute financially to the PDPA electoral campaign. Karmal became a leading figure within the student movement in the 1960s, electing Mohammad Hashim Maiwandwal as Prime Minister after a student demonstration (called for by Karmal) concluded with three deaths under the former leadership. In 1967, the PDPA unofficially split into two formal parties, one Khalqist and one Parchamist. The dissolution of the PDPA was initiated by the closing down of the Khalqist newspaper, Khalq. Karmal criticised the Khalq for being too communist, and believed that its leadership should have hidden its Marxist orientation instead of promoting it. According to the official version of events, the majority of the PDPA Central Committee rejected Karmal's criticism. The vote was a close one, and it is reported that Taraki expanded the Central Committee to win the vote; this plan resulted in eight of the new members becoming politically unaligned with and one switching to the Parchamite side. Karmal and half the PDPA Central Committee left the PDPA to establish a Parchamite-led PDPA. Officially the split was caused by ideological differences, but the party may have divided between the different leadership styles and plans of Taraki versus Karmal. Taraki wanted to model the party after Leninist norms while Karmal wanted to establish a democratic front. Other differences were socioeconomic. The majority of Khalqists came from rural areas; hence they were poorer, and were of Pashtun origin. The Parchamites were urban, richer, and spoke Dari more often than not. The Khalqists accused the Parchamites of having a connection with the monarchy, and because of it, referred to the Parchamite PDPA as the "Royal Communist Party". Both Karmal and Amin retained their seats in the lower house of parliament in the 1969 parliamentary election. CANNOTANSWER
Comrade of the Workers'"
Babrak Karmal (Dari/Pashto , born Sultan Hussein; 6 January 1929 – 1 or 3 December 1996) was an Afghan revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Afghanistan, serving in the post of General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan for seven years. Born in Kabul Province into a Tajikized family of Kashmiri origin, Karmal attended Kabul University and developed openly leftist views there, having been introduced to Marxism by Mir Akbar Khyber during his imprisonment for activities deemed too radical by the government. He became a founding member of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and eventually became the leader of the Parcham faction when the PDPA split in 1967, with their ideological nemesis being the Khalq faction. Karmal was elected to the Lower House after the 1965 parliamentary election, serving in parliament until losing his seat in the 1969 parliamentary election. Under Karmal's leadership, the Parchamite PDPA participated in Mohammad Daoud Khan's rise to power in 1973, and his subsequent regime. While relations were good at the beginning, Daoud began a major purge of leftist influence in the mid-1970s. This in turn led to the reformation of the PDPA in 1977, and Karmal played a role in the 1978 Saur Revolution when the PDPA took power. Karmal was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Council, synonymous with vice head of state, in the communist government. The Parchamite faction found itself under significant pressure by the Khalqists soon after taking power. In June 1978, a PDPA Central Committee meeting voted in favor of giving the Khalqist faction exclusive control over PDPA policy. This decision was followed by a failed Parchamite coup, after which Hafizullah Amin, a Khalqist, initiated a purge against the Parchamites. Karmal survived this purge but was exiled to Prague and eventually dismissed from his post. Instead of returning to Kabul, he feared for his life and lived with his family in the forests protected by the Czechoslovak secret police StB. The Afghan secret police KHAD had allegedly sent members to Czechoslovakia to assassinate Karmal. In late 1979 he was brought to Moscow by the KGB and eventually, in December 1979, the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan (with the consent of Amin's government) to stabilize the country. The Soviet troops staged a coup and assassinated Amin, replacing him with Karmal. Karmal was promoted to Chairman of the Revolutionary Council and Chairman of the Council of Ministers on 27 December 1979. He remained in the latter office until 1981, when he was succeeded by Sultan Ali Keshtmand. Throughout his term, Karmal worked to establish a support base for the PDPA by introducing several reforms. Among these were the "Fundamental Principles of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan", introducing a general amnesty for those people imprisoned during Nur Mohammad Taraki's and Amin's rule. He also replaced the red Khalqist flag with a more traditional one. These policies failed to increase the PDPA's legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghan people and the Afghan mujahideen rebels - he was widely seen as a Soviet puppet amongst the populace. These policy failures, and the stalemate that ensued after the Soviet intervention, led the Soviet leadership to become highly critical of Karmal's leadership. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union deposed Karmal in 1986 and replaced him with Mohammad Najibullah. Following his loss of power, he was again exiled, this time to Moscow. It was Anahita Ratebzad who persuaded Najibullah to allow Babrak Karmal to return to Afghanistan in 1991, where Karmal became an associate of Abdul Rashid Dostum and possibly helped remove the Najibullah government from power in 1992. He eventually left Afghanistan again for Moscow. Not long after, in 1996, Karmal died from liver cancer. Early life and career Karmal was born Sultan Hussein on 6 January 1929 in Kamari, a village close to Kabul. He was the son of Muhammad Hussein Hashem, a Major General in the Afghan Army and former governor of the province of Paktia, and was the second of five siblings. His family was one of the wealthier families in Kabul. His ethnic background was publicly disputed at the time, with many sources reporting he was a Tajik of Kabul. In 1986, Karmal declared that he and his brother Mahmud Baryalay were Pashtuns as their mother was a linguistically Persianized Pashtun of the Khilji tribe. This declaration was considered to be political as descent comes from the patriarchal line in Afghan society. Karmal's forefathers came to Kabul from Kashmir, and his original name Sultan Hussein (which is associated with Indian Muslims) reinforces his Kashmiri roots. He attended Nejat High School, a German-speaking school, and graduated from it in 1948, and applied to enter the Faculty of Law and Political Science of Kabul University. Karmal's application was initially denied admission to Kabul University because of his student political activist and his openly leftist views. He was always a charismatic speaker and became involved in the student union and the Wikh-i-Zalmayan (Awakened Youth Movement), a progressive and leftist organization. He studied at the College of Law and Political Science at Kabul University from 1951 to 1953. In 1953 Karmal was arrested because of his student union activities, but was released three years later in 1956 in an amnesty by Muhammad Daoud Khan. Shortly after, in 1957, Karmal found work as an English and German translator, before quitting and leaving for military training. Karmal graduated from the College of Law and Political Science in 1960, and in 1961, he found work as an employee in the Compilation and Translation Department of the Ministry of Education. From 1961 to 1963 he worked in the Ministry of Planning. When his mother died, Karmal left with his maternal aunt to live somewhere else. His father disowned him because of his leftist views. Karmal was involved in much debauchery, which was controversial in the mostly conservative Afghan society. Communist politics Imprisoned from 1953 to 1956, Karmal befriended fellow inmate Mir Akbar Khyber, who introduced Karmal to Marxism. Karmal changed his name from Sultan Hussein to Babrak Karmal, which means "Comrade of the Workers'" in Pashtun, to disassociate himself from his bourgeois background. When he was released from prison, he continued his activities in the student union, and began to promote Marxism. Karmal spent the rest of the 1950s and the early 1960s becoming involved with Marxist organizations, of which there were at least four in Afghanistan at the time; two of the four were established by Karmal. When the 1964 Afghan Provisional Constitution, which legalised the establishment of new political entities, was introduced several prominent Marxists agreed to establish a communist political party. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA, the Communist Party) was established in January 1965 in Nur Muhammad Taraki's home. Factionalism within the PDPA quickly became a problem; the party split into the Khalq led by Taraki alongside Hafizullah Amin, and the Parcham led by Karmal. During the 1965 parliamentary election Karmal was one of four PDPA members elected to the lower house of parliament; the three others were Anahita Ratebzad, Nur Ahmed Nur and Fezanul Haq Fezan. No Khalqists were elected; however, Amin was 50 votes short of being elected. The Parchamite victory may be explained by the simple fact that Karmal could contribute financially to the PDPA electoral campaign. Karmal became a leading figure within the student movement in the 1960s, electing Mohammad Hashim Maiwandwal as Prime Minister after a student demonstration (called for by Karmal) concluded with three deaths under the former leadership. In 1966 inside parliament, Karmal was physically assaulted by an Islamist MP, Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi. In 1967, the PDPA unofficially split into two formal parties, one Khalqist and one Parchamist. The dissolution of the PDPA was initiated by the closing down of the Khalqist newspaper, Khalq. Karmal criticised the Khalq for being too communist, and believed that its leadership should have hidden its Marxist orientation instead of promoting it. According to the official version of events, the majority of the PDPA Central Committee rejected Karmal's criticism. The vote was a close one, and it is reported that Taraki expanded the Central Committee to win the vote; this plan resulted in eight of the new members becoming politically unaligned with and one switching to the Parchamite side. Karmal and half the PDPA Central Committee left the PDPA to establish a Parchamite-led PDPA. Officially the split was caused by ideological differences, but the party may have divided between the different leadership styles and plans of Taraki versus Karmal. Taraki wanted to model the party after Leninist norms while Karmal wanted to establish a democratic front. Other differences were socioeconomic. The majority of Khalqists came from rural areas; hence they were poorer, and were of Pashtun origin. The Parchamites were urban, richer, and spoke Dari more often than not. The Khalqists accused the Parchamites of having a connection with the monarchy, and because of it, referred to the Parchamite PDPA as the "Royal Communist Party". Both Karmal and Amin retained their seats in the lower house of parliament in the 1969 parliamentary election. The Daoud era Mohammed Daoud Khan, in collaboration with the Parchamite PDPA and radical military officers, overthrew the monarchy and instituted the Republic of Afghanistan in 1973. After Daoud's seizure of power, an American embassy cable stated that the new government had established a Soviet-style Central Committee, in which Karmal and Mir Akbar Khyber were given leading positions. Most ministries were given to Parchamites; Hassan Sharq became Deputy Prime Minister, Major Faiz Mohammad became Minister of Internal Affairs and Niamatullah Pazhwak became Minister of Education. The Parchamites took control over the ministries of finance, agriculture, communications and border affairs. The new government quickly suppressed the opposition, and secured their power base. At first, the National Front government between Daoud and the Parchamites seemed to work. By 1975, Daoud had strengthened his position by enhancing the executive, legislative and judicial powers of the Presidency. To the dismay of the Parchamites, all parties other than the National Revolutionary Party (NRP, established by Daoud) were made illegal. Shortly after the ban on opposition to the NRP, Daoud began a massive purge of Parchamites in government. Mohammad lost his position as interior minister, Abdul Qadir was demoted, and Karmal was put under government surveillance. To mitigate Daoud's suddenly anti-communist directives, the Soviet Union reestablished the PDPA; Taraki was elected its General Secretary and Karmal, Second Secretary. While the Saur Revolution (literally the April Revolution) was planned for August, the assassination of Khyber led to a chain of events which ended with the communists seizing power. Karmal, when taking power in 1979, accused Amin of ordering the assassination of Khyber. Taraki–Amin rule Taraki was appointed Chairman of the Presidium of the Revolutionary Council and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, retaining his post as PDPA general secretary. Taraki initially formed a government which consisted of both Khalqists and Parchamites; Karmal became Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Council, while Amin became Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers.Mohammad Aslam Watanjar became Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers. The two Parchamites Abdul Qadir and Mohammad Rafi, became Minister of Defence and Minister of Public Works, respectively. The appointment of Amin, Karmal and Watanjar led to splits within the Council of Ministers: the Khalqists answered to Amin; Karmal led the civilian Parchamites; and the military officers (who were Parchamites) were answerable to Watanjar (a Khalqist). The first conflict arose when the Khalqists wanted to give PDPA Central Committee membership to military officers who had participated in the Saur Revolution; Karmal opposed such a move but was overruled. A PDPA Politburo meeting voted in favour of giving Central Committee membership to the officers. On 27 June, three months after the Saur Revolution, Amin outmaneuvered the Parchamites at a Central Committee meeting, giving the Khalqists exclusive right over formulating and deciding policy. A purge against the Parchamites was initiated by Amin and supported by Taraki on 1 July 1979. Karmal, fearing for his safety, went into hiding in one of his Soviet friends' homes. Karmal tried to contact Alexander Puzanov, the Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan, to talk about the situation. Puzanov refused, and revealed Karmal's location to Amin. The Soviets probably saved Karmal's life by sending him to the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia. In exile, Karmal established a network with the remaining Parchamites in government. A coup to overthrow Amin was planned for 4 September 1979. Its leading members in Afghanistan were Qadir and the Army Chief of Staff General Shahpur Ahmedzai. The coup was planned for the Festival of Eid, in anticipation of relaxed military vigilance. The conspiracy failed when the Afghan ambassador to India told the Afghan leadership about the plan. Another purge was initiated, and Parchamite ambassadors were recalled. Few returned to Afghanistan; Karmal and Mohammad Najibullah stayed in their respective countries. The Soviets decided that Amin should be removed to make way for a Karmal-Taraki coalition government. However Amin managed to order the arrest and later the murder of Taraki. Amin was informed of the Soviet decision to intervene in Afghanistan and was initially supportive, but was assassinated. Under the command of the Soviets, Karmal ascended to power. On 27 December 1979, Karmal's pre-recorded speech to the Afghan people was broadcast via Radio Kabul from Tashkent in the Uzbek SSR (the radio wavelength was changed to that of Kabul), saying: "Today the torture machine of Amin has been smashed, his accomplices – the primitive executioners, usurpers and murderers of tens of thousand of our fellow countrymen – fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters, children and old people ..." Karmal was not in Kabul when the speech was broadcast; he was in Bagram, protected by the KGB. That evening Yuri Andropov, the KGB Chairman, congratulated Karmal on his rise to the Chairmanship of the Presidium of the Revolutionary Council, some time before Karmal received an official appointment. Karmal returned to Kabul on 28 December. He travelled alongside a Soviet military column. For the next few days Karmal lived in a villa on the outskirts of Kabul under the protection of the KGB. On 1 January 1980 Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and Alexei Kosygin, the Soviet Chairman of the Council of Ministers, congratulated Karmal on his "election" as leader. Leadership Domestic policies Karmal's ascension was quickly troubled as he was effectively installed by the invading Soviet Union, delegitimizing him. Unrest in the country quickly escalated, and in Kabul two major uprisings, on 3 Hoot (22 February) and the months long students' protests were early signs of trouble. The "Fundamental Principles" and amnesty When he came to power, Karmal promised an end to executions, the establishment of democratic institutions and free elections, the creation of a constitution, and legalization of alternative political parties. Prisoners incarcerated under the two previous governments would be freed in a general amnesty (which occurred on 6 January). He promised the creation of a coalition government which would not espouse socialism. At the same time, he told the Afghan people that he had negotiated with the Soviet Union to give economic, military and political assistance. The mistrust most Afghans felt towards the government was a problem for Karmal. Many still remembered he had said he would protect private capital in 1978—a promise later proven to be a lie. Karmal's three most important promises were the general amnesty of prisoners, the promulgation of the Fundamental Principles of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the adoption of a new flag containing the traditional black, red and green (the flag of Taraki and Amin was red). His government granted concessions to religious leaders and the restoration of confiscated property. Some property, which was confiscated during earlier land reforms, was also partially restored. All these measures, with the exception of the general amnesty of prisoners, were introduced gradually. Of 2,700 prisoners, 2,600 were released from prison; 600 of these were Parchamites. The general amnesty was greatly publicized by the government. While the event was hailed with enthusiasm by some, many others greeted the event with disdain, since their loved ones or associates had died during earlier purges. Amin had planned to introduce a general amnesty on 1 January 1980, to coincide with the PDPA's sixteenth anniversary. Work on the Fundamental Principles had started under Amin: it guaranteed democratic rights such as freedom of speech, the right to security and life, the right to peaceful association, the right to demonstrate and the right that "no one would be accused of crime but in accord with the provisions of law" and that the accused had the right to a fair trial. The Fundamental Principles envisaged a democratic state led by the PDPA, the only party then permitted by law. The Revolutionary Council, the organ of supreme power, would convene twice every year. The Revolutionary Council in turn elected a Presidium which would take decisions on behalf of the Revolutionary Council when it was not in session. The Presidium consisted mostly of PDPA Politburo members. The state would safeguard three kinds of property: state, cooperative and private property. The Fundamental Principles said that the state had the right to change the Afghan economy from an economy where man was exploited to an economy where man was free. Another clause stated that the state had the right to take "families, both parents and children, under its supervision." While it looked democratic at the outset, the Fundamental Principles was based on contradictions. The Fundamental Principles led to the establishment of two important state organs: the Special Revolutionary Court, a specialized court for crimes against national security and territorial integrity, and the Institute for Legal and Scientific Research and Legislative Affairs, the supreme legislative organ of state, This body could amend and draft laws, and introduce regulations and decrees on behalf of the government. The introduction of more Soviet-style institutions led the Afghan people to distrust the communist government even more. The Fundamental Principles constitution came into power on 22 April 1980. Dividing power: Khalq–Parcham With Karmal's ascension to power, Parchamites began to "settle old scores". Revolutionary Troikas were created to arrest, sentence and execute people. Amin's guard were the first victims of the terror which ensued. Those commanders who had stayed loyal to Amin were arrested, filling the prisons. The Soviets protested, and Karmal replied, "As long as you keep my hands bound and do not let me deal with the Khalq faction there will be no unity in the PDPA and the government cannot become strong ... They tortured and killed us. They still hate us! They are the enemies of the party ..." Amin's daughter, along with her baby, was imprisoned for twelve years, until Mohammad Najibullah, then leader of the PDPA, released her. When Karmal took power, leading posts in the Party and Government bureaucracy were taken over by Parchamites. The Khalq faction was removed from power, and only technocrats, opportunists and individuals which the Soviets trusted would be appointed to the higher echelons of government. Khalqists remained in control of the Ministry of Interior, but Parchamites were given control over KHAD and the secret police. The Parchamites and the Khalqists controlled an equal share of the military. Two out of Karmal's three Council of Ministers deputy chairmen were Khalqists. Khalqists controlled the Ministry of Communications and the interior ministry. Parchamites, on the other hand, controlled the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defence. In addition to the changes in government, the Parchamites held clear majority in the PDPA Central Committee. Only one Khalqi, Saleh Mohammad Zeary, was a member of the PDPA Secretariat during Karmal's rule. Over 14 and 15 March 1982 the PDPA held a party conference at the Kabul Polytechnic Institute instead of a party congress, since a party congress would have given the Khalq faction a majority and could have led to a Khalqist takeover of the PDPA. The rules of holding a party conference were different, and the Parchamites had a three-fifths majority. This infuriated several Khalqists; the threat of expulsion did not lessen their anger. The conference was not successful, but it was portrayed as such by the official media. The conference broke up after one and a half days of a 3-day long program, because of the inter-party struggle for power between the Khalqists and the Parchamites. A "program of action" was introduced, and party rules were given minor changes. As an explanation of the low party membership, the official media also made it seem hard to become a member of the party. PDPA base When Karmal took power, he began expanding the support base of the PDPA. Karmal tried to persuade certain groups, which had been referred to class enemies of the revolution during Taraki and Amin's rule, to support the PDPA. Karmal appointed several non-communists to top positions. Between March and May 1980, 78 out of the 191 people appointed to government posts were not members of the PDPA. Karmal reintroduced the old Afghan custom of having an Islamic invocation every time the government issued a proclamation. In his first live speech to the Afghan people, Karmal called for the establishment of the National Fatherland Front (NFF); the NFF's founding congress was held in June 1981. Unfortunately for Karmal, his policies did not lead to a notable increase in support for his regime, and it did not help Karmal that most Afghans saw the Soviet intervention as an invasion. By 1981, the government gave up on political solutions to the conflict. At the fifth PDPA Central Committee plenum in June, Karmal resigned from his Council of Ministers chairmanship and was replaced by Sultan Ali Keshtmand, while Nur Ahmad Nur was given a bigger role in the Revolutionary Council. This was seen as "base broadening". The previous weight given to non-PDPA members in top positions ceased to be an important matter in the media by June 1981. This was significant, considering that up to five members of the Revolutionary Council were non-PDPA members. By the end of 1981, the previous contenders, who had been heavily presented in the media, were all gone; two were given ambassadorships, two ceased to be active in politics, and one continued as an advisor to the government. The other three changed sides, and began to work for the opposition. The national policy of reconciliation continued: in January 1984 the land reform introduced by Taraki and Amin was drastically modified, the limits of landholdings were increased to win the support of middle class peasants, the literacy programme was continued, and concessions to women were made. In 1985 the Loya Jirga was reconvened. The 1985 Loya Jirga was followed by a tribal jirga in September. In 1986 Abdul Rahim Hatef, a non-PDPA member, was elected to the NFF chairmanship. During the 1985–86 elections it was said that 60 percent of the elected officials were non-PDPA members. By the end of Karmal's rule, several non-PDPA members had high-level government positions. Civil war and military In March 1979, the military budget was 6.4 million US$, which was 8.3 percent of the government budget, but only 2.2 of gross national product. After the Soviet intervention, the defence budget increased to 208 million US$ in 1980, and 325 million US$ by 1981. In 1982 it was reported that the government spent around 22 percent of total expenditure. When the political solution failed (see "PDPA base" section), the Afghan government and the Soviet military decided to solve the conflict militarily. The change from a political to a military solution did not come suddenly. It began in January 1981, as Karmal doubled wages for military personnel, issued several promotions, and decorated one general and thirteen colonels. The draft age was lowered, the obligatory length of arms duty was extended and the age for reservists was increased to thirty-five years of age. In June 1981, Assadullah Sarwari lost his seat in the PDPA Politburo, replaced by Mohammad Aslam Watanjar, a former tank commander and Minister of Communications, Major General Mohammad Rafi was made Minister of Defence and Mohammad Najibullah appointed KHAD Chairman. These measures were introduced due to the collapse of the army during the Soviet intervention. Before the intervention the army could field 100,000 troops, after the intervention only 25,000. Desertions were pandemic, and the recruitment campaigns for young people often drove them to the opposition. To better organize the military, seven military zones were established, each with its own Defence Council. The Defence Councils were established at the national, provincial and district level to empower the local PDPA. It is estimated that the Afghan government spent as much as 40 percent of government revenue on defense. Karmal refused to recognize the rebels as genuine, saying in an interview: Economy During the civil war and the ensuing Soviet–Afghan War, most of the country's infrastructure was destroyed. Normal patterns of economic activity were disrupted. The Gross national product (GNP) fell substantially during Karmal's rule because of the conflict; trade and transport was disrupted with loss of labor and capital. In 1981 the Afghan GDP stood at 154.3 billion Afghan afghanis, a drop from 159.7 billion in 1978. GNP per capita decreased from 7,370 in 1978 to 6,852 in 1981. The dominant form of economic activity was in the agricultural sector. Agriculture accounted for 63 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1981; 56 percent of the labor force was working in agriculture in 1982. Industry accounted for 21 percent of GDP in 1982, and employed 10 percent of the labor force. All industrial enterprises were government-owned. The service sector, the smallest of the three, accounted for 10 percent of GDP in 1981, and employed an estimated one-third of the labour force. The balance of payments, which had grown in the pre-communist administration of Muhammad Daoud Khan, decreased, turning negative by 1982 at 70.3 million $US. The only economic activity which grew substantially during Karmal's rule was export and import. Foreign policy Karmal observed in early 1983 that without Soviet intervention, "It is unknown what the destiny of the Afghan Revolution would be ... We are realists and we clearly realize that in store for us yet lie trials and deprivations, losses and difficulties." Two weeks before this statement Sultan Ali Keshtmand, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, lamented the fact that half the schools and three-quarters of communications had been destroyed since 1979. The Soviet Union rejected several Western-made peace plans, such as the Carrington Plan, since they did not take into consideration the PDPA government. Most Western peace plans had been made in collaboration with the Afghan opposition forces. At the 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, stated; The stance of the Pakistani government was clear, demanding complete Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the establishment of a non-PDPA government. Karmal, summarizing his discussions with Iran and Pakistan, said "Iran and Pakistan have so far not opted for concrete and constructive positions." During Karmal's rule Afghan–Pakistani relations remained hostile; the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was the catalyst for the hostile relationship. The increasing numbers of Afghan refugees in Pakistan challenged the PDPA's legitimacy to rule. The Soviet Union threatened in 1985 that it would support the Baloch separatist movement in Pakistan if the Pakistani government continued to aid the Afghan mujahideen. Karmal, problematically for the Soviets, did not want a Soviet withdrawal, and he hampered attempts to improve relations with Pakistan since the Pakistani government had refused to recognise the PDPA government. Public image Because Karmal was put into power without a formal ceremony as in Afghan tradition, he was seen as an illegitimate leader in many eyes of his people. A poor performance in foreign interviews also didn't help his public image where he was noted to speak like an "exhibitionist" rather than a statesman. Karmal was widely viewed as a puppet leader of the Soviet Union by Afghans and the Western press. Despite his position, Karmal was apparently not permitted to make key decisions as he was following advice from Soviet advisers. The Soviet control of the Afghan state was apparently so much that Karmal himself admitted to a friend of his unfree life, telling him: “The Soviet comrades love me boundlessly, and for the sake of my personal safety, they don’t obey even my own orders.” Fall from power and succession Mikhail Gorbachev, then General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, said, "The main reason that there has been no national consolidation so far is that Comrade Karmal is hoping to continue sitting in Kabul with our help." Karmal's position became less secure when the Soviet leadership began blaming him for the failures in Afghanistan. Gorbachev, worried over the situation, told the Soviet Politburo "If we don't change approaches [to evacuate Afghanistan], we will be fighting there for another 20 or 30 years." It is not clear when the Soviet leadership began to campaign for Karmal's dismissal, but Andrei Gromyko discussed the possibility of Karmal's resignation with Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1982. While it was Gorbachev who would dismiss Karmal, there may have been a consensus within the Soviet leadership in 1983 that Karmal should resign. Gorbachev's own plan was to replace Karmal with Mohammad Najibullah, who had joined the PDPA at its creation. Najibullah was thought highly of by Yuri Andropov, Boris Ponomarev and Dmitriy Ustinov, and negotiations for his succession may have started in 1983. Najibullah was not the Soviet leadership's only choice for Karmal's succession; a GRU report noted that the majority of the PDPA leadership would support Assadullah Sarwari's ascension to leadership. According to the GRU, Sarwari was a better candidate as he could balance between the Pashtuns, Tajiks and Uzbeks; Najibullah was a Pashtun nationalist. Another viable candidate was Abdul Qadir, who had been a participant in the Saur Revolution. Najibullah was appointed to the PDPA Secretariat in November 1985. During Karmal's March 1986 visit to the Soviet Union, the Soviets tried to persuade Karmal that he was too ill to govern, and that he should resign. This backfired, as a Soviet doctor attending to Karmal told him he was in good health. Karmal asked to return home to Kabul, and said that he understood and would listen to the Soviet recommendations. Before leaving, Karmal promised he would step down as PDPA General Secretary. The Soviets did not trust him and sent Vladimir Kryuchkov, the head of intelligence (FCD) in the KGB, into Afghanistan. At a meeting in Kabul, Karmal confessed his undying love for the Soviet Union, comparing his ardor to his Muslim faith. Kryuchkov, concluding that he could not persuade Karmal to resign, left the meeting. After Kryuchkov left the room, the Afghan defence minister and the state security minister visited Karmal's office, telling him that he had to resign from one of his posts. Understanding that his Soviet support had been eliminated, Karmal resigned from the office of the General Secretary at the 18th PDPA Central Committee plenum. He was succeeded in his post by Najibullah. Karmal still had support within the party, and used his base to curb Najibullah's powers. He began spreading rumors that he would be reappointed General Secretary. Najibullah's power base was in the KHAD, the Afghan equivalent to the KGB, and not the party. Considering the fact that the Soviet Union had supported Karmal for over six years, the Soviet leadership wanted to ease him out of power gradually. Yuli Vorontsov, the Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan, told Najibullah to begin undermining Karmal's power slowly. Najibullah complained to the Soviet leadership that Karmal used most of his spare time looking for errors and "speaking against the National Reconciliation [programme]". At a meeting of the Soviet Politburo on 13 November 1986 it was decided that Najibullah should remove Karmal; this motion was supported by Gromyko, Vorontsov, Eduard Shevardnadze, Anatoly Dobrynin and Viktor Chebrikov. A PDPA meeting in November relieved Karmal of his Revolutionary Council chairmanship, and exiled him to Moscow where he was given a state-owned apartment and a dacha. Karmal was succeeded as Revolutionary Council chairman by Haji Mohammad Chamkani, who was not a member of the PDPA. Later life and death Many years after the end of his leadership, he denounced the Saur Revolution of 1978 in which he took part, taking aim at the Khalq governments of Taraki and Amin. He told a Soviet reporter: It was the greatest crime against the people of Afghanistan. Parcham's leaders were against armed actions because the country was not ready for a revolution... I knew that people would not support us if we decided to keep power without such support. For unknown reasons, Karmal was invited back to Kabul by Najibullah, and "for equally obscure reasons Karmal accepted", returning on 20 June 1991. (this could have been on the recommendation of Anahita Ratebzad who was very close to Karmal and also respected by Najibullah). If Najibullah's plan was to strengthen his position within the Watan Party (the renamed PDPA) by appeasing the pro-Karmal Parchamites, he failed – Karmal's apartment became a center for opposition to Najibullah's government. When Najibullah was toppled in 1992, Karmal became the most powerful politician in Kabul through leadership of the Parcham. However, his negotiations with the rebels collapsed quickly, and on 16 April 1992 the rebels, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, took Kabul. After the fall of Najibullah's government, Karmal was based in Hairatan. There, it is alleged, Karmal used most of his time either trying to establish a new party, or advising people to join the secular National Islamic Movement (Junbish-i-Milli). Abdul Rashid Dostum, the leader of Junbish-i-Milli, was a supporter of Karmal during his rule. It is unknown how much control Karmal had over Dostum, but there is little evidence that Karmal was in any commanding position. Karmal's influence over Dostum appeared indirect – some of his former associates supported Dostum. Those who spoke with Karmal during this period noted his lack of interest in politics. In June 1992 it was reported that he had died in a plane crash along with Dostum, although these reports later proved to be false. In early December 1996, Karmal died in Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital from liver cancer. The date of his death was reported by some sources as 1 December and by others as 3 December. The Taliban summed up his rule as follows: [he] committed all kinds of crimes during his illegitimate rule ... God inflicted on him various kinds of hardship and pain. Eventually he died of cancer in a hospital belonging to his paymasters, the Russians. Notes References Bibliography External links Biography of President Babrak Karmal 1929 births 1996 deaths 20th-century heads of state of Afghanistan Communist rulers of Afghanistan Afghan atheists Presidents of Afghanistan Prime Ministers of Afghanistan People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan politicians Afghan prisoners and detainees Prisoners and detainees of Afghanistan Afghan emigrants to the Soviet Union Collaborators with the Soviet Union Afghan emigrants to Russia People granted political asylum in the Soviet Union Deaths from cancer in Russia Deaths from liver cancer Democratic Republic of Afghanistan 1970s in Afghanistan 1980s in Afghanistan Afghan revolutionaries
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[ "The 8th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party was in session from 1956 to 1969. It was preceded by the 7th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. It held 12 plenary sessions in this period of 13 years. It was the longest serving central committee ever held by the Communist Party.\n\nIt elected the 8th Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party in 1956. This politburo was dysfunctional from 1967 -1969. This committee was succeeded by the 9th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.\n\nMembers\nOrdered according to the numbers of ballots:\n\nChronology\n1st Plenary Session\nDate: September 28, 1956\nLocation: Beijing\nSignificance: Mao Zedong was appointed Chairman of the CCP Central Committee, with Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and Chen Yun as vice-chairmen and Deng Xiaoping as general secretary. A 23-members Politburo, the 6-members Politburo Standing Committee and other central organs were elected.\n2nd Plenary Session\nDate: November 10–15, 1956\nLocation: Beijing\nSignificance: Liu Shaoqi made a report on the Suez Crisis and the anti-communist revolts in Hungary and Poland; Zhou Enlai made a report on the 1957 economic plan; Chen Yun made a report on food issues. Mao Zedong delivered a closing speech focusing on the relations with the Soviet Union and upholding Joseph Stalin's legacy.\n3rd Plenary Session\nDate: September 20–October 9, 1957\nLocation: Beijing\nSignificance: Deng Xiaoping made a report on the Anti-Rightist Campaign; Chen Yun made a report on State governance and development of agriculture; Zhou Enlai made a report on labor insurances. The Great Leap Forward was first outlined.\n4th Plenary Session\nDate: May 3, 1958\nLocation: Beijing\nSignificance: The meeting approved the report which was to be delivered to the 2nd Session of the Party's 8th National Congress as well as a resolution on the meeting of communist and workers' parties held in Moscow in 1957.\n5th Plenary Session\nDate: May 25, 1958\nLocation: Beijing\nSignificance: The meeting focused on organizational issues, particularly appointing Lin Biao an additional vice-chairman of the CCP Central Committee, and starting the publication of Hongqi with Chen Boda as editor-in-chief.\n6th Plenary Session\nDate: November 28–December 10, 1958\nLocation: Beijing\nSignificance: The people's commune were proclaimed. Mao Zedong decided not propose himself as President of the People's Republic of China to the 2nd National People's Congress, paving the way for Liu Shaoqi.\n7th Plenary Session\nDate: April 2–5, 1959\nLocation: Shanghai\nSignificance: Meeting focused on economic and financial work. Reports were submitted by Bo Yibo, Li Xiannian, Deng Xiaoping and Li Fuchun.\n8th Plenary Session\nDate: August 2–16, 1959\nLocation: Lushan\nSignificance: Also known as \"Lushan Conference\", a debate on the Great Leap Forward occurred. In the end, Peng Dehuai (who criticized the Leap and the people's commune) was accused of being a counter-revolutionary and removed along with other Party leaders like PLA Chief-of-Staff Huang Kecheng and former General Secretary Zhang Wentian. The plenary meeting followed a central conference started on July 2. \n9th Plenary Session\nDate: January 14–18, 1961\nLocation: Beijing\nSignificance: Chen Yun made a report on the 1961 economic plan; Deng Xiaoping made a report on the 1960 Moscow meeting of communist parties. Regional bureaux of the CCP Central Committee were established at this session.\n10th Plenary Session\nDate: September 24–27, 1962\nLocation: Beijing\nSignificance: The meeting repeated Mao Zedong's assessment that Chinese economy was to take agriculture as basis to develop industry. The session's official communique also started to outline Mao Zedong's \"theory of continued revolution under proletarian dictatorship\" which led to the Cultural Revolution.\n11th Plenary Session\nDate: August 1–12, 1966\nLocation: Beijing\nSignificance: First plenary meeting after 4 years. It approved the Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, setting the course for the Cultural Revolution, which had started in May. The Politburo Standing Committee was expanded from 7 to 11 members, with Lin Biao as the single vice-chairman and Liu Shaoqi severely demoted.\n12th Plenary Session\nDate: October 13–31, 1968\nLocation: Beijing\nSignificance: Liu Shaoqi—the main target of the Cultural Revolution—was condemned as \"renegade, traitor and scab\" and expelled from the Party. A decision to convene the Party's 9th National Congress (after 12 years since the 8th Congress) was adopted.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n 8th Central Committee of the CCP, People's Daily Online.\n\nCentral Committee of the Chinese Communist Party\n1956 establishments in China\n1969 disestablishments in China\n\nit:VIII Congresso nazionale del Partito Comunista Cinese\nru:VIII съезд КПК", "The 7th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party was in session from 1945 to 1956. It was a product of the convening of the 7th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. It held six plenary sessions in this 11-year period. It began in June 1945, before the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the resumption of the Chinese Civil War. This committee would be succeeded by the 8th Central Committee.\n\nIt had 44 members and 33 alternate members.\n\nIts first plenary session elected the 7th Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party in 1945.\n\nIts second plenary session was held in 1949, at about the same time as the establishment of the People's Republic of China.\n\nMembers\nOrdered according to the numbers of ballots:\n\nChronology\n1st Plenary Session\nDate: June 19, 1945\nLocation: Yan'an\nSignificance: Mao Zedong was appointed Chairman of the CCP Central Committee, aided by a Secretariat made up by Zhou Enlai, Ren Bishi, Liu Shaoqi and Zhu De. A 13-members Politburo and other central organs were elected.\n2nd Plenary Session\nDate: March 5–13, 1949\nLocation: Xibaipo, Pingshan County\nSignificance: This meeting was held just before the victory over the Kuomintang. Mao Zedong delivered a report focusing on the post-victory activity of the Communist Party, emphasizing the need to guard from \"unarmed enemies\" and \"sugar-covered bullets\". The decision to convene the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference with \"democratic parties\" was also taken.\n3rd Plenary Session\nDate: June 6–9, 1950\nLocation: Beijing\nSignificance: First meeting of the CCP Central Committee to be held in Beijing and after the nationwide victory. It focused on the Central People's Government work, with reports delivered by Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi and Chen Yun. Nie Rongzhen made a report on the reorganization of the People's Liberation Army from guerilla formations towards becoming the armed forces of the new Republic.\n4th Plenary Session\nDate: February 6–10, 1954\nLocation: Beijing\nSignificance: Gao Gang was criticized. Mao Zedong did not participate, and the report by the Politburo was delivered by Liu Shaoqi.\n5th Plenary Session\nDate: April 4, 1955\nLocation: Beijing\nSignificance: The meeting was held after a Party national conference held in March. It approved the conference's resolutions on the Five-Year Plan and expelling Gao Gang (posthumously) and Rao Shushi. Lin Biao and Deng Xiaoping were elected to the Politburo for the first time.\n6th Plenary Session\nDate: October 4–11, 1955\nLocation: Beijing\nSignificance: Resolutions on the collectivization and socialist transformation of agriculture were taken. A decision on the convening of the Party's 8th National Congress was adopted.\n7th Plenary Session\nDate: August 22–September 13, 1956\nLocation: Beijing\nSignificance: Preparations for the 8th Congress were made.\n\nNotes\n\nExternal links\n 7th Central Committee of the CCP, People's Daily Online.\n\nCentral Committee of the Chinese Communist Party\n1945 establishments in China\n1956 disestablishments in China" ]
[ "Babrak Karmal", "Communist politics", "How was Karmal involved in Communist politics?", "befriended fellow inmate Mir Akbar Khyber,", "What was the significance of communist politics?", "Comrade of the Workers'\"" ]
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Was he involved in politics?
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Was Babrak Karmal involved in politics?
Babrak Karmal
Imprisoned from 1953 to 1956, Karmal befriended fellow inmate Mir Akbar Khyber, who introduced Karmal to Marxism. Karmal changed his name from Sultan Hussein to Babrak Karmal, which means "Comrade of the Workers'" in Pashtun, to disassociate himself from his bourgeois background. When he was released from prison, he continued his activities in the student union, and began to promote Marxism. Karmal spent the rest of the 1950s and the early 1960s becoming involved with Marxist organizations, of which there were at least four in Afghanistan at the time; two of the four were established by Karmal. When the 1964 Afghan Provisional Constitution, which legalised the establishment of new political entities, was introduced several prominent Marxists agreed to establish a communist political party. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA, the Communist Party) was established in January 1965 in Nur Muhammad Taraki's home. Factionalism within the PDPA quickly became a problem; the party split into the Khalq led by Taraki alongside Hafizullah Amin, and the Parcham led by Karmal. During the 1965 parliamentary election Karmal was one of four PDPA members elected to the lower house of parliament; the three others were Anahita Ratebzad, Nur Ahmed Nur and Fezanul Haq Fezan. No Khalqists were elected; however, Amin was 50 votes short of being elected. The Parchamite victory may be explained by the simple fact that Karmal could contribute financially to the PDPA electoral campaign. Karmal became a leading figure within the student movement in the 1960s, electing Mohammad Hashim Maiwandwal as Prime Minister after a student demonstration (called for by Karmal) concluded with three deaths under the former leadership. In 1967, the PDPA unofficially split into two formal parties, one Khalqist and one Parchamist. The dissolution of the PDPA was initiated by the closing down of the Khalqist newspaper, Khalq. Karmal criticised the Khalq for being too communist, and believed that its leadership should have hidden its Marxist orientation instead of promoting it. According to the official version of events, the majority of the PDPA Central Committee rejected Karmal's criticism. The vote was a close one, and it is reported that Taraki expanded the Central Committee to win the vote; this plan resulted in eight of the new members becoming politically unaligned with and one switching to the Parchamite side. Karmal and half the PDPA Central Committee left the PDPA to establish a Parchamite-led PDPA. Officially the split was caused by ideological differences, but the party may have divided between the different leadership styles and plans of Taraki versus Karmal. Taraki wanted to model the party after Leninist norms while Karmal wanted to establish a democratic front. Other differences were socioeconomic. The majority of Khalqists came from rural areas; hence they were poorer, and were of Pashtun origin. The Parchamites were urban, richer, and spoke Dari more often than not. The Khalqists accused the Parchamites of having a connection with the monarchy, and because of it, referred to the Parchamite PDPA as the "Royal Communist Party". Both Karmal and Amin retained their seats in the lower house of parliament in the 1969 parliamentary election. CANNOTANSWER
his bourgeois background.
Babrak Karmal (Dari/Pashto , born Sultan Hussein; 6 January 1929 – 1 or 3 December 1996) was an Afghan revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Afghanistan, serving in the post of General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan for seven years. Born in Kabul Province into a Tajikized family of Kashmiri origin, Karmal attended Kabul University and developed openly leftist views there, having been introduced to Marxism by Mir Akbar Khyber during his imprisonment for activities deemed too radical by the government. He became a founding member of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and eventually became the leader of the Parcham faction when the PDPA split in 1967, with their ideological nemesis being the Khalq faction. Karmal was elected to the Lower House after the 1965 parliamentary election, serving in parliament until losing his seat in the 1969 parliamentary election. Under Karmal's leadership, the Parchamite PDPA participated in Mohammad Daoud Khan's rise to power in 1973, and his subsequent regime. While relations were good at the beginning, Daoud began a major purge of leftist influence in the mid-1970s. This in turn led to the reformation of the PDPA in 1977, and Karmal played a role in the 1978 Saur Revolution when the PDPA took power. Karmal was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Council, synonymous with vice head of state, in the communist government. The Parchamite faction found itself under significant pressure by the Khalqists soon after taking power. In June 1978, a PDPA Central Committee meeting voted in favor of giving the Khalqist faction exclusive control over PDPA policy. This decision was followed by a failed Parchamite coup, after which Hafizullah Amin, a Khalqist, initiated a purge against the Parchamites. Karmal survived this purge but was exiled to Prague and eventually dismissed from his post. Instead of returning to Kabul, he feared for his life and lived with his family in the forests protected by the Czechoslovak secret police StB. The Afghan secret police KHAD had allegedly sent members to Czechoslovakia to assassinate Karmal. In late 1979 he was brought to Moscow by the KGB and eventually, in December 1979, the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan (with the consent of Amin's government) to stabilize the country. The Soviet troops staged a coup and assassinated Amin, replacing him with Karmal. Karmal was promoted to Chairman of the Revolutionary Council and Chairman of the Council of Ministers on 27 December 1979. He remained in the latter office until 1981, when he was succeeded by Sultan Ali Keshtmand. Throughout his term, Karmal worked to establish a support base for the PDPA by introducing several reforms. Among these were the "Fundamental Principles of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan", introducing a general amnesty for those people imprisoned during Nur Mohammad Taraki's and Amin's rule. He also replaced the red Khalqist flag with a more traditional one. These policies failed to increase the PDPA's legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghan people and the Afghan mujahideen rebels - he was widely seen as a Soviet puppet amongst the populace. These policy failures, and the stalemate that ensued after the Soviet intervention, led the Soviet leadership to become highly critical of Karmal's leadership. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union deposed Karmal in 1986 and replaced him with Mohammad Najibullah. Following his loss of power, he was again exiled, this time to Moscow. It was Anahita Ratebzad who persuaded Najibullah to allow Babrak Karmal to return to Afghanistan in 1991, where Karmal became an associate of Abdul Rashid Dostum and possibly helped remove the Najibullah government from power in 1992. He eventually left Afghanistan again for Moscow. Not long after, in 1996, Karmal died from liver cancer. Early life and career Karmal was born Sultan Hussein on 6 January 1929 in Kamari, a village close to Kabul. He was the son of Muhammad Hussein Hashem, a Major General in the Afghan Army and former governor of the province of Paktia, and was the second of five siblings. His family was one of the wealthier families in Kabul. His ethnic background was publicly disputed at the time, with many sources reporting he was a Tajik of Kabul. In 1986, Karmal declared that he and his brother Mahmud Baryalay were Pashtuns as their mother was a linguistically Persianized Pashtun of the Khilji tribe. This declaration was considered to be political as descent comes from the patriarchal line in Afghan society. Karmal's forefathers came to Kabul from Kashmir, and his original name Sultan Hussein (which is associated with Indian Muslims) reinforces his Kashmiri roots. He attended Nejat High School, a German-speaking school, and graduated from it in 1948, and applied to enter the Faculty of Law and Political Science of Kabul University. Karmal's application was initially denied admission to Kabul University because of his student political activist and his openly leftist views. He was always a charismatic speaker and became involved in the student union and the Wikh-i-Zalmayan (Awakened Youth Movement), a progressive and leftist organization. He studied at the College of Law and Political Science at Kabul University from 1951 to 1953. In 1953 Karmal was arrested because of his student union activities, but was released three years later in 1956 in an amnesty by Muhammad Daoud Khan. Shortly after, in 1957, Karmal found work as an English and German translator, before quitting and leaving for military training. Karmal graduated from the College of Law and Political Science in 1960, and in 1961, he found work as an employee in the Compilation and Translation Department of the Ministry of Education. From 1961 to 1963 he worked in the Ministry of Planning. When his mother died, Karmal left with his maternal aunt to live somewhere else. His father disowned him because of his leftist views. Karmal was involved in much debauchery, which was controversial in the mostly conservative Afghan society. Communist politics Imprisoned from 1953 to 1956, Karmal befriended fellow inmate Mir Akbar Khyber, who introduced Karmal to Marxism. Karmal changed his name from Sultan Hussein to Babrak Karmal, which means "Comrade of the Workers'" in Pashtun, to disassociate himself from his bourgeois background. When he was released from prison, he continued his activities in the student union, and began to promote Marxism. Karmal spent the rest of the 1950s and the early 1960s becoming involved with Marxist organizations, of which there were at least four in Afghanistan at the time; two of the four were established by Karmal. When the 1964 Afghan Provisional Constitution, which legalised the establishment of new political entities, was introduced several prominent Marxists agreed to establish a communist political party. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA, the Communist Party) was established in January 1965 in Nur Muhammad Taraki's home. Factionalism within the PDPA quickly became a problem; the party split into the Khalq led by Taraki alongside Hafizullah Amin, and the Parcham led by Karmal. During the 1965 parliamentary election Karmal was one of four PDPA members elected to the lower house of parliament; the three others were Anahita Ratebzad, Nur Ahmed Nur and Fezanul Haq Fezan. No Khalqists were elected; however, Amin was 50 votes short of being elected. The Parchamite victory may be explained by the simple fact that Karmal could contribute financially to the PDPA electoral campaign. Karmal became a leading figure within the student movement in the 1960s, electing Mohammad Hashim Maiwandwal as Prime Minister after a student demonstration (called for by Karmal) concluded with three deaths under the former leadership. In 1966 inside parliament, Karmal was physically assaulted by an Islamist MP, Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi. In 1967, the PDPA unofficially split into two formal parties, one Khalqist and one Parchamist. The dissolution of the PDPA was initiated by the closing down of the Khalqist newspaper, Khalq. Karmal criticised the Khalq for being too communist, and believed that its leadership should have hidden its Marxist orientation instead of promoting it. According to the official version of events, the majority of the PDPA Central Committee rejected Karmal's criticism. The vote was a close one, and it is reported that Taraki expanded the Central Committee to win the vote; this plan resulted in eight of the new members becoming politically unaligned with and one switching to the Parchamite side. Karmal and half the PDPA Central Committee left the PDPA to establish a Parchamite-led PDPA. Officially the split was caused by ideological differences, but the party may have divided between the different leadership styles and plans of Taraki versus Karmal. Taraki wanted to model the party after Leninist norms while Karmal wanted to establish a democratic front. Other differences were socioeconomic. The majority of Khalqists came from rural areas; hence they were poorer, and were of Pashtun origin. The Parchamites were urban, richer, and spoke Dari more often than not. The Khalqists accused the Parchamites of having a connection with the monarchy, and because of it, referred to the Parchamite PDPA as the "Royal Communist Party". Both Karmal and Amin retained their seats in the lower house of parliament in the 1969 parliamentary election. The Daoud era Mohammed Daoud Khan, in collaboration with the Parchamite PDPA and radical military officers, overthrew the monarchy and instituted the Republic of Afghanistan in 1973. After Daoud's seizure of power, an American embassy cable stated that the new government had established a Soviet-style Central Committee, in which Karmal and Mir Akbar Khyber were given leading positions. Most ministries were given to Parchamites; Hassan Sharq became Deputy Prime Minister, Major Faiz Mohammad became Minister of Internal Affairs and Niamatullah Pazhwak became Minister of Education. The Parchamites took control over the ministries of finance, agriculture, communications and border affairs. The new government quickly suppressed the opposition, and secured their power base. At first, the National Front government between Daoud and the Parchamites seemed to work. By 1975, Daoud had strengthened his position by enhancing the executive, legislative and judicial powers of the Presidency. To the dismay of the Parchamites, all parties other than the National Revolutionary Party (NRP, established by Daoud) were made illegal. Shortly after the ban on opposition to the NRP, Daoud began a massive purge of Parchamites in government. Mohammad lost his position as interior minister, Abdul Qadir was demoted, and Karmal was put under government surveillance. To mitigate Daoud's suddenly anti-communist directives, the Soviet Union reestablished the PDPA; Taraki was elected its General Secretary and Karmal, Second Secretary. While the Saur Revolution (literally the April Revolution) was planned for August, the assassination of Khyber led to a chain of events which ended with the communists seizing power. Karmal, when taking power in 1979, accused Amin of ordering the assassination of Khyber. Taraki–Amin rule Taraki was appointed Chairman of the Presidium of the Revolutionary Council and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, retaining his post as PDPA general secretary. Taraki initially formed a government which consisted of both Khalqists and Parchamites; Karmal became Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Council, while Amin became Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers.Mohammad Aslam Watanjar became Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers. The two Parchamites Abdul Qadir and Mohammad Rafi, became Minister of Defence and Minister of Public Works, respectively. The appointment of Amin, Karmal and Watanjar led to splits within the Council of Ministers: the Khalqists answered to Amin; Karmal led the civilian Parchamites; and the military officers (who were Parchamites) were answerable to Watanjar (a Khalqist). The first conflict arose when the Khalqists wanted to give PDPA Central Committee membership to military officers who had participated in the Saur Revolution; Karmal opposed such a move but was overruled. A PDPA Politburo meeting voted in favour of giving Central Committee membership to the officers. On 27 June, three months after the Saur Revolution, Amin outmaneuvered the Parchamites at a Central Committee meeting, giving the Khalqists exclusive right over formulating and deciding policy. A purge against the Parchamites was initiated by Amin and supported by Taraki on 1 July 1979. Karmal, fearing for his safety, went into hiding in one of his Soviet friends' homes. Karmal tried to contact Alexander Puzanov, the Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan, to talk about the situation. Puzanov refused, and revealed Karmal's location to Amin. The Soviets probably saved Karmal's life by sending him to the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia. In exile, Karmal established a network with the remaining Parchamites in government. A coup to overthrow Amin was planned for 4 September 1979. Its leading members in Afghanistan were Qadir and the Army Chief of Staff General Shahpur Ahmedzai. The coup was planned for the Festival of Eid, in anticipation of relaxed military vigilance. The conspiracy failed when the Afghan ambassador to India told the Afghan leadership about the plan. Another purge was initiated, and Parchamite ambassadors were recalled. Few returned to Afghanistan; Karmal and Mohammad Najibullah stayed in their respective countries. The Soviets decided that Amin should be removed to make way for a Karmal-Taraki coalition government. However Amin managed to order the arrest and later the murder of Taraki. Amin was informed of the Soviet decision to intervene in Afghanistan and was initially supportive, but was assassinated. Under the command of the Soviets, Karmal ascended to power. On 27 December 1979, Karmal's pre-recorded speech to the Afghan people was broadcast via Radio Kabul from Tashkent in the Uzbek SSR (the radio wavelength was changed to that of Kabul), saying: "Today the torture machine of Amin has been smashed, his accomplices – the primitive executioners, usurpers and murderers of tens of thousand of our fellow countrymen – fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters, children and old people ..." Karmal was not in Kabul when the speech was broadcast; he was in Bagram, protected by the KGB. That evening Yuri Andropov, the KGB Chairman, congratulated Karmal on his rise to the Chairmanship of the Presidium of the Revolutionary Council, some time before Karmal received an official appointment. Karmal returned to Kabul on 28 December. He travelled alongside a Soviet military column. For the next few days Karmal lived in a villa on the outskirts of Kabul under the protection of the KGB. On 1 January 1980 Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and Alexei Kosygin, the Soviet Chairman of the Council of Ministers, congratulated Karmal on his "election" as leader. Leadership Domestic policies Karmal's ascension was quickly troubled as he was effectively installed by the invading Soviet Union, delegitimizing him. Unrest in the country quickly escalated, and in Kabul two major uprisings, on 3 Hoot (22 February) and the months long students' protests were early signs of trouble. The "Fundamental Principles" and amnesty When he came to power, Karmal promised an end to executions, the establishment of democratic institutions and free elections, the creation of a constitution, and legalization of alternative political parties. Prisoners incarcerated under the two previous governments would be freed in a general amnesty (which occurred on 6 January). He promised the creation of a coalition government which would not espouse socialism. At the same time, he told the Afghan people that he had negotiated with the Soviet Union to give economic, military and political assistance. The mistrust most Afghans felt towards the government was a problem for Karmal. Many still remembered he had said he would protect private capital in 1978—a promise later proven to be a lie. Karmal's three most important promises were the general amnesty of prisoners, the promulgation of the Fundamental Principles of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the adoption of a new flag containing the traditional black, red and green (the flag of Taraki and Amin was red). His government granted concessions to religious leaders and the restoration of confiscated property. Some property, which was confiscated during earlier land reforms, was also partially restored. All these measures, with the exception of the general amnesty of prisoners, were introduced gradually. Of 2,700 prisoners, 2,600 were released from prison; 600 of these were Parchamites. The general amnesty was greatly publicized by the government. While the event was hailed with enthusiasm by some, many others greeted the event with disdain, since their loved ones or associates had died during earlier purges. Amin had planned to introduce a general amnesty on 1 January 1980, to coincide with the PDPA's sixteenth anniversary. Work on the Fundamental Principles had started under Amin: it guaranteed democratic rights such as freedom of speech, the right to security and life, the right to peaceful association, the right to demonstrate and the right that "no one would be accused of crime but in accord with the provisions of law" and that the accused had the right to a fair trial. The Fundamental Principles envisaged a democratic state led by the PDPA, the only party then permitted by law. The Revolutionary Council, the organ of supreme power, would convene twice every year. The Revolutionary Council in turn elected a Presidium which would take decisions on behalf of the Revolutionary Council when it was not in session. The Presidium consisted mostly of PDPA Politburo members. The state would safeguard three kinds of property: state, cooperative and private property. The Fundamental Principles said that the state had the right to change the Afghan economy from an economy where man was exploited to an economy where man was free. Another clause stated that the state had the right to take "families, both parents and children, under its supervision." While it looked democratic at the outset, the Fundamental Principles was based on contradictions. The Fundamental Principles led to the establishment of two important state organs: the Special Revolutionary Court, a specialized court for crimes against national security and territorial integrity, and the Institute for Legal and Scientific Research and Legislative Affairs, the supreme legislative organ of state, This body could amend and draft laws, and introduce regulations and decrees on behalf of the government. The introduction of more Soviet-style institutions led the Afghan people to distrust the communist government even more. The Fundamental Principles constitution came into power on 22 April 1980. Dividing power: Khalq–Parcham With Karmal's ascension to power, Parchamites began to "settle old scores". Revolutionary Troikas were created to arrest, sentence and execute people. Amin's guard were the first victims of the terror which ensued. Those commanders who had stayed loyal to Amin were arrested, filling the prisons. The Soviets protested, and Karmal replied, "As long as you keep my hands bound and do not let me deal with the Khalq faction there will be no unity in the PDPA and the government cannot become strong ... They tortured and killed us. They still hate us! They are the enemies of the party ..." Amin's daughter, along with her baby, was imprisoned for twelve years, until Mohammad Najibullah, then leader of the PDPA, released her. When Karmal took power, leading posts in the Party and Government bureaucracy were taken over by Parchamites. The Khalq faction was removed from power, and only technocrats, opportunists and individuals which the Soviets trusted would be appointed to the higher echelons of government. Khalqists remained in control of the Ministry of Interior, but Parchamites were given control over KHAD and the secret police. The Parchamites and the Khalqists controlled an equal share of the military. Two out of Karmal's three Council of Ministers deputy chairmen were Khalqists. Khalqists controlled the Ministry of Communications and the interior ministry. Parchamites, on the other hand, controlled the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defence. In addition to the changes in government, the Parchamites held clear majority in the PDPA Central Committee. Only one Khalqi, Saleh Mohammad Zeary, was a member of the PDPA Secretariat during Karmal's rule. Over 14 and 15 March 1982 the PDPA held a party conference at the Kabul Polytechnic Institute instead of a party congress, since a party congress would have given the Khalq faction a majority and could have led to a Khalqist takeover of the PDPA. The rules of holding a party conference were different, and the Parchamites had a three-fifths majority. This infuriated several Khalqists; the threat of expulsion did not lessen their anger. The conference was not successful, but it was portrayed as such by the official media. The conference broke up after one and a half days of a 3-day long program, because of the inter-party struggle for power between the Khalqists and the Parchamites. A "program of action" was introduced, and party rules were given minor changes. As an explanation of the low party membership, the official media also made it seem hard to become a member of the party. PDPA base When Karmal took power, he began expanding the support base of the PDPA. Karmal tried to persuade certain groups, which had been referred to class enemies of the revolution during Taraki and Amin's rule, to support the PDPA. Karmal appointed several non-communists to top positions. Between March and May 1980, 78 out of the 191 people appointed to government posts were not members of the PDPA. Karmal reintroduced the old Afghan custom of having an Islamic invocation every time the government issued a proclamation. In his first live speech to the Afghan people, Karmal called for the establishment of the National Fatherland Front (NFF); the NFF's founding congress was held in June 1981. Unfortunately for Karmal, his policies did not lead to a notable increase in support for his regime, and it did not help Karmal that most Afghans saw the Soviet intervention as an invasion. By 1981, the government gave up on political solutions to the conflict. At the fifth PDPA Central Committee plenum in June, Karmal resigned from his Council of Ministers chairmanship and was replaced by Sultan Ali Keshtmand, while Nur Ahmad Nur was given a bigger role in the Revolutionary Council. This was seen as "base broadening". The previous weight given to non-PDPA members in top positions ceased to be an important matter in the media by June 1981. This was significant, considering that up to five members of the Revolutionary Council were non-PDPA members. By the end of 1981, the previous contenders, who had been heavily presented in the media, were all gone; two were given ambassadorships, two ceased to be active in politics, and one continued as an advisor to the government. The other three changed sides, and began to work for the opposition. The national policy of reconciliation continued: in January 1984 the land reform introduced by Taraki and Amin was drastically modified, the limits of landholdings were increased to win the support of middle class peasants, the literacy programme was continued, and concessions to women were made. In 1985 the Loya Jirga was reconvened. The 1985 Loya Jirga was followed by a tribal jirga in September. In 1986 Abdul Rahim Hatef, a non-PDPA member, was elected to the NFF chairmanship. During the 1985–86 elections it was said that 60 percent of the elected officials were non-PDPA members. By the end of Karmal's rule, several non-PDPA members had high-level government positions. Civil war and military In March 1979, the military budget was 6.4 million US$, which was 8.3 percent of the government budget, but only 2.2 of gross national product. After the Soviet intervention, the defence budget increased to 208 million US$ in 1980, and 325 million US$ by 1981. In 1982 it was reported that the government spent around 22 percent of total expenditure. When the political solution failed (see "PDPA base" section), the Afghan government and the Soviet military decided to solve the conflict militarily. The change from a political to a military solution did not come suddenly. It began in January 1981, as Karmal doubled wages for military personnel, issued several promotions, and decorated one general and thirteen colonels. The draft age was lowered, the obligatory length of arms duty was extended and the age for reservists was increased to thirty-five years of age. In June 1981, Assadullah Sarwari lost his seat in the PDPA Politburo, replaced by Mohammad Aslam Watanjar, a former tank commander and Minister of Communications, Major General Mohammad Rafi was made Minister of Defence and Mohammad Najibullah appointed KHAD Chairman. These measures were introduced due to the collapse of the army during the Soviet intervention. Before the intervention the army could field 100,000 troops, after the intervention only 25,000. Desertions were pandemic, and the recruitment campaigns for young people often drove them to the opposition. To better organize the military, seven military zones were established, each with its own Defence Council. The Defence Councils were established at the national, provincial and district level to empower the local PDPA. It is estimated that the Afghan government spent as much as 40 percent of government revenue on defense. Karmal refused to recognize the rebels as genuine, saying in an interview: Economy During the civil war and the ensuing Soviet–Afghan War, most of the country's infrastructure was destroyed. Normal patterns of economic activity were disrupted. The Gross national product (GNP) fell substantially during Karmal's rule because of the conflict; trade and transport was disrupted with loss of labor and capital. In 1981 the Afghan GDP stood at 154.3 billion Afghan afghanis, a drop from 159.7 billion in 1978. GNP per capita decreased from 7,370 in 1978 to 6,852 in 1981. The dominant form of economic activity was in the agricultural sector. Agriculture accounted for 63 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1981; 56 percent of the labor force was working in agriculture in 1982. Industry accounted for 21 percent of GDP in 1982, and employed 10 percent of the labor force. All industrial enterprises were government-owned. The service sector, the smallest of the three, accounted for 10 percent of GDP in 1981, and employed an estimated one-third of the labour force. The balance of payments, which had grown in the pre-communist administration of Muhammad Daoud Khan, decreased, turning negative by 1982 at 70.3 million $US. The only economic activity which grew substantially during Karmal's rule was export and import. Foreign policy Karmal observed in early 1983 that without Soviet intervention, "It is unknown what the destiny of the Afghan Revolution would be ... We are realists and we clearly realize that in store for us yet lie trials and deprivations, losses and difficulties." Two weeks before this statement Sultan Ali Keshtmand, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, lamented the fact that half the schools and three-quarters of communications had been destroyed since 1979. The Soviet Union rejected several Western-made peace plans, such as the Carrington Plan, since they did not take into consideration the PDPA government. Most Western peace plans had been made in collaboration with the Afghan opposition forces. At the 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, stated; The stance of the Pakistani government was clear, demanding complete Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the establishment of a non-PDPA government. Karmal, summarizing his discussions with Iran and Pakistan, said "Iran and Pakistan have so far not opted for concrete and constructive positions." During Karmal's rule Afghan–Pakistani relations remained hostile; the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was the catalyst for the hostile relationship. The increasing numbers of Afghan refugees in Pakistan challenged the PDPA's legitimacy to rule. The Soviet Union threatened in 1985 that it would support the Baloch separatist movement in Pakistan if the Pakistani government continued to aid the Afghan mujahideen. Karmal, problematically for the Soviets, did not want a Soviet withdrawal, and he hampered attempts to improve relations with Pakistan since the Pakistani government had refused to recognise the PDPA government. Public image Because Karmal was put into power without a formal ceremony as in Afghan tradition, he was seen as an illegitimate leader in many eyes of his people. A poor performance in foreign interviews also didn't help his public image where he was noted to speak like an "exhibitionist" rather than a statesman. Karmal was widely viewed as a puppet leader of the Soviet Union by Afghans and the Western press. Despite his position, Karmal was apparently not permitted to make key decisions as he was following advice from Soviet advisers. The Soviet control of the Afghan state was apparently so much that Karmal himself admitted to a friend of his unfree life, telling him: “The Soviet comrades love me boundlessly, and for the sake of my personal safety, they don’t obey even my own orders.” Fall from power and succession Mikhail Gorbachev, then General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, said, "The main reason that there has been no national consolidation so far is that Comrade Karmal is hoping to continue sitting in Kabul with our help." Karmal's position became less secure when the Soviet leadership began blaming him for the failures in Afghanistan. Gorbachev, worried over the situation, told the Soviet Politburo "If we don't change approaches [to evacuate Afghanistan], we will be fighting there for another 20 or 30 years." It is not clear when the Soviet leadership began to campaign for Karmal's dismissal, but Andrei Gromyko discussed the possibility of Karmal's resignation with Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1982. While it was Gorbachev who would dismiss Karmal, there may have been a consensus within the Soviet leadership in 1983 that Karmal should resign. Gorbachev's own plan was to replace Karmal with Mohammad Najibullah, who had joined the PDPA at its creation. Najibullah was thought highly of by Yuri Andropov, Boris Ponomarev and Dmitriy Ustinov, and negotiations for his succession may have started in 1983. Najibullah was not the Soviet leadership's only choice for Karmal's succession; a GRU report noted that the majority of the PDPA leadership would support Assadullah Sarwari's ascension to leadership. According to the GRU, Sarwari was a better candidate as he could balance between the Pashtuns, Tajiks and Uzbeks; Najibullah was a Pashtun nationalist. Another viable candidate was Abdul Qadir, who had been a participant in the Saur Revolution. Najibullah was appointed to the PDPA Secretariat in November 1985. During Karmal's March 1986 visit to the Soviet Union, the Soviets tried to persuade Karmal that he was too ill to govern, and that he should resign. This backfired, as a Soviet doctor attending to Karmal told him he was in good health. Karmal asked to return home to Kabul, and said that he understood and would listen to the Soviet recommendations. Before leaving, Karmal promised he would step down as PDPA General Secretary. The Soviets did not trust him and sent Vladimir Kryuchkov, the head of intelligence (FCD) in the KGB, into Afghanistan. At a meeting in Kabul, Karmal confessed his undying love for the Soviet Union, comparing his ardor to his Muslim faith. Kryuchkov, concluding that he could not persuade Karmal to resign, left the meeting. After Kryuchkov left the room, the Afghan defence minister and the state security minister visited Karmal's office, telling him that he had to resign from one of his posts. Understanding that his Soviet support had been eliminated, Karmal resigned from the office of the General Secretary at the 18th PDPA Central Committee plenum. He was succeeded in his post by Najibullah. Karmal still had support within the party, and used his base to curb Najibullah's powers. He began spreading rumors that he would be reappointed General Secretary. Najibullah's power base was in the KHAD, the Afghan equivalent to the KGB, and not the party. Considering the fact that the Soviet Union had supported Karmal for over six years, the Soviet leadership wanted to ease him out of power gradually. Yuli Vorontsov, the Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan, told Najibullah to begin undermining Karmal's power slowly. Najibullah complained to the Soviet leadership that Karmal used most of his spare time looking for errors and "speaking against the National Reconciliation [programme]". At a meeting of the Soviet Politburo on 13 November 1986 it was decided that Najibullah should remove Karmal; this motion was supported by Gromyko, Vorontsov, Eduard Shevardnadze, Anatoly Dobrynin and Viktor Chebrikov. A PDPA meeting in November relieved Karmal of his Revolutionary Council chairmanship, and exiled him to Moscow where he was given a state-owned apartment and a dacha. Karmal was succeeded as Revolutionary Council chairman by Haji Mohammad Chamkani, who was not a member of the PDPA. Later life and death Many years after the end of his leadership, he denounced the Saur Revolution of 1978 in which he took part, taking aim at the Khalq governments of Taraki and Amin. He told a Soviet reporter: It was the greatest crime against the people of Afghanistan. Parcham's leaders were against armed actions because the country was not ready for a revolution... I knew that people would not support us if we decided to keep power without such support. For unknown reasons, Karmal was invited back to Kabul by Najibullah, and "for equally obscure reasons Karmal accepted", returning on 20 June 1991. (this could have been on the recommendation of Anahita Ratebzad who was very close to Karmal and also respected by Najibullah). If Najibullah's plan was to strengthen his position within the Watan Party (the renamed PDPA) by appeasing the pro-Karmal Parchamites, he failed – Karmal's apartment became a center for opposition to Najibullah's government. When Najibullah was toppled in 1992, Karmal became the most powerful politician in Kabul through leadership of the Parcham. However, his negotiations with the rebels collapsed quickly, and on 16 April 1992 the rebels, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, took Kabul. After the fall of Najibullah's government, Karmal was based in Hairatan. There, it is alleged, Karmal used most of his time either trying to establish a new party, or advising people to join the secular National Islamic Movement (Junbish-i-Milli). Abdul Rashid Dostum, the leader of Junbish-i-Milli, was a supporter of Karmal during his rule. It is unknown how much control Karmal had over Dostum, but there is little evidence that Karmal was in any commanding position. Karmal's influence over Dostum appeared indirect – some of his former associates supported Dostum. Those who spoke with Karmal during this period noted his lack of interest in politics. In June 1992 it was reported that he had died in a plane crash along with Dostum, although these reports later proved to be false. In early December 1996, Karmal died in Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital from liver cancer. The date of his death was reported by some sources as 1 December and by others as 3 December. The Taliban summed up his rule as follows: [he] committed all kinds of crimes during his illegitimate rule ... God inflicted on him various kinds of hardship and pain. Eventually he died of cancer in a hospital belonging to his paymasters, the Russians. Notes References Bibliography External links Biography of President Babrak Karmal 1929 births 1996 deaths 20th-century heads of state of Afghanistan Communist rulers of Afghanistan Afghan atheists Presidents of Afghanistan Prime Ministers of Afghanistan People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan politicians Afghan prisoners and detainees Prisoners and detainees of Afghanistan Afghan emigrants to the Soviet Union Collaborators with the Soviet Union Afghan emigrants to Russia People granted political asylum in the Soviet Union Deaths from cancer in Russia Deaths from liver cancer Democratic Republic of Afghanistan 1970s in Afghanistan 1980s in Afghanistan Afghan revolutionaries
true
[ "Chester C. Platt (1869–1934) operated a drugstore in Ithaca, New York, and was credited with the invention of the ice cream sundae. He was the owner of the Ithaca Democrat, the Batavia Times, and the Madison Wisconsin Leader. He was secretary to New York Governor William Sulzer, and was involved in Democratic state and national politics from 1910 to 1920. In Ithaca, he was active in the Unitarian Church and in local politics.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\n1869 births\n1934 deaths", "Ragnhild Barland (29 September 1934 – 27 November 2015) was a Norwegian politician for the Labour Party.\n\nBarland was born in Holla, Telemark. She was elected to the Norwegian Parliament from Telemark in 1985, and was re-elected on two occasions.\n\nBarland was involved in local politics in Skien municipality council from 1975 to 1985, serving as deputy mayor in 1983–1985.\n\nOutside politics she worked as a high school teacher from 1957. In 1975 he was promoted to school inspector. She was involved in the teachers' union Norsk lektorlag, and was board chairman of the sports club Gjerpen IF from 1972 to 1975.\n\nReferences\n\n1934 births\n2015 deaths\nLabour Party (Norway) politicians\nMembers of the Storting\nPoliticians from Skien\nWomen members of the Storting\n20th-century Norwegian politicians\n20th-century Norwegian women politicians\nPeople from Nome, Norway" ]
[ "Babrak Karmal", "Communist politics", "How was Karmal involved in Communist politics?", "befriended fellow inmate Mir Akbar Khyber,", "What was the significance of communist politics?", "Comrade of the Workers'\"", "Was he involved in politics?", "his bourgeois background." ]
C_d59d3bea17bf49e58c77e1132c5be2ec_1
How is karmal connected to the communist party?
4
How is Babrak Karmal connected to the communist party?
Babrak Karmal
Imprisoned from 1953 to 1956, Karmal befriended fellow inmate Mir Akbar Khyber, who introduced Karmal to Marxism. Karmal changed his name from Sultan Hussein to Babrak Karmal, which means "Comrade of the Workers'" in Pashtun, to disassociate himself from his bourgeois background. When he was released from prison, he continued his activities in the student union, and began to promote Marxism. Karmal spent the rest of the 1950s and the early 1960s becoming involved with Marxist organizations, of which there were at least four in Afghanistan at the time; two of the four were established by Karmal. When the 1964 Afghan Provisional Constitution, which legalised the establishment of new political entities, was introduced several prominent Marxists agreed to establish a communist political party. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA, the Communist Party) was established in January 1965 in Nur Muhammad Taraki's home. Factionalism within the PDPA quickly became a problem; the party split into the Khalq led by Taraki alongside Hafizullah Amin, and the Parcham led by Karmal. During the 1965 parliamentary election Karmal was one of four PDPA members elected to the lower house of parliament; the three others were Anahita Ratebzad, Nur Ahmed Nur and Fezanul Haq Fezan. No Khalqists were elected; however, Amin was 50 votes short of being elected. The Parchamite victory may be explained by the simple fact that Karmal could contribute financially to the PDPA electoral campaign. Karmal became a leading figure within the student movement in the 1960s, electing Mohammad Hashim Maiwandwal as Prime Minister after a student demonstration (called for by Karmal) concluded with three deaths under the former leadership. In 1967, the PDPA unofficially split into two formal parties, one Khalqist and one Parchamist. The dissolution of the PDPA was initiated by the closing down of the Khalqist newspaper, Khalq. Karmal criticised the Khalq for being too communist, and believed that its leadership should have hidden its Marxist orientation instead of promoting it. According to the official version of events, the majority of the PDPA Central Committee rejected Karmal's criticism. The vote was a close one, and it is reported that Taraki expanded the Central Committee to win the vote; this plan resulted in eight of the new members becoming politically unaligned with and one switching to the Parchamite side. Karmal and half the PDPA Central Committee left the PDPA to establish a Parchamite-led PDPA. Officially the split was caused by ideological differences, but the party may have divided between the different leadership styles and plans of Taraki versus Karmal. Taraki wanted to model the party after Leninist norms while Karmal wanted to establish a democratic front. Other differences were socioeconomic. The majority of Khalqists came from rural areas; hence they were poorer, and were of Pashtun origin. The Parchamites were urban, richer, and spoke Dari more often than not. The Khalqists accused the Parchamites of having a connection with the monarchy, and because of it, referred to the Parchamite PDPA as the "Royal Communist Party". Both Karmal and Amin retained their seats in the lower house of parliament in the 1969 parliamentary election. CANNOTANSWER
agreed to establish a communist political party.
Babrak Karmal (Dari/Pashto , born Sultan Hussein; 6 January 1929 – 1 or 3 December 1996) was an Afghan revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Afghanistan, serving in the post of General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan for seven years. Born in Kabul Province into a Tajikized family of Kashmiri origin, Karmal attended Kabul University and developed openly leftist views there, having been introduced to Marxism by Mir Akbar Khyber during his imprisonment for activities deemed too radical by the government. He became a founding member of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and eventually became the leader of the Parcham faction when the PDPA split in 1967, with their ideological nemesis being the Khalq faction. Karmal was elected to the Lower House after the 1965 parliamentary election, serving in parliament until losing his seat in the 1969 parliamentary election. Under Karmal's leadership, the Parchamite PDPA participated in Mohammad Daoud Khan's rise to power in 1973, and his subsequent regime. While relations were good at the beginning, Daoud began a major purge of leftist influence in the mid-1970s. This in turn led to the reformation of the PDPA in 1977, and Karmal played a role in the 1978 Saur Revolution when the PDPA took power. Karmal was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Council, synonymous with vice head of state, in the communist government. The Parchamite faction found itself under significant pressure by the Khalqists soon after taking power. In June 1978, a PDPA Central Committee meeting voted in favor of giving the Khalqist faction exclusive control over PDPA policy. This decision was followed by a failed Parchamite coup, after which Hafizullah Amin, a Khalqist, initiated a purge against the Parchamites. Karmal survived this purge but was exiled to Prague and eventually dismissed from his post. Instead of returning to Kabul, he feared for his life and lived with his family in the forests protected by the Czechoslovak secret police StB. The Afghan secret police KHAD had allegedly sent members to Czechoslovakia to assassinate Karmal. In late 1979 he was brought to Moscow by the KGB and eventually, in December 1979, the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan (with the consent of Amin's government) to stabilize the country. The Soviet troops staged a coup and assassinated Amin, replacing him with Karmal. Karmal was promoted to Chairman of the Revolutionary Council and Chairman of the Council of Ministers on 27 December 1979. He remained in the latter office until 1981, when he was succeeded by Sultan Ali Keshtmand. Throughout his term, Karmal worked to establish a support base for the PDPA by introducing several reforms. Among these were the "Fundamental Principles of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan", introducing a general amnesty for those people imprisoned during Nur Mohammad Taraki's and Amin's rule. He also replaced the red Khalqist flag with a more traditional one. These policies failed to increase the PDPA's legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghan people and the Afghan mujahideen rebels - he was widely seen as a Soviet puppet amongst the populace. These policy failures, and the stalemate that ensued after the Soviet intervention, led the Soviet leadership to become highly critical of Karmal's leadership. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union deposed Karmal in 1986 and replaced him with Mohammad Najibullah. Following his loss of power, he was again exiled, this time to Moscow. It was Anahita Ratebzad who persuaded Najibullah to allow Babrak Karmal to return to Afghanistan in 1991, where Karmal became an associate of Abdul Rashid Dostum and possibly helped remove the Najibullah government from power in 1992. He eventually left Afghanistan again for Moscow. Not long after, in 1996, Karmal died from liver cancer. Early life and career Karmal was born Sultan Hussein on 6 January 1929 in Kamari, a village close to Kabul. He was the son of Muhammad Hussein Hashem, a Major General in the Afghan Army and former governor of the province of Paktia, and was the second of five siblings. His family was one of the wealthier families in Kabul. His ethnic background was publicly disputed at the time, with many sources reporting he was a Tajik of Kabul. In 1986, Karmal declared that he and his brother Mahmud Baryalay were Pashtuns as their mother was a linguistically Persianized Pashtun of the Khilji tribe. This declaration was considered to be political as descent comes from the patriarchal line in Afghan society. Karmal's forefathers came to Kabul from Kashmir, and his original name Sultan Hussein (which is associated with Indian Muslims) reinforces his Kashmiri roots. He attended Nejat High School, a German-speaking school, and graduated from it in 1948, and applied to enter the Faculty of Law and Political Science of Kabul University. Karmal's application was initially denied admission to Kabul University because of his student political activist and his openly leftist views. He was always a charismatic speaker and became involved in the student union and the Wikh-i-Zalmayan (Awakened Youth Movement), a progressive and leftist organization. He studied at the College of Law and Political Science at Kabul University from 1951 to 1953. In 1953 Karmal was arrested because of his student union activities, but was released three years later in 1956 in an amnesty by Muhammad Daoud Khan. Shortly after, in 1957, Karmal found work as an English and German translator, before quitting and leaving for military training. Karmal graduated from the College of Law and Political Science in 1960, and in 1961, he found work as an employee in the Compilation and Translation Department of the Ministry of Education. From 1961 to 1963 he worked in the Ministry of Planning. When his mother died, Karmal left with his maternal aunt to live somewhere else. His father disowned him because of his leftist views. Karmal was involved in much debauchery, which was controversial in the mostly conservative Afghan society. Communist politics Imprisoned from 1953 to 1956, Karmal befriended fellow inmate Mir Akbar Khyber, who introduced Karmal to Marxism. Karmal changed his name from Sultan Hussein to Babrak Karmal, which means "Comrade of the Workers'" in Pashtun, to disassociate himself from his bourgeois background. When he was released from prison, he continued his activities in the student union, and began to promote Marxism. Karmal spent the rest of the 1950s and the early 1960s becoming involved with Marxist organizations, of which there were at least four in Afghanistan at the time; two of the four were established by Karmal. When the 1964 Afghan Provisional Constitution, which legalised the establishment of new political entities, was introduced several prominent Marxists agreed to establish a communist political party. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA, the Communist Party) was established in January 1965 in Nur Muhammad Taraki's home. Factionalism within the PDPA quickly became a problem; the party split into the Khalq led by Taraki alongside Hafizullah Amin, and the Parcham led by Karmal. During the 1965 parliamentary election Karmal was one of four PDPA members elected to the lower house of parliament; the three others were Anahita Ratebzad, Nur Ahmed Nur and Fezanul Haq Fezan. No Khalqists were elected; however, Amin was 50 votes short of being elected. The Parchamite victory may be explained by the simple fact that Karmal could contribute financially to the PDPA electoral campaign. Karmal became a leading figure within the student movement in the 1960s, electing Mohammad Hashim Maiwandwal as Prime Minister after a student demonstration (called for by Karmal) concluded with three deaths under the former leadership. In 1966 inside parliament, Karmal was physically assaulted by an Islamist MP, Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi. In 1967, the PDPA unofficially split into two formal parties, one Khalqist and one Parchamist. The dissolution of the PDPA was initiated by the closing down of the Khalqist newspaper, Khalq. Karmal criticised the Khalq for being too communist, and believed that its leadership should have hidden its Marxist orientation instead of promoting it. According to the official version of events, the majority of the PDPA Central Committee rejected Karmal's criticism. The vote was a close one, and it is reported that Taraki expanded the Central Committee to win the vote; this plan resulted in eight of the new members becoming politically unaligned with and one switching to the Parchamite side. Karmal and half the PDPA Central Committee left the PDPA to establish a Parchamite-led PDPA. Officially the split was caused by ideological differences, but the party may have divided between the different leadership styles and plans of Taraki versus Karmal. Taraki wanted to model the party after Leninist norms while Karmal wanted to establish a democratic front. Other differences were socioeconomic. The majority of Khalqists came from rural areas; hence they were poorer, and were of Pashtun origin. The Parchamites were urban, richer, and spoke Dari more often than not. The Khalqists accused the Parchamites of having a connection with the monarchy, and because of it, referred to the Parchamite PDPA as the "Royal Communist Party". Both Karmal and Amin retained their seats in the lower house of parliament in the 1969 parliamentary election. The Daoud era Mohammed Daoud Khan, in collaboration with the Parchamite PDPA and radical military officers, overthrew the monarchy and instituted the Republic of Afghanistan in 1973. After Daoud's seizure of power, an American embassy cable stated that the new government had established a Soviet-style Central Committee, in which Karmal and Mir Akbar Khyber were given leading positions. Most ministries were given to Parchamites; Hassan Sharq became Deputy Prime Minister, Major Faiz Mohammad became Minister of Internal Affairs and Niamatullah Pazhwak became Minister of Education. The Parchamites took control over the ministries of finance, agriculture, communications and border affairs. The new government quickly suppressed the opposition, and secured their power base. At first, the National Front government between Daoud and the Parchamites seemed to work. By 1975, Daoud had strengthened his position by enhancing the executive, legislative and judicial powers of the Presidency. To the dismay of the Parchamites, all parties other than the National Revolutionary Party (NRP, established by Daoud) were made illegal. Shortly after the ban on opposition to the NRP, Daoud began a massive purge of Parchamites in government. Mohammad lost his position as interior minister, Abdul Qadir was demoted, and Karmal was put under government surveillance. To mitigate Daoud's suddenly anti-communist directives, the Soviet Union reestablished the PDPA; Taraki was elected its General Secretary and Karmal, Second Secretary. While the Saur Revolution (literally the April Revolution) was planned for August, the assassination of Khyber led to a chain of events which ended with the communists seizing power. Karmal, when taking power in 1979, accused Amin of ordering the assassination of Khyber. Taraki–Amin rule Taraki was appointed Chairman of the Presidium of the Revolutionary Council and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, retaining his post as PDPA general secretary. Taraki initially formed a government which consisted of both Khalqists and Parchamites; Karmal became Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Council, while Amin became Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers.Mohammad Aslam Watanjar became Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers. The two Parchamites Abdul Qadir and Mohammad Rafi, became Minister of Defence and Minister of Public Works, respectively. The appointment of Amin, Karmal and Watanjar led to splits within the Council of Ministers: the Khalqists answered to Amin; Karmal led the civilian Parchamites; and the military officers (who were Parchamites) were answerable to Watanjar (a Khalqist). The first conflict arose when the Khalqists wanted to give PDPA Central Committee membership to military officers who had participated in the Saur Revolution; Karmal opposed such a move but was overruled. A PDPA Politburo meeting voted in favour of giving Central Committee membership to the officers. On 27 June, three months after the Saur Revolution, Amin outmaneuvered the Parchamites at a Central Committee meeting, giving the Khalqists exclusive right over formulating and deciding policy. A purge against the Parchamites was initiated by Amin and supported by Taraki on 1 July 1979. Karmal, fearing for his safety, went into hiding in one of his Soviet friends' homes. Karmal tried to contact Alexander Puzanov, the Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan, to talk about the situation. Puzanov refused, and revealed Karmal's location to Amin. The Soviets probably saved Karmal's life by sending him to the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia. In exile, Karmal established a network with the remaining Parchamites in government. A coup to overthrow Amin was planned for 4 September 1979. Its leading members in Afghanistan were Qadir and the Army Chief of Staff General Shahpur Ahmedzai. The coup was planned for the Festival of Eid, in anticipation of relaxed military vigilance. The conspiracy failed when the Afghan ambassador to India told the Afghan leadership about the plan. Another purge was initiated, and Parchamite ambassadors were recalled. Few returned to Afghanistan; Karmal and Mohammad Najibullah stayed in their respective countries. The Soviets decided that Amin should be removed to make way for a Karmal-Taraki coalition government. However Amin managed to order the arrest and later the murder of Taraki. Amin was informed of the Soviet decision to intervene in Afghanistan and was initially supportive, but was assassinated. Under the command of the Soviets, Karmal ascended to power. On 27 December 1979, Karmal's pre-recorded speech to the Afghan people was broadcast via Radio Kabul from Tashkent in the Uzbek SSR (the radio wavelength was changed to that of Kabul), saying: "Today the torture machine of Amin has been smashed, his accomplices – the primitive executioners, usurpers and murderers of tens of thousand of our fellow countrymen – fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters, children and old people ..." Karmal was not in Kabul when the speech was broadcast; he was in Bagram, protected by the KGB. That evening Yuri Andropov, the KGB Chairman, congratulated Karmal on his rise to the Chairmanship of the Presidium of the Revolutionary Council, some time before Karmal received an official appointment. Karmal returned to Kabul on 28 December. He travelled alongside a Soviet military column. For the next few days Karmal lived in a villa on the outskirts of Kabul under the protection of the KGB. On 1 January 1980 Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and Alexei Kosygin, the Soviet Chairman of the Council of Ministers, congratulated Karmal on his "election" as leader. Leadership Domestic policies Karmal's ascension was quickly troubled as he was effectively installed by the invading Soviet Union, delegitimizing him. Unrest in the country quickly escalated, and in Kabul two major uprisings, on 3 Hoot (22 February) and the months long students' protests were early signs of trouble. The "Fundamental Principles" and amnesty When he came to power, Karmal promised an end to executions, the establishment of democratic institutions and free elections, the creation of a constitution, and legalization of alternative political parties. Prisoners incarcerated under the two previous governments would be freed in a general amnesty (which occurred on 6 January). He promised the creation of a coalition government which would not espouse socialism. At the same time, he told the Afghan people that he had negotiated with the Soviet Union to give economic, military and political assistance. The mistrust most Afghans felt towards the government was a problem for Karmal. Many still remembered he had said he would protect private capital in 1978—a promise later proven to be a lie. Karmal's three most important promises were the general amnesty of prisoners, the promulgation of the Fundamental Principles of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the adoption of a new flag containing the traditional black, red and green (the flag of Taraki and Amin was red). His government granted concessions to religious leaders and the restoration of confiscated property. Some property, which was confiscated during earlier land reforms, was also partially restored. All these measures, with the exception of the general amnesty of prisoners, were introduced gradually. Of 2,700 prisoners, 2,600 were released from prison; 600 of these were Parchamites. The general amnesty was greatly publicized by the government. While the event was hailed with enthusiasm by some, many others greeted the event with disdain, since their loved ones or associates had died during earlier purges. Amin had planned to introduce a general amnesty on 1 January 1980, to coincide with the PDPA's sixteenth anniversary. Work on the Fundamental Principles had started under Amin: it guaranteed democratic rights such as freedom of speech, the right to security and life, the right to peaceful association, the right to demonstrate and the right that "no one would be accused of crime but in accord with the provisions of law" and that the accused had the right to a fair trial. The Fundamental Principles envisaged a democratic state led by the PDPA, the only party then permitted by law. The Revolutionary Council, the organ of supreme power, would convene twice every year. The Revolutionary Council in turn elected a Presidium which would take decisions on behalf of the Revolutionary Council when it was not in session. The Presidium consisted mostly of PDPA Politburo members. The state would safeguard three kinds of property: state, cooperative and private property. The Fundamental Principles said that the state had the right to change the Afghan economy from an economy where man was exploited to an economy where man was free. Another clause stated that the state had the right to take "families, both parents and children, under its supervision." While it looked democratic at the outset, the Fundamental Principles was based on contradictions. The Fundamental Principles led to the establishment of two important state organs: the Special Revolutionary Court, a specialized court for crimes against national security and territorial integrity, and the Institute for Legal and Scientific Research and Legislative Affairs, the supreme legislative organ of state, This body could amend and draft laws, and introduce regulations and decrees on behalf of the government. The introduction of more Soviet-style institutions led the Afghan people to distrust the communist government even more. The Fundamental Principles constitution came into power on 22 April 1980. Dividing power: Khalq–Parcham With Karmal's ascension to power, Parchamites began to "settle old scores". Revolutionary Troikas were created to arrest, sentence and execute people. Amin's guard were the first victims of the terror which ensued. Those commanders who had stayed loyal to Amin were arrested, filling the prisons. The Soviets protested, and Karmal replied, "As long as you keep my hands bound and do not let me deal with the Khalq faction there will be no unity in the PDPA and the government cannot become strong ... They tortured and killed us. They still hate us! They are the enemies of the party ..." Amin's daughter, along with her baby, was imprisoned for twelve years, until Mohammad Najibullah, then leader of the PDPA, released her. When Karmal took power, leading posts in the Party and Government bureaucracy were taken over by Parchamites. The Khalq faction was removed from power, and only technocrats, opportunists and individuals which the Soviets trusted would be appointed to the higher echelons of government. Khalqists remained in control of the Ministry of Interior, but Parchamites were given control over KHAD and the secret police. The Parchamites and the Khalqists controlled an equal share of the military. Two out of Karmal's three Council of Ministers deputy chairmen were Khalqists. Khalqists controlled the Ministry of Communications and the interior ministry. Parchamites, on the other hand, controlled the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defence. In addition to the changes in government, the Parchamites held clear majority in the PDPA Central Committee. Only one Khalqi, Saleh Mohammad Zeary, was a member of the PDPA Secretariat during Karmal's rule. Over 14 and 15 March 1982 the PDPA held a party conference at the Kabul Polytechnic Institute instead of a party congress, since a party congress would have given the Khalq faction a majority and could have led to a Khalqist takeover of the PDPA. The rules of holding a party conference were different, and the Parchamites had a three-fifths majority. This infuriated several Khalqists; the threat of expulsion did not lessen their anger. The conference was not successful, but it was portrayed as such by the official media. The conference broke up after one and a half days of a 3-day long program, because of the inter-party struggle for power between the Khalqists and the Parchamites. A "program of action" was introduced, and party rules were given minor changes. As an explanation of the low party membership, the official media also made it seem hard to become a member of the party. PDPA base When Karmal took power, he began expanding the support base of the PDPA. Karmal tried to persuade certain groups, which had been referred to class enemies of the revolution during Taraki and Amin's rule, to support the PDPA. Karmal appointed several non-communists to top positions. Between March and May 1980, 78 out of the 191 people appointed to government posts were not members of the PDPA. Karmal reintroduced the old Afghan custom of having an Islamic invocation every time the government issued a proclamation. In his first live speech to the Afghan people, Karmal called for the establishment of the National Fatherland Front (NFF); the NFF's founding congress was held in June 1981. Unfortunately for Karmal, his policies did not lead to a notable increase in support for his regime, and it did not help Karmal that most Afghans saw the Soviet intervention as an invasion. By 1981, the government gave up on political solutions to the conflict. At the fifth PDPA Central Committee plenum in June, Karmal resigned from his Council of Ministers chairmanship and was replaced by Sultan Ali Keshtmand, while Nur Ahmad Nur was given a bigger role in the Revolutionary Council. This was seen as "base broadening". The previous weight given to non-PDPA members in top positions ceased to be an important matter in the media by June 1981. This was significant, considering that up to five members of the Revolutionary Council were non-PDPA members. By the end of 1981, the previous contenders, who had been heavily presented in the media, were all gone; two were given ambassadorships, two ceased to be active in politics, and one continued as an advisor to the government. The other three changed sides, and began to work for the opposition. The national policy of reconciliation continued: in January 1984 the land reform introduced by Taraki and Amin was drastically modified, the limits of landholdings were increased to win the support of middle class peasants, the literacy programme was continued, and concessions to women were made. In 1985 the Loya Jirga was reconvened. The 1985 Loya Jirga was followed by a tribal jirga in September. In 1986 Abdul Rahim Hatef, a non-PDPA member, was elected to the NFF chairmanship. During the 1985–86 elections it was said that 60 percent of the elected officials were non-PDPA members. By the end of Karmal's rule, several non-PDPA members had high-level government positions. Civil war and military In March 1979, the military budget was 6.4 million US$, which was 8.3 percent of the government budget, but only 2.2 of gross national product. After the Soviet intervention, the defence budget increased to 208 million US$ in 1980, and 325 million US$ by 1981. In 1982 it was reported that the government spent around 22 percent of total expenditure. When the political solution failed (see "PDPA base" section), the Afghan government and the Soviet military decided to solve the conflict militarily. The change from a political to a military solution did not come suddenly. It began in January 1981, as Karmal doubled wages for military personnel, issued several promotions, and decorated one general and thirteen colonels. The draft age was lowered, the obligatory length of arms duty was extended and the age for reservists was increased to thirty-five years of age. In June 1981, Assadullah Sarwari lost his seat in the PDPA Politburo, replaced by Mohammad Aslam Watanjar, a former tank commander and Minister of Communications, Major General Mohammad Rafi was made Minister of Defence and Mohammad Najibullah appointed KHAD Chairman. These measures were introduced due to the collapse of the army during the Soviet intervention. Before the intervention the army could field 100,000 troops, after the intervention only 25,000. Desertions were pandemic, and the recruitment campaigns for young people often drove them to the opposition. To better organize the military, seven military zones were established, each with its own Defence Council. The Defence Councils were established at the national, provincial and district level to empower the local PDPA. It is estimated that the Afghan government spent as much as 40 percent of government revenue on defense. Karmal refused to recognize the rebels as genuine, saying in an interview: Economy During the civil war and the ensuing Soviet–Afghan War, most of the country's infrastructure was destroyed. Normal patterns of economic activity were disrupted. The Gross national product (GNP) fell substantially during Karmal's rule because of the conflict; trade and transport was disrupted with loss of labor and capital. In 1981 the Afghan GDP stood at 154.3 billion Afghan afghanis, a drop from 159.7 billion in 1978. GNP per capita decreased from 7,370 in 1978 to 6,852 in 1981. The dominant form of economic activity was in the agricultural sector. Agriculture accounted for 63 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1981; 56 percent of the labor force was working in agriculture in 1982. Industry accounted for 21 percent of GDP in 1982, and employed 10 percent of the labor force. All industrial enterprises were government-owned. The service sector, the smallest of the three, accounted for 10 percent of GDP in 1981, and employed an estimated one-third of the labour force. The balance of payments, which had grown in the pre-communist administration of Muhammad Daoud Khan, decreased, turning negative by 1982 at 70.3 million $US. The only economic activity which grew substantially during Karmal's rule was export and import. Foreign policy Karmal observed in early 1983 that without Soviet intervention, "It is unknown what the destiny of the Afghan Revolution would be ... We are realists and we clearly realize that in store for us yet lie trials and deprivations, losses and difficulties." Two weeks before this statement Sultan Ali Keshtmand, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, lamented the fact that half the schools and three-quarters of communications had been destroyed since 1979. The Soviet Union rejected several Western-made peace plans, such as the Carrington Plan, since they did not take into consideration the PDPA government. Most Western peace plans had been made in collaboration with the Afghan opposition forces. At the 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, stated; The stance of the Pakistani government was clear, demanding complete Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the establishment of a non-PDPA government. Karmal, summarizing his discussions with Iran and Pakistan, said "Iran and Pakistan have so far not opted for concrete and constructive positions." During Karmal's rule Afghan–Pakistani relations remained hostile; the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was the catalyst for the hostile relationship. The increasing numbers of Afghan refugees in Pakistan challenged the PDPA's legitimacy to rule. The Soviet Union threatened in 1985 that it would support the Baloch separatist movement in Pakistan if the Pakistani government continued to aid the Afghan mujahideen. Karmal, problematically for the Soviets, did not want a Soviet withdrawal, and he hampered attempts to improve relations with Pakistan since the Pakistani government had refused to recognise the PDPA government. Public image Because Karmal was put into power without a formal ceremony as in Afghan tradition, he was seen as an illegitimate leader in many eyes of his people. A poor performance in foreign interviews also didn't help his public image where he was noted to speak like an "exhibitionist" rather than a statesman. Karmal was widely viewed as a puppet leader of the Soviet Union by Afghans and the Western press. Despite his position, Karmal was apparently not permitted to make key decisions as he was following advice from Soviet advisers. The Soviet control of the Afghan state was apparently so much that Karmal himself admitted to a friend of his unfree life, telling him: “The Soviet comrades love me boundlessly, and for the sake of my personal safety, they don’t obey even my own orders.” Fall from power and succession Mikhail Gorbachev, then General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, said, "The main reason that there has been no national consolidation so far is that Comrade Karmal is hoping to continue sitting in Kabul with our help." Karmal's position became less secure when the Soviet leadership began blaming him for the failures in Afghanistan. Gorbachev, worried over the situation, told the Soviet Politburo "If we don't change approaches [to evacuate Afghanistan], we will be fighting there for another 20 or 30 years." It is not clear when the Soviet leadership began to campaign for Karmal's dismissal, but Andrei Gromyko discussed the possibility of Karmal's resignation with Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1982. While it was Gorbachev who would dismiss Karmal, there may have been a consensus within the Soviet leadership in 1983 that Karmal should resign. Gorbachev's own plan was to replace Karmal with Mohammad Najibullah, who had joined the PDPA at its creation. Najibullah was thought highly of by Yuri Andropov, Boris Ponomarev and Dmitriy Ustinov, and negotiations for his succession may have started in 1983. Najibullah was not the Soviet leadership's only choice for Karmal's succession; a GRU report noted that the majority of the PDPA leadership would support Assadullah Sarwari's ascension to leadership. According to the GRU, Sarwari was a better candidate as he could balance between the Pashtuns, Tajiks and Uzbeks; Najibullah was a Pashtun nationalist. Another viable candidate was Abdul Qadir, who had been a participant in the Saur Revolution. Najibullah was appointed to the PDPA Secretariat in November 1985. During Karmal's March 1986 visit to the Soviet Union, the Soviets tried to persuade Karmal that he was too ill to govern, and that he should resign. This backfired, as a Soviet doctor attending to Karmal told him he was in good health. Karmal asked to return home to Kabul, and said that he understood and would listen to the Soviet recommendations. Before leaving, Karmal promised he would step down as PDPA General Secretary. The Soviets did not trust him and sent Vladimir Kryuchkov, the head of intelligence (FCD) in the KGB, into Afghanistan. At a meeting in Kabul, Karmal confessed his undying love for the Soviet Union, comparing his ardor to his Muslim faith. Kryuchkov, concluding that he could not persuade Karmal to resign, left the meeting. After Kryuchkov left the room, the Afghan defence minister and the state security minister visited Karmal's office, telling him that he had to resign from one of his posts. Understanding that his Soviet support had been eliminated, Karmal resigned from the office of the General Secretary at the 18th PDPA Central Committee plenum. He was succeeded in his post by Najibullah. Karmal still had support within the party, and used his base to curb Najibullah's powers. He began spreading rumors that he would be reappointed General Secretary. Najibullah's power base was in the KHAD, the Afghan equivalent to the KGB, and not the party. Considering the fact that the Soviet Union had supported Karmal for over six years, the Soviet leadership wanted to ease him out of power gradually. Yuli Vorontsov, the Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan, told Najibullah to begin undermining Karmal's power slowly. Najibullah complained to the Soviet leadership that Karmal used most of his spare time looking for errors and "speaking against the National Reconciliation [programme]". At a meeting of the Soviet Politburo on 13 November 1986 it was decided that Najibullah should remove Karmal; this motion was supported by Gromyko, Vorontsov, Eduard Shevardnadze, Anatoly Dobrynin and Viktor Chebrikov. A PDPA meeting in November relieved Karmal of his Revolutionary Council chairmanship, and exiled him to Moscow where he was given a state-owned apartment and a dacha. Karmal was succeeded as Revolutionary Council chairman by Haji Mohammad Chamkani, who was not a member of the PDPA. Later life and death Many years after the end of his leadership, he denounced the Saur Revolution of 1978 in which he took part, taking aim at the Khalq governments of Taraki and Amin. He told a Soviet reporter: It was the greatest crime against the people of Afghanistan. Parcham's leaders were against armed actions because the country was not ready for a revolution... I knew that people would not support us if we decided to keep power without such support. For unknown reasons, Karmal was invited back to Kabul by Najibullah, and "for equally obscure reasons Karmal accepted", returning on 20 June 1991. (this could have been on the recommendation of Anahita Ratebzad who was very close to Karmal and also respected by Najibullah). If Najibullah's plan was to strengthen his position within the Watan Party (the renamed PDPA) by appeasing the pro-Karmal Parchamites, he failed – Karmal's apartment became a center for opposition to Najibullah's government. When Najibullah was toppled in 1992, Karmal became the most powerful politician in Kabul through leadership of the Parcham. However, his negotiations with the rebels collapsed quickly, and on 16 April 1992 the rebels, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, took Kabul. After the fall of Najibullah's government, Karmal was based in Hairatan. There, it is alleged, Karmal used most of his time either trying to establish a new party, or advising people to join the secular National Islamic Movement (Junbish-i-Milli). Abdul Rashid Dostum, the leader of Junbish-i-Milli, was a supporter of Karmal during his rule. It is unknown how much control Karmal had over Dostum, but there is little evidence that Karmal was in any commanding position. Karmal's influence over Dostum appeared indirect – some of his former associates supported Dostum. Those who spoke with Karmal during this period noted his lack of interest in politics. In June 1992 it was reported that he had died in a plane crash along with Dostum, although these reports later proved to be false. In early December 1996, Karmal died in Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital from liver cancer. The date of his death was reported by some sources as 1 December and by others as 3 December. The Taliban summed up his rule as follows: [he] committed all kinds of crimes during his illegitimate rule ... God inflicted on him various kinds of hardship and pain. Eventually he died of cancer in a hospital belonging to his paymasters, the Russians. Notes References Bibliography External links Biography of President Babrak Karmal 1929 births 1996 deaths 20th-century heads of state of Afghanistan Communist rulers of Afghanistan Afghan atheists Presidents of Afghanistan Prime Ministers of Afghanistan People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan politicians Afghan prisoners and detainees Prisoners and detainees of Afghanistan Afghan emigrants to the Soviet Union Collaborators with the Soviet Union Afghan emigrants to Russia People granted political asylum in the Soviet Union Deaths from cancer in Russia Deaths from liver cancer Democratic Republic of Afghanistan 1970s in Afghanistan 1980s in Afghanistan Afghan revolutionaries
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[ "The following lists events that happened during 1980 in Afghanistan.\n\nKarmal faces increasing friction within the Revolutionary Council and other wings of the government. One of the most striking evidences of Khalq-Parcham feuding comes when Karmal removes his deputy prime minister, Assadullah Sarwari, a prominent Khalqi, and three other Khalq followers from the scene by appointing them as ambassadors. Sarwari, who was once considered a potential Soviet choice to replace Karmal, is named envoy to Mongolia after a sojourn in the Soviet Union. There are reports of assassinations of Khalqis by Parchamites and vice versa, and bitter interparty fighting is said to have spread to army units and government agencies in various parts of the country. Karmal reshuffles his cabinet, promoting Sultan Ali Keshtmand, a trusted Parchamite colleague, to replace Sarwari as first deputy prime minister.\n\nIncumbents\n General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan: Babrak Karmal\n Chairman of the Revolutionary Council: Babrak Karmal\n Chairman of the Council of Ministers: Babrak Karmal\n\nJanuary 14, 1980\nA special session of the UN General Assembly passes a resolution (104-18) calling for the immediate withdrawal of \"foreign troops\" in Afghanistan. Similar resolutions are passed in subsequent years until November 10, 1987, when the vote in favour reaches a record 123.\n\nJanuary 29, 1980\nAn emergency session of the Conference of Islamic States, convening in Islamabad, Pakistan, condemns the \"Soviet military aggression against the Afghan people\" and demands that all Soviet troops be withdrawn immediately. The foreign ministers also suspend Afghanistan from their organization and ask that their respective governments sever diplomatic relations with it.\n\nFebruary 1980\n\nAnti-Soviet feeling among the Afghans rises to a high pitch, when a general strike and violent demonstrations are staged against the Soviet presence in Kabul and other major cities. The mass uprising is quelled as Afghan armed forces and Communist militia inflict heavy casualties on the demonstrators. As cases of Soviet soldiers disappearing begin to increase, the Soviet troops assume more and more direct control of the security situation from the Afghan Army. The Soviets unleash a series of offensives against insurgents in the provinces of Paktia, Konarha, Ghazni, Herat, Kandahar, and Badakhshan.\n\nApril 1980\n\nThe demonstrations are repeated at the end of April, this time staged by students from Kabul University and other educational institutions. The April demonstrations, which occur during the anniversary celebrations of the Saur (April) Revolution launched by former leader Taraki on April 27, 1978, result in the brutal killings of more than 50 students.\n\nMay 1980\nAttempts to bring about a peaceful solution of the Afghan crisis and Soviet withdrawal from the country are made by the Islamic Conference in Islamabad, Pakistan. No headway can be made, however. Pakistan refuses to have any direct talks with the Karmal regime, since this would involve recognition of the Soviet-backed government. Karmal insists that all subversive activities against his country must stop before any international discussion on the crisis could be held.\n\nJune 1980\nThe Soviet Union announces a token withdrawal of one of its divisions, but this fails to placate the Afghans. Despite intense propaganda by General Secretary Karmal, Afghan state organs, and the Soviet government to the effect that the Soviet presence had a \"limited\" purpose and the troops would pull out as soon as peace was restored, the Karmal regime is finding itself more and more isolated from the people. Except for a small percentage consisting of ruling PDPA cadres, bureaucrats, and intellectuals, no section of the population accepts the government's thesis: that all the country's ills either are caused by saboteurs and agents from Pakistan and the U.S. or result from the tyrannical measures adopted by the short-lived regime of Karmal's predecessor, Hafizullah Amin. Increasingly, Karmal is finding himself in a dilemma, because the very Soviet troops who are arousing such resistance from his countrymen are the only force preventing the collapse of his government. Meanwhile, several regional groups, collectively known as Mujahideen (from the Persian word meaning \"warriors\"), have united inside Afghanistan, or across the border in Peshawar, to resist the Soviet invaders and the Soviet-backed Afghan Army.\n\nThe Afghan Army's strength is down to 32,000 from an estimated 80,000 at the time of the Soviet intervention, due to large-scale desertions.\n\nSeptember 1980\nOutside estimates place the number of Afghans seeking shelter in Pakistan at over 900,000.\n\nOctober 16, 1980\nKarmal begins an extended visit to Moscow, where he is welcomed by Soviet Pres. Leonid Brezhnev. Their subsequent discussion and joint signature of a document in the Kremlin is seen as a formal acknowledgment of the Afghan government's puppet status.\n\nNovember 1980\nIt is disclosed that Egypt is sending arms to the Mujahideen.\n\n \nAfghanistan\nYears of the 20th century in Afghanistan\nAfghanistan\n1980s in Afghanistan", "Ghulam Dastagir Panjsheri (Pashtu: غلام دستگير پنجشېری) was an Afghan communist politician and public servant. Panjsheri was usually identified as a Khalq by fellow Afghan politicians, while outside observers said he was creating his own PDPA group under the name Gruhi Kar.\n\nEarly career \nPanjsheri studied at Kabul Teachers College and was the faculty of letters at the Kabul University. After working in a journal under the name, Anis and teaching literature at the Kabul Teachers College he started working for the Ministry of Information and Culture. In 1965, he became a member of the Central Committee of the PDPA at their first congress meeting on January 1, 1965. When Babrak Karmal left the PDPA because of the power struggle between the Khalq and the Parchams, Panjsheri left the party with Karmal and the rest of his supporters, he eventually returned to his original position in the PDPA and became a member of the Khalqi faction again. Later on, he tried to establish his own splinter communist party, which turned out to be unsuccessful. Between 1969-1972 he was imprisoned for political activities.\n\nIt is unknown what position he held or what he did under the rule of Mohammad Daoud Khan's Daoud's Republic of Afghanistan (1973–1978).\n\nDemocratic Republic of Afghanistan \nAfter the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) sized power after the Saur Revolution (1978), he was Minister of Education and later Minister of Public Works under Nur Mohammad Taraki. He held the job as Minister of Public Works until Hafizullah Amin rose to power in 1979 after his assassination of Taraki. Under the rule of Babrak Karmal he was promoted to the Central Committee's Politburo. While seen by many as a Khalqi, he was given the position of Chairman of the Party Control Commission.\n\nAccording to rumours at that time Panjsheri was establishing his own political group within the PDPA with help from the Soviet government in Moscow. The name of his political group was Kar.\n\nReferences \n\nPeople's Democratic Party of Afghanistan politicians\nLiving people\nGovernment ministers of Afghanistan\n1933 births" ]
[ "Mumtaz Mahal", "Marriage" ]
C_169ee9f3b1a14e0fa0a232da507ecea9_1
When did she marry?
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When did Mumtaz Mahal marry?
Mumtaz Mahal
Mumtaz Mahal was betrothed to Shah Jahan around 30 January 1607, when she was 14 years old at the time and he was 15. They were, however, married five years after the year of their betrothal on 30 April 1612 in Agra. The marriage was a love-match. After their wedding celebrations, Shah Jahan, "finding her in appearance and character elect among all the women of the time", gave her the title "Mumtaz Mahal" Begum ("the Exalted One of the Palace"). During the intervening years between their betrothal and marriage, Shah Jahan had gotten married to his first wife, Princess Kandahari Begum in 1609 and in 1617, after marrying Mumtaz, took a third wife, Izz-un-Nissa Begum (titled Akbarabadi Mahal), the daughter of a prominent Mughal courtier. According to the official court historians, both the marriages were political alliances. By all accounts, Shah Jahan was so taken with Mumtaz that he showed little interest in exercising his polygamous rights with his two other wives, other than dutifully siring a child with each. According to the official court chronicler, Motamid Khan, as recorded in his Iqbal Namah-e-Jahangiri, the relationship with his other wives "had nothing more than the status of marriage. The intimacy, deep affection, attention and favour which Shah Jahan had for Mumtaz exceeded what he felt for his other wives." Likewise, Shah Jahan's historian Inayat Khan commented that 'his whole delight was centered on this illustrious lady [Mumtaz], to such an extent that he did not feel towards the others [i.e. his other wives] one-thousandth part of the affection that he did for her.' Mumtaz had a loving marriage with Shah Jahan. Even during her lifetime, poets would extol her beauty, grace, and compassion. Despite her frequent pregnancies, Mumtaz travelled with Shah Jahan's entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father. She was his constant companion and trusted confidant, leading court historians to go to unheard lengths to document the intimate and erotic relationship the couple enjoyed. In their nineteen years of marriage, they had fourteen children together (eight sons and six daughters), seven of whom died at birth or at a very young age. CANNOTANSWER
30 April 1612
Mumtaz Mahal (, ), born Arjumand Banu Begum (; 27 April 1593 – 17 June 1631) was the empress consort of the Mughal Empire from 19 January 1628 to 17 June 1631 as the chief consort of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. The Taj Mahal in Agra, often cited as one of the Wonders of the World, was commissioned by her husband to act as her tomb. Mumtaz Mahal was born Arjumand Banu Begum in Agra to a family of Persian nobility. She was the daughter of Abu'l-Hasan Asaf Khan, a wealthy Persian noble who held high office in the Mughal Empire, and the niece of Empress Nur Jahan, the chief wife of Emperor Jahangir and the power behind the emperor. She was married at the age of 19 on 10 May 1612 or 16 June 1612 to Prince Khurram, later known by his regnal name Shah Jahan, who conferred upon her the title "Mumtaz Mahal" (Persian: the exalted one of the palace). Although betrothed to Shah Jahan since 1607, she ultimately became his second wife in 1612. Mumtaz and her husband had 14 children, including Jahanara Begum (Shah Jahan's favourite daughter), and the Crown prince Dara Shikoh, the heir-apparent, anointed by his father, who temporarily succeeded him, until deposed by Mumtaz Mahal's sixth child, Aurangzeb, who ultimately succeeded his father as the sixth Mughal emperor in 1658. Mumtaz Mahal died in 1631 in Burhanpur, Deccan (present-day Madhya Pradesh), during the birth of her 14th child, a daughter named Gauhar Ara Begum. Shah Jahan had the Taj Mahal built as a tomb for her, which is considered to be a monument of undying love. As with other Mughal royal ladies, no contemporary likenesses of her are accepted, but numerous imagined portraits were created from the 19th century onwards. She is wrongly referred to as "Taj Bibi" which was the corrupted of her title Mumtaz and was in reality the title of her mother-in-law, Jagat Gosain. Family and early life Mumtaz Mahal was born as Arjumand Banu on 27 April 1593 in Agra to Abu'l-Hasan Asaf Khan and his wife Diwanji Begum, the daughter of a Persian noble, Khwaja Ghias-ud-din of Qazvin. Asaf Khan was a wealthy Persian noble who held high office in the Mughal Empire. His family had come to India impoverished in 1577, when his father Mirza Ghias Beg (popularly known by his title of I'timad-ud-Daulah), was taken into the service of Emperor Akbar in Agra. Asaf Khan was also the older brother of Empress Nur Jahan, making Mumtaz a niece, and later, a step daughter-in-law of Nur Jahan, the chief consort of Emperor Jahangir, Shah Jahan's father. Her older sister, Parwar Khanum, married Sheikh Farid, the son of Nawab Qutubuddin Koka, the governor of Badaun, who was also the emperor Jahangir's foster brother. Mumtaz also had a brother, Shaista Khan, who served as the governor of Bengal and various other provinces in the empire during Shah Jahan's reign. Mumtaz was remarkable in the field of learning and was a talented and cultured lady. She was well-versed in Arabic and Persian languages and could compose poems in the latter. She was reputed to have a combination of modesty and candor, a woman warmly straightforward yet bemusedly self-possessed. Early in adolescence, she attracted the attention of important nobles of the realm. Jahangir must have heard about her, since he readily consented to Shah Jahan's engagement with her. Marriage Mumtaz Mahal was betrothed to Shah Jahan around 5 April 1607, when she was 14 years old at the time and he was 15. They were, however, married five years after the year of their betrothal on 10 May 1612 or 7 June 1612 in Agra. After their wedding celebrations, Shah Jahan, "finding her in appearance and character elect among all the women of the time", gave her the title "Mumtaz Mahal" Begum ("the Exalted One of the Palace"). During the intervening years between their betrothal and marriage, Shah Jahan had married his first wife, Princess Kandahari Begum in 1610 and in 1617, after marrying Mumtaz, took a third wife, Izz-un-Nissa Begum (titled Akbarabadi Mahal), the daughter of a prominent Mughal courtier. According to the official court historians, both the marriages were political alliances. By all accounts, Shah Jahan was so taken with Mumtaz that he showed little interest in exercising his polygamous rights with his two other wives, other than dutifully siring a child with each. According to the official court chronicler, Motamid Khan, as recorded in his Iqbal Namah-e-Jahangiri, the relationship with his other wives "had nothing more than the status of marriage. The intimacy, deep affection, attention and favour which Shah Jahan had for Mumtaz exceeded what he felt for his other wives." Likewise, Shah Jahan's historian Inayat Khan commented that 'his whole delight was centered on this illustrious lady [Mumtaz], to such an extent that he did not feel towards the others [i.e. his other wives] one-thousandth part of the affection that he did for her.' Mumtaz had a loving marriage with Shah Jahan. Even during her lifetime, poets would extol her beauty, grace, and compassion. Despite her frequent pregnancies, Mumtaz travelled with Shah Jahan's entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father. She was his constant companion and trusted confidant, leading court historians to go to unheard lengths to document the intimate and erotic relationship the couple enjoyed. In their 19 years of marriage, they had 14 children together (eight sons and six daughters), seven of whom died at birth or at a very young age. Mughal empress Upon his accession to the throne in 1628 after subduing his half brother, Shahryar Mirza, Shah Jahan designated Mumtaz as his chief empress with the title of Padshah Begum '(Lady Emperor)', 'Malika-i-Jahan' ("Queen of the World") and 'Malika-uz-Zamani' ("Queen of the Age") and 'Malika-i-hindustan' ("Queen of the Hindustan"). Mumtaz's tenure as empress was brief, spanning a period of only three years due to her untimely death, nonetheless, Shah Jahan bestowed her with luxuries that no other empress was given before her. She was also the only wife of Shah Jahan to be addressed as " Hazrat ". For example, no other empress' residence was as decorated as Khas Mahal (part of Agra Fort), where Mumtaz lived with Shah Jahan. It was decorated with pure gold and precious stones and had rose-water fountains of its own. Each wife of the Mughal emperor was given a regular monthly allowance for her gastos (housekeeping or travelling expenses); the highest such allowance on record is the one million rupees per year given to Mumtaz Mahal by Shah Jahan. Apart from this income, he gave her a lot of high-income lands and properties. Shah Jahan consulted Mumtaz in both private matters and the affairs of the state, and she served as his close confidant and trusted adviser. Whenever an official sent matters or the people made a request, he first reported the matter to the Empress and made the decision with the knowledge of understanding and consultation with her. At her intercession, he forgave enemies or commuted death sentences. His trust in her was so great that he gave her the highest honour of the land – his imperial seal, the Mehr Uzaz, which validated imperial decrees. Mumtaz was portrayed as having no aspirations to political power, in contrast to her aunt, Empress Nur Jahan, the chief consort of Emperor Jahangir, who had wielded considerable influence in the previous reign. A uncontested and great influence on him, often intervening on behalf of the poor and destitute, she also enjoyed watching elephant and combat fights performed for the court. Mumtaz also patronized a number of poets, scholars and other talented persons. A noted Sanskrit poet, Vansidhara Mishra, was the Empress's favourite. On the recommendation of her principal lady-in-waiting, Sati-un-Nissa, Mumtaz Mahal provided pensions and donations to the daughters of poor scholars, theologians, and pious men. It was quite common for women of noble birth to commission architecture in the Mughal Empire, so Mumtaz devoted some time to a riverside garden in Agra, which is now known as Zahara Bagh. It is the only architectural foundation which can be connected to her patronage. Death and aftermath Mumtaz Mahal died from postpartum hemorrhage in Burhanpur on 17 June 1631 while giving birth to her 14th child, after a prolonged labor around 30 hours. She had been accompanying her husband while he was fighting a campaign in the Deccan Plateau. Her body was temporarily buried at Burhanpur in a walled pleasure garden known as Zainabad originally constructed by Shah Jahan's uncle Daniyal on the bank of the Tapti River. The contemporary court chroniclers paid an unusual amount of attention to Mumtaz Mahal's death and Shah Jahan's grief at her demise. In the immediate aftermath of his bereavement, the emperor was reportedly inconsolable. Apparently, after her death, he went into secluded mourning for a year. When he appeared again, his hair had turned white, his back was bent, and his face worn. Mumtaz's eldest daughter, Jahanara Begum, gradually brought her father out of grief and took her mother's place at court. Mumtaz Mahal's personal fortune (valued at 10 million rupees) was divided by Shah Jahan between Jahanara Begum, who received half, and the rest of her surviving children. Burhanpur was never intended by her husband as his wife's final resting spot. As a result, her body was disinterred in December 1631 and transported in a golden casket escorted by her son Shah Shuja, the deceased empress's head lady-in-waiting, and the distinguished courtier Wazir Khan, back to Agra. There, it was interred in a small building on the banks of the Yamuna River. Shah Jahan stayed behind in Burhanpur to conclude the military campaign that had originally brought him to the region. While there, he began planning the design and construction of a suitable mausoleum and funerary garden in Agra for his wife. It was a task that would take 22 years to complete, the Taj Mahal. Taj Mahal The Taj Mahal was commissioned by Shah Jahan to be built as a mausoleum for Mumtaz Mahal. It is seen as an embodiment of undying love and marital devotion. English poet Sir Edwin Arnold describes it as "Not a piece of architecture, as other buildings are, but the proud passion of an emperor's love wrought in living stones." The beauty of the monument is also taken as a representation of Mumtaz Mahal's beauty and this association leads many to describe the Taj Mahal as feminine. Since Muslim tradition forbids elaborate decorations on graves, the bodies of Mumtaz and Shah Jahan are placed in a relatively plain crypt beneath the inner chamber with their faces turned to the right and towards Mecca. The Ninety Nine Names of God are found as calligraphic inscriptions on the sides of the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal in the crypt including, "O Noble, O Magnificent, O Majestic, O Unique, O Eternal, O Glorious…". There are many theories about the origin of the name of this tomb and one of them suggests that 'Taj' is an abbreviation of the name Mumtaz. European travelers, such as François Bernier, who observed its construction, were among the first to call it the Taj Mahal. Since they are unlikely to have come up with the name, they might have picked it up from the locals of Agra who called the Empress 'Taj Mahal' and thought the tomb was named after her and the name began to be used interchangeably, but no firm evidence suggests this. Shah Jahan had not intended to entomb another person in the Taj Mahal; however, Aurangzeb had Shah Jahan buried next to the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal rather than build a separate tomb for his father. This is evident from the asymmetrical placement of Shah Jahan's grave on one side of his wife's grave which is in the centre. In popular culture Astronomy A crater was named in her honour on asteroid 433 Eros, along with another one after her husband. A crater on the planet Venus is named after her. Literature A cat named after Mumtaz Mahal ("Princess Arjumand") plays a major role in Connie Willis's 1997 novel To Say Nothing of the Dog. Arjumand Banu (Mumtaz Mahal) is a principal character in Indu Sundaresan's novel The Feast of Roses (2003) and its sequel, Shadow Princess (2010), begins with her death. Mumtaz Mahal is a main character in Sonja Chandrachud's novel Trouble at the Taj (2011). She appears in the book as a ghost. In John Shors' novel Beneath a Marble Sky (2013), Mahal's daughter, Princess Jahanara, tells the extraordinary story of how the Taj Mahal came to be, describing her own life as an agent in its creation and as a witness to the fateful events surrounding its completion. Films Mumtaz Mahal is a 1926 Indian silent film by Homi Master. Actress Enakshi Rama Rau played the role of Mumtaz Mahal in Shiraz (1928). Mumtaz Mahal, a 1944 Indian film was based on her life. Actress Suraiya played the role of young Mumtaz Mahal in Nanubhai Vakil's film Taj Mahal (1941). Mumtaz Mahal was portrayed by actress Nasreen in Abdul Rashid Kardar's film Shahjehan (1946). Mumtaz Mahal is a 1957 Indian Hindi-language drama film by Ram Daryani, starring Veena in the titular role. Bina Rai portrayed Mumtaz Mahal in M. Sadiq's film Taj Mahal (1963). Shahzadi Mumtaz, an Indian film starring Asokan and Shakuntala released in 1977. Purnima Patwardhan portrayed her role in the 2003 Indian historical drama film, Taj Mahal: A Monument of Love. Sonya Jehan portrayed Mumtaz Mahal in Akbar Khan's film Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story (2005). Other Mumtaz Mahal was the inspiration behind the popular Guerlain perfume Shalimar (1921). Issue Ancestry References Bibliography External links Mumtaz Mahal 1593 births 1631 deaths Deaths in childbirth Indian Shia Muslims People from Agra Taj Mahal 16th-century Indian women 16th-century Indian people 17th-century Indian women 17th-century Indian people 16th-century Iranian people 17th-century Iranian people Indian people of Iranian descent Wives of Shah Jahan
false
[ "I Told You So is a 1970 Ghanaian movie. The movie portrays Ghanaians and their way of life in a satirical style. It also gives insight into the life of a young lady who did not take the advice of her father when about to marry a man, she did not know anything about the man she was going to marry, but rather took her mother's and uncle's advice because of the wealth and power the man has.\n\nThe young lady later finds out that the man she is supposed to marry was an armed robber. She was unhappy of the whole incident. When her dad ask what had happened, she replied that the man she was supposed to marry is an armed robber; her father ended by saying \"I told you so\".\n\nCast\nBobe Cole\nMargret Quainoo (Araba Stamp)\nKweku Crankson (Osuo Abrobor)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n I TOLD YOU SO GHANAIAN MOVIE\n\n1970 films\nGhanaian films", "Kitty Lambert is an LGBT rights activist. She was raised Mormon and married a male Mormon missionary when she was seventeen.  She did not come out as a lesbian for many years out of fear of losing her children.\n\nLambert is president of (and was involved in the founding of) OUTspoken for Equality, an LGBT rights nonprofit in the Western New York area, and as such was instrumental in convincing the New York state legislature to legalize same-sex marriage.\n\nIn 2010 Lambert and her partner Cheryle Rudd went to a marriage office in Buffalo, New York to apply for a marriage license, accompanied by a group of supporters.  They were refused, but Lambert was given a license to marry a 22-year-old man at the marriage office whom she had never met before. She did not marry him, but the incident was filmed and put on YouTube, where as of July 2011 it had been viewed by 125,000 people.\n\nOver the years, Lambert had three heart attacks, and Rudd had cervical and thyroid cancer.  They had difficulty with hospitals due to lack of legal recognition of their relationship.\n\nIn 2011 Kitty Lambert and Cheryle Rudd became the first same-sex couple to legally marry in New York.  She and Rudd had been together for twelve years prior to their marriage.  Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster officiated.\n\nReferences \n\nLGBT people from New York (state)\nLGBT rights activists from the United States\nLesbians\nActivists from Buffalo, New York\nFormer Latter Day Saints\nYear of birth missing (living people)\nLiving people" ]
[ "Mumtaz Mahal", "Marriage", "When did she marry?", "30 April 1612" ]
C_169ee9f3b1a14e0fa0a232da507ecea9_1
Who did she marry?
2
Who did Mumtaz Mahal marry?
Mumtaz Mahal
Mumtaz Mahal was betrothed to Shah Jahan around 30 January 1607, when she was 14 years old at the time and he was 15. They were, however, married five years after the year of their betrothal on 30 April 1612 in Agra. The marriage was a love-match. After their wedding celebrations, Shah Jahan, "finding her in appearance and character elect among all the women of the time", gave her the title "Mumtaz Mahal" Begum ("the Exalted One of the Palace"). During the intervening years between their betrothal and marriage, Shah Jahan had gotten married to his first wife, Princess Kandahari Begum in 1609 and in 1617, after marrying Mumtaz, took a third wife, Izz-un-Nissa Begum (titled Akbarabadi Mahal), the daughter of a prominent Mughal courtier. According to the official court historians, both the marriages were political alliances. By all accounts, Shah Jahan was so taken with Mumtaz that he showed little interest in exercising his polygamous rights with his two other wives, other than dutifully siring a child with each. According to the official court chronicler, Motamid Khan, as recorded in his Iqbal Namah-e-Jahangiri, the relationship with his other wives "had nothing more than the status of marriage. The intimacy, deep affection, attention and favour which Shah Jahan had for Mumtaz exceeded what he felt for his other wives." Likewise, Shah Jahan's historian Inayat Khan commented that 'his whole delight was centered on this illustrious lady [Mumtaz], to such an extent that he did not feel towards the others [i.e. his other wives] one-thousandth part of the affection that he did for her.' Mumtaz had a loving marriage with Shah Jahan. Even during her lifetime, poets would extol her beauty, grace, and compassion. Despite her frequent pregnancies, Mumtaz travelled with Shah Jahan's entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father. She was his constant companion and trusted confidant, leading court historians to go to unheard lengths to document the intimate and erotic relationship the couple enjoyed. In their nineteen years of marriage, they had fourteen children together (eight sons and six daughters), seven of whom died at birth or at a very young age. CANNOTANSWER
Shah Jahan
Mumtaz Mahal (, ), born Arjumand Banu Begum (; 27 April 1593 – 17 June 1631) was the empress consort of the Mughal Empire from 19 January 1628 to 17 June 1631 as the chief consort of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. The Taj Mahal in Agra, often cited as one of the Wonders of the World, was commissioned by her husband to act as her tomb. Mumtaz Mahal was born Arjumand Banu Begum in Agra to a family of Persian nobility. She was the daughter of Abu'l-Hasan Asaf Khan, a wealthy Persian noble who held high office in the Mughal Empire, and the niece of Empress Nur Jahan, the chief wife of Emperor Jahangir and the power behind the emperor. She was married at the age of 19 on 10 May 1612 or 16 June 1612 to Prince Khurram, later known by his regnal name Shah Jahan, who conferred upon her the title "Mumtaz Mahal" (Persian: the exalted one of the palace). Although betrothed to Shah Jahan since 1607, she ultimately became his second wife in 1612. Mumtaz and her husband had 14 children, including Jahanara Begum (Shah Jahan's favourite daughter), and the Crown prince Dara Shikoh, the heir-apparent, anointed by his father, who temporarily succeeded him, until deposed by Mumtaz Mahal's sixth child, Aurangzeb, who ultimately succeeded his father as the sixth Mughal emperor in 1658. Mumtaz Mahal died in 1631 in Burhanpur, Deccan (present-day Madhya Pradesh), during the birth of her 14th child, a daughter named Gauhar Ara Begum. Shah Jahan had the Taj Mahal built as a tomb for her, which is considered to be a monument of undying love. As with other Mughal royal ladies, no contemporary likenesses of her are accepted, but numerous imagined portraits were created from the 19th century onwards. She is wrongly referred to as "Taj Bibi" which was the corrupted of her title Mumtaz and was in reality the title of her mother-in-law, Jagat Gosain. Family and early life Mumtaz Mahal was born as Arjumand Banu on 27 April 1593 in Agra to Abu'l-Hasan Asaf Khan and his wife Diwanji Begum, the daughter of a Persian noble, Khwaja Ghias-ud-din of Qazvin. Asaf Khan was a wealthy Persian noble who held high office in the Mughal Empire. His family had come to India impoverished in 1577, when his father Mirza Ghias Beg (popularly known by his title of I'timad-ud-Daulah), was taken into the service of Emperor Akbar in Agra. Asaf Khan was also the older brother of Empress Nur Jahan, making Mumtaz a niece, and later, a step daughter-in-law of Nur Jahan, the chief consort of Emperor Jahangir, Shah Jahan's father. Her older sister, Parwar Khanum, married Sheikh Farid, the son of Nawab Qutubuddin Koka, the governor of Badaun, who was also the emperor Jahangir's foster brother. Mumtaz also had a brother, Shaista Khan, who served as the governor of Bengal and various other provinces in the empire during Shah Jahan's reign. Mumtaz was remarkable in the field of learning and was a talented and cultured lady. She was well-versed in Arabic and Persian languages and could compose poems in the latter. She was reputed to have a combination of modesty and candor, a woman warmly straightforward yet bemusedly self-possessed. Early in adolescence, she attracted the attention of important nobles of the realm. Jahangir must have heard about her, since he readily consented to Shah Jahan's engagement with her. Marriage Mumtaz Mahal was betrothed to Shah Jahan around 5 April 1607, when she was 14 years old at the time and he was 15. They were, however, married five years after the year of their betrothal on 10 May 1612 or 7 June 1612 in Agra. After their wedding celebrations, Shah Jahan, "finding her in appearance and character elect among all the women of the time", gave her the title "Mumtaz Mahal" Begum ("the Exalted One of the Palace"). During the intervening years between their betrothal and marriage, Shah Jahan had married his first wife, Princess Kandahari Begum in 1610 and in 1617, after marrying Mumtaz, took a third wife, Izz-un-Nissa Begum (titled Akbarabadi Mahal), the daughter of a prominent Mughal courtier. According to the official court historians, both the marriages were political alliances. By all accounts, Shah Jahan was so taken with Mumtaz that he showed little interest in exercising his polygamous rights with his two other wives, other than dutifully siring a child with each. According to the official court chronicler, Motamid Khan, as recorded in his Iqbal Namah-e-Jahangiri, the relationship with his other wives "had nothing more than the status of marriage. The intimacy, deep affection, attention and favour which Shah Jahan had for Mumtaz exceeded what he felt for his other wives." Likewise, Shah Jahan's historian Inayat Khan commented that 'his whole delight was centered on this illustrious lady [Mumtaz], to such an extent that he did not feel towards the others [i.e. his other wives] one-thousandth part of the affection that he did for her.' Mumtaz had a loving marriage with Shah Jahan. Even during her lifetime, poets would extol her beauty, grace, and compassion. Despite her frequent pregnancies, Mumtaz travelled with Shah Jahan's entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father. She was his constant companion and trusted confidant, leading court historians to go to unheard lengths to document the intimate and erotic relationship the couple enjoyed. In their 19 years of marriage, they had 14 children together (eight sons and six daughters), seven of whom died at birth or at a very young age. Mughal empress Upon his accession to the throne in 1628 after subduing his half brother, Shahryar Mirza, Shah Jahan designated Mumtaz as his chief empress with the title of Padshah Begum '(Lady Emperor)', 'Malika-i-Jahan' ("Queen of the World") and 'Malika-uz-Zamani' ("Queen of the Age") and 'Malika-i-hindustan' ("Queen of the Hindustan"). Mumtaz's tenure as empress was brief, spanning a period of only three years due to her untimely death, nonetheless, Shah Jahan bestowed her with luxuries that no other empress was given before her. She was also the only wife of Shah Jahan to be addressed as " Hazrat ". For example, no other empress' residence was as decorated as Khas Mahal (part of Agra Fort), where Mumtaz lived with Shah Jahan. It was decorated with pure gold and precious stones and had rose-water fountains of its own. Each wife of the Mughal emperor was given a regular monthly allowance for her gastos (housekeeping or travelling expenses); the highest such allowance on record is the one million rupees per year given to Mumtaz Mahal by Shah Jahan. Apart from this income, he gave her a lot of high-income lands and properties. Shah Jahan consulted Mumtaz in both private matters and the affairs of the state, and she served as his close confidant and trusted adviser. Whenever an official sent matters or the people made a request, he first reported the matter to the Empress and made the decision with the knowledge of understanding and consultation with her. At her intercession, he forgave enemies or commuted death sentences. His trust in her was so great that he gave her the highest honour of the land – his imperial seal, the Mehr Uzaz, which validated imperial decrees. Mumtaz was portrayed as having no aspirations to political power, in contrast to her aunt, Empress Nur Jahan, the chief consort of Emperor Jahangir, who had wielded considerable influence in the previous reign. A uncontested and great influence on him, often intervening on behalf of the poor and destitute, she also enjoyed watching elephant and combat fights performed for the court. Mumtaz also patronized a number of poets, scholars and other talented persons. A noted Sanskrit poet, Vansidhara Mishra, was the Empress's favourite. On the recommendation of her principal lady-in-waiting, Sati-un-Nissa, Mumtaz Mahal provided pensions and donations to the daughters of poor scholars, theologians, and pious men. It was quite common for women of noble birth to commission architecture in the Mughal Empire, so Mumtaz devoted some time to a riverside garden in Agra, which is now known as Zahara Bagh. It is the only architectural foundation which can be connected to her patronage. Death and aftermath Mumtaz Mahal died from postpartum hemorrhage in Burhanpur on 17 June 1631 while giving birth to her 14th child, after a prolonged labor around 30 hours. She had been accompanying her husband while he was fighting a campaign in the Deccan Plateau. Her body was temporarily buried at Burhanpur in a walled pleasure garden known as Zainabad originally constructed by Shah Jahan's uncle Daniyal on the bank of the Tapti River. The contemporary court chroniclers paid an unusual amount of attention to Mumtaz Mahal's death and Shah Jahan's grief at her demise. In the immediate aftermath of his bereavement, the emperor was reportedly inconsolable. Apparently, after her death, he went into secluded mourning for a year. When he appeared again, his hair had turned white, his back was bent, and his face worn. Mumtaz's eldest daughter, Jahanara Begum, gradually brought her father out of grief and took her mother's place at court. Mumtaz Mahal's personal fortune (valued at 10 million rupees) was divided by Shah Jahan between Jahanara Begum, who received half, and the rest of her surviving children. Burhanpur was never intended by her husband as his wife's final resting spot. As a result, her body was disinterred in December 1631 and transported in a golden casket escorted by her son Shah Shuja, the deceased empress's head lady-in-waiting, and the distinguished courtier Wazir Khan, back to Agra. There, it was interred in a small building on the banks of the Yamuna River. Shah Jahan stayed behind in Burhanpur to conclude the military campaign that had originally brought him to the region. While there, he began planning the design and construction of a suitable mausoleum and funerary garden in Agra for his wife. It was a task that would take 22 years to complete, the Taj Mahal. Taj Mahal The Taj Mahal was commissioned by Shah Jahan to be built as a mausoleum for Mumtaz Mahal. It is seen as an embodiment of undying love and marital devotion. English poet Sir Edwin Arnold describes it as "Not a piece of architecture, as other buildings are, but the proud passion of an emperor's love wrought in living stones." The beauty of the monument is also taken as a representation of Mumtaz Mahal's beauty and this association leads many to describe the Taj Mahal as feminine. Since Muslim tradition forbids elaborate decorations on graves, the bodies of Mumtaz and Shah Jahan are placed in a relatively plain crypt beneath the inner chamber with their faces turned to the right and towards Mecca. The Ninety Nine Names of God are found as calligraphic inscriptions on the sides of the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal in the crypt including, "O Noble, O Magnificent, O Majestic, O Unique, O Eternal, O Glorious…". There are many theories about the origin of the name of this tomb and one of them suggests that 'Taj' is an abbreviation of the name Mumtaz. European travelers, such as François Bernier, who observed its construction, were among the first to call it the Taj Mahal. Since they are unlikely to have come up with the name, they might have picked it up from the locals of Agra who called the Empress 'Taj Mahal' and thought the tomb was named after her and the name began to be used interchangeably, but no firm evidence suggests this. Shah Jahan had not intended to entomb another person in the Taj Mahal; however, Aurangzeb had Shah Jahan buried next to the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal rather than build a separate tomb for his father. This is evident from the asymmetrical placement of Shah Jahan's grave on one side of his wife's grave which is in the centre. In popular culture Astronomy A crater was named in her honour on asteroid 433 Eros, along with another one after her husband. A crater on the planet Venus is named after her. Literature A cat named after Mumtaz Mahal ("Princess Arjumand") plays a major role in Connie Willis's 1997 novel To Say Nothing of the Dog. Arjumand Banu (Mumtaz Mahal) is a principal character in Indu Sundaresan's novel The Feast of Roses (2003) and its sequel, Shadow Princess (2010), begins with her death. Mumtaz Mahal is a main character in Sonja Chandrachud's novel Trouble at the Taj (2011). She appears in the book as a ghost. In John Shors' novel Beneath a Marble Sky (2013), Mahal's daughter, Princess Jahanara, tells the extraordinary story of how the Taj Mahal came to be, describing her own life as an agent in its creation and as a witness to the fateful events surrounding its completion. Films Mumtaz Mahal is a 1926 Indian silent film by Homi Master. Actress Enakshi Rama Rau played the role of Mumtaz Mahal in Shiraz (1928). Mumtaz Mahal, a 1944 Indian film was based on her life. Actress Suraiya played the role of young Mumtaz Mahal in Nanubhai Vakil's film Taj Mahal (1941). Mumtaz Mahal was portrayed by actress Nasreen in Abdul Rashid Kardar's film Shahjehan (1946). Mumtaz Mahal is a 1957 Indian Hindi-language drama film by Ram Daryani, starring Veena in the titular role. Bina Rai portrayed Mumtaz Mahal in M. Sadiq's film Taj Mahal (1963). Shahzadi Mumtaz, an Indian film starring Asokan and Shakuntala released in 1977. Purnima Patwardhan portrayed her role in the 2003 Indian historical drama film, Taj Mahal: A Monument of Love. Sonya Jehan portrayed Mumtaz Mahal in Akbar Khan's film Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story (2005). Other Mumtaz Mahal was the inspiration behind the popular Guerlain perfume Shalimar (1921). Issue Ancestry References Bibliography External links Mumtaz Mahal 1593 births 1631 deaths Deaths in childbirth Indian Shia Muslims People from Agra Taj Mahal 16th-century Indian women 16th-century Indian people 17th-century Indian women 17th-century Indian people 16th-century Iranian people 17th-century Iranian people Indian people of Iranian descent Wives of Shah Jahan
true
[ "I Told You So is a 1970 Ghanaian movie. The movie portrays Ghanaians and their way of life in a satirical style. It also gives insight into the life of a young lady who did not take the advice of her father when about to marry a man, she did not know anything about the man she was going to marry, but rather took her mother's and uncle's advice because of the wealth and power the man has.\n\nThe young lady later finds out that the man she is supposed to marry was an armed robber. She was unhappy of the whole incident. When her dad ask what had happened, she replied that the man she was supposed to marry is an armed robber; her father ended by saying \"I told you so\".\n\nCast\nBobe Cole\nMargret Quainoo (Araba Stamp)\nKweku Crankson (Osuo Abrobor)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n I TOLD YOU SO GHANAIAN MOVIE\n\n1970 films\nGhanaian films", "Lucia Rosa was a girl from the 19th century who wanted to marry a poor farmer and instead was forced by her father to marry a wealthy man she did not want. In despair, she threw herself into the Tyrrhenian Sea on the northwest side of the island of Ponza, Italy. She is viewed by some women as a martyr for women's rights and a symbol for human rights. A beach and a group of tall rock stacks (the 'faraglioni di Lucia Rossa') are named after her, at the place where she died.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \nLucia Rosa Stacks Google Maps\nPicture and description of Lucia Rosa beach\n\nItalian children\nPeople from the Province of Latina\nSuicides by drowning\n19th-century deaths\nSuicides in Italy\nYear of birth unknown" ]
[ "Mumtaz Mahal", "Marriage", "When did she marry?", "30 April 1612", "Who did she marry?", "Shah Jahan" ]
C_169ee9f3b1a14e0fa0a232da507ecea9_1
Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?
3
Besides Mumtaz Mahal marrying Shah Jahan, are there any other interesting aspects about this article?
Mumtaz Mahal
Mumtaz Mahal was betrothed to Shah Jahan around 30 January 1607, when she was 14 years old at the time and he was 15. They were, however, married five years after the year of their betrothal on 30 April 1612 in Agra. The marriage was a love-match. After their wedding celebrations, Shah Jahan, "finding her in appearance and character elect among all the women of the time", gave her the title "Mumtaz Mahal" Begum ("the Exalted One of the Palace"). During the intervening years between their betrothal and marriage, Shah Jahan had gotten married to his first wife, Princess Kandahari Begum in 1609 and in 1617, after marrying Mumtaz, took a third wife, Izz-un-Nissa Begum (titled Akbarabadi Mahal), the daughter of a prominent Mughal courtier. According to the official court historians, both the marriages were political alliances. By all accounts, Shah Jahan was so taken with Mumtaz that he showed little interest in exercising his polygamous rights with his two other wives, other than dutifully siring a child with each. According to the official court chronicler, Motamid Khan, as recorded in his Iqbal Namah-e-Jahangiri, the relationship with his other wives "had nothing more than the status of marriage. The intimacy, deep affection, attention and favour which Shah Jahan had for Mumtaz exceeded what he felt for his other wives." Likewise, Shah Jahan's historian Inayat Khan commented that 'his whole delight was centered on this illustrious lady [Mumtaz], to such an extent that he did not feel towards the others [i.e. his other wives] one-thousandth part of the affection that he did for her.' Mumtaz had a loving marriage with Shah Jahan. Even during her lifetime, poets would extol her beauty, grace, and compassion. Despite her frequent pregnancies, Mumtaz travelled with Shah Jahan's entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father. She was his constant companion and trusted confidant, leading court historians to go to unheard lengths to document the intimate and erotic relationship the couple enjoyed. In their nineteen years of marriage, they had fourteen children together (eight sons and six daughters), seven of whom died at birth or at a very young age. CANNOTANSWER
Despite her frequent pregnancies, Mumtaz travelled with Shah Jahan's entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father.
Mumtaz Mahal (, ), born Arjumand Banu Begum (; 27 April 1593 – 17 June 1631) was the empress consort of the Mughal Empire from 19 January 1628 to 17 June 1631 as the chief consort of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. The Taj Mahal in Agra, often cited as one of the Wonders of the World, was commissioned by her husband to act as her tomb. Mumtaz Mahal was born Arjumand Banu Begum in Agra to a family of Persian nobility. She was the daughter of Abu'l-Hasan Asaf Khan, a wealthy Persian noble who held high office in the Mughal Empire, and the niece of Empress Nur Jahan, the chief wife of Emperor Jahangir and the power behind the emperor. She was married at the age of 19 on 10 May 1612 or 16 June 1612 to Prince Khurram, later known by his regnal name Shah Jahan, who conferred upon her the title "Mumtaz Mahal" (Persian: the exalted one of the palace). Although betrothed to Shah Jahan since 1607, she ultimately became his second wife in 1612. Mumtaz and her husband had 14 children, including Jahanara Begum (Shah Jahan's favourite daughter), and the Crown prince Dara Shikoh, the heir-apparent, anointed by his father, who temporarily succeeded him, until deposed by Mumtaz Mahal's sixth child, Aurangzeb, who ultimately succeeded his father as the sixth Mughal emperor in 1658. Mumtaz Mahal died in 1631 in Burhanpur, Deccan (present-day Madhya Pradesh), during the birth of her 14th child, a daughter named Gauhar Ara Begum. Shah Jahan had the Taj Mahal built as a tomb for her, which is considered to be a monument of undying love. As with other Mughal royal ladies, no contemporary likenesses of her are accepted, but numerous imagined portraits were created from the 19th century onwards. She is wrongly referred to as "Taj Bibi" which was the corrupted of her title Mumtaz and was in reality the title of her mother-in-law, Jagat Gosain. Family and early life Mumtaz Mahal was born as Arjumand Banu on 27 April 1593 in Agra to Abu'l-Hasan Asaf Khan and his wife Diwanji Begum, the daughter of a Persian noble, Khwaja Ghias-ud-din of Qazvin. Asaf Khan was a wealthy Persian noble who held high office in the Mughal Empire. His family had come to India impoverished in 1577, when his father Mirza Ghias Beg (popularly known by his title of I'timad-ud-Daulah), was taken into the service of Emperor Akbar in Agra. Asaf Khan was also the older brother of Empress Nur Jahan, making Mumtaz a niece, and later, a step daughter-in-law of Nur Jahan, the chief consort of Emperor Jahangir, Shah Jahan's father. Her older sister, Parwar Khanum, married Sheikh Farid, the son of Nawab Qutubuddin Koka, the governor of Badaun, who was also the emperor Jahangir's foster brother. Mumtaz also had a brother, Shaista Khan, who served as the governor of Bengal and various other provinces in the empire during Shah Jahan's reign. Mumtaz was remarkable in the field of learning and was a talented and cultured lady. She was well-versed in Arabic and Persian languages and could compose poems in the latter. She was reputed to have a combination of modesty and candor, a woman warmly straightforward yet bemusedly self-possessed. Early in adolescence, she attracted the attention of important nobles of the realm. Jahangir must have heard about her, since he readily consented to Shah Jahan's engagement with her. Marriage Mumtaz Mahal was betrothed to Shah Jahan around 5 April 1607, when she was 14 years old at the time and he was 15. They were, however, married five years after the year of their betrothal on 10 May 1612 or 7 June 1612 in Agra. After their wedding celebrations, Shah Jahan, "finding her in appearance and character elect among all the women of the time", gave her the title "Mumtaz Mahal" Begum ("the Exalted One of the Palace"). During the intervening years between their betrothal and marriage, Shah Jahan had married his first wife, Princess Kandahari Begum in 1610 and in 1617, after marrying Mumtaz, took a third wife, Izz-un-Nissa Begum (titled Akbarabadi Mahal), the daughter of a prominent Mughal courtier. According to the official court historians, both the marriages were political alliances. By all accounts, Shah Jahan was so taken with Mumtaz that he showed little interest in exercising his polygamous rights with his two other wives, other than dutifully siring a child with each. According to the official court chronicler, Motamid Khan, as recorded in his Iqbal Namah-e-Jahangiri, the relationship with his other wives "had nothing more than the status of marriage. The intimacy, deep affection, attention and favour which Shah Jahan had for Mumtaz exceeded what he felt for his other wives." Likewise, Shah Jahan's historian Inayat Khan commented that 'his whole delight was centered on this illustrious lady [Mumtaz], to such an extent that he did not feel towards the others [i.e. his other wives] one-thousandth part of the affection that he did for her.' Mumtaz had a loving marriage with Shah Jahan. Even during her lifetime, poets would extol her beauty, grace, and compassion. Despite her frequent pregnancies, Mumtaz travelled with Shah Jahan's entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father. She was his constant companion and trusted confidant, leading court historians to go to unheard lengths to document the intimate and erotic relationship the couple enjoyed. In their 19 years of marriage, they had 14 children together (eight sons and six daughters), seven of whom died at birth or at a very young age. Mughal empress Upon his accession to the throne in 1628 after subduing his half brother, Shahryar Mirza, Shah Jahan designated Mumtaz as his chief empress with the title of Padshah Begum '(Lady Emperor)', 'Malika-i-Jahan' ("Queen of the World") and 'Malika-uz-Zamani' ("Queen of the Age") and 'Malika-i-hindustan' ("Queen of the Hindustan"). Mumtaz's tenure as empress was brief, spanning a period of only three years due to her untimely death, nonetheless, Shah Jahan bestowed her with luxuries that no other empress was given before her. She was also the only wife of Shah Jahan to be addressed as " Hazrat ". For example, no other empress' residence was as decorated as Khas Mahal (part of Agra Fort), where Mumtaz lived with Shah Jahan. It was decorated with pure gold and precious stones and had rose-water fountains of its own. Each wife of the Mughal emperor was given a regular monthly allowance for her gastos (housekeeping or travelling expenses); the highest such allowance on record is the one million rupees per year given to Mumtaz Mahal by Shah Jahan. Apart from this income, he gave her a lot of high-income lands and properties. Shah Jahan consulted Mumtaz in both private matters and the affairs of the state, and she served as his close confidant and trusted adviser. Whenever an official sent matters or the people made a request, he first reported the matter to the Empress and made the decision with the knowledge of understanding and consultation with her. At her intercession, he forgave enemies or commuted death sentences. His trust in her was so great that he gave her the highest honour of the land – his imperial seal, the Mehr Uzaz, which validated imperial decrees. Mumtaz was portrayed as having no aspirations to political power, in contrast to her aunt, Empress Nur Jahan, the chief consort of Emperor Jahangir, who had wielded considerable influence in the previous reign. A uncontested and great influence on him, often intervening on behalf of the poor and destitute, she also enjoyed watching elephant and combat fights performed for the court. Mumtaz also patronized a number of poets, scholars and other talented persons. A noted Sanskrit poet, Vansidhara Mishra, was the Empress's favourite. On the recommendation of her principal lady-in-waiting, Sati-un-Nissa, Mumtaz Mahal provided pensions and donations to the daughters of poor scholars, theologians, and pious men. It was quite common for women of noble birth to commission architecture in the Mughal Empire, so Mumtaz devoted some time to a riverside garden in Agra, which is now known as Zahara Bagh. It is the only architectural foundation which can be connected to her patronage. Death and aftermath Mumtaz Mahal died from postpartum hemorrhage in Burhanpur on 17 June 1631 while giving birth to her 14th child, after a prolonged labor around 30 hours. She had been accompanying her husband while he was fighting a campaign in the Deccan Plateau. Her body was temporarily buried at Burhanpur in a walled pleasure garden known as Zainabad originally constructed by Shah Jahan's uncle Daniyal on the bank of the Tapti River. The contemporary court chroniclers paid an unusual amount of attention to Mumtaz Mahal's death and Shah Jahan's grief at her demise. In the immediate aftermath of his bereavement, the emperor was reportedly inconsolable. Apparently, after her death, he went into secluded mourning for a year. When he appeared again, his hair had turned white, his back was bent, and his face worn. Mumtaz's eldest daughter, Jahanara Begum, gradually brought her father out of grief and took her mother's place at court. Mumtaz Mahal's personal fortune (valued at 10 million rupees) was divided by Shah Jahan between Jahanara Begum, who received half, and the rest of her surviving children. Burhanpur was never intended by her husband as his wife's final resting spot. As a result, her body was disinterred in December 1631 and transported in a golden casket escorted by her son Shah Shuja, the deceased empress's head lady-in-waiting, and the distinguished courtier Wazir Khan, back to Agra. There, it was interred in a small building on the banks of the Yamuna River. Shah Jahan stayed behind in Burhanpur to conclude the military campaign that had originally brought him to the region. While there, he began planning the design and construction of a suitable mausoleum and funerary garden in Agra for his wife. It was a task that would take 22 years to complete, the Taj Mahal. Taj Mahal The Taj Mahal was commissioned by Shah Jahan to be built as a mausoleum for Mumtaz Mahal. It is seen as an embodiment of undying love and marital devotion. English poet Sir Edwin Arnold describes it as "Not a piece of architecture, as other buildings are, but the proud passion of an emperor's love wrought in living stones." The beauty of the monument is also taken as a representation of Mumtaz Mahal's beauty and this association leads many to describe the Taj Mahal as feminine. Since Muslim tradition forbids elaborate decorations on graves, the bodies of Mumtaz and Shah Jahan are placed in a relatively plain crypt beneath the inner chamber with their faces turned to the right and towards Mecca. The Ninety Nine Names of God are found as calligraphic inscriptions on the sides of the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal in the crypt including, "O Noble, O Magnificent, O Majestic, O Unique, O Eternal, O Glorious…". There are many theories about the origin of the name of this tomb and one of them suggests that 'Taj' is an abbreviation of the name Mumtaz. European travelers, such as François Bernier, who observed its construction, were among the first to call it the Taj Mahal. Since they are unlikely to have come up with the name, they might have picked it up from the locals of Agra who called the Empress 'Taj Mahal' and thought the tomb was named after her and the name began to be used interchangeably, but no firm evidence suggests this. Shah Jahan had not intended to entomb another person in the Taj Mahal; however, Aurangzeb had Shah Jahan buried next to the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal rather than build a separate tomb for his father. This is evident from the asymmetrical placement of Shah Jahan's grave on one side of his wife's grave which is in the centre. In popular culture Astronomy A crater was named in her honour on asteroid 433 Eros, along with another one after her husband. A crater on the planet Venus is named after her. Literature A cat named after Mumtaz Mahal ("Princess Arjumand") plays a major role in Connie Willis's 1997 novel To Say Nothing of the Dog. Arjumand Banu (Mumtaz Mahal) is a principal character in Indu Sundaresan's novel The Feast of Roses (2003) and its sequel, Shadow Princess (2010), begins with her death. Mumtaz Mahal is a main character in Sonja Chandrachud's novel Trouble at the Taj (2011). She appears in the book as a ghost. In John Shors' novel Beneath a Marble Sky (2013), Mahal's daughter, Princess Jahanara, tells the extraordinary story of how the Taj Mahal came to be, describing her own life as an agent in its creation and as a witness to the fateful events surrounding its completion. Films Mumtaz Mahal is a 1926 Indian silent film by Homi Master. Actress Enakshi Rama Rau played the role of Mumtaz Mahal in Shiraz (1928). Mumtaz Mahal, a 1944 Indian film was based on her life. Actress Suraiya played the role of young Mumtaz Mahal in Nanubhai Vakil's film Taj Mahal (1941). Mumtaz Mahal was portrayed by actress Nasreen in Abdul Rashid Kardar's film Shahjehan (1946). Mumtaz Mahal is a 1957 Indian Hindi-language drama film by Ram Daryani, starring Veena in the titular role. Bina Rai portrayed Mumtaz Mahal in M. Sadiq's film Taj Mahal (1963). Shahzadi Mumtaz, an Indian film starring Asokan and Shakuntala released in 1977. Purnima Patwardhan portrayed her role in the 2003 Indian historical drama film, Taj Mahal: A Monument of Love. Sonya Jehan portrayed Mumtaz Mahal in Akbar Khan's film Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story (2005). Other Mumtaz Mahal was the inspiration behind the popular Guerlain perfume Shalimar (1921). Issue Ancestry References Bibliography External links Mumtaz Mahal 1593 births 1631 deaths Deaths in childbirth Indian Shia Muslims People from Agra Taj Mahal 16th-century Indian women 16th-century Indian people 17th-century Indian women 17th-century Indian people 16th-century Iranian people 17th-century Iranian people Indian people of Iranian descent Wives of Shah Jahan
true
[ "Přírodní park Třebíčsko (before Oblast klidu Třebíčsko) is a natural park near Třebíč in the Czech Republic. There are many interesting plants. The park was founded in 1983.\n\nKobylinec and Ptáčovský kopeček\n\nKobylinec is a natural monument situated ca 0,5 km from the village of Trnava.\nThe area of this monument is 0,44 ha. Pulsatilla grandis can be found here and in the Ptáčovský kopeček park near Ptáčov near Třebíč. Both monuments are very popular for tourists.\n\nPonds\n\nIn the natural park there are some interesting ponds such as Velký Bor, Malý Bor, Buršík near Přeckov and a brook Březinka. Dams on the brook are examples of European beaver activity.\n\nSyenitové skály near Pocoucov\n\nSyenitové skály (rocks of syenit) near Pocoucov is one of famed locations. There are interesting granite boulders. The area of the reservation is 0,77 ha.\n\nExternal links\nParts of this article or all article was translated from Czech. The original article is :cs:Přírodní park Třebíčsko.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNature near the village Trnava which is there\n\nTřebíč\nParks in the Czech Republic\nTourist attractions in the Vysočina Region", "Damn Interesting is an independent website founded by Alan Bellows in 2005. The website presents true stories from science, history, and psychology, primarily as long-form articles, often illustrated with original artwork. Works are written by various authors, and published at irregular intervals. The website openly rejects advertising, relying on reader and listener donations to cover operating costs.\n\nAs of October 2012, each article is also published as a podcast under the same name. In November 2019, a second podcast was launched under the title Damn Interesting Week, featuring unscripted commentary on an assortment of news articles featured on the website's \"Curated Links\" section that week. In mid-2020, a third podcast called Damn Interesting Curio Cabinet began highlighting the website's periodic short-form articles in the same radioplay format as the original podcast.\n\nIn July 2009, Damn Interesting published the print book Alien Hand Syndrome through Workman Publishing. It contains some favorites from the site and some exclusive content.\n\nAwards and recognition \nIn August 2007, PC Magazine named Damn Interesting one of the \"Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites\".\nThe article \"The Zero-Armed Bandit\" by Alan Bellows won a 2015 Sidney Award from David Brooks in The New York Times.\nThe article \"Ghoulish Acts and Dastardly Deeds\" by Alan Bellows was cited as \"nonfiction journalism from 2017 that will stand the test of time\" by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.\nThe article \"Dupes and Duplicity\" by Jennifer Lee Noonan won a 2020 Sidney Award from David Brooks in the New York Times.\n\nAccusing The Dollop of plagiarism \n\nOn July 9, 2015, Bellows posted an open letter accusing The Dollop, a comedy podcast about history, of plagiarism due to their repeated use of verbatim text from Damn Interesting articles without permission or attribution. Dave Anthony, the writer of The Dollop, responded on reddit, admitting to using Damn Interesting content, but claiming that the use was protected by fair use, and that \"historical facts are not copyrightable.\" In an article about the controversy on Plagiarism Today, Jonathan Bailey concluded, \"Any way one looks at it, The Dollop failed its ethical obligations to all of the people, not just those writing for Damn Interesting, who put in the time, energy and expertise into writing the original content upon which their show is based.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n\n2005 podcast debuts" ]
[ "Mumtaz Mahal", "Marriage", "When did she marry?", "30 April 1612", "Who did she marry?", "Shah Jahan", "Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?", "Despite her frequent pregnancies, Mumtaz travelled with Shah Jahan's entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father." ]
C_169ee9f3b1a14e0fa0a232da507ecea9_1
Did they have children?
4
Did Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan have children?
Mumtaz Mahal
Mumtaz Mahal was betrothed to Shah Jahan around 30 January 1607, when she was 14 years old at the time and he was 15. They were, however, married five years after the year of their betrothal on 30 April 1612 in Agra. The marriage was a love-match. After their wedding celebrations, Shah Jahan, "finding her in appearance and character elect among all the women of the time", gave her the title "Mumtaz Mahal" Begum ("the Exalted One of the Palace"). During the intervening years between their betrothal and marriage, Shah Jahan had gotten married to his first wife, Princess Kandahari Begum in 1609 and in 1617, after marrying Mumtaz, took a third wife, Izz-un-Nissa Begum (titled Akbarabadi Mahal), the daughter of a prominent Mughal courtier. According to the official court historians, both the marriages were political alliances. By all accounts, Shah Jahan was so taken with Mumtaz that he showed little interest in exercising his polygamous rights with his two other wives, other than dutifully siring a child with each. According to the official court chronicler, Motamid Khan, as recorded in his Iqbal Namah-e-Jahangiri, the relationship with his other wives "had nothing more than the status of marriage. The intimacy, deep affection, attention and favour which Shah Jahan had for Mumtaz exceeded what he felt for his other wives." Likewise, Shah Jahan's historian Inayat Khan commented that 'his whole delight was centered on this illustrious lady [Mumtaz], to such an extent that he did not feel towards the others [i.e. his other wives] one-thousandth part of the affection that he did for her.' Mumtaz had a loving marriage with Shah Jahan. Even during her lifetime, poets would extol her beauty, grace, and compassion. Despite her frequent pregnancies, Mumtaz travelled with Shah Jahan's entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father. She was his constant companion and trusted confidant, leading court historians to go to unheard lengths to document the intimate and erotic relationship the couple enjoyed. In their nineteen years of marriage, they had fourteen children together (eight sons and six daughters), seven of whom died at birth or at a very young age. CANNOTANSWER
they had fourteen children together (eight sons and six daughters), seven of whom died at birth or at a very young age.
Mumtaz Mahal (, ), born Arjumand Banu Begum (; 27 April 1593 – 17 June 1631) was the empress consort of the Mughal Empire from 19 January 1628 to 17 June 1631 as the chief consort of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. The Taj Mahal in Agra, often cited as one of the Wonders of the World, was commissioned by her husband to act as her tomb. Mumtaz Mahal was born Arjumand Banu Begum in Agra to a family of Persian nobility. She was the daughter of Abu'l-Hasan Asaf Khan, a wealthy Persian noble who held high office in the Mughal Empire, and the niece of Empress Nur Jahan, the chief wife of Emperor Jahangir and the power behind the emperor. She was married at the age of 19 on 10 May 1612 or 16 June 1612 to Prince Khurram, later known by his regnal name Shah Jahan, who conferred upon her the title "Mumtaz Mahal" (Persian: the exalted one of the palace). Although betrothed to Shah Jahan since 1607, she ultimately became his second wife in 1612. Mumtaz and her husband had 14 children, including Jahanara Begum (Shah Jahan's favourite daughter), and the Crown prince Dara Shikoh, the heir-apparent, anointed by his father, who temporarily succeeded him, until deposed by Mumtaz Mahal's sixth child, Aurangzeb, who ultimately succeeded his father as the sixth Mughal emperor in 1658. Mumtaz Mahal died in 1631 in Burhanpur, Deccan (present-day Madhya Pradesh), during the birth of her 14th child, a daughter named Gauhar Ara Begum. Shah Jahan had the Taj Mahal built as a tomb for her, which is considered to be a monument of undying love. As with other Mughal royal ladies, no contemporary likenesses of her are accepted, but numerous imagined portraits were created from the 19th century onwards. She is wrongly referred to as "Taj Bibi" which was the corrupted of her title Mumtaz and was in reality the title of her mother-in-law, Jagat Gosain. Family and early life Mumtaz Mahal was born as Arjumand Banu on 27 April 1593 in Agra to Abu'l-Hasan Asaf Khan and his wife Diwanji Begum, the daughter of a Persian noble, Khwaja Ghias-ud-din of Qazvin. Asaf Khan was a wealthy Persian noble who held high office in the Mughal Empire. His family had come to India impoverished in 1577, when his father Mirza Ghias Beg (popularly known by his title of I'timad-ud-Daulah), was taken into the service of Emperor Akbar in Agra. Asaf Khan was also the older brother of Empress Nur Jahan, making Mumtaz a niece, and later, a step daughter-in-law of Nur Jahan, the chief consort of Emperor Jahangir, Shah Jahan's father. Her older sister, Parwar Khanum, married Sheikh Farid, the son of Nawab Qutubuddin Koka, the governor of Badaun, who was also the emperor Jahangir's foster brother. Mumtaz also had a brother, Shaista Khan, who served as the governor of Bengal and various other provinces in the empire during Shah Jahan's reign. Mumtaz was remarkable in the field of learning and was a talented and cultured lady. She was well-versed in Arabic and Persian languages and could compose poems in the latter. She was reputed to have a combination of modesty and candor, a woman warmly straightforward yet bemusedly self-possessed. Early in adolescence, she attracted the attention of important nobles of the realm. Jahangir must have heard about her, since he readily consented to Shah Jahan's engagement with her. Marriage Mumtaz Mahal was betrothed to Shah Jahan around 5 April 1607, when she was 14 years old at the time and he was 15. They were, however, married five years after the year of their betrothal on 10 May 1612 or 7 June 1612 in Agra. After their wedding celebrations, Shah Jahan, "finding her in appearance and character elect among all the women of the time", gave her the title "Mumtaz Mahal" Begum ("the Exalted One of the Palace"). During the intervening years between their betrothal and marriage, Shah Jahan had married his first wife, Princess Kandahari Begum in 1610 and in 1617, after marrying Mumtaz, took a third wife, Izz-un-Nissa Begum (titled Akbarabadi Mahal), the daughter of a prominent Mughal courtier. According to the official court historians, both the marriages were political alliances. By all accounts, Shah Jahan was so taken with Mumtaz that he showed little interest in exercising his polygamous rights with his two other wives, other than dutifully siring a child with each. According to the official court chronicler, Motamid Khan, as recorded in his Iqbal Namah-e-Jahangiri, the relationship with his other wives "had nothing more than the status of marriage. The intimacy, deep affection, attention and favour which Shah Jahan had for Mumtaz exceeded what he felt for his other wives." Likewise, Shah Jahan's historian Inayat Khan commented that 'his whole delight was centered on this illustrious lady [Mumtaz], to such an extent that he did not feel towards the others [i.e. his other wives] one-thousandth part of the affection that he did for her.' Mumtaz had a loving marriage with Shah Jahan. Even during her lifetime, poets would extol her beauty, grace, and compassion. Despite her frequent pregnancies, Mumtaz travelled with Shah Jahan's entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father. She was his constant companion and trusted confidant, leading court historians to go to unheard lengths to document the intimate and erotic relationship the couple enjoyed. In their 19 years of marriage, they had 14 children together (eight sons and six daughters), seven of whom died at birth or at a very young age. Mughal empress Upon his accession to the throne in 1628 after subduing his half brother, Shahryar Mirza, Shah Jahan designated Mumtaz as his chief empress with the title of Padshah Begum '(Lady Emperor)', 'Malika-i-Jahan' ("Queen of the World") and 'Malika-uz-Zamani' ("Queen of the Age") and 'Malika-i-hindustan' ("Queen of the Hindustan"). Mumtaz's tenure as empress was brief, spanning a period of only three years due to her untimely death, nonetheless, Shah Jahan bestowed her with luxuries that no other empress was given before her. She was also the only wife of Shah Jahan to be addressed as " Hazrat ". For example, no other empress' residence was as decorated as Khas Mahal (part of Agra Fort), where Mumtaz lived with Shah Jahan. It was decorated with pure gold and precious stones and had rose-water fountains of its own. Each wife of the Mughal emperor was given a regular monthly allowance for her gastos (housekeeping or travelling expenses); the highest such allowance on record is the one million rupees per year given to Mumtaz Mahal by Shah Jahan. Apart from this income, he gave her a lot of high-income lands and properties. Shah Jahan consulted Mumtaz in both private matters and the affairs of the state, and she served as his close confidant and trusted adviser. Whenever an official sent matters or the people made a request, he first reported the matter to the Empress and made the decision with the knowledge of understanding and consultation with her. At her intercession, he forgave enemies or commuted death sentences. His trust in her was so great that he gave her the highest honour of the land – his imperial seal, the Mehr Uzaz, which validated imperial decrees. Mumtaz was portrayed as having no aspirations to political power, in contrast to her aunt, Empress Nur Jahan, the chief consort of Emperor Jahangir, who had wielded considerable influence in the previous reign. A uncontested and great influence on him, often intervening on behalf of the poor and destitute, she also enjoyed watching elephant and combat fights performed for the court. Mumtaz also patronized a number of poets, scholars and other talented persons. A noted Sanskrit poet, Vansidhara Mishra, was the Empress's favourite. On the recommendation of her principal lady-in-waiting, Sati-un-Nissa, Mumtaz Mahal provided pensions and donations to the daughters of poor scholars, theologians, and pious men. It was quite common for women of noble birth to commission architecture in the Mughal Empire, so Mumtaz devoted some time to a riverside garden in Agra, which is now known as Zahara Bagh. It is the only architectural foundation which can be connected to her patronage. Death and aftermath Mumtaz Mahal died from postpartum hemorrhage in Burhanpur on 17 June 1631 while giving birth to her 14th child, after a prolonged labor around 30 hours. She had been accompanying her husband while he was fighting a campaign in the Deccan Plateau. Her body was temporarily buried at Burhanpur in a walled pleasure garden known as Zainabad originally constructed by Shah Jahan's uncle Daniyal on the bank of the Tapti River. The contemporary court chroniclers paid an unusual amount of attention to Mumtaz Mahal's death and Shah Jahan's grief at her demise. In the immediate aftermath of his bereavement, the emperor was reportedly inconsolable. Apparently, after her death, he went into secluded mourning for a year. When he appeared again, his hair had turned white, his back was bent, and his face worn. Mumtaz's eldest daughter, Jahanara Begum, gradually brought her father out of grief and took her mother's place at court. Mumtaz Mahal's personal fortune (valued at 10 million rupees) was divided by Shah Jahan between Jahanara Begum, who received half, and the rest of her surviving children. Burhanpur was never intended by her husband as his wife's final resting spot. As a result, her body was disinterred in December 1631 and transported in a golden casket escorted by her son Shah Shuja, the deceased empress's head lady-in-waiting, and the distinguished courtier Wazir Khan, back to Agra. There, it was interred in a small building on the banks of the Yamuna River. Shah Jahan stayed behind in Burhanpur to conclude the military campaign that had originally brought him to the region. While there, he began planning the design and construction of a suitable mausoleum and funerary garden in Agra for his wife. It was a task that would take 22 years to complete, the Taj Mahal. Taj Mahal The Taj Mahal was commissioned by Shah Jahan to be built as a mausoleum for Mumtaz Mahal. It is seen as an embodiment of undying love and marital devotion. English poet Sir Edwin Arnold describes it as "Not a piece of architecture, as other buildings are, but the proud passion of an emperor's love wrought in living stones." The beauty of the monument is also taken as a representation of Mumtaz Mahal's beauty and this association leads many to describe the Taj Mahal as feminine. Since Muslim tradition forbids elaborate decorations on graves, the bodies of Mumtaz and Shah Jahan are placed in a relatively plain crypt beneath the inner chamber with their faces turned to the right and towards Mecca. The Ninety Nine Names of God are found as calligraphic inscriptions on the sides of the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal in the crypt including, "O Noble, O Magnificent, O Majestic, O Unique, O Eternal, O Glorious…". There are many theories about the origin of the name of this tomb and one of them suggests that 'Taj' is an abbreviation of the name Mumtaz. European travelers, such as François Bernier, who observed its construction, were among the first to call it the Taj Mahal. Since they are unlikely to have come up with the name, they might have picked it up from the locals of Agra who called the Empress 'Taj Mahal' and thought the tomb was named after her and the name began to be used interchangeably, but no firm evidence suggests this. Shah Jahan had not intended to entomb another person in the Taj Mahal; however, Aurangzeb had Shah Jahan buried next to the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal rather than build a separate tomb for his father. This is evident from the asymmetrical placement of Shah Jahan's grave on one side of his wife's grave which is in the centre. In popular culture Astronomy A crater was named in her honour on asteroid 433 Eros, along with another one after her husband. A crater on the planet Venus is named after her. Literature A cat named after Mumtaz Mahal ("Princess Arjumand") plays a major role in Connie Willis's 1997 novel To Say Nothing of the Dog. Arjumand Banu (Mumtaz Mahal) is a principal character in Indu Sundaresan's novel The Feast of Roses (2003) and its sequel, Shadow Princess (2010), begins with her death. Mumtaz Mahal is a main character in Sonja Chandrachud's novel Trouble at the Taj (2011). She appears in the book as a ghost. In John Shors' novel Beneath a Marble Sky (2013), Mahal's daughter, Princess Jahanara, tells the extraordinary story of how the Taj Mahal came to be, describing her own life as an agent in its creation and as a witness to the fateful events surrounding its completion. Films Mumtaz Mahal is a 1926 Indian silent film by Homi Master. Actress Enakshi Rama Rau played the role of Mumtaz Mahal in Shiraz (1928). Mumtaz Mahal, a 1944 Indian film was based on her life. Actress Suraiya played the role of young Mumtaz Mahal in Nanubhai Vakil's film Taj Mahal (1941). Mumtaz Mahal was portrayed by actress Nasreen in Abdul Rashid Kardar's film Shahjehan (1946). Mumtaz Mahal is a 1957 Indian Hindi-language drama film by Ram Daryani, starring Veena in the titular role. Bina Rai portrayed Mumtaz Mahal in M. Sadiq's film Taj Mahal (1963). Shahzadi Mumtaz, an Indian film starring Asokan and Shakuntala released in 1977. Purnima Patwardhan portrayed her role in the 2003 Indian historical drama film, Taj Mahal: A Monument of Love. Sonya Jehan portrayed Mumtaz Mahal in Akbar Khan's film Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story (2005). Other Mumtaz Mahal was the inspiration behind the popular Guerlain perfume Shalimar (1921). Issue Ancestry References Bibliography External links Mumtaz Mahal 1593 births 1631 deaths Deaths in childbirth Indian Shia Muslims People from Agra Taj Mahal 16th-century Indian women 16th-century Indian people 17th-century Indian women 17th-century Indian people 16th-century Iranian people 17th-century Iranian people Indian people of Iranian descent Wives of Shah Jahan
false
[ "The American Homecoming Act or Amerasian Homecoming Act, was an Act of Congress giving preferential immigration status to children in Vietnam born of U.S. fathers. The American Homecoming Act was written in 1987, passed in 1988, and implemented in 1989. The act increased Vietnamese Amerasian immigration to the U.S. because it allowed applicants to establish a mixed race identity by appearance alone. Additionally, the American Homecoming Act allowed the Amerasian children and their immediate relatives to receive refugee benefits. About 23,000 Amerasians and 67,000 of their relatives entered the United States under this act. While the American Homecoming Act was the most successful program in moving Vietnamese Amerasian children to the United States, the act was not the first attempt by the U.S. government. Additionally the act experienced flaws and controversies over the refugees it did and did not include since the act only allowed Vietnamese Amerasian children, as opposed to other South East Asian nations in which the United States also had forces in the war.\n\nBackground\n\nIn April 1975, the U.S.-backed government of South Vietnam fell to North Vietnamese forces. Refugees from Vietnam started to arrive in the United States under U.S. government programs. In 1982, the U.S. Congress passed the Amerasian Immigration Act (PL 97-359). The law prioritized U.S. immigration to children fathered by U.S. citizens including from Korea, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand. However, the law did not provide immigration to mothers or half-siblings, only to Amerasian children. Amerasians would generally have to coordinate with their American fathers in order to obtain a visa. This provided a challenge for many since some fathers did not know they had children or the fathers may not have wanted to claim the children. If the Amerasian children did not have documentation from the American father, then they could be examined for “American” physical features by a group of doctors. Additionally, since the U.S. and Vietnam's governments did not have diplomatic relations, the law could not be applied to Vietnamese Amerasian children. Essentially the Amerasian Immigration Act did little for Amerasian children and even less for Vietnamese Amerasian children.\n\nAs a way to address Vietnamese Amerasian children, the U.S. government permitted another route for Vietnamese-born children of American soldiers to the United States. The children would be classified as immigrants, but would also be eligible to receive refugee benefits. The U.S. and Vietnam governments established the Orderly Departure Program (ODP). The program is housed in the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). The ODP created a system where South Vietnamese soldiers and others connected to the U.S. war effort could emigrate from Vietnam to the United States. Initially the Amerasian children had to have documentation from their American fathers to be issued a visa, however the program eventually expanded to individuals that did not have firm documentation. The Orderly Departure Program moved around 6,000 Amerasians and 11,000 relatives to the United States.\n\nEnactment\n\nOn August 6, 1987, Rep. Robert J. Mrazek [D-NY-3] introduced the Amerasian Homecoming Bill (H.R. 3171). The bill was co-sponsored by 204 U.S. representatives (154 Democrats, 49 Republicans, and 1 Independent). In 1988, the U.S. Congress passed the Amerasian Homecoming Act (PL 100-200). The law took effect on March 21, 1988, and allowed Vietnamese Amerasians born January 1, 1962, through January 1, 1976, to apply for immigrant visas until March 21, 1990. Additionally the legislation removed immigration quotas and reduced legal barriers for Vietnamese Amerasians’ immigration. As a result of the act around 20,000 Amerasian children left Vietnam. Prior to the Amerasian Homecoming Act, many Amerasian children faced prejudice in Vietnam sometimes referred to as bui doi (“the dust of life” or “trash”). However, after the act many of these children would be called “golden children” since not only could the Amerasian children move to the United States, but so could their families. The act allowed the spouse, child, mother, or the next of kin of the Amerasian child to emigrate. The act was significant, because it allowed applicants to establish a mixed race identity by appearance alone.\n\nImmigration process\n\nThe American Homecoming Act operated through the Orderly Departure Program in the respective U.S. embassies. U.S. Embassy officials would conduct interviews for Amerasians children and their families. The interviews were intended to prove whether or not the child's father was a U.S. military personnel. Under the American Homecoming Act, Vietnamese Amerasian children did not have to have documentation from their American fathers; however if they did, their case would be processed quicker. The approval rating for Amerasian applicants was approximately 95 percent.\n\nThe approved applicants and their families would go through a medical exam. The medical exam was less extensive than other immigration medical exams. If they passed, the U.S. would notify Vietnamese authorities and would process them for departure. The Amerasians would then be sent to the Philippines for a 6-month English language (ESL) and cultural orientation (CO) program. Once the Amerasians arrived in the United States they would be resettled by private voluntary agencies contracted with the U.S. State Department. Some Amerasians gave accounts that some “fake families” approached them as a way to immigrate to the United States. The U.S. Attorney General in conversation with the U.S. Secretary of State submitted program reports to the U.S. Congress every three years.\n\nControversies\n\nWhile the American Homecoming Act was the most successful measure by the United States to encourage Amerasian immigration, the act faced controversies. A primary issue was the act only applied to Amerasian children born in Vietnam. The American Homecoming Act excluded Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand. While Amerasian children from outside Vietnam could immigrate to the United States, they could do so only if their fathers claimed them. Most fathers did not recognize their children, especially if they were born to sex workers.\n\nIn 1993, a class action lawsuit was filed in the International Court of Complaints to establish Filipino Amerasian children's rights to assistance. The court ruled against the children, stating they were the products of sexual services provided to U.S. service personnel. Since prostitution is illegal, there could be no legal claim for the Filipino Amerasian children. Amerasian advocacy groups are actively attempting to gain recognition for Amerasian children through legal and legislative measures.\n\nThere were other concerns facing the American Homecoming Act by the Vietnamese immigrants. Some accounts include a Vietnamese woman who attempted to claim American citizenship for her Amerasian son, but the father denied the relationship and responsibility by calling her a prostitute. Since sex workers were largely excluded, many children were unable to participate in the program. In the 1970s, the U.S. cut refugee cash assistance and medical aid to only eight months. Many Amerasian children account for their struggles in public school and very few attended higher education. Amerasian children who stayed in their respective countries found difficulties. Many of the children faced prejudice since their fair skin or very dark skin, blue eyes, or curly black hair would quickly identify them as Amerasian. Additionally the children faced judgment from the new socialist Vietnamese officials and other neighbors since their features positioned them as reminders of the “old enemy.”\n\nReferences\n\nUnited States federal immigration and nationality legislation", "Matthew 11:17 is the seventeenth verse in the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament.\n\nContent\nIn the original Greek according to Westcott-Hort for this verse is:\nκαὶ λέγουσιν, Ηὐλήσαμεν ὑμῖν, καὶ οὐκ ὠρχήσασθε· ἐθρηνήσαμεν ὑμῖν, καὶ οὐκ ἐκόψασθε. \n\nIn the King James Version of the Bible the text reads:\nAnd saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented.\n\nThe New International Version translates the passage as:\n\"'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge and you did not mourn.'\n\nAnalysis\nWitham states that Christ here is represented by the children that piped, while St. John by those that mourned, since Christ did not refuse to eat and converse with sinners.\n\nCommentary from the Church Fathers\nSaint Remigius: \" And straightway He answers Himself, saying, It is like unto children sitting in the market-place, crying unto their fellows, and saying, We have played music to you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned, and ye have not lamented.\"\n\nHilary of Poitiers: \" By the children are meant the Prophets, who preached as children in singleness of meaning, and in the midst of the synagogue, that is in the market-place, reprove them, that when they played to those to whom they had devoted the service of their body, they had not obeyed their words, as the movement of the dancers are regulated by the measures of the music. For the Prophets invited them to make confession by song to God, as it is contained in the song of Moses, of Isaiah, or of David.\"\n\nJerome: \" They say therefore, We have flayed music to you, and ye have not danced; i. e. We have called on you to work good works to our songs, and ye would not. We have lamented and called you to repentance, and this ye would not, rejecting both preaching, as well of exhortation to virtue, as of repentance for sin.\"\n\nSaint Remigius: \" What is that He says, To their fellows? Were the unbelieving Jews then fellows of the Prophets? He speaks thus only because they were sprung of one stock.\"\n\nJerome: \" The children are they of whom Isaiah speaks, Behold I, and the children whom the Lord has given me. (Is. 8:18) These children then sit in the market-place, where are many things for sale, and say,\"\n\nChrysostom: \" We have played music to you, and ye have not danced; that is, I have showed you an unrestricted life, and ye are not convinced; We have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented; that is, John lived a hard life, and ye heeded him not. Yet does not he speak one thing, and I another, but both speak the same thing, because both have one and the same object. For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a dæmon. The Son of man came &c.\"\n\nSee also\nWeddings and Funerals\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nOther translations of Matthew 11:17 at BibleHub\n\n011:17" ]
[ "Mumtaz Mahal", "Marriage", "When did she marry?", "30 April 1612", "Who did she marry?", "Shah Jahan", "Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?", "Despite her frequent pregnancies, Mumtaz travelled with Shah Jahan's entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father.", "Did they have children?", "they had fourteen children together (eight sons and six daughters), seven of whom died at birth or at a very young age." ]
C_169ee9f3b1a14e0fa0a232da507ecea9_1
Was this an arranged marriage?
5
Did Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan have an arranged marriage?
Mumtaz Mahal
Mumtaz Mahal was betrothed to Shah Jahan around 30 January 1607, when she was 14 years old at the time and he was 15. They were, however, married five years after the year of their betrothal on 30 April 1612 in Agra. The marriage was a love-match. After their wedding celebrations, Shah Jahan, "finding her in appearance and character elect among all the women of the time", gave her the title "Mumtaz Mahal" Begum ("the Exalted One of the Palace"). During the intervening years between their betrothal and marriage, Shah Jahan had gotten married to his first wife, Princess Kandahari Begum in 1609 and in 1617, after marrying Mumtaz, took a third wife, Izz-un-Nissa Begum (titled Akbarabadi Mahal), the daughter of a prominent Mughal courtier. According to the official court historians, both the marriages were political alliances. By all accounts, Shah Jahan was so taken with Mumtaz that he showed little interest in exercising his polygamous rights with his two other wives, other than dutifully siring a child with each. According to the official court chronicler, Motamid Khan, as recorded in his Iqbal Namah-e-Jahangiri, the relationship with his other wives "had nothing more than the status of marriage. The intimacy, deep affection, attention and favour which Shah Jahan had for Mumtaz exceeded what he felt for his other wives." Likewise, Shah Jahan's historian Inayat Khan commented that 'his whole delight was centered on this illustrious lady [Mumtaz], to such an extent that he did not feel towards the others [i.e. his other wives] one-thousandth part of the affection that he did for her.' Mumtaz had a loving marriage with Shah Jahan. Even during her lifetime, poets would extol her beauty, grace, and compassion. Despite her frequent pregnancies, Mumtaz travelled with Shah Jahan's entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father. She was his constant companion and trusted confidant, leading court historians to go to unheard lengths to document the intimate and erotic relationship the couple enjoyed. In their nineteen years of marriage, they had fourteen children together (eight sons and six daughters), seven of whom died at birth or at a very young age. CANNOTANSWER
Mumtaz Mahal was betrothed to Shah Jahan around 30 January 1607, when she was 14 years old at the time and he was 15.
Mumtaz Mahal (, ), born Arjumand Banu Begum (; 27 April 1593 – 17 June 1631) was the empress consort of the Mughal Empire from 19 January 1628 to 17 June 1631 as the chief consort of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. The Taj Mahal in Agra, often cited as one of the Wonders of the World, was commissioned by her husband to act as her tomb. Mumtaz Mahal was born Arjumand Banu Begum in Agra to a family of Persian nobility. She was the daughter of Abu'l-Hasan Asaf Khan, a wealthy Persian noble who held high office in the Mughal Empire, and the niece of Empress Nur Jahan, the chief wife of Emperor Jahangir and the power behind the emperor. She was married at the age of 19 on 10 May 1612 or 16 June 1612 to Prince Khurram, later known by his regnal name Shah Jahan, who conferred upon her the title "Mumtaz Mahal" (Persian: the exalted one of the palace). Although betrothed to Shah Jahan since 1607, she ultimately became his second wife in 1612. Mumtaz and her husband had 14 children, including Jahanara Begum (Shah Jahan's favourite daughter), and the Crown prince Dara Shikoh, the heir-apparent, anointed by his father, who temporarily succeeded him, until deposed by Mumtaz Mahal's sixth child, Aurangzeb, who ultimately succeeded his father as the sixth Mughal emperor in 1658. Mumtaz Mahal died in 1631 in Burhanpur, Deccan (present-day Madhya Pradesh), during the birth of her 14th child, a daughter named Gauhar Ara Begum. Shah Jahan had the Taj Mahal built as a tomb for her, which is considered to be a monument of undying love. As with other Mughal royal ladies, no contemporary likenesses of her are accepted, but numerous imagined portraits were created from the 19th century onwards. She is wrongly referred to as "Taj Bibi" which was the corrupted of her title Mumtaz and was in reality the title of her mother-in-law, Jagat Gosain. Family and early life Mumtaz Mahal was born as Arjumand Banu on 27 April 1593 in Agra to Abu'l-Hasan Asaf Khan and his wife Diwanji Begum, the daughter of a Persian noble, Khwaja Ghias-ud-din of Qazvin. Asaf Khan was a wealthy Persian noble who held high office in the Mughal Empire. His family had come to India impoverished in 1577, when his father Mirza Ghias Beg (popularly known by his title of I'timad-ud-Daulah), was taken into the service of Emperor Akbar in Agra. Asaf Khan was also the older brother of Empress Nur Jahan, making Mumtaz a niece, and later, a step daughter-in-law of Nur Jahan, the chief consort of Emperor Jahangir, Shah Jahan's father. Her older sister, Parwar Khanum, married Sheikh Farid, the son of Nawab Qutubuddin Koka, the governor of Badaun, who was also the emperor Jahangir's foster brother. Mumtaz also had a brother, Shaista Khan, who served as the governor of Bengal and various other provinces in the empire during Shah Jahan's reign. Mumtaz was remarkable in the field of learning and was a talented and cultured lady. She was well-versed in Arabic and Persian languages and could compose poems in the latter. She was reputed to have a combination of modesty and candor, a woman warmly straightforward yet bemusedly self-possessed. Early in adolescence, she attracted the attention of important nobles of the realm. Jahangir must have heard about her, since he readily consented to Shah Jahan's engagement with her. Marriage Mumtaz Mahal was betrothed to Shah Jahan around 5 April 1607, when she was 14 years old at the time and he was 15. They were, however, married five years after the year of their betrothal on 10 May 1612 or 7 June 1612 in Agra. After their wedding celebrations, Shah Jahan, "finding her in appearance and character elect among all the women of the time", gave her the title "Mumtaz Mahal" Begum ("the Exalted One of the Palace"). During the intervening years between their betrothal and marriage, Shah Jahan had married his first wife, Princess Kandahari Begum in 1610 and in 1617, after marrying Mumtaz, took a third wife, Izz-un-Nissa Begum (titled Akbarabadi Mahal), the daughter of a prominent Mughal courtier. According to the official court historians, both the marriages were political alliances. By all accounts, Shah Jahan was so taken with Mumtaz that he showed little interest in exercising his polygamous rights with his two other wives, other than dutifully siring a child with each. According to the official court chronicler, Motamid Khan, as recorded in his Iqbal Namah-e-Jahangiri, the relationship with his other wives "had nothing more than the status of marriage. The intimacy, deep affection, attention and favour which Shah Jahan had for Mumtaz exceeded what he felt for his other wives." Likewise, Shah Jahan's historian Inayat Khan commented that 'his whole delight was centered on this illustrious lady [Mumtaz], to such an extent that he did not feel towards the others [i.e. his other wives] one-thousandth part of the affection that he did for her.' Mumtaz had a loving marriage with Shah Jahan. Even during her lifetime, poets would extol her beauty, grace, and compassion. Despite her frequent pregnancies, Mumtaz travelled with Shah Jahan's entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father. She was his constant companion and trusted confidant, leading court historians to go to unheard lengths to document the intimate and erotic relationship the couple enjoyed. In their 19 years of marriage, they had 14 children together (eight sons and six daughters), seven of whom died at birth or at a very young age. Mughal empress Upon his accession to the throne in 1628 after subduing his half brother, Shahryar Mirza, Shah Jahan designated Mumtaz as his chief empress with the title of Padshah Begum '(Lady Emperor)', 'Malika-i-Jahan' ("Queen of the World") and 'Malika-uz-Zamani' ("Queen of the Age") and 'Malika-i-hindustan' ("Queen of the Hindustan"). Mumtaz's tenure as empress was brief, spanning a period of only three years due to her untimely death, nonetheless, Shah Jahan bestowed her with luxuries that no other empress was given before her. She was also the only wife of Shah Jahan to be addressed as " Hazrat ". For example, no other empress' residence was as decorated as Khas Mahal (part of Agra Fort), where Mumtaz lived with Shah Jahan. It was decorated with pure gold and precious stones and had rose-water fountains of its own. Each wife of the Mughal emperor was given a regular monthly allowance for her gastos (housekeeping or travelling expenses); the highest such allowance on record is the one million rupees per year given to Mumtaz Mahal by Shah Jahan. Apart from this income, he gave her a lot of high-income lands and properties. Shah Jahan consulted Mumtaz in both private matters and the affairs of the state, and she served as his close confidant and trusted adviser. Whenever an official sent matters or the people made a request, he first reported the matter to the Empress and made the decision with the knowledge of understanding and consultation with her. At her intercession, he forgave enemies or commuted death sentences. His trust in her was so great that he gave her the highest honour of the land – his imperial seal, the Mehr Uzaz, which validated imperial decrees. Mumtaz was portrayed as having no aspirations to political power, in contrast to her aunt, Empress Nur Jahan, the chief consort of Emperor Jahangir, who had wielded considerable influence in the previous reign. A uncontested and great influence on him, often intervening on behalf of the poor and destitute, she also enjoyed watching elephant and combat fights performed for the court. Mumtaz also patronized a number of poets, scholars and other talented persons. A noted Sanskrit poet, Vansidhara Mishra, was the Empress's favourite. On the recommendation of her principal lady-in-waiting, Sati-un-Nissa, Mumtaz Mahal provided pensions and donations to the daughters of poor scholars, theologians, and pious men. It was quite common for women of noble birth to commission architecture in the Mughal Empire, so Mumtaz devoted some time to a riverside garden in Agra, which is now known as Zahara Bagh. It is the only architectural foundation which can be connected to her patronage. Death and aftermath Mumtaz Mahal died from postpartum hemorrhage in Burhanpur on 17 June 1631 while giving birth to her 14th child, after a prolonged labor around 30 hours. She had been accompanying her husband while he was fighting a campaign in the Deccan Plateau. Her body was temporarily buried at Burhanpur in a walled pleasure garden known as Zainabad originally constructed by Shah Jahan's uncle Daniyal on the bank of the Tapti River. The contemporary court chroniclers paid an unusual amount of attention to Mumtaz Mahal's death and Shah Jahan's grief at her demise. In the immediate aftermath of his bereavement, the emperor was reportedly inconsolable. Apparently, after her death, he went into secluded mourning for a year. When he appeared again, his hair had turned white, his back was bent, and his face worn. Mumtaz's eldest daughter, Jahanara Begum, gradually brought her father out of grief and took her mother's place at court. Mumtaz Mahal's personal fortune (valued at 10 million rupees) was divided by Shah Jahan between Jahanara Begum, who received half, and the rest of her surviving children. Burhanpur was never intended by her husband as his wife's final resting spot. As a result, her body was disinterred in December 1631 and transported in a golden casket escorted by her son Shah Shuja, the deceased empress's head lady-in-waiting, and the distinguished courtier Wazir Khan, back to Agra. There, it was interred in a small building on the banks of the Yamuna River. Shah Jahan stayed behind in Burhanpur to conclude the military campaign that had originally brought him to the region. While there, he began planning the design and construction of a suitable mausoleum and funerary garden in Agra for his wife. It was a task that would take 22 years to complete, the Taj Mahal. Taj Mahal The Taj Mahal was commissioned by Shah Jahan to be built as a mausoleum for Mumtaz Mahal. It is seen as an embodiment of undying love and marital devotion. English poet Sir Edwin Arnold describes it as "Not a piece of architecture, as other buildings are, but the proud passion of an emperor's love wrought in living stones." The beauty of the monument is also taken as a representation of Mumtaz Mahal's beauty and this association leads many to describe the Taj Mahal as feminine. Since Muslim tradition forbids elaborate decorations on graves, the bodies of Mumtaz and Shah Jahan are placed in a relatively plain crypt beneath the inner chamber with their faces turned to the right and towards Mecca. The Ninety Nine Names of God are found as calligraphic inscriptions on the sides of the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal in the crypt including, "O Noble, O Magnificent, O Majestic, O Unique, O Eternal, O Glorious…". There are many theories about the origin of the name of this tomb and one of them suggests that 'Taj' is an abbreviation of the name Mumtaz. European travelers, such as François Bernier, who observed its construction, were among the first to call it the Taj Mahal. Since they are unlikely to have come up with the name, they might have picked it up from the locals of Agra who called the Empress 'Taj Mahal' and thought the tomb was named after her and the name began to be used interchangeably, but no firm evidence suggests this. Shah Jahan had not intended to entomb another person in the Taj Mahal; however, Aurangzeb had Shah Jahan buried next to the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal rather than build a separate tomb for his father. This is evident from the asymmetrical placement of Shah Jahan's grave on one side of his wife's grave which is in the centre. In popular culture Astronomy A crater was named in her honour on asteroid 433 Eros, along with another one after her husband. A crater on the planet Venus is named after her. Literature A cat named after Mumtaz Mahal ("Princess Arjumand") plays a major role in Connie Willis's 1997 novel To Say Nothing of the Dog. Arjumand Banu (Mumtaz Mahal) is a principal character in Indu Sundaresan's novel The Feast of Roses (2003) and its sequel, Shadow Princess (2010), begins with her death. Mumtaz Mahal is a main character in Sonja Chandrachud's novel Trouble at the Taj (2011). She appears in the book as a ghost. In John Shors' novel Beneath a Marble Sky (2013), Mahal's daughter, Princess Jahanara, tells the extraordinary story of how the Taj Mahal came to be, describing her own life as an agent in its creation and as a witness to the fateful events surrounding its completion. Films Mumtaz Mahal is a 1926 Indian silent film by Homi Master. Actress Enakshi Rama Rau played the role of Mumtaz Mahal in Shiraz (1928). Mumtaz Mahal, a 1944 Indian film was based on her life. Actress Suraiya played the role of young Mumtaz Mahal in Nanubhai Vakil's film Taj Mahal (1941). Mumtaz Mahal was portrayed by actress Nasreen in Abdul Rashid Kardar's film Shahjehan (1946). Mumtaz Mahal is a 1957 Indian Hindi-language drama film by Ram Daryani, starring Veena in the titular role. Bina Rai portrayed Mumtaz Mahal in M. Sadiq's film Taj Mahal (1963). Shahzadi Mumtaz, an Indian film starring Asokan and Shakuntala released in 1977. Purnima Patwardhan portrayed her role in the 2003 Indian historical drama film, Taj Mahal: A Monument of Love. Sonya Jehan portrayed Mumtaz Mahal in Akbar Khan's film Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story (2005). Other Mumtaz Mahal was the inspiration behind the popular Guerlain perfume Shalimar (1921). Issue Ancestry References Bibliography External links Mumtaz Mahal 1593 births 1631 deaths Deaths in childbirth Indian Shia Muslims People from Agra Taj Mahal 16th-century Indian women 16th-century Indian people 17th-century Indian women 17th-century Indian people 16th-century Iranian people 17th-century Iranian people Indian people of Iranian descent Wives of Shah Jahan
false
[ "The A-Z Guide to Arranged Marriage is a 2005 romantic comedy novel written by Rekha Waheed about a single Asian woman looking to settle using old traditions and new world savvy.\n\nPlot summary\nMaya Malik is a 28-year-old single lonely Asian girl who wants an attractive husband and a grand ostentatious wedding. Her biggest fear is the realisation that she has to find a husband from a diminishing stock of eligible bachelors.\n\nMaya endures family introductions, blind dates, with Internet meetings in a journey that takes her from London to New York to Dhaka, and then back to London again.\n\nDevelopment\nIn November 2005, Waheed told CyberSylhet.com, A-Z Guide to Arranged Marriage \"merges old world tradition with new world savvy\". In a February 2011 interview with The Asian Writer she said, she wrote the novel \"to dispel myths surrounding the custom and help readers distinguish between the virtues of arranged marriages and the illegality of forced marriages.\"\n\nRelease\nMonsoon Press secured A-Z Guide to Arranged Marriage following a reading at London's 2005 Spitalfield's Literary Event. The book was launched at Bangladesh Centre on 17 November 2005. The event was attended by luminaries from Penguin, MBA Literary Agency, Bloomsbury, Saqi Books, Rebecca Winfield Agency, East Side Books, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Local Government, and community organisations.\n\nCritical response\nRedhotcurry.com said \"The A-Z Guide to Arranged Marriage is a sassy story that unapologetically celebrates the realities of an age-old tradition for the new generation... The book is a contemporary, witty and proud representation of the controversial topic that has already created considerable interest... The A-Z Guide to Arranged Marriage reflects the splendid spirit of Asian traditions that has mass appeal. Helen Fraser, Managing Director of Penguin (UK) called the novel \"witty and charming.\"\n\nSequel\nAs a result of the success of this novel, Little Black Dress asked Waheed to write sequel My Bollywood Wedding, which was published in 2010.\n\nSee also\nArranged marriage in the Indian subcontinent\nBritish Asian\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nThe A-Z Guide to Arranged Marriage on Google Books\n\n2005 British novels\nBengali-language novels\nEnglish novels\nNovels by Rekha Waheed\nArranged marriage\nBangladeshi diaspora in the United Kingdom", "Theodegotha (5th-century – fl. 502) was a Visigoth queen consort by marriage to king Alaric II (494–507).\n\nShe was the daughter of Theodoric the Great. Her marriage was arranged as an alliance between the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, though it is disputed when it took place and therefore the exact reasons for the alliance. She was the mother of Amalaric.\n\nReferences \n\nVisigothic queens consort\n6th-century people of the Visigothic Kingdom\n5th-century women\n6th-century women" ]
[ "Mumtaz Mahal", "Marriage", "When did she marry?", "30 April 1612", "Who did she marry?", "Shah Jahan", "Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?", "Despite her frequent pregnancies, Mumtaz travelled with Shah Jahan's entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father.", "Did they have children?", "they had fourteen children together (eight sons and six daughters), seven of whom died at birth or at a very young age.", "Was this an arranged marriage?", "Mumtaz Mahal was betrothed to Shah Jahan around 30 January 1607, when she was 14 years old at the time and he was 15." ]
C_169ee9f3b1a14e0fa0a232da507ecea9_1
Did they divorce?
6
Did Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan divorce?
Mumtaz Mahal
Mumtaz Mahal was betrothed to Shah Jahan around 30 January 1607, when she was 14 years old at the time and he was 15. They were, however, married five years after the year of their betrothal on 30 April 1612 in Agra. The marriage was a love-match. After their wedding celebrations, Shah Jahan, "finding her in appearance and character elect among all the women of the time", gave her the title "Mumtaz Mahal" Begum ("the Exalted One of the Palace"). During the intervening years between their betrothal and marriage, Shah Jahan had gotten married to his first wife, Princess Kandahari Begum in 1609 and in 1617, after marrying Mumtaz, took a third wife, Izz-un-Nissa Begum (titled Akbarabadi Mahal), the daughter of a prominent Mughal courtier. According to the official court historians, both the marriages were political alliances. By all accounts, Shah Jahan was so taken with Mumtaz that he showed little interest in exercising his polygamous rights with his two other wives, other than dutifully siring a child with each. According to the official court chronicler, Motamid Khan, as recorded in his Iqbal Namah-e-Jahangiri, the relationship with his other wives "had nothing more than the status of marriage. The intimacy, deep affection, attention and favour which Shah Jahan had for Mumtaz exceeded what he felt for his other wives." Likewise, Shah Jahan's historian Inayat Khan commented that 'his whole delight was centered on this illustrious lady [Mumtaz], to such an extent that he did not feel towards the others [i.e. his other wives] one-thousandth part of the affection that he did for her.' Mumtaz had a loving marriage with Shah Jahan. Even during her lifetime, poets would extol her beauty, grace, and compassion. Despite her frequent pregnancies, Mumtaz travelled with Shah Jahan's entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father. She was his constant companion and trusted confidant, leading court historians to go to unheard lengths to document the intimate and erotic relationship the couple enjoyed. In their nineteen years of marriage, they had fourteen children together (eight sons and six daughters), seven of whom died at birth or at a very young age. CANNOTANSWER
Mumtaz had a loving marriage with Shah Jahan.
Mumtaz Mahal (, ), born Arjumand Banu Begum (; 27 April 1593 – 17 June 1631) was the empress consort of the Mughal Empire from 19 January 1628 to 17 June 1631 as the chief consort of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. The Taj Mahal in Agra, often cited as one of the Wonders of the World, was commissioned by her husband to act as her tomb. Mumtaz Mahal was born Arjumand Banu Begum in Agra to a family of Persian nobility. She was the daughter of Abu'l-Hasan Asaf Khan, a wealthy Persian noble who held high office in the Mughal Empire, and the niece of Empress Nur Jahan, the chief wife of Emperor Jahangir and the power behind the emperor. She was married at the age of 19 on 10 May 1612 or 16 June 1612 to Prince Khurram, later known by his regnal name Shah Jahan, who conferred upon her the title "Mumtaz Mahal" (Persian: the exalted one of the palace). Although betrothed to Shah Jahan since 1607, she ultimately became his second wife in 1612. Mumtaz and her husband had 14 children, including Jahanara Begum (Shah Jahan's favourite daughter), and the Crown prince Dara Shikoh, the heir-apparent, anointed by his father, who temporarily succeeded him, until deposed by Mumtaz Mahal's sixth child, Aurangzeb, who ultimately succeeded his father as the sixth Mughal emperor in 1658. Mumtaz Mahal died in 1631 in Burhanpur, Deccan (present-day Madhya Pradesh), during the birth of her 14th child, a daughter named Gauhar Ara Begum. Shah Jahan had the Taj Mahal built as a tomb for her, which is considered to be a monument of undying love. As with other Mughal royal ladies, no contemporary likenesses of her are accepted, but numerous imagined portraits were created from the 19th century onwards. She is wrongly referred to as "Taj Bibi" which was the corrupted of her title Mumtaz and was in reality the title of her mother-in-law, Jagat Gosain. Family and early life Mumtaz Mahal was born as Arjumand Banu on 27 April 1593 in Agra to Abu'l-Hasan Asaf Khan and his wife Diwanji Begum, the daughter of a Persian noble, Khwaja Ghias-ud-din of Qazvin. Asaf Khan was a wealthy Persian noble who held high office in the Mughal Empire. His family had come to India impoverished in 1577, when his father Mirza Ghias Beg (popularly known by his title of I'timad-ud-Daulah), was taken into the service of Emperor Akbar in Agra. Asaf Khan was also the older brother of Empress Nur Jahan, making Mumtaz a niece, and later, a step daughter-in-law of Nur Jahan, the chief consort of Emperor Jahangir, Shah Jahan's father. Her older sister, Parwar Khanum, married Sheikh Farid, the son of Nawab Qutubuddin Koka, the governor of Badaun, who was also the emperor Jahangir's foster brother. Mumtaz also had a brother, Shaista Khan, who served as the governor of Bengal and various other provinces in the empire during Shah Jahan's reign. Mumtaz was remarkable in the field of learning and was a talented and cultured lady. She was well-versed in Arabic and Persian languages and could compose poems in the latter. She was reputed to have a combination of modesty and candor, a woman warmly straightforward yet bemusedly self-possessed. Early in adolescence, she attracted the attention of important nobles of the realm. Jahangir must have heard about her, since he readily consented to Shah Jahan's engagement with her. Marriage Mumtaz Mahal was betrothed to Shah Jahan around 5 April 1607, when she was 14 years old at the time and he was 15. They were, however, married five years after the year of their betrothal on 10 May 1612 or 7 June 1612 in Agra. After their wedding celebrations, Shah Jahan, "finding her in appearance and character elect among all the women of the time", gave her the title "Mumtaz Mahal" Begum ("the Exalted One of the Palace"). During the intervening years between their betrothal and marriage, Shah Jahan had married his first wife, Princess Kandahari Begum in 1610 and in 1617, after marrying Mumtaz, took a third wife, Izz-un-Nissa Begum (titled Akbarabadi Mahal), the daughter of a prominent Mughal courtier. According to the official court historians, both the marriages were political alliances. By all accounts, Shah Jahan was so taken with Mumtaz that he showed little interest in exercising his polygamous rights with his two other wives, other than dutifully siring a child with each. According to the official court chronicler, Motamid Khan, as recorded in his Iqbal Namah-e-Jahangiri, the relationship with his other wives "had nothing more than the status of marriage. The intimacy, deep affection, attention and favour which Shah Jahan had for Mumtaz exceeded what he felt for his other wives." Likewise, Shah Jahan's historian Inayat Khan commented that 'his whole delight was centered on this illustrious lady [Mumtaz], to such an extent that he did not feel towards the others [i.e. his other wives] one-thousandth part of the affection that he did for her.' Mumtaz had a loving marriage with Shah Jahan. Even during her lifetime, poets would extol her beauty, grace, and compassion. Despite her frequent pregnancies, Mumtaz travelled with Shah Jahan's entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father. She was his constant companion and trusted confidant, leading court historians to go to unheard lengths to document the intimate and erotic relationship the couple enjoyed. In their 19 years of marriage, they had 14 children together (eight sons and six daughters), seven of whom died at birth or at a very young age. Mughal empress Upon his accession to the throne in 1628 after subduing his half brother, Shahryar Mirza, Shah Jahan designated Mumtaz as his chief empress with the title of Padshah Begum '(Lady Emperor)', 'Malika-i-Jahan' ("Queen of the World") and 'Malika-uz-Zamani' ("Queen of the Age") and 'Malika-i-hindustan' ("Queen of the Hindustan"). Mumtaz's tenure as empress was brief, spanning a period of only three years due to her untimely death, nonetheless, Shah Jahan bestowed her with luxuries that no other empress was given before her. She was also the only wife of Shah Jahan to be addressed as " Hazrat ". For example, no other empress' residence was as decorated as Khas Mahal (part of Agra Fort), where Mumtaz lived with Shah Jahan. It was decorated with pure gold and precious stones and had rose-water fountains of its own. Each wife of the Mughal emperor was given a regular monthly allowance for her gastos (housekeeping or travelling expenses); the highest such allowance on record is the one million rupees per year given to Mumtaz Mahal by Shah Jahan. Apart from this income, he gave her a lot of high-income lands and properties. Shah Jahan consulted Mumtaz in both private matters and the affairs of the state, and she served as his close confidant and trusted adviser. Whenever an official sent matters or the people made a request, he first reported the matter to the Empress and made the decision with the knowledge of understanding and consultation with her. At her intercession, he forgave enemies or commuted death sentences. His trust in her was so great that he gave her the highest honour of the land – his imperial seal, the Mehr Uzaz, which validated imperial decrees. Mumtaz was portrayed as having no aspirations to political power, in contrast to her aunt, Empress Nur Jahan, the chief consort of Emperor Jahangir, who had wielded considerable influence in the previous reign. A uncontested and great influence on him, often intervening on behalf of the poor and destitute, she also enjoyed watching elephant and combat fights performed for the court. Mumtaz also patronized a number of poets, scholars and other talented persons. A noted Sanskrit poet, Vansidhara Mishra, was the Empress's favourite. On the recommendation of her principal lady-in-waiting, Sati-un-Nissa, Mumtaz Mahal provided pensions and donations to the daughters of poor scholars, theologians, and pious men. It was quite common for women of noble birth to commission architecture in the Mughal Empire, so Mumtaz devoted some time to a riverside garden in Agra, which is now known as Zahara Bagh. It is the only architectural foundation which can be connected to her patronage. Death and aftermath Mumtaz Mahal died from postpartum hemorrhage in Burhanpur on 17 June 1631 while giving birth to her 14th child, after a prolonged labor around 30 hours. She had been accompanying her husband while he was fighting a campaign in the Deccan Plateau. Her body was temporarily buried at Burhanpur in a walled pleasure garden known as Zainabad originally constructed by Shah Jahan's uncle Daniyal on the bank of the Tapti River. The contemporary court chroniclers paid an unusual amount of attention to Mumtaz Mahal's death and Shah Jahan's grief at her demise. In the immediate aftermath of his bereavement, the emperor was reportedly inconsolable. Apparently, after her death, he went into secluded mourning for a year. When he appeared again, his hair had turned white, his back was bent, and his face worn. Mumtaz's eldest daughter, Jahanara Begum, gradually brought her father out of grief and took her mother's place at court. Mumtaz Mahal's personal fortune (valued at 10 million rupees) was divided by Shah Jahan between Jahanara Begum, who received half, and the rest of her surviving children. Burhanpur was never intended by her husband as his wife's final resting spot. As a result, her body was disinterred in December 1631 and transported in a golden casket escorted by her son Shah Shuja, the deceased empress's head lady-in-waiting, and the distinguished courtier Wazir Khan, back to Agra. There, it was interred in a small building on the banks of the Yamuna River. Shah Jahan stayed behind in Burhanpur to conclude the military campaign that had originally brought him to the region. While there, he began planning the design and construction of a suitable mausoleum and funerary garden in Agra for his wife. It was a task that would take 22 years to complete, the Taj Mahal. Taj Mahal The Taj Mahal was commissioned by Shah Jahan to be built as a mausoleum for Mumtaz Mahal. It is seen as an embodiment of undying love and marital devotion. English poet Sir Edwin Arnold describes it as "Not a piece of architecture, as other buildings are, but the proud passion of an emperor's love wrought in living stones." The beauty of the monument is also taken as a representation of Mumtaz Mahal's beauty and this association leads many to describe the Taj Mahal as feminine. Since Muslim tradition forbids elaborate decorations on graves, the bodies of Mumtaz and Shah Jahan are placed in a relatively plain crypt beneath the inner chamber with their faces turned to the right and towards Mecca. The Ninety Nine Names of God are found as calligraphic inscriptions on the sides of the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal in the crypt including, "O Noble, O Magnificent, O Majestic, O Unique, O Eternal, O Glorious…". There are many theories about the origin of the name of this tomb and one of them suggests that 'Taj' is an abbreviation of the name Mumtaz. European travelers, such as François Bernier, who observed its construction, were among the first to call it the Taj Mahal. Since they are unlikely to have come up with the name, they might have picked it up from the locals of Agra who called the Empress 'Taj Mahal' and thought the tomb was named after her and the name began to be used interchangeably, but no firm evidence suggests this. Shah Jahan had not intended to entomb another person in the Taj Mahal; however, Aurangzeb had Shah Jahan buried next to the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal rather than build a separate tomb for his father. This is evident from the asymmetrical placement of Shah Jahan's grave on one side of his wife's grave which is in the centre. In popular culture Astronomy A crater was named in her honour on asteroid 433 Eros, along with another one after her husband. A crater on the planet Venus is named after her. Literature A cat named after Mumtaz Mahal ("Princess Arjumand") plays a major role in Connie Willis's 1997 novel To Say Nothing of the Dog. Arjumand Banu (Mumtaz Mahal) is a principal character in Indu Sundaresan's novel The Feast of Roses (2003) and its sequel, Shadow Princess (2010), begins with her death. Mumtaz Mahal is a main character in Sonja Chandrachud's novel Trouble at the Taj (2011). She appears in the book as a ghost. In John Shors' novel Beneath a Marble Sky (2013), Mahal's daughter, Princess Jahanara, tells the extraordinary story of how the Taj Mahal came to be, describing her own life as an agent in its creation and as a witness to the fateful events surrounding its completion. Films Mumtaz Mahal is a 1926 Indian silent film by Homi Master. Actress Enakshi Rama Rau played the role of Mumtaz Mahal in Shiraz (1928). Mumtaz Mahal, a 1944 Indian film was based on her life. Actress Suraiya played the role of young Mumtaz Mahal in Nanubhai Vakil's film Taj Mahal (1941). Mumtaz Mahal was portrayed by actress Nasreen in Abdul Rashid Kardar's film Shahjehan (1946). Mumtaz Mahal is a 1957 Indian Hindi-language drama film by Ram Daryani, starring Veena in the titular role. Bina Rai portrayed Mumtaz Mahal in M. Sadiq's film Taj Mahal (1963). Shahzadi Mumtaz, an Indian film starring Asokan and Shakuntala released in 1977. Purnima Patwardhan portrayed her role in the 2003 Indian historical drama film, Taj Mahal: A Monument of Love. Sonya Jehan portrayed Mumtaz Mahal in Akbar Khan's film Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story (2005). Other Mumtaz Mahal was the inspiration behind the popular Guerlain perfume Shalimar (1921). Issue Ancestry References Bibliography External links Mumtaz Mahal 1593 births 1631 deaths Deaths in childbirth Indian Shia Muslims People from Agra Taj Mahal 16th-century Indian women 16th-century Indian people 17th-century Indian women 17th-century Indian people 16th-century Iranian people 17th-century Iranian people Indian people of Iranian descent Wives of Shah Jahan
true
[ "The effects associated with divorce affect the couple’s children in both the short and the long term. After divorce the couple often experience effects including, decreased levels of happiness, change in economic status, and emotional problems. The effects on children include academic, behavioral, and psychological problems. Studies suggest that children from divorced families are more likely to exhibit such behavioral issues than those from non-divorced families.\n\nEffect on children \nA longitudinal study by Judith Wallerstein reports long-term negative effects of divorce on children.\n\nLinda Waite analyzed the relation between marriage, divorce and happiness using the National Survey of Family and Households and found that unhappily married families who had divorced were no happier than those who had stayed together. One broad-based study also shows that people have an easier time recovering after the death of a parent as opposed to a divorce. This study reported that children who lose a parent are usually able to attain the same level of happiness that they had before the death, whereas children of divorced parents often are not able to attain the same level of happiness that they had before the divorce.\n\nA child affected by divorce at an early age will show effects later in life. They may make premature transitions to adulthood such as leave home or parent their own child early. Recent authors have argued that a major cost to children comes long after: when they attempt to form stable marriages themselves. Parental divorce leads a child to have lower trust in future relationships. Compared with children of always married parents, children of divorced parents have more positive attitudes towards divorce and less favorable attitudes towards marriage.\n\nThe children of divorced parents have also been reported more likely to have behavioral problems than children of married parents and are more likely to suffer abuse than children in intact families.\n\nIn contrast to the usual negative views on marriage by children affected by it, Constance Ahrons, in We're Still Family: What Grown Children Have to Say About Their Parents' Divorce, interviewed 98 divorced families' children for numerous subjects found a few of the children saying, \"I saw some of the things my parents did and know not to do that in my marriage and see the way they treated each other and know not to do that to my spouse and my children. I know [the divorce] has made me more committed to my husband and my children.\" In the book For Better or For Worse: Divorce Reconsidered, Mavis Hetherington reports that not all kids fare so badly, and that divorce can actually help children living in high-conflict homes such as those with domestic violence. A peaceful divorce has less of an impact on children than a contested divorce.\n\nContrary to some of the previous research, those with divorced parents were no more likely than those from intact families to regard divorce positively or to see it as an easy way of solving the problem of a failing marriage. Members of both groups felt that divorce should be avoided, but that it was also a necessary option when a relationship could not be rescued.\n\nA 2015 article updated and confirmed the findings in a 2002 article in Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review. Both articles discuss a variety of health consequences for children of divorced parents. Studies have claimed that people who have been in divorced families have higher rates of alcoholism and other substance abuse compared to those who have never been divorced. Robert H. Coombs, Professor of Behavioral Sciences at UCLA, reviewed over 130 studies measuring how marital status affects personal well-being. Researchers have also shown that children of divorced or separated parents:\n\n Have higher rates of clinical depression – Family disruption and low socioeconomic status in early childhood increase the long-term risk for major depression.\n Seek formal psychiatric care at higher rates.\n In the case of men, are more likely to die by suicide and have lower life expectancies.\n Acute infectious diseases, digestive illnesses, parasitic diseases, respiratory illnesses, and severe injuries.\n Cancer – Married cancer patients are also more likely to recover than divorced ones.\n Stroke. \n Heart problems. \n Rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis. \n Increased risk of arthritis for children later in life.\nLower levels of the hormone oxytocin in adulthood.\n\nUncontested divorce \nAn uncontested divorce is a divorce decree that neither party is fighting. Over 40% of American children will experience parental divorce or separation during their childhood. In a study of the effect of relocation after a divorce, researchers found that parents relocating far away from each other (with either both moving or one moving) has a long-term effect on children. Researchers found major differences in divorced families in which one parent moved away from the child; the children (as college students) received less financial support from their parents compared with divorced families in which neither parent moved. The children also felt more distress related to the divorce and did not feel a sense of emotional support from their parents. A parental divorce influences a child’s behavior in a negative manner that leads to anger, frustration, and depression. This negative behavior is cast outward in their academic and personal life. Relocating is defined as when a parent moves more than an hour away from their children. Children of divorces where both parents stayed close together did not have these negative effects.\n\nSee also\n Divorce\n Fear of commitment\n Cost of raising a child\n Single person\n\nReferences \n\nDivorce", "A referendum on divorce was held in Malta on 28 May 2011. Voters were asked whether they approved of a new law to introduce allowing divorces, as at that time, Malta was one of only three countries in the world (along with the Philippines and the Vatican City) in which divorce was not permitted. The proposal was approved by 53% of voters, resulting in a law allowing divorce under certain conditions being enacted later in the year.\n\nBackground\nA private member's bill was tabled in the House of Representatives by Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, a Nationalist Member of Parliament. The text of the bill, which had been changed twice, did not provide for the holding of a referendum. This was eventually provided for through a separate Parliamentary resolution under the Referenda Act authorising a facultative, non-binding referendum to be held.\n\nThe Catholic Church in Malta encouraged a \"no\" vote through a pastoral letter issued on the Sunday before the referendum day. Complaints were made that religious pressure was being brought to bear upon voters. Around 8 per cent of marriages in Malta are already annulled by the Catholic Church.\n\nQuestion\nBallot papers had both English and Maltese questions printed on them. The English version of the question put to voters was as follows:\n\nThe question, which resembled the proposal approved by Irish voters in the Irish divorce referendum of 1995, was somewhat controversial. It was claimed that it did not reflect the content of the private member's bill.\n\nResults\n\nAlthough for the purposes of the referendum the whole country was regarded to be a single constituency - taking into account electoral districts - in only three out of the thirteen did the \"no\" vote reach a majority.\n\nAftermath\nDiscussion on the divorce bill started in earnest soon after the result was announced. In the second and third readings a number of MPs still voted against the bill. Parliament approved the law on 25 July. The law came into effect on 1 October.\n\nSee also \nDivorce in Malta\n\nReferences\n\n2011 in Malta\nMalta\nReferendums in Malta\nDivorce law\nMaltese law\nHistory of Malta\nMarriage reform\nMay 2011 events in Europe\nDivorce referendums" ]
[ "Mumtaz Mahal", "Marriage", "When did she marry?", "30 April 1612", "Who did she marry?", "Shah Jahan", "Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?", "Despite her frequent pregnancies, Mumtaz travelled with Shah Jahan's entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father.", "Did they have children?", "they had fourteen children together (eight sons and six daughters), seven of whom died at birth or at a very young age.", "Was this an arranged marriage?", "Mumtaz Mahal was betrothed to Shah Jahan around 30 January 1607, when she was 14 years old at the time and he was 15.", "Did they divorce?", "Mumtaz had a loving marriage with Shah Jahan." ]
C_169ee9f3b1a14e0fa0a232da507ecea9_1
Where did they live?
7
Where did Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan live?
Mumtaz Mahal
Mumtaz Mahal was betrothed to Shah Jahan around 30 January 1607, when she was 14 years old at the time and he was 15. They were, however, married five years after the year of their betrothal on 30 April 1612 in Agra. The marriage was a love-match. After their wedding celebrations, Shah Jahan, "finding her in appearance and character elect among all the women of the time", gave her the title "Mumtaz Mahal" Begum ("the Exalted One of the Palace"). During the intervening years between their betrothal and marriage, Shah Jahan had gotten married to his first wife, Princess Kandahari Begum in 1609 and in 1617, after marrying Mumtaz, took a third wife, Izz-un-Nissa Begum (titled Akbarabadi Mahal), the daughter of a prominent Mughal courtier. According to the official court historians, both the marriages were political alliances. By all accounts, Shah Jahan was so taken with Mumtaz that he showed little interest in exercising his polygamous rights with his two other wives, other than dutifully siring a child with each. According to the official court chronicler, Motamid Khan, as recorded in his Iqbal Namah-e-Jahangiri, the relationship with his other wives "had nothing more than the status of marriage. The intimacy, deep affection, attention and favour which Shah Jahan had for Mumtaz exceeded what he felt for his other wives." Likewise, Shah Jahan's historian Inayat Khan commented that 'his whole delight was centered on this illustrious lady [Mumtaz], to such an extent that he did not feel towards the others [i.e. his other wives] one-thousandth part of the affection that he did for her.' Mumtaz had a loving marriage with Shah Jahan. Even during her lifetime, poets would extol her beauty, grace, and compassion. Despite her frequent pregnancies, Mumtaz travelled with Shah Jahan's entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father. She was his constant companion and trusted confidant, leading court historians to go to unheard lengths to document the intimate and erotic relationship the couple enjoyed. In their nineteen years of marriage, they had fourteen children together (eight sons and six daughters), seven of whom died at birth or at a very young age. CANNOTANSWER
in Agra.
Mumtaz Mahal (, ), born Arjumand Banu Begum (; 27 April 1593 – 17 June 1631) was the empress consort of the Mughal Empire from 19 January 1628 to 17 June 1631 as the chief consort of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. The Taj Mahal in Agra, often cited as one of the Wonders of the World, was commissioned by her husband to act as her tomb. Mumtaz Mahal was born Arjumand Banu Begum in Agra to a family of Persian nobility. She was the daughter of Abu'l-Hasan Asaf Khan, a wealthy Persian noble who held high office in the Mughal Empire, and the niece of Empress Nur Jahan, the chief wife of Emperor Jahangir and the power behind the emperor. She was married at the age of 19 on 10 May 1612 or 16 June 1612 to Prince Khurram, later known by his regnal name Shah Jahan, who conferred upon her the title "Mumtaz Mahal" (Persian: the exalted one of the palace). Although betrothed to Shah Jahan since 1607, she ultimately became his second wife in 1612. Mumtaz and her husband had 14 children, including Jahanara Begum (Shah Jahan's favourite daughter), and the Crown prince Dara Shikoh, the heir-apparent, anointed by his father, who temporarily succeeded him, until deposed by Mumtaz Mahal's sixth child, Aurangzeb, who ultimately succeeded his father as the sixth Mughal emperor in 1658. Mumtaz Mahal died in 1631 in Burhanpur, Deccan (present-day Madhya Pradesh), during the birth of her 14th child, a daughter named Gauhar Ara Begum. Shah Jahan had the Taj Mahal built as a tomb for her, which is considered to be a monument of undying love. As with other Mughal royal ladies, no contemporary likenesses of her are accepted, but numerous imagined portraits were created from the 19th century onwards. She is wrongly referred to as "Taj Bibi" which was the corrupted of her title Mumtaz and was in reality the title of her mother-in-law, Jagat Gosain. Family and early life Mumtaz Mahal was born as Arjumand Banu on 27 April 1593 in Agra to Abu'l-Hasan Asaf Khan and his wife Diwanji Begum, the daughter of a Persian noble, Khwaja Ghias-ud-din of Qazvin. Asaf Khan was a wealthy Persian noble who held high office in the Mughal Empire. His family had come to India impoverished in 1577, when his father Mirza Ghias Beg (popularly known by his title of I'timad-ud-Daulah), was taken into the service of Emperor Akbar in Agra. Asaf Khan was also the older brother of Empress Nur Jahan, making Mumtaz a niece, and later, a step daughter-in-law of Nur Jahan, the chief consort of Emperor Jahangir, Shah Jahan's father. Her older sister, Parwar Khanum, married Sheikh Farid, the son of Nawab Qutubuddin Koka, the governor of Badaun, who was also the emperor Jahangir's foster brother. Mumtaz also had a brother, Shaista Khan, who served as the governor of Bengal and various other provinces in the empire during Shah Jahan's reign. Mumtaz was remarkable in the field of learning and was a talented and cultured lady. She was well-versed in Arabic and Persian languages and could compose poems in the latter. She was reputed to have a combination of modesty and candor, a woman warmly straightforward yet bemusedly self-possessed. Early in adolescence, she attracted the attention of important nobles of the realm. Jahangir must have heard about her, since he readily consented to Shah Jahan's engagement with her. Marriage Mumtaz Mahal was betrothed to Shah Jahan around 5 April 1607, when she was 14 years old at the time and he was 15. They were, however, married five years after the year of their betrothal on 10 May 1612 or 7 June 1612 in Agra. After their wedding celebrations, Shah Jahan, "finding her in appearance and character elect among all the women of the time", gave her the title "Mumtaz Mahal" Begum ("the Exalted One of the Palace"). During the intervening years between their betrothal and marriage, Shah Jahan had married his first wife, Princess Kandahari Begum in 1610 and in 1617, after marrying Mumtaz, took a third wife, Izz-un-Nissa Begum (titled Akbarabadi Mahal), the daughter of a prominent Mughal courtier. According to the official court historians, both the marriages were political alliances. By all accounts, Shah Jahan was so taken with Mumtaz that he showed little interest in exercising his polygamous rights with his two other wives, other than dutifully siring a child with each. According to the official court chronicler, Motamid Khan, as recorded in his Iqbal Namah-e-Jahangiri, the relationship with his other wives "had nothing more than the status of marriage. The intimacy, deep affection, attention and favour which Shah Jahan had for Mumtaz exceeded what he felt for his other wives." Likewise, Shah Jahan's historian Inayat Khan commented that 'his whole delight was centered on this illustrious lady [Mumtaz], to such an extent that he did not feel towards the others [i.e. his other wives] one-thousandth part of the affection that he did for her.' Mumtaz had a loving marriage with Shah Jahan. Even during her lifetime, poets would extol her beauty, grace, and compassion. Despite her frequent pregnancies, Mumtaz travelled with Shah Jahan's entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father. She was his constant companion and trusted confidant, leading court historians to go to unheard lengths to document the intimate and erotic relationship the couple enjoyed. In their 19 years of marriage, they had 14 children together (eight sons and six daughters), seven of whom died at birth or at a very young age. Mughal empress Upon his accession to the throne in 1628 after subduing his half brother, Shahryar Mirza, Shah Jahan designated Mumtaz as his chief empress with the title of Padshah Begum '(Lady Emperor)', 'Malika-i-Jahan' ("Queen of the World") and 'Malika-uz-Zamani' ("Queen of the Age") and 'Malika-i-hindustan' ("Queen of the Hindustan"). Mumtaz's tenure as empress was brief, spanning a period of only three years due to her untimely death, nonetheless, Shah Jahan bestowed her with luxuries that no other empress was given before her. She was also the only wife of Shah Jahan to be addressed as " Hazrat ". For example, no other empress' residence was as decorated as Khas Mahal (part of Agra Fort), where Mumtaz lived with Shah Jahan. It was decorated with pure gold and precious stones and had rose-water fountains of its own. Each wife of the Mughal emperor was given a regular monthly allowance for her gastos (housekeeping or travelling expenses); the highest such allowance on record is the one million rupees per year given to Mumtaz Mahal by Shah Jahan. Apart from this income, he gave her a lot of high-income lands and properties. Shah Jahan consulted Mumtaz in both private matters and the affairs of the state, and she served as his close confidant and trusted adviser. Whenever an official sent matters or the people made a request, he first reported the matter to the Empress and made the decision with the knowledge of understanding and consultation with her. At her intercession, he forgave enemies or commuted death sentences. His trust in her was so great that he gave her the highest honour of the land – his imperial seal, the Mehr Uzaz, which validated imperial decrees. Mumtaz was portrayed as having no aspirations to political power, in contrast to her aunt, Empress Nur Jahan, the chief consort of Emperor Jahangir, who had wielded considerable influence in the previous reign. A uncontested and great influence on him, often intervening on behalf of the poor and destitute, she also enjoyed watching elephant and combat fights performed for the court. Mumtaz also patronized a number of poets, scholars and other talented persons. A noted Sanskrit poet, Vansidhara Mishra, was the Empress's favourite. On the recommendation of her principal lady-in-waiting, Sati-un-Nissa, Mumtaz Mahal provided pensions and donations to the daughters of poor scholars, theologians, and pious men. It was quite common for women of noble birth to commission architecture in the Mughal Empire, so Mumtaz devoted some time to a riverside garden in Agra, which is now known as Zahara Bagh. It is the only architectural foundation which can be connected to her patronage. Death and aftermath Mumtaz Mahal died from postpartum hemorrhage in Burhanpur on 17 June 1631 while giving birth to her 14th child, after a prolonged labor around 30 hours. She had been accompanying her husband while he was fighting a campaign in the Deccan Plateau. Her body was temporarily buried at Burhanpur in a walled pleasure garden known as Zainabad originally constructed by Shah Jahan's uncle Daniyal on the bank of the Tapti River. The contemporary court chroniclers paid an unusual amount of attention to Mumtaz Mahal's death and Shah Jahan's grief at her demise. In the immediate aftermath of his bereavement, the emperor was reportedly inconsolable. Apparently, after her death, he went into secluded mourning for a year. When he appeared again, his hair had turned white, his back was bent, and his face worn. Mumtaz's eldest daughter, Jahanara Begum, gradually brought her father out of grief and took her mother's place at court. Mumtaz Mahal's personal fortune (valued at 10 million rupees) was divided by Shah Jahan between Jahanara Begum, who received half, and the rest of her surviving children. Burhanpur was never intended by her husband as his wife's final resting spot. As a result, her body was disinterred in December 1631 and transported in a golden casket escorted by her son Shah Shuja, the deceased empress's head lady-in-waiting, and the distinguished courtier Wazir Khan, back to Agra. There, it was interred in a small building on the banks of the Yamuna River. Shah Jahan stayed behind in Burhanpur to conclude the military campaign that had originally brought him to the region. While there, he began planning the design and construction of a suitable mausoleum and funerary garden in Agra for his wife. It was a task that would take 22 years to complete, the Taj Mahal. Taj Mahal The Taj Mahal was commissioned by Shah Jahan to be built as a mausoleum for Mumtaz Mahal. It is seen as an embodiment of undying love and marital devotion. English poet Sir Edwin Arnold describes it as "Not a piece of architecture, as other buildings are, but the proud passion of an emperor's love wrought in living stones." The beauty of the monument is also taken as a representation of Mumtaz Mahal's beauty and this association leads many to describe the Taj Mahal as feminine. Since Muslim tradition forbids elaborate decorations on graves, the bodies of Mumtaz and Shah Jahan are placed in a relatively plain crypt beneath the inner chamber with their faces turned to the right and towards Mecca. The Ninety Nine Names of God are found as calligraphic inscriptions on the sides of the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal in the crypt including, "O Noble, O Magnificent, O Majestic, O Unique, O Eternal, O Glorious…". There are many theories about the origin of the name of this tomb and one of them suggests that 'Taj' is an abbreviation of the name Mumtaz. European travelers, such as François Bernier, who observed its construction, were among the first to call it the Taj Mahal. Since they are unlikely to have come up with the name, they might have picked it up from the locals of Agra who called the Empress 'Taj Mahal' and thought the tomb was named after her and the name began to be used interchangeably, but no firm evidence suggests this. Shah Jahan had not intended to entomb another person in the Taj Mahal; however, Aurangzeb had Shah Jahan buried next to the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal rather than build a separate tomb for his father. This is evident from the asymmetrical placement of Shah Jahan's grave on one side of his wife's grave which is in the centre. In popular culture Astronomy A crater was named in her honour on asteroid 433 Eros, along with another one after her husband. A crater on the planet Venus is named after her. Literature A cat named after Mumtaz Mahal ("Princess Arjumand") plays a major role in Connie Willis's 1997 novel To Say Nothing of the Dog. Arjumand Banu (Mumtaz Mahal) is a principal character in Indu Sundaresan's novel The Feast of Roses (2003) and its sequel, Shadow Princess (2010), begins with her death. Mumtaz Mahal is a main character in Sonja Chandrachud's novel Trouble at the Taj (2011). She appears in the book as a ghost. In John Shors' novel Beneath a Marble Sky (2013), Mahal's daughter, Princess Jahanara, tells the extraordinary story of how the Taj Mahal came to be, describing her own life as an agent in its creation and as a witness to the fateful events surrounding its completion. Films Mumtaz Mahal is a 1926 Indian silent film by Homi Master. Actress Enakshi Rama Rau played the role of Mumtaz Mahal in Shiraz (1928). Mumtaz Mahal, a 1944 Indian film was based on her life. Actress Suraiya played the role of young Mumtaz Mahal in Nanubhai Vakil's film Taj Mahal (1941). Mumtaz Mahal was portrayed by actress Nasreen in Abdul Rashid Kardar's film Shahjehan (1946). Mumtaz Mahal is a 1957 Indian Hindi-language drama film by Ram Daryani, starring Veena in the titular role. Bina Rai portrayed Mumtaz Mahal in M. Sadiq's film Taj Mahal (1963). Shahzadi Mumtaz, an Indian film starring Asokan and Shakuntala released in 1977. Purnima Patwardhan portrayed her role in the 2003 Indian historical drama film, Taj Mahal: A Monument of Love. Sonya Jehan portrayed Mumtaz Mahal in Akbar Khan's film Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story (2005). Other Mumtaz Mahal was the inspiration behind the popular Guerlain perfume Shalimar (1921). Issue Ancestry References Bibliography External links Mumtaz Mahal 1593 births 1631 deaths Deaths in childbirth Indian Shia Muslims People from Agra Taj Mahal 16th-century Indian women 16th-century Indian people 17th-century Indian women 17th-century Indian people 16th-century Iranian people 17th-century Iranian people Indian people of Iranian descent Wives of Shah Jahan
true
[ "Sessions@AOL is the first live/digital compilation album by Linkin Park co-vocalist Mike Shinoda for his well-known hip-hop side project, Fort Minor. This was recorded in Studio A of the Capitol Studio in Los Angeles, California, and filmed on November 2, 2005. The album included the live versions of songs that were included in Fort Minor's first studio album, The Rising Tied, which was released on November 22, 2005. Due to its time length in the digital download version, it is considered an EP.\n\nLive performance\nThe live performance included two versions. The digital download version and the webcast version. The digital download version only included the audio live versions of the songs. But the webcast version included the video of the live performance of the song and in addition it had performances of \"It's Goin' Down\" and \"Where'd You Go\" with Holly Brook, an interview with Mike Shinoda, and Sessions @ AOL announcements by Mike. It is rumored that Fort Minor did a whole set to rehearse for the gig at the Universal Amphitheater in LA that month, but it is not confirmed. Eric Bobo from Cypress Hill came out and played his Latin drums on the song \"Believe Me\". After Fort Minor did \"There They Go\", they launched into \"It's Goin' Down\", and then Holly Brook came out and they practiced \"Where'd You Go\".\n\nNotes\nSome clips of \"Where'd You Go\" and \"Believe Me\" can be seen in interviews with Holly Brook and Bobo on the Fort Minor Militia website. There is a \"Behind the Scene's\" montage video on AOL.com that can be viewed that has part of \"It's Goin Down\" in it. The show was released through AOL as a part of its Sessions@AOL series. It came with a front cover and a back cover. The set list of the release was in a different order and did not include \"Where'd You Go\" or \"It's Goin' Down\".\n\niTunes\nThe live performances of the whole track list of the digital album is available on iTunes for purchase.\n\nTrack listing\n\nDigital download\n\nWebcast\n\nPersonnel\nPerformer \nFort Minor (Mike Shinoda, rap vocals throughout)\n\nAdditional Musicians\n Styles of Beyond (rap vocals on \"Remember the Name\" and \"Believe Me\")\n Eric Bobo (Latin drums on \"Believe Me\")\n Toy Soldier (drums)\n Los Angeles choir (backing vocals and strings)\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nFort Minor albums\n2006 live albums\n2006 video albums\nLive video albums", "Ike & Tina Turner's Festival of Live Performances is a live album released by Kent Records in January 1970. It was recorded during their stint at Kent in the mid-1960s.\n\nBackground \nAt the time of the recording Ike & Tina Turner were touring vigorously on the Chitlin Circuit. They already had a string of hits by 1962, and simultaneously they were establishing themselves as \"one of the most potent live acts on the R&B circuit.\" They released various live albums in the 1960s which did better on the charts than their studio albums. Opening for the Rolling Stones on their 1969 American tour helped sell the duo to a major market. After they achieved mainstream success, Kent Records, one of the many labels they recorded for in the 1960s released Ike & Tina Turner's Festival of Live Performances in 1970.\n\nCritical reception \n\nBillboard (February 21, 1970): The husband-wife soul duo of Ike & Tina Turner are everyday these days, especially on the charts where their incredible brand of pop-soul excitement has finally been realized after years as also-rans. Their live performances at the Fillmore and Madison Square Garden did the trick, but Kent presents the team as they were when 'live' meant clubs and smaller audiences of devoted fans.Record World (February 28, 1970): \"After paying their dues, and it was a large amount, Ike and Tina are finally full-fledged members of the hot artist organization. All these sides were recorded live and some will say that's the only way to enjoy the sizzling duo and their Ikettes.\"\n\nRon Wynn at AllMusic stated that \"they were still a hungry, eager, galvanizing band then, and even performed with energy and fire on mundane filler.\"\n\nReissues \nThe album was reissued in France by Disques Festival on the double vinyl The Great Album Of Ike And Tina Turner in 1974.\n\nIke & Tina Turner's Festival of Live Performances was reissued on CD by RockBeat Records in 2011 with two additional tracks.\n\nTrack listing\n\nReferences \n\n1970 live albums\nIke & Tina Turner live albums\nKent Records albums" ]
[ "George Stephanopoulos", "Real estate loan controversy" ]
C_f443454d631b4be6916844adb42f9739_0
What year did this occur?
1
What year did George Stephanopoulos' real estate loan controversy occur?
George Stephanopoulos
In 1994, columnist Jack Anderson reported that Stephanopoulos sealed an $835,000 commercial real estate deal consisting of a two-story apartment, including an eyewear retailer, with a below-market loan rate from a bank owned by Hugh McColl, who had been called by President Clinton "the most enlightened banker in America". A NationsBank commercial loan officer said that this loan did "not fit our product matrix" as banks typically offer such loans for only those customers who have deep pockets and on a short-term adjustable rate basis. Stephanopoulos's real estate agent explained that "nobody making $125,000 could qualify for the property without the commercial property (lease)." One former senior bank regulator told Anderson that, "If his name were George Smith, and he didn't work in the White House, this loan wouldn't have gotten made." Regarding the controversy, NationsBank stated, "The loan described by Jack Anderson as a commercial loan to George Stephanopoulos was, in fact, a residential mortgage loan. At the time the loan commitment was made, Mr. Anderson (or his imaginary 'George Smith' who 'doesn't work in the White House') could have walked into any NationsBank Mortgage Company office in the D.C. area and received the same excellent rate and term for the same deal." However, Stephanopoulos's realtor states that he would not have qualified for the loan without the commercial property rent. One NationsBank source states that the issuance of a residential loan on mixed-use properties is such a rarity that it was not even addressed in the "NationsBank Mortgage Corporation's Program Summary" or its "Credit Policy Manual." A NationsBank underwriting memo revealed that one of the three restrictions for mixed-use properties is that "the borrower must be the owner of the business entity." The source claims that NationsBank told the listing agent that, "We're not (interested in mixed-use properties), but we do have an appetite for this particular loan." NationsBank's primary regulator at the time was Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig, a Rhodes scholar who attended Yale Law School with President Clinton, and who had been asked to investigate NationsBank by Democratic congressmen Henry B. Gonzalez and John Dingell. CANNOTANSWER
In 1994,
George Robert Stephanopoulos (born February 10, 1961) is an American television host, political commentator, and former Democratic advisor. Stephanopoulos currently is a coanchor with Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan on Good Morning America, and host of This Week, ABC's Sunday morning current events news program. Before his career as a journalist, Stephanopoulos was an advisor to the Democratic Party. He rose to early prominence as a communications director for the 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton and subsequently became White House communications director. He was later senior advisor for policy and strategy, before departing in December 1996. Early life and education George Stephanopoulos was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, the son of Nickolitsa "Nikki" Gloria (née Chafos) and Robert George Stephanopoulos. His parents are of Greek descent. His father is a Greek Orthodox priest and dean emeritus of the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in New York City. His father is a retired priest at Sts. Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox church in Cleveland Heights, OH. His mother was the director of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America National News Service for many years. Following some time in Purchase, New York, Stephanopoulos moved to the eastern suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, where he graduated in 1978 from Orange High School in Pepper Pike. In 1982, Stephanopoulos received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science summa cum laude from Columbia University in New York and was the salutatorian of his class. While at Columbia, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa his junior year and was awarded a Harry S. Truman Scholarship. He was also a sports broadcaster for 89.9 WKCR-FM, the university's radio station. Promising his father that he would attend law school eventually, George took a job in Washington, D.C., as an aide to Democratic Congressman Ed Feighan of Ohio. He became Feighan's chief of staff. Stephanopoulos attended Balliol College at the University of Oxford in England, as a Rhodes Scholar, earning a Master of Arts in Theology in 1984. Career Politics 1988 U.S. presidential election In 1988, Stephanopoulos worked on the Michael Dukakis 1988 U.S. presidential campaign. He has noted that one of his attractions to this campaign was that Dukakis was a Greek-American liberal from Massachusetts. After this campaign, Stephanopoulos became an executive floor assistant to Dick Gephardt, U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader; he held this position until he joined the Clinton campaign. Clinton administration Stephanopoulos was, along with David Wilhelm and James Carville, a leading member of Clinton's 1992 U.S. presidential campaign. His role on the campaign is portrayed in the documentary film The War Room (1993). In the Clinton administration, Stephanopoulos served as a senior advisor for policy and strategy. His initiatives focused on crime legislation, affirmative action, and health care. At the outset of Clinton's presidency, Stephanopoulos also served as the de facto press secretary, briefing the press even though Dee Dee Myers was officially the White House Press Secretary. In 1994, after Paula Jones accused Bill Clinton of Sexual harassment, Stephanopoulos and James Carville sought to discredit her allegations against Clinton. Both men suggested that Jones was just seeking cash for her story. Stephanopoulos also successfully sought to keep Jones' news conference off television. Stephanopoulos called NBC journalist Tim Russert, CNN chairman Tom Johnson, as well as several others, whom he convinced to keep her conference off television. On February 25, 1994, Stephanopoulos and Harold Ickes had a conference call with Roger Altman to discuss the Resolution Trust Corporation's choice of Republican lawyer Jay Stephens to head the Madison Guaranty investigation, that later turned into the Whitewater controversy. In 1999 Stephanopoulos and James Carville were sued for defamation by Gennifer Flowers. Stephanopoulos had made comments about her allegations that she had an affair with Bill Clinton. He accused Flowers of doctoring her taped conversation with Clinton to make her story look creditable. Stephanopoulos also called her story "tabloid trash", "garbage", and "crap". The suit was dismissed since his comments were not the basis for defamation. Stephanopoulos resigned from the Clinton administration shortly after Clinton was re-elected in 1996. His memoir, All Too Human: A Political Education (1999), was published after he left the White House during Clinton's second term. It quickly became a number-one bestseller on The New York Times Best Seller list. In the book, Stephanopoulos spoke of his depression and how his face broke out into hives due to the pressures of conveying the Clinton White House message. Clinton referred to the book in his autobiography, My Life, apologizing for what he felt in retrospect to be excessive demands placed on the young staffer. Stephanopoulos's book covers his time with Clinton from the day he met him in September 1991, to the day Stephanopoulos left the White House in December 1996, through two presidential campaigns and four years in the White House. Stephanopoulos describes Clinton in the book as a "complicated man responding to the pressures and pleasures of public life in ways I found both awesome and appalling". Journalism After leaving the White House at the end of Clinton's first term, Stephanopoulos became a political analyst for ABC News, and served as a correspondent on This Week, ABC's Sunday morning public affairs program; World News Tonight, the evening news broadcast; Good Morning America, the morning news program; along with other various special broadcasts. In September 2002, Stephanopoulos became host of This Week, and ABC News officially named him "Chief Washington Correspondent" in December 2005. The program's title added the new host's name. When named to the position, Stephanopoulos was a relative newcomer to the show, usurping longtime panelists and short-term co-hosts Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts who, for a few years, briefly replaced the longtime original host, David Brinkley. ABC News executives reportedly offered Ted Koppel, former Nightline anchor, the This Week host job in 2005 after the program's ratings had become a regular third-, fourth-, and sometimes fifth-place finish after competitors NBC, CBS, Fox, and syndicated programs. However, This Week beat Meet the Press on January 11, 2009, when Stephanopoulos interviewed president-elect Barack Obama. On April 16, 2008, Stephanopoulos co-moderated, with Charles Gibson, the twenty-first, and ultimately final, Democratic Party presidential debate between Illinois Senator Barack Obama and New York Senator Hillary Clinton for the 2008 election cycle. While the debate received record ratings, the co-moderators were heavily criticized for focusing most of the first hour of the debate on controversies that occurred during the campaign rather than issues such as the economy and the Iraq War. Stephanopoulos acknowledged the legitimacy of the concerns over the order of the questions, but said they were issues in the campaign that had not been covered in previous debates. ABC had sought out a woman who opposed Obama and aired a video of her asking a trivial question, repeated by Stephanopoulos, about why Obama wasn't wearing a flag pin. The question brought widespread criticism from the media. During the 2008 presidential election campaign, Stephanopoulos launched a blog George's Bottom Line on the ABC News website. Stephanopoulos blogged about political news and analysis from Washington. In December 2009, ABC News president David Westin offered Stephanopoulos Diane Sawyer's job on Good Morning America after Sawyer was named anchor of World News. Stephanopoulos accepted the new position and began co-anchoring GMA on December 14, 2009. Stephanopoulos announced on January 10, 2010, that that would be his last broadcast as the permanent host of This Week. However, after his successor, Christiane Amanpour, left the show amid sagging ratings, it was announced that Stephanopoulos would return as host of This Week in December 2011. He signed a deal to stay with ABC until 2021 worth $105 million. On January 7, 2012, Stephanopoulos was the co-moderator of a debate among Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. During the debate, Stephanopoulos repeatedly asked Romney whether the former Massachusetts governor believes the U.S. Supreme Court should overturn a 1965 ruling that a constitutional right to privacy bars states from banning contraception. During the debate, Romney said it was a preposterous question. Following Diane Sawyer's departure from World News at the end of August 2014, Stephanopoulos was the Chief Anchor at ABC News 2014–2020 while retaining his roles on GMA and This Week. Stephanopoulos leads a new documentary unit for Disney's digital platforms and hosts four primetime hour-long specials on the ABC network annually. Speaking engagements In 2009, Stephanopoulos spoke at the annual Tri-C Presidential Scholarship Luncheon held at the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel and praised Cuyahoga Community College. Controversies Real estate loan controversy In 1994, columnist Jack Anderson reported that Stephanopoulos signed an $835,000 commercial real estate deal consisting of a two-story apartment, including an eyewear retailer, with a below-market loan rate from a bank owned by Hugh McColl, who had been called by President Clinton "the most enlightened banker in America". A NationsBank commercial loan officer said that this loan did "not fit our product matrix" as banks typically offer such loans for only those customers who have deep pockets and on a short-term adjustable rate basis. Stephanopoulos's real estate agent explained that "nobody making $125,000 could qualify for the property without the commercial property (lease)." One former senior bank regulator told Anderson, "If his name were George Smith, and he didn't work in the White House, this loan wouldn't have gotten made." Regarding the controversy, NationsBank stated, "The loan described by Jack Anderson as a commercial loan to George Stephanopoulos was, in fact, a residential mortgage loan. At the time the loan commitment was made, Mr. Anderson (or his imaginary 'George Smith' who 'doesn't work in the White House') could have walked into any NationsBank Mortgage Company office in the D.C. area and received the same excellent rate and term for the same deal." However, Stephanopoulos's realtor states that he would not have qualified for the loan without the commercial property rent. One NationsBank source states that the issuance of a residential loan on mixed-use properties is such a rarity that it was not even addressed in the "NationsBank Mortgage Corporation's Program Summary" or its "Credit Policy Manual". A NationsBank underwriting memo revealed that one of the three restrictions for mixed-use properties is that "the borrower must be the owner of the business entity". The source claims that NationsBank told the listing agent that, "We're not (interested in mixed-use properties), but we do have an appetite for this particular loan." NationsBank's primary regulator at the time was Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig, a Rhodes scholar who attended Yale Law School with President Clinton, and who had been asked to investigate NationsBank by Democratic congressmen Henry B. Gonzalez and John Dingell. Clinton Foundation charity donations and conflict of interest as a journalist Stephanopoulos donated $25,000 in 2012, 2013, and 2014, a total of $75,000, to the Clinton Foundation, but did not disclose the donations to ABC News, his employer, or to his viewers. Stephanopoulos failed to reveal the donations even on April 26, 2015, while interviewing Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, a book which alleges that donations to the Foundation influenced some of Hillary Clinton's actions as Secretary of State. After exposure of the donations by Politico on May 14, 2015, Stephanopoulos apologized and admitted he should have disclosed the donations to ABC News and its viewers. The story was broken by The Washington Free Beacon, which had questioned ABC News regarding the matter. The donations had been reported by the Clinton Foundation, which Stephanopoulos had considered sufficient, a reliance ABC News characterized as "an honest mistake." Based on Stephanopoulos's donations to The Clinton Foundation charity and his behavior during prior interviews and presidential debates, Republican party leaders and candidates expressed their distrust, and called for him to be banned from moderating 2016 Presidential debates, due to bias and conflict of interest. He agreed to drop out as a moderator of the scheduled February 2016 Republican presidential primary debate. In the month prior to his revelation, Stephanopoulos told Jon Stewart on The Daily Show that when money is given to the Clinton Foundation "everybody" knows there's "a hope that that's going to lead to something, and that's what you have to be careful of." Jeffrey Epstein association In 2010, Stephanopoulos attended a dinner party at the home of convicted sex offender socialite Jeffrey Epstein alongside Chelsea Handler, Woody Allen, Katie Couric, Prince Andrew, Charlie Rose and Eva Andersson-Dubin. Following Epstein's arrest in July 2019, the party resurfaced online, with those attending receiving backlash, Stephanopoulos denied being friends with Epstein, with the party being the only encounter. Stephanopoulos told The New York Times: "That dinner was the first and last time I’ve seen him, I should have done more due diligence. It was a mistake to go.” In popular culture In the fourth episode of the first season of the NBC television series Friends, entitled The One with George Stephanopoulos and originally aired 13 October, 1994, the girls spy on Stephanopoulos across the street, after they were delivered his pizza by accident. Stephanopoulos was the inspiration for the character of Henry Burton in Joe Klein's novel Primary Colors (1996). Burton was subsequently portrayed by Adrian Lester in the 1998 film adaptation. Michael J. Fox's character, Lewis Rothschild, in the film The American President (1995), written by Aaron Sorkin was modeled after Stephanopoulos. He was also used by Sorkin as the model for Rob Lowe's character, Sam Seaborn, on the television drama series The West Wing. According to Stephanopoulos, his role in the Clinton administration was more like Bradley Whitford's character Josh Lyman than Seaborn or Rothschild. Stephanopoulos returned to his alma mater, Columbia University, in 2003, serving as the keynote speaker at Columbia College's Class Day. In 2013, Stephanopoulos played himself in House of Cards and in 2014 he played himself in an episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. In September 2016, Stephanopoulos was featured on a €1 (1 euro) Greek postage stamp, along with other notable Greek-Americans. In 2021, Stephanopoulos was portrayed by George H. Xanthis in Impeachment: American Crime Story; the third season of the FX true-crime anthology television series American Crime Story. Personal life Stephanopoulos is a Greek Orthodox Christian and has earned a master's degree in theology. In 1995, as he was pulling out of a parking space in front of a restaurant in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., he had a collision with a parked vehicle. Stephanopoulos was arrested and charged with leaving the scene of an accident and driving with an expired license and license plates. The charge of leaving the scene of an accident was subsequently dropped. Stephanopoulos married Ali Wentworth, an actress, comedian, and writer, in 2001 at the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity on New York's Upper East Side. They have two daughters, one born in 2002 and one born in 2005. Stephanopoulos was introduced to transcendental meditation by Jerry Seinfeld. Conducting an interview on Good Morning America, he said, "We’re all here because we all have something in common—we all practice Transcendental Meditation. … I think that people don’t really understand exactly what it is and what a difference it has made in people’s lives." Wentworth posted on Instagram April 1, 2020, that she was struggling with COVID-19 while self-quarantining in their New York home. Stephanopoulos announced on April 13, 2020, that he had tested positive for COVID-19 but was asymptomatic. Honors In May 2007, Stephanopoulos received an Honorary Doctor of Laws from St. John's University in New York City. See also List of Balliol College people List of Columbia University alumni List of Eastern Orthodox Christians List of Greek Americans List of people from Cleveland List of people from Massachusetts List of people from New York City List of people from Washington, D.C. List of Rhodes Scholars List of television reporters List of talk show hosts Lists of American writers New Yorkers in journalism References Citations Sources External links abcnews.com/thisweek, This Week with George Stephanopoulos official website Membership at the Council on Foreign Relations |- |- |- |- 1961 births 20th-century American journalists American male journalists 20th-century American writers 21st-century American journalists 21st-century American writers ABC News personalities Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford American bloggers American memoirists American political consultants American Rhodes Scholars American television news anchors American television reporters and correspondents American television talk show hosts American people of Greek descent American writers of Greek descent Clinton administration personnel Columbia College (New York) alumni Journalists from New York City Journalists from Washington, D.C. Greek Orthodox Christians from the United States Living people Massachusetts Democrats Members of the Council on Foreign Relations Television personalities from Cleveland People from Fall River, Massachusetts People from Purchase, New York Senior Advisors to the President of the United States Washington, D.C. Democrats White House Communications Directors Writers from Massachusetts Writers from New York City Writers from Cleveland Liberalism in the United States
true
[ "IROC XII was the twelfth year of IROC competition took place in 1988. It saw the use of the Chevrolet Camaro in all races, and continued the format introduced in IROC VIII. Race one took place on the Daytona International Speedway, race two took place at Riverside International Raceway, race three ran at Michigan International Speedway, and race four concluded the year at Watkins Glen International. Al Unser, Jr. won his second championship and $211,900.\n\nThe roster of drivers and final points standings were as follows:\n\nRace results\n\nRace One, Daytona International Speedway\nFriday, February 12, 1988\n\n(5) Indicates 5 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the most laps.(3) Indicates 3 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the 2nd most laps (did not occur in this race so not awarded).(2) Indicates 2 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the 3rd most laps (did not occur in this race so not awarded).\n\nAverage speed: Cautions: 1Margin of victory: 2 clLead changes: 0\n\nRace Two, Riverside International Raceway\nSaturday, June 11, 1988\n\n(5) Indicates 5 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the most laps.(3) Indicates 3 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the 2nd most laps(2) Indicates 2 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the 3rd most laps (did not occur in this race so not awarded).\n\nAverage speed: Cautions: 2Margin of victory: 2 secLead changes: 1\nLap Leader Breakdown\n\nRace Three, Michigan International Speedway\nSaturday, August 6, 1988 \n\n(5) Indicates 5 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the most laps.(3) Indicates 3 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the 2nd most laps(2) Indicates 2 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the 3rd most laps (did not occur in this race so not awarded).\n\nAverage speed: Cautions:noneMargin of victory: 0.78 secLead changes: 1\nLap Leader Breakdown\n\nRace Four, Watkins Glen International\nSaturday, August 13, 1988\n\n(5) Indicates 5 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the most laps.(3) Indicates 3 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the 2nd most laps (did not occur in this race so not awarded).(2) Indicates 2 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the 3rd most laps (did not occur in this race so not awarded).\n\nAverage speed: Cautions: 3Margin of victory: 1.58 secLead changes: 0\n\nNotes\n Dale Earnhardt and Geoff Bodine tied for fifth place in the championship standings, but Earnhardt was awarded the position due to a higher finishing position in the final race.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nIROC XII History - IROC Website\n\nInternational Race of Champions\n1988 in American motorsport", "IROC XI was the eleventh year of IROC competition, which took place in 1987. It saw the use of the Chevrolet Camaro in all races, the beginning of a long partnership with ABC/ESPN, and continued the format introduced in IROC VIII. Race one took place on the Daytona International Speedway, race two took place at Mid-Ohio, race three ran at Michigan International Speedway, and race four concluded the year at Watkins Glen International. Geoff Bodine won the championship and $191,900.\n\nThe roster of drivers and final points standings were as follows:\n\nRace results\n\nRace One, Daytona International Speedway\nFriday, February 13, 1987\n\n(5) Indicates 5 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the most laps.(3) Indicates 3 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the 2nd most laps(2) Indicates 2 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the 3rd most laps.\n\nAverage speed: Cautions: 3Margin of victory: 1 clLead changes: 5\n\nRace Two, Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course\nSaturday, June 6, 1987\n\n(5) Indicates 5 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the most laps.(3) Indicates 3 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the 2nd most laps(2) Indicates 2 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the 3rd most laps (did not occur in this race so not awarded).\n\nAverage speed: 85.702 mphCautions: noneMargin of victory: 1.7 secLead changes: 1\n\nLap Leader Breakdown\n\nRace Three, Michigan International Speedway\nSaturday, August 1, 1987\n\n(5) Indicates 5 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the most laps.(3) Indicates 3 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the 2nd most laps(2) Indicates 2 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the 3rd most laps (did not occur in this race so not awarded).\n\nAverage speed: 155.633 mphCautions: 1 (Lap 12, Dale Earnhardt crash)Margin of victory: .03 secLead changes: 6\n\nRace Four, Watkins Glen International\nSaturday, August 8, 1987\n\n(5) Indicates 5 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the most laps.(3) Indicates 3 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the 2nd most laps (did not occur in this race so not awarded).(2) Indicates 2 bonus points added to normal race points scored for leading the 3rd most laps (did not occur in this race so not awarded).\n\nAverage speed: Cautions: noneMargin of victory: 2.02 secLead changes: 0\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nIROC XI History - IROC Website\n\nInternational Race of Champions\n1987 in American motorsport" ]
[ "George Stephanopoulos", "Real estate loan controversy", "What year did this occur?", "In 1994," ]
C_f443454d631b4be6916844adb42f9739_0
Was he directly involved?
2
Was George Stephanopoulos directly involved?
George Stephanopoulos
In 1994, columnist Jack Anderson reported that Stephanopoulos sealed an $835,000 commercial real estate deal consisting of a two-story apartment, including an eyewear retailer, with a below-market loan rate from a bank owned by Hugh McColl, who had been called by President Clinton "the most enlightened banker in America". A NationsBank commercial loan officer said that this loan did "not fit our product matrix" as banks typically offer such loans for only those customers who have deep pockets and on a short-term adjustable rate basis. Stephanopoulos's real estate agent explained that "nobody making $125,000 could qualify for the property without the commercial property (lease)." One former senior bank regulator told Anderson that, "If his name were George Smith, and he didn't work in the White House, this loan wouldn't have gotten made." Regarding the controversy, NationsBank stated, "The loan described by Jack Anderson as a commercial loan to George Stephanopoulos was, in fact, a residential mortgage loan. At the time the loan commitment was made, Mr. Anderson (or his imaginary 'George Smith' who 'doesn't work in the White House') could have walked into any NationsBank Mortgage Company office in the D.C. area and received the same excellent rate and term for the same deal." However, Stephanopoulos's realtor states that he would not have qualified for the loan without the commercial property rent. One NationsBank source states that the issuance of a residential loan on mixed-use properties is such a rarity that it was not even addressed in the "NationsBank Mortgage Corporation's Program Summary" or its "Credit Policy Manual." A NationsBank underwriting memo revealed that one of the three restrictions for mixed-use properties is that "the borrower must be the owner of the business entity." The source claims that NationsBank told the listing agent that, "We're not (interested in mixed-use properties), but we do have an appetite for this particular loan." NationsBank's primary regulator at the time was Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig, a Rhodes scholar who attended Yale Law School with President Clinton, and who had been asked to investigate NationsBank by Democratic congressmen Henry B. Gonzalez and John Dingell. CANNOTANSWER
Stephanopoulos sealed an $835,000 commercial real estate deal consisting of a two-story apartment, including an eyewear retailer, with a below-market loan rate from a bank
George Robert Stephanopoulos (born February 10, 1961) is an American television host, political commentator, and former Democratic advisor. Stephanopoulos currently is a coanchor with Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan on Good Morning America, and host of This Week, ABC's Sunday morning current events news program. Before his career as a journalist, Stephanopoulos was an advisor to the Democratic Party. He rose to early prominence as a communications director for the 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton and subsequently became White House communications director. He was later senior advisor for policy and strategy, before departing in December 1996. Early life and education George Stephanopoulos was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, the son of Nickolitsa "Nikki" Gloria (née Chafos) and Robert George Stephanopoulos. His parents are of Greek descent. His father is a Greek Orthodox priest and dean emeritus of the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in New York City. His father is a retired priest at Sts. Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox church in Cleveland Heights, OH. His mother was the director of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America National News Service for many years. Following some time in Purchase, New York, Stephanopoulos moved to the eastern suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, where he graduated in 1978 from Orange High School in Pepper Pike. In 1982, Stephanopoulos received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science summa cum laude from Columbia University in New York and was the salutatorian of his class. While at Columbia, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa his junior year and was awarded a Harry S. Truman Scholarship. He was also a sports broadcaster for 89.9 WKCR-FM, the university's radio station. Promising his father that he would attend law school eventually, George took a job in Washington, D.C., as an aide to Democratic Congressman Ed Feighan of Ohio. He became Feighan's chief of staff. Stephanopoulos attended Balliol College at the University of Oxford in England, as a Rhodes Scholar, earning a Master of Arts in Theology in 1984. Career Politics 1988 U.S. presidential election In 1988, Stephanopoulos worked on the Michael Dukakis 1988 U.S. presidential campaign. He has noted that one of his attractions to this campaign was that Dukakis was a Greek-American liberal from Massachusetts. After this campaign, Stephanopoulos became an executive floor assistant to Dick Gephardt, U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader; he held this position until he joined the Clinton campaign. Clinton administration Stephanopoulos was, along with David Wilhelm and James Carville, a leading member of Clinton's 1992 U.S. presidential campaign. His role on the campaign is portrayed in the documentary film The War Room (1993). In the Clinton administration, Stephanopoulos served as a senior advisor for policy and strategy. His initiatives focused on crime legislation, affirmative action, and health care. At the outset of Clinton's presidency, Stephanopoulos also served as the de facto press secretary, briefing the press even though Dee Dee Myers was officially the White House Press Secretary. In 1994, after Paula Jones accused Bill Clinton of Sexual harassment, Stephanopoulos and James Carville sought to discredit her allegations against Clinton. Both men suggested that Jones was just seeking cash for her story. Stephanopoulos also successfully sought to keep Jones' news conference off television. Stephanopoulos called NBC journalist Tim Russert, CNN chairman Tom Johnson, as well as several others, whom he convinced to keep her conference off television. On February 25, 1994, Stephanopoulos and Harold Ickes had a conference call with Roger Altman to discuss the Resolution Trust Corporation's choice of Republican lawyer Jay Stephens to head the Madison Guaranty investigation, that later turned into the Whitewater controversy. In 1999 Stephanopoulos and James Carville were sued for defamation by Gennifer Flowers. Stephanopoulos had made comments about her allegations that she had an affair with Bill Clinton. He accused Flowers of doctoring her taped conversation with Clinton to make her story look creditable. Stephanopoulos also called her story "tabloid trash", "garbage", and "crap". The suit was dismissed since his comments were not the basis for defamation. Stephanopoulos resigned from the Clinton administration shortly after Clinton was re-elected in 1996. His memoir, All Too Human: A Political Education (1999), was published after he left the White House during Clinton's second term. It quickly became a number-one bestseller on The New York Times Best Seller list. In the book, Stephanopoulos spoke of his depression and how his face broke out into hives due to the pressures of conveying the Clinton White House message. Clinton referred to the book in his autobiography, My Life, apologizing for what he felt in retrospect to be excessive demands placed on the young staffer. Stephanopoulos's book covers his time with Clinton from the day he met him in September 1991, to the day Stephanopoulos left the White House in December 1996, through two presidential campaigns and four years in the White House. Stephanopoulos describes Clinton in the book as a "complicated man responding to the pressures and pleasures of public life in ways I found both awesome and appalling". Journalism After leaving the White House at the end of Clinton's first term, Stephanopoulos became a political analyst for ABC News, and served as a correspondent on This Week, ABC's Sunday morning public affairs program; World News Tonight, the evening news broadcast; Good Morning America, the morning news program; along with other various special broadcasts. In September 2002, Stephanopoulos became host of This Week, and ABC News officially named him "Chief Washington Correspondent" in December 2005. The program's title added the new host's name. When named to the position, Stephanopoulos was a relative newcomer to the show, usurping longtime panelists and short-term co-hosts Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts who, for a few years, briefly replaced the longtime original host, David Brinkley. ABC News executives reportedly offered Ted Koppel, former Nightline anchor, the This Week host job in 2005 after the program's ratings had become a regular third-, fourth-, and sometimes fifth-place finish after competitors NBC, CBS, Fox, and syndicated programs. However, This Week beat Meet the Press on January 11, 2009, when Stephanopoulos interviewed president-elect Barack Obama. On April 16, 2008, Stephanopoulos co-moderated, with Charles Gibson, the twenty-first, and ultimately final, Democratic Party presidential debate between Illinois Senator Barack Obama and New York Senator Hillary Clinton for the 2008 election cycle. While the debate received record ratings, the co-moderators were heavily criticized for focusing most of the first hour of the debate on controversies that occurred during the campaign rather than issues such as the economy and the Iraq War. Stephanopoulos acknowledged the legitimacy of the concerns over the order of the questions, but said they were issues in the campaign that had not been covered in previous debates. ABC had sought out a woman who opposed Obama and aired a video of her asking a trivial question, repeated by Stephanopoulos, about why Obama wasn't wearing a flag pin. The question brought widespread criticism from the media. During the 2008 presidential election campaign, Stephanopoulos launched a blog George's Bottom Line on the ABC News website. Stephanopoulos blogged about political news and analysis from Washington. In December 2009, ABC News president David Westin offered Stephanopoulos Diane Sawyer's job on Good Morning America after Sawyer was named anchor of World News. Stephanopoulos accepted the new position and began co-anchoring GMA on December 14, 2009. Stephanopoulos announced on January 10, 2010, that that would be his last broadcast as the permanent host of This Week. However, after his successor, Christiane Amanpour, left the show amid sagging ratings, it was announced that Stephanopoulos would return as host of This Week in December 2011. He signed a deal to stay with ABC until 2021 worth $105 million. On January 7, 2012, Stephanopoulos was the co-moderator of a debate among Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. During the debate, Stephanopoulos repeatedly asked Romney whether the former Massachusetts governor believes the U.S. Supreme Court should overturn a 1965 ruling that a constitutional right to privacy bars states from banning contraception. During the debate, Romney said it was a preposterous question. Following Diane Sawyer's departure from World News at the end of August 2014, Stephanopoulos was the Chief Anchor at ABC News 2014–2020 while retaining his roles on GMA and This Week. Stephanopoulos leads a new documentary unit for Disney's digital platforms and hosts four primetime hour-long specials on the ABC network annually. Speaking engagements In 2009, Stephanopoulos spoke at the annual Tri-C Presidential Scholarship Luncheon held at the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel and praised Cuyahoga Community College. Controversies Real estate loan controversy In 1994, columnist Jack Anderson reported that Stephanopoulos signed an $835,000 commercial real estate deal consisting of a two-story apartment, including an eyewear retailer, with a below-market loan rate from a bank owned by Hugh McColl, who had been called by President Clinton "the most enlightened banker in America". A NationsBank commercial loan officer said that this loan did "not fit our product matrix" as banks typically offer such loans for only those customers who have deep pockets and on a short-term adjustable rate basis. Stephanopoulos's real estate agent explained that "nobody making $125,000 could qualify for the property without the commercial property (lease)." One former senior bank regulator told Anderson, "If his name were George Smith, and he didn't work in the White House, this loan wouldn't have gotten made." Regarding the controversy, NationsBank stated, "The loan described by Jack Anderson as a commercial loan to George Stephanopoulos was, in fact, a residential mortgage loan. At the time the loan commitment was made, Mr. Anderson (or his imaginary 'George Smith' who 'doesn't work in the White House') could have walked into any NationsBank Mortgage Company office in the D.C. area and received the same excellent rate and term for the same deal." However, Stephanopoulos's realtor states that he would not have qualified for the loan without the commercial property rent. One NationsBank source states that the issuance of a residential loan on mixed-use properties is such a rarity that it was not even addressed in the "NationsBank Mortgage Corporation's Program Summary" or its "Credit Policy Manual". A NationsBank underwriting memo revealed that one of the three restrictions for mixed-use properties is that "the borrower must be the owner of the business entity". The source claims that NationsBank told the listing agent that, "We're not (interested in mixed-use properties), but we do have an appetite for this particular loan." NationsBank's primary regulator at the time was Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig, a Rhodes scholar who attended Yale Law School with President Clinton, and who had been asked to investigate NationsBank by Democratic congressmen Henry B. Gonzalez and John Dingell. Clinton Foundation charity donations and conflict of interest as a journalist Stephanopoulos donated $25,000 in 2012, 2013, and 2014, a total of $75,000, to the Clinton Foundation, but did not disclose the donations to ABC News, his employer, or to his viewers. Stephanopoulos failed to reveal the donations even on April 26, 2015, while interviewing Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, a book which alleges that donations to the Foundation influenced some of Hillary Clinton's actions as Secretary of State. After exposure of the donations by Politico on May 14, 2015, Stephanopoulos apologized and admitted he should have disclosed the donations to ABC News and its viewers. The story was broken by The Washington Free Beacon, which had questioned ABC News regarding the matter. The donations had been reported by the Clinton Foundation, which Stephanopoulos had considered sufficient, a reliance ABC News characterized as "an honest mistake." Based on Stephanopoulos's donations to The Clinton Foundation charity and his behavior during prior interviews and presidential debates, Republican party leaders and candidates expressed their distrust, and called for him to be banned from moderating 2016 Presidential debates, due to bias and conflict of interest. He agreed to drop out as a moderator of the scheduled February 2016 Republican presidential primary debate. In the month prior to his revelation, Stephanopoulos told Jon Stewart on The Daily Show that when money is given to the Clinton Foundation "everybody" knows there's "a hope that that's going to lead to something, and that's what you have to be careful of." Jeffrey Epstein association In 2010, Stephanopoulos attended a dinner party at the home of convicted sex offender socialite Jeffrey Epstein alongside Chelsea Handler, Woody Allen, Katie Couric, Prince Andrew, Charlie Rose and Eva Andersson-Dubin. Following Epstein's arrest in July 2019, the party resurfaced online, with those attending receiving backlash, Stephanopoulos denied being friends with Epstein, with the party being the only encounter. Stephanopoulos told The New York Times: "That dinner was the first and last time I’ve seen him, I should have done more due diligence. It was a mistake to go.” In popular culture In the fourth episode of the first season of the NBC television series Friends, entitled The One with George Stephanopoulos and originally aired 13 October, 1994, the girls spy on Stephanopoulos across the street, after they were delivered his pizza by accident. Stephanopoulos was the inspiration for the character of Henry Burton in Joe Klein's novel Primary Colors (1996). Burton was subsequently portrayed by Adrian Lester in the 1998 film adaptation. Michael J. Fox's character, Lewis Rothschild, in the film The American President (1995), written by Aaron Sorkin was modeled after Stephanopoulos. He was also used by Sorkin as the model for Rob Lowe's character, Sam Seaborn, on the television drama series The West Wing. According to Stephanopoulos, his role in the Clinton administration was more like Bradley Whitford's character Josh Lyman than Seaborn or Rothschild. Stephanopoulos returned to his alma mater, Columbia University, in 2003, serving as the keynote speaker at Columbia College's Class Day. In 2013, Stephanopoulos played himself in House of Cards and in 2014 he played himself in an episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. In September 2016, Stephanopoulos was featured on a €1 (1 euro) Greek postage stamp, along with other notable Greek-Americans. In 2021, Stephanopoulos was portrayed by George H. Xanthis in Impeachment: American Crime Story; the third season of the FX true-crime anthology television series American Crime Story. Personal life Stephanopoulos is a Greek Orthodox Christian and has earned a master's degree in theology. In 1995, as he was pulling out of a parking space in front of a restaurant in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., he had a collision with a parked vehicle. Stephanopoulos was arrested and charged with leaving the scene of an accident and driving with an expired license and license plates. The charge of leaving the scene of an accident was subsequently dropped. Stephanopoulos married Ali Wentworth, an actress, comedian, and writer, in 2001 at the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity on New York's Upper East Side. They have two daughters, one born in 2002 and one born in 2005. Stephanopoulos was introduced to transcendental meditation by Jerry Seinfeld. Conducting an interview on Good Morning America, he said, "We’re all here because we all have something in common—we all practice Transcendental Meditation. … I think that people don’t really understand exactly what it is and what a difference it has made in people’s lives." Wentworth posted on Instagram April 1, 2020, that she was struggling with COVID-19 while self-quarantining in their New York home. Stephanopoulos announced on April 13, 2020, that he had tested positive for COVID-19 but was asymptomatic. Honors In May 2007, Stephanopoulos received an Honorary Doctor of Laws from St. John's University in New York City. See also List of Balliol College people List of Columbia University alumni List of Eastern Orthodox Christians List of Greek Americans List of people from Cleveland List of people from Massachusetts List of people from New York City List of people from Washington, D.C. List of Rhodes Scholars List of television reporters List of talk show hosts Lists of American writers New Yorkers in journalism References Citations Sources External links abcnews.com/thisweek, This Week with George Stephanopoulos official website Membership at the Council on Foreign Relations |- |- |- |- 1961 births 20th-century American journalists American male journalists 20th-century American writers 21st-century American journalists 21st-century American writers ABC News personalities Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford American bloggers American memoirists American political consultants American Rhodes Scholars American television news anchors American television reporters and correspondents American television talk show hosts American people of Greek descent American writers of Greek descent Clinton administration personnel Columbia College (New York) alumni Journalists from New York City Journalists from Washington, D.C. Greek Orthodox Christians from the United States Living people Massachusetts Democrats Members of the Council on Foreign Relations Television personalities from Cleveland People from Fall River, Massachusetts People from Purchase, New York Senior Advisors to the President of the United States Washington, D.C. Democrats White House Communications Directors Writers from Massachusetts Writers from New York City Writers from Cleveland Liberalism in the United States
false
[ "Leontiy Vasilievich Dubbelt () (1792–1862) was a Russian soldier and police chief under Nicholas I. He fought at the Battle of Borodino in 1812 and was briefly suspected of being involved in the Decembrist conspiracy of 1825. He ran the feared Third Section and was directly involved in secret service cases involving writers and intellectuals such as Pushkin, Lermontov, Saltykov-Shchedrin and Turgenev.\n\nReferences\n\nRussian soldiers\n1792 births\n1862 deaths", "Sergius I of Cyrrhus was a bishop of Cyrrhus, a Roman city in what is today Syria. He lived at a time when Cyrrhus was the center of a number of theological controversies, that birthed the Nestorian and Jacobite churches. \n\nHe was a late 5th century Nestorian bishop and was deposed by Byzantine Emperor Justin I in the theological controversies following the first four ecumenical councils. Sergius I of Cyrrhus was replaced by another bishop called Sergius II, who was of the directly opposite theological opinion, being a Jacobite. This bishop was subsequently expelled in 522 and replaced by an Orthodox bishop.\n\nReferences \n\n5th-century Syrian bishops\nAncient Christians involved in controversies\n\nYear of birth unknown\nPeople from Cyrrhus" ]
[ "George Stephanopoulos", "Real estate loan controversy", "What year did this occur?", "In 1994,", "Was he directly involved?", "Stephanopoulos sealed an $835,000 commercial real estate deal consisting of a two-story apartment, including an eyewear retailer, with a below-market loan rate from a bank" ]
C_f443454d631b4be6916844adb42f9739_0
Was this something he was charged criminally with?
3
Was the real estate loan controversy something George Stephanopoulos was charged criminally with?
George Stephanopoulos
In 1994, columnist Jack Anderson reported that Stephanopoulos sealed an $835,000 commercial real estate deal consisting of a two-story apartment, including an eyewear retailer, with a below-market loan rate from a bank owned by Hugh McColl, who had been called by President Clinton "the most enlightened banker in America". A NationsBank commercial loan officer said that this loan did "not fit our product matrix" as banks typically offer such loans for only those customers who have deep pockets and on a short-term adjustable rate basis. Stephanopoulos's real estate agent explained that "nobody making $125,000 could qualify for the property without the commercial property (lease)." One former senior bank regulator told Anderson that, "If his name were George Smith, and he didn't work in the White House, this loan wouldn't have gotten made." Regarding the controversy, NationsBank stated, "The loan described by Jack Anderson as a commercial loan to George Stephanopoulos was, in fact, a residential mortgage loan. At the time the loan commitment was made, Mr. Anderson (or his imaginary 'George Smith' who 'doesn't work in the White House') could have walked into any NationsBank Mortgage Company office in the D.C. area and received the same excellent rate and term for the same deal." However, Stephanopoulos's realtor states that he would not have qualified for the loan without the commercial property rent. One NationsBank source states that the issuance of a residential loan on mixed-use properties is such a rarity that it was not even addressed in the "NationsBank Mortgage Corporation's Program Summary" or its "Credit Policy Manual." A NationsBank underwriting memo revealed that one of the three restrictions for mixed-use properties is that "the borrower must be the owner of the business entity." The source claims that NationsBank told the listing agent that, "We're not (interested in mixed-use properties), but we do have an appetite for this particular loan." NationsBank's primary regulator at the time was Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig, a Rhodes scholar who attended Yale Law School with President Clinton, and who had been asked to investigate NationsBank by Democratic congressmen Henry B. Gonzalez and John Dingell. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
George Robert Stephanopoulos (born February 10, 1961) is an American television host, political commentator, and former Democratic advisor. Stephanopoulos currently is a coanchor with Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan on Good Morning America, and host of This Week, ABC's Sunday morning current events news program. Before his career as a journalist, Stephanopoulos was an advisor to the Democratic Party. He rose to early prominence as a communications director for the 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton and subsequently became White House communications director. He was later senior advisor for policy and strategy, before departing in December 1996. Early life and education George Stephanopoulos was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, the son of Nickolitsa "Nikki" Gloria (née Chafos) and Robert George Stephanopoulos. His parents are of Greek descent. His father is a Greek Orthodox priest and dean emeritus of the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in New York City. His father is a retired priest at Sts. Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox church in Cleveland Heights, OH. His mother was the director of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America National News Service for many years. Following some time in Purchase, New York, Stephanopoulos moved to the eastern suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, where he graduated in 1978 from Orange High School in Pepper Pike. In 1982, Stephanopoulos received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science summa cum laude from Columbia University in New York and was the salutatorian of his class. While at Columbia, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa his junior year and was awarded a Harry S. Truman Scholarship. He was also a sports broadcaster for 89.9 WKCR-FM, the university's radio station. Promising his father that he would attend law school eventually, George took a job in Washington, D.C., as an aide to Democratic Congressman Ed Feighan of Ohio. He became Feighan's chief of staff. Stephanopoulos attended Balliol College at the University of Oxford in England, as a Rhodes Scholar, earning a Master of Arts in Theology in 1984. Career Politics 1988 U.S. presidential election In 1988, Stephanopoulos worked on the Michael Dukakis 1988 U.S. presidential campaign. He has noted that one of his attractions to this campaign was that Dukakis was a Greek-American liberal from Massachusetts. After this campaign, Stephanopoulos became an executive floor assistant to Dick Gephardt, U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader; he held this position until he joined the Clinton campaign. Clinton administration Stephanopoulos was, along with David Wilhelm and James Carville, a leading member of Clinton's 1992 U.S. presidential campaign. His role on the campaign is portrayed in the documentary film The War Room (1993). In the Clinton administration, Stephanopoulos served as a senior advisor for policy and strategy. His initiatives focused on crime legislation, affirmative action, and health care. At the outset of Clinton's presidency, Stephanopoulos also served as the de facto press secretary, briefing the press even though Dee Dee Myers was officially the White House Press Secretary. In 1994, after Paula Jones accused Bill Clinton of Sexual harassment, Stephanopoulos and James Carville sought to discredit her allegations against Clinton. Both men suggested that Jones was just seeking cash for her story. Stephanopoulos also successfully sought to keep Jones' news conference off television. Stephanopoulos called NBC journalist Tim Russert, CNN chairman Tom Johnson, as well as several others, whom he convinced to keep her conference off television. On February 25, 1994, Stephanopoulos and Harold Ickes had a conference call with Roger Altman to discuss the Resolution Trust Corporation's choice of Republican lawyer Jay Stephens to head the Madison Guaranty investigation, that later turned into the Whitewater controversy. In 1999 Stephanopoulos and James Carville were sued for defamation by Gennifer Flowers. Stephanopoulos had made comments about her allegations that she had an affair with Bill Clinton. He accused Flowers of doctoring her taped conversation with Clinton to make her story look creditable. Stephanopoulos also called her story "tabloid trash", "garbage", and "crap". The suit was dismissed since his comments were not the basis for defamation. Stephanopoulos resigned from the Clinton administration shortly after Clinton was re-elected in 1996. His memoir, All Too Human: A Political Education (1999), was published after he left the White House during Clinton's second term. It quickly became a number-one bestseller on The New York Times Best Seller list. In the book, Stephanopoulos spoke of his depression and how his face broke out into hives due to the pressures of conveying the Clinton White House message. Clinton referred to the book in his autobiography, My Life, apologizing for what he felt in retrospect to be excessive demands placed on the young staffer. Stephanopoulos's book covers his time with Clinton from the day he met him in September 1991, to the day Stephanopoulos left the White House in December 1996, through two presidential campaigns and four years in the White House. Stephanopoulos describes Clinton in the book as a "complicated man responding to the pressures and pleasures of public life in ways I found both awesome and appalling". Journalism After leaving the White House at the end of Clinton's first term, Stephanopoulos became a political analyst for ABC News, and served as a correspondent on This Week, ABC's Sunday morning public affairs program; World News Tonight, the evening news broadcast; Good Morning America, the morning news program; along with other various special broadcasts. In September 2002, Stephanopoulos became host of This Week, and ABC News officially named him "Chief Washington Correspondent" in December 2005. The program's title added the new host's name. When named to the position, Stephanopoulos was a relative newcomer to the show, usurping longtime panelists and short-term co-hosts Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts who, for a few years, briefly replaced the longtime original host, David Brinkley. ABC News executives reportedly offered Ted Koppel, former Nightline anchor, the This Week host job in 2005 after the program's ratings had become a regular third-, fourth-, and sometimes fifth-place finish after competitors NBC, CBS, Fox, and syndicated programs. However, This Week beat Meet the Press on January 11, 2009, when Stephanopoulos interviewed president-elect Barack Obama. On April 16, 2008, Stephanopoulos co-moderated, with Charles Gibson, the twenty-first, and ultimately final, Democratic Party presidential debate between Illinois Senator Barack Obama and New York Senator Hillary Clinton for the 2008 election cycle. While the debate received record ratings, the co-moderators were heavily criticized for focusing most of the first hour of the debate on controversies that occurred during the campaign rather than issues such as the economy and the Iraq War. Stephanopoulos acknowledged the legitimacy of the concerns over the order of the questions, but said they were issues in the campaign that had not been covered in previous debates. ABC had sought out a woman who opposed Obama and aired a video of her asking a trivial question, repeated by Stephanopoulos, about why Obama wasn't wearing a flag pin. The question brought widespread criticism from the media. During the 2008 presidential election campaign, Stephanopoulos launched a blog George's Bottom Line on the ABC News website. Stephanopoulos blogged about political news and analysis from Washington. In December 2009, ABC News president David Westin offered Stephanopoulos Diane Sawyer's job on Good Morning America after Sawyer was named anchor of World News. Stephanopoulos accepted the new position and began co-anchoring GMA on December 14, 2009. Stephanopoulos announced on January 10, 2010, that that would be his last broadcast as the permanent host of This Week. However, after his successor, Christiane Amanpour, left the show amid sagging ratings, it was announced that Stephanopoulos would return as host of This Week in December 2011. He signed a deal to stay with ABC until 2021 worth $105 million. On January 7, 2012, Stephanopoulos was the co-moderator of a debate among Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. During the debate, Stephanopoulos repeatedly asked Romney whether the former Massachusetts governor believes the U.S. Supreme Court should overturn a 1965 ruling that a constitutional right to privacy bars states from banning contraception. During the debate, Romney said it was a preposterous question. Following Diane Sawyer's departure from World News at the end of August 2014, Stephanopoulos was the Chief Anchor at ABC News 2014–2020 while retaining his roles on GMA and This Week. Stephanopoulos leads a new documentary unit for Disney's digital platforms and hosts four primetime hour-long specials on the ABC network annually. Speaking engagements In 2009, Stephanopoulos spoke at the annual Tri-C Presidential Scholarship Luncheon held at the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel and praised Cuyahoga Community College. Controversies Real estate loan controversy In 1994, columnist Jack Anderson reported that Stephanopoulos signed an $835,000 commercial real estate deal consisting of a two-story apartment, including an eyewear retailer, with a below-market loan rate from a bank owned by Hugh McColl, who had been called by President Clinton "the most enlightened banker in America". A NationsBank commercial loan officer said that this loan did "not fit our product matrix" as banks typically offer such loans for only those customers who have deep pockets and on a short-term adjustable rate basis. Stephanopoulos's real estate agent explained that "nobody making $125,000 could qualify for the property without the commercial property (lease)." One former senior bank regulator told Anderson, "If his name were George Smith, and he didn't work in the White House, this loan wouldn't have gotten made." Regarding the controversy, NationsBank stated, "The loan described by Jack Anderson as a commercial loan to George Stephanopoulos was, in fact, a residential mortgage loan. At the time the loan commitment was made, Mr. Anderson (or his imaginary 'George Smith' who 'doesn't work in the White House') could have walked into any NationsBank Mortgage Company office in the D.C. area and received the same excellent rate and term for the same deal." However, Stephanopoulos's realtor states that he would not have qualified for the loan without the commercial property rent. One NationsBank source states that the issuance of a residential loan on mixed-use properties is such a rarity that it was not even addressed in the "NationsBank Mortgage Corporation's Program Summary" or its "Credit Policy Manual". A NationsBank underwriting memo revealed that one of the three restrictions for mixed-use properties is that "the borrower must be the owner of the business entity". The source claims that NationsBank told the listing agent that, "We're not (interested in mixed-use properties), but we do have an appetite for this particular loan." NationsBank's primary regulator at the time was Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig, a Rhodes scholar who attended Yale Law School with President Clinton, and who had been asked to investigate NationsBank by Democratic congressmen Henry B. Gonzalez and John Dingell. Clinton Foundation charity donations and conflict of interest as a journalist Stephanopoulos donated $25,000 in 2012, 2013, and 2014, a total of $75,000, to the Clinton Foundation, but did not disclose the donations to ABC News, his employer, or to his viewers. Stephanopoulos failed to reveal the donations even on April 26, 2015, while interviewing Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, a book which alleges that donations to the Foundation influenced some of Hillary Clinton's actions as Secretary of State. After exposure of the donations by Politico on May 14, 2015, Stephanopoulos apologized and admitted he should have disclosed the donations to ABC News and its viewers. The story was broken by The Washington Free Beacon, which had questioned ABC News regarding the matter. The donations had been reported by the Clinton Foundation, which Stephanopoulos had considered sufficient, a reliance ABC News characterized as "an honest mistake." Based on Stephanopoulos's donations to The Clinton Foundation charity and his behavior during prior interviews and presidential debates, Republican party leaders and candidates expressed their distrust, and called for him to be banned from moderating 2016 Presidential debates, due to bias and conflict of interest. He agreed to drop out as a moderator of the scheduled February 2016 Republican presidential primary debate. In the month prior to his revelation, Stephanopoulos told Jon Stewart on The Daily Show that when money is given to the Clinton Foundation "everybody" knows there's "a hope that that's going to lead to something, and that's what you have to be careful of." Jeffrey Epstein association In 2010, Stephanopoulos attended a dinner party at the home of convicted sex offender socialite Jeffrey Epstein alongside Chelsea Handler, Woody Allen, Katie Couric, Prince Andrew, Charlie Rose and Eva Andersson-Dubin. Following Epstein's arrest in July 2019, the party resurfaced online, with those attending receiving backlash, Stephanopoulos denied being friends with Epstein, with the party being the only encounter. Stephanopoulos told The New York Times: "That dinner was the first and last time I’ve seen him, I should have done more due diligence. It was a mistake to go.” In popular culture In the fourth episode of the first season of the NBC television series Friends, entitled The One with George Stephanopoulos and originally aired 13 October, 1994, the girls spy on Stephanopoulos across the street, after they were delivered his pizza by accident. Stephanopoulos was the inspiration for the character of Henry Burton in Joe Klein's novel Primary Colors (1996). Burton was subsequently portrayed by Adrian Lester in the 1998 film adaptation. Michael J. Fox's character, Lewis Rothschild, in the film The American President (1995), written by Aaron Sorkin was modeled after Stephanopoulos. He was also used by Sorkin as the model for Rob Lowe's character, Sam Seaborn, on the television drama series The West Wing. According to Stephanopoulos, his role in the Clinton administration was more like Bradley Whitford's character Josh Lyman than Seaborn or Rothschild. Stephanopoulos returned to his alma mater, Columbia University, in 2003, serving as the keynote speaker at Columbia College's Class Day. In 2013, Stephanopoulos played himself in House of Cards and in 2014 he played himself in an episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. In September 2016, Stephanopoulos was featured on a €1 (1 euro) Greek postage stamp, along with other notable Greek-Americans. In 2021, Stephanopoulos was portrayed by George H. Xanthis in Impeachment: American Crime Story; the third season of the FX true-crime anthology television series American Crime Story. Personal life Stephanopoulos is a Greek Orthodox Christian and has earned a master's degree in theology. In 1995, as he was pulling out of a parking space in front of a restaurant in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., he had a collision with a parked vehicle. Stephanopoulos was arrested and charged with leaving the scene of an accident and driving with an expired license and license plates. The charge of leaving the scene of an accident was subsequently dropped. Stephanopoulos married Ali Wentworth, an actress, comedian, and writer, in 2001 at the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity on New York's Upper East Side. They have two daughters, one born in 2002 and one born in 2005. Stephanopoulos was introduced to transcendental meditation by Jerry Seinfeld. Conducting an interview on Good Morning America, he said, "We’re all here because we all have something in common—we all practice Transcendental Meditation. … I think that people don’t really understand exactly what it is and what a difference it has made in people’s lives." Wentworth posted on Instagram April 1, 2020, that she was struggling with COVID-19 while self-quarantining in their New York home. Stephanopoulos announced on April 13, 2020, that he had tested positive for COVID-19 but was asymptomatic. Honors In May 2007, Stephanopoulos received an Honorary Doctor of Laws from St. John's University in New York City. See also List of Balliol College people List of Columbia University alumni List of Eastern Orthodox Christians List of Greek Americans List of people from Cleveland List of people from Massachusetts List of people from New York City List of people from Washington, D.C. List of Rhodes Scholars List of television reporters List of talk show hosts Lists of American writers New Yorkers in journalism References Citations Sources External links abcnews.com/thisweek, This Week with George Stephanopoulos official website Membership at the Council on Foreign Relations |- |- |- |- 1961 births 20th-century American journalists American male journalists 20th-century American writers 21st-century American journalists 21st-century American writers ABC News personalities Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford American bloggers American memoirists American political consultants American Rhodes Scholars American television news anchors American television reporters and correspondents American television talk show hosts American people of Greek descent American writers of Greek descent Clinton administration personnel Columbia College (New York) alumni Journalists from New York City Journalists from Washington, D.C. Greek Orthodox Christians from the United States Living people Massachusetts Democrats Members of the Council on Foreign Relations Television personalities from Cleveland People from Fall River, Massachusetts People from Purchase, New York Senior Advisors to the President of the United States Washington, D.C. Democrats White House Communications Directors Writers from Massachusetts Writers from New York City Writers from Cleveland Liberalism in the United States
false
[ "Jonny K. was a man who was fatally beaten at Alexanderplatz in Mitte, Berlin, Germany on 14 October 2012. Six people were criminally prosecuted for the beating. \n\nJonny K. was a 20-year-old Thai-German student. He was a Buddhist and was born in Khon Kaen, Thailand on 7 April 1992.\n\nAttack and arrests\nHe was with friends when one of them was attacked, and he received injuries when he attempted to intervene. The attack occurred close to a bar. Jonny K. was hospitalised before succumbing to a brain hemorrhage.\n\nPolice in Berlin arrested four of the accused while another one, Onur U., initially fled to Turkey. Onur U., a Turkish citizen, was 19 years old at the time and was an amateur boxer. He later said that he left Germany as he felt he was being presumed guilty. In April 2013 the Turkish authorities extradited Onur U. to Germany. Prosecutors stated that he was the primary culprit, as he was the first to punch the victim.\n\nThe trial began in May 2013. Two of the accused were charged with aggravated assault and the remaining ones were charged with grievous bodily harm causing death. The suspects were not charged with manslaughter or murder as the court could not determine that they planned to kill the victim. The prosecution wanted a five-and a-half-year sentence for Onur U. while the suspect said he did not hit Jonny K.\n\nIn June 2013 a mistrial was declared, therefore requiring the trial to occur again. Sentencing occurred in August 2013. Onur U., classified as a juvenile, was sentenced to four-and-a-half years. Five other men, all of ages ranging from 19 to 24, each received sentences with the highest being two years and eight months.\n\nAftermath\nAccording to Deutsche Welle, the killing sparked nationwide outrage and triggered a debate on youth violence.\n\nJonny K.'s sister, Tina K., began anti-violence advocacy. She was a co-plaintiff in the criminal case against the suspects.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\nCrime in Berlin\n2012 crimes in Germany\nOctober 2014 events in Europe\n2012 deaths\nOctober 2012 events in Germany", "Regina v. Woodrow, 15 M. & W. 404 (Exch. 1846) was a case decided by the English Court of Exchequer Chamber that first adopted a strict liability standard for the criminal offence of selling impure foods.\n\nDecision\nThe defendant was charged with violating a statute that prohibited possession of adulterated tobacco. The court held the defendant criminally liable even though he had no knowledge or reason to suspect the adulteration. The court justified this adoption of strict liability as being in the interests of convenient prosecution.\n\nThis decision overruled Rex v. Dixon, which had included a mens rea requirement.\n\nReferences\n\nW\n1846 in case law\n1846 in England\nCourt of Exchequer Chamber cases\nFood safety scandals\nTobacco in the United Kingdom\nFood safety in the United Kingdom\n1846 in British law" ]
[ "George Stephanopoulos", "Real estate loan controversy", "What year did this occur?", "In 1994,", "Was he directly involved?", "Stephanopoulos sealed an $835,000 commercial real estate deal consisting of a two-story apartment, including an eyewear retailer, with a below-market loan rate from a bank", "Was this something he was charged criminally with?", "I don't know." ]
C_f443454d631b4be6916844adb42f9739_0
Did he end up paying a fine?
4
Did George Stephanopoulos end up paying a fine?
George Stephanopoulos
In 1994, columnist Jack Anderson reported that Stephanopoulos sealed an $835,000 commercial real estate deal consisting of a two-story apartment, including an eyewear retailer, with a below-market loan rate from a bank owned by Hugh McColl, who had been called by President Clinton "the most enlightened banker in America". A NationsBank commercial loan officer said that this loan did "not fit our product matrix" as banks typically offer such loans for only those customers who have deep pockets and on a short-term adjustable rate basis. Stephanopoulos's real estate agent explained that "nobody making $125,000 could qualify for the property without the commercial property (lease)." One former senior bank regulator told Anderson that, "If his name were George Smith, and he didn't work in the White House, this loan wouldn't have gotten made." Regarding the controversy, NationsBank stated, "The loan described by Jack Anderson as a commercial loan to George Stephanopoulos was, in fact, a residential mortgage loan. At the time the loan commitment was made, Mr. Anderson (or his imaginary 'George Smith' who 'doesn't work in the White House') could have walked into any NationsBank Mortgage Company office in the D.C. area and received the same excellent rate and term for the same deal." However, Stephanopoulos's realtor states that he would not have qualified for the loan without the commercial property rent. One NationsBank source states that the issuance of a residential loan on mixed-use properties is such a rarity that it was not even addressed in the "NationsBank Mortgage Corporation's Program Summary" or its "Credit Policy Manual." A NationsBank underwriting memo revealed that one of the three restrictions for mixed-use properties is that "the borrower must be the owner of the business entity." The source claims that NationsBank told the listing agent that, "We're not (interested in mixed-use properties), but we do have an appetite for this particular loan." NationsBank's primary regulator at the time was Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig, a Rhodes scholar who attended Yale Law School with President Clinton, and who had been asked to investigate NationsBank by Democratic congressmen Henry B. Gonzalez and John Dingell. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
George Robert Stephanopoulos (born February 10, 1961) is an American television host, political commentator, and former Democratic advisor. Stephanopoulos currently is a coanchor with Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan on Good Morning America, and host of This Week, ABC's Sunday morning current events news program. Before his career as a journalist, Stephanopoulos was an advisor to the Democratic Party. He rose to early prominence as a communications director for the 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton and subsequently became White House communications director. He was later senior advisor for policy and strategy, before departing in December 1996. Early life and education George Stephanopoulos was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, the son of Nickolitsa "Nikki" Gloria (née Chafos) and Robert George Stephanopoulos. His parents are of Greek descent. His father is a Greek Orthodox priest and dean emeritus of the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in New York City. His father is a retired priest at Sts. Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox church in Cleveland Heights, OH. His mother was the director of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America National News Service for many years. Following some time in Purchase, New York, Stephanopoulos moved to the eastern suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, where he graduated in 1978 from Orange High School in Pepper Pike. In 1982, Stephanopoulos received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science summa cum laude from Columbia University in New York and was the salutatorian of his class. While at Columbia, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa his junior year and was awarded a Harry S. Truman Scholarship. He was also a sports broadcaster for 89.9 WKCR-FM, the university's radio station. Promising his father that he would attend law school eventually, George took a job in Washington, D.C., as an aide to Democratic Congressman Ed Feighan of Ohio. He became Feighan's chief of staff. Stephanopoulos attended Balliol College at the University of Oxford in England, as a Rhodes Scholar, earning a Master of Arts in Theology in 1984. Career Politics 1988 U.S. presidential election In 1988, Stephanopoulos worked on the Michael Dukakis 1988 U.S. presidential campaign. He has noted that one of his attractions to this campaign was that Dukakis was a Greek-American liberal from Massachusetts. After this campaign, Stephanopoulos became an executive floor assistant to Dick Gephardt, U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader; he held this position until he joined the Clinton campaign. Clinton administration Stephanopoulos was, along with David Wilhelm and James Carville, a leading member of Clinton's 1992 U.S. presidential campaign. His role on the campaign is portrayed in the documentary film The War Room (1993). In the Clinton administration, Stephanopoulos served as a senior advisor for policy and strategy. His initiatives focused on crime legislation, affirmative action, and health care. At the outset of Clinton's presidency, Stephanopoulos also served as the de facto press secretary, briefing the press even though Dee Dee Myers was officially the White House Press Secretary. In 1994, after Paula Jones accused Bill Clinton of Sexual harassment, Stephanopoulos and James Carville sought to discredit her allegations against Clinton. Both men suggested that Jones was just seeking cash for her story. Stephanopoulos also successfully sought to keep Jones' news conference off television. Stephanopoulos called NBC journalist Tim Russert, CNN chairman Tom Johnson, as well as several others, whom he convinced to keep her conference off television. On February 25, 1994, Stephanopoulos and Harold Ickes had a conference call with Roger Altman to discuss the Resolution Trust Corporation's choice of Republican lawyer Jay Stephens to head the Madison Guaranty investigation, that later turned into the Whitewater controversy. In 1999 Stephanopoulos and James Carville were sued for defamation by Gennifer Flowers. Stephanopoulos had made comments about her allegations that she had an affair with Bill Clinton. He accused Flowers of doctoring her taped conversation with Clinton to make her story look creditable. Stephanopoulos also called her story "tabloid trash", "garbage", and "crap". The suit was dismissed since his comments were not the basis for defamation. Stephanopoulos resigned from the Clinton administration shortly after Clinton was re-elected in 1996. His memoir, All Too Human: A Political Education (1999), was published after he left the White House during Clinton's second term. It quickly became a number-one bestseller on The New York Times Best Seller list. In the book, Stephanopoulos spoke of his depression and how his face broke out into hives due to the pressures of conveying the Clinton White House message. Clinton referred to the book in his autobiography, My Life, apologizing for what he felt in retrospect to be excessive demands placed on the young staffer. Stephanopoulos's book covers his time with Clinton from the day he met him in September 1991, to the day Stephanopoulos left the White House in December 1996, through two presidential campaigns and four years in the White House. Stephanopoulos describes Clinton in the book as a "complicated man responding to the pressures and pleasures of public life in ways I found both awesome and appalling". Journalism After leaving the White House at the end of Clinton's first term, Stephanopoulos became a political analyst for ABC News, and served as a correspondent on This Week, ABC's Sunday morning public affairs program; World News Tonight, the evening news broadcast; Good Morning America, the morning news program; along with other various special broadcasts. In September 2002, Stephanopoulos became host of This Week, and ABC News officially named him "Chief Washington Correspondent" in December 2005. The program's title added the new host's name. When named to the position, Stephanopoulos was a relative newcomer to the show, usurping longtime panelists and short-term co-hosts Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts who, for a few years, briefly replaced the longtime original host, David Brinkley. ABC News executives reportedly offered Ted Koppel, former Nightline anchor, the This Week host job in 2005 after the program's ratings had become a regular third-, fourth-, and sometimes fifth-place finish after competitors NBC, CBS, Fox, and syndicated programs. However, This Week beat Meet the Press on January 11, 2009, when Stephanopoulos interviewed president-elect Barack Obama. On April 16, 2008, Stephanopoulos co-moderated, with Charles Gibson, the twenty-first, and ultimately final, Democratic Party presidential debate between Illinois Senator Barack Obama and New York Senator Hillary Clinton for the 2008 election cycle. While the debate received record ratings, the co-moderators were heavily criticized for focusing most of the first hour of the debate on controversies that occurred during the campaign rather than issues such as the economy and the Iraq War. Stephanopoulos acknowledged the legitimacy of the concerns over the order of the questions, but said they were issues in the campaign that had not been covered in previous debates. ABC had sought out a woman who opposed Obama and aired a video of her asking a trivial question, repeated by Stephanopoulos, about why Obama wasn't wearing a flag pin. The question brought widespread criticism from the media. During the 2008 presidential election campaign, Stephanopoulos launched a blog George's Bottom Line on the ABC News website. Stephanopoulos blogged about political news and analysis from Washington. In December 2009, ABC News president David Westin offered Stephanopoulos Diane Sawyer's job on Good Morning America after Sawyer was named anchor of World News. Stephanopoulos accepted the new position and began co-anchoring GMA on December 14, 2009. Stephanopoulos announced on January 10, 2010, that that would be his last broadcast as the permanent host of This Week. However, after his successor, Christiane Amanpour, left the show amid sagging ratings, it was announced that Stephanopoulos would return as host of This Week in December 2011. He signed a deal to stay with ABC until 2021 worth $105 million. On January 7, 2012, Stephanopoulos was the co-moderator of a debate among Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. During the debate, Stephanopoulos repeatedly asked Romney whether the former Massachusetts governor believes the U.S. Supreme Court should overturn a 1965 ruling that a constitutional right to privacy bars states from banning contraception. During the debate, Romney said it was a preposterous question. Following Diane Sawyer's departure from World News at the end of August 2014, Stephanopoulos was the Chief Anchor at ABC News 2014–2020 while retaining his roles on GMA and This Week. Stephanopoulos leads a new documentary unit for Disney's digital platforms and hosts four primetime hour-long specials on the ABC network annually. Speaking engagements In 2009, Stephanopoulos spoke at the annual Tri-C Presidential Scholarship Luncheon held at the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel and praised Cuyahoga Community College. Controversies Real estate loan controversy In 1994, columnist Jack Anderson reported that Stephanopoulos signed an $835,000 commercial real estate deal consisting of a two-story apartment, including an eyewear retailer, with a below-market loan rate from a bank owned by Hugh McColl, who had been called by President Clinton "the most enlightened banker in America". A NationsBank commercial loan officer said that this loan did "not fit our product matrix" as banks typically offer such loans for only those customers who have deep pockets and on a short-term adjustable rate basis. Stephanopoulos's real estate agent explained that "nobody making $125,000 could qualify for the property without the commercial property (lease)." One former senior bank regulator told Anderson, "If his name were George Smith, and he didn't work in the White House, this loan wouldn't have gotten made." Regarding the controversy, NationsBank stated, "The loan described by Jack Anderson as a commercial loan to George Stephanopoulos was, in fact, a residential mortgage loan. At the time the loan commitment was made, Mr. Anderson (or his imaginary 'George Smith' who 'doesn't work in the White House') could have walked into any NationsBank Mortgage Company office in the D.C. area and received the same excellent rate and term for the same deal." However, Stephanopoulos's realtor states that he would not have qualified for the loan without the commercial property rent. One NationsBank source states that the issuance of a residential loan on mixed-use properties is such a rarity that it was not even addressed in the "NationsBank Mortgage Corporation's Program Summary" or its "Credit Policy Manual". A NationsBank underwriting memo revealed that one of the three restrictions for mixed-use properties is that "the borrower must be the owner of the business entity". The source claims that NationsBank told the listing agent that, "We're not (interested in mixed-use properties), but we do have an appetite for this particular loan." NationsBank's primary regulator at the time was Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig, a Rhodes scholar who attended Yale Law School with President Clinton, and who had been asked to investigate NationsBank by Democratic congressmen Henry B. Gonzalez and John Dingell. Clinton Foundation charity donations and conflict of interest as a journalist Stephanopoulos donated $25,000 in 2012, 2013, and 2014, a total of $75,000, to the Clinton Foundation, but did not disclose the donations to ABC News, his employer, or to his viewers. Stephanopoulos failed to reveal the donations even on April 26, 2015, while interviewing Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, a book which alleges that donations to the Foundation influenced some of Hillary Clinton's actions as Secretary of State. After exposure of the donations by Politico on May 14, 2015, Stephanopoulos apologized and admitted he should have disclosed the donations to ABC News and its viewers. The story was broken by The Washington Free Beacon, which had questioned ABC News regarding the matter. The donations had been reported by the Clinton Foundation, which Stephanopoulos had considered sufficient, a reliance ABC News characterized as "an honest mistake." Based on Stephanopoulos's donations to The Clinton Foundation charity and his behavior during prior interviews and presidential debates, Republican party leaders and candidates expressed their distrust, and called for him to be banned from moderating 2016 Presidential debates, due to bias and conflict of interest. He agreed to drop out as a moderator of the scheduled February 2016 Republican presidential primary debate. In the month prior to his revelation, Stephanopoulos told Jon Stewart on The Daily Show that when money is given to the Clinton Foundation "everybody" knows there's "a hope that that's going to lead to something, and that's what you have to be careful of." Jeffrey Epstein association In 2010, Stephanopoulos attended a dinner party at the home of convicted sex offender socialite Jeffrey Epstein alongside Chelsea Handler, Woody Allen, Katie Couric, Prince Andrew, Charlie Rose and Eva Andersson-Dubin. Following Epstein's arrest in July 2019, the party resurfaced online, with those attending receiving backlash, Stephanopoulos denied being friends with Epstein, with the party being the only encounter. Stephanopoulos told The New York Times: "That dinner was the first and last time I’ve seen him, I should have done more due diligence. It was a mistake to go.” In popular culture In the fourth episode of the first season of the NBC television series Friends, entitled The One with George Stephanopoulos and originally aired 13 October, 1994, the girls spy on Stephanopoulos across the street, after they were delivered his pizza by accident. Stephanopoulos was the inspiration for the character of Henry Burton in Joe Klein's novel Primary Colors (1996). Burton was subsequently portrayed by Adrian Lester in the 1998 film adaptation. Michael J. Fox's character, Lewis Rothschild, in the film The American President (1995), written by Aaron Sorkin was modeled after Stephanopoulos. He was also used by Sorkin as the model for Rob Lowe's character, Sam Seaborn, on the television drama series The West Wing. According to Stephanopoulos, his role in the Clinton administration was more like Bradley Whitford's character Josh Lyman than Seaborn or Rothschild. Stephanopoulos returned to his alma mater, Columbia University, in 2003, serving as the keynote speaker at Columbia College's Class Day. In 2013, Stephanopoulos played himself in House of Cards and in 2014 he played himself in an episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. In September 2016, Stephanopoulos was featured on a €1 (1 euro) Greek postage stamp, along with other notable Greek-Americans. In 2021, Stephanopoulos was portrayed by George H. Xanthis in Impeachment: American Crime Story; the third season of the FX true-crime anthology television series American Crime Story. Personal life Stephanopoulos is a Greek Orthodox Christian and has earned a master's degree in theology. In 1995, as he was pulling out of a parking space in front of a restaurant in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., he had a collision with a parked vehicle. Stephanopoulos was arrested and charged with leaving the scene of an accident and driving with an expired license and license plates. The charge of leaving the scene of an accident was subsequently dropped. Stephanopoulos married Ali Wentworth, an actress, comedian, and writer, in 2001 at the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity on New York's Upper East Side. They have two daughters, one born in 2002 and one born in 2005. Stephanopoulos was introduced to transcendental meditation by Jerry Seinfeld. Conducting an interview on Good Morning America, he said, "We’re all here because we all have something in common—we all practice Transcendental Meditation. … I think that people don’t really understand exactly what it is and what a difference it has made in people’s lives." Wentworth posted on Instagram April 1, 2020, that she was struggling with COVID-19 while self-quarantining in their New York home. Stephanopoulos announced on April 13, 2020, that he had tested positive for COVID-19 but was asymptomatic. Honors In May 2007, Stephanopoulos received an Honorary Doctor of Laws from St. John's University in New York City. See also List of Balliol College people List of Columbia University alumni List of Eastern Orthodox Christians List of Greek Americans List of people from Cleveland List of people from Massachusetts List of people from New York City List of people from Washington, D.C. List of Rhodes Scholars List of television reporters List of talk show hosts Lists of American writers New Yorkers in journalism References Citations Sources External links abcnews.com/thisweek, This Week with George Stephanopoulos official website Membership at the Council on Foreign Relations |- |- |- |- 1961 births 20th-century American journalists American male journalists 20th-century American writers 21st-century American journalists 21st-century American writers ABC News personalities Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford American bloggers American memoirists American political consultants American Rhodes Scholars American television news anchors American television reporters and correspondents American television talk show hosts American people of Greek descent American writers of Greek descent Clinton administration personnel Columbia College (New York) alumni Journalists from New York City Journalists from Washington, D.C. Greek Orthodox Christians from the United States Living people Massachusetts Democrats Members of the Council on Foreign Relations Television personalities from Cleveland People from Fall River, Massachusetts People from Purchase, New York Senior Advisors to the President of the United States Washington, D.C. Democrats White House Communications Directors Writers from Massachusetts Writers from New York City Writers from Cleveland Liberalism in the United States
false
[ "Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U.S. 660 (1983), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case holding that a local government can only imprison or jail someone for not paying a fine if it can be shown, by means of a hearing, that the person in question could have paid it but \"willfully\" chose not to do so.\n\nBackground\nTunnel Hill, Georgia resident, Danny Bearden was convicted of robbery for breaking into a trailer as a young man. As a result, he was ordered to pay a $500 fine and $250 in restitution, which he was initially paying off until he lost his job and couldn't find another one. This left him unable to pay the rest of his fines and fees, for which Georgia sent him to prison. Bearden's case was handled by Jim Lohr, a court-appointed attorney who had graduated from law school only a few years earlier. Lohr spent hours researching in the library before the case.\n\nRuling\nOn May 24, 1983, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that imprisoning Bearden violated his Fourteenth Amendment rights to \"fundamental rights\". In the Court's opinion, Sandra Day O'Connor, the Supreme Court's most junior Associate Justice at the time, wrote that it was \"fundamentally unfair\" for Georgia to have imprisoned Bearden. The ruling held that local governments \"must inquire into the reasons for the failure to pay\" when dealing with revocation cases for people who failed to pay a fine, and that only if the probationer \"willfully refused to pay or failed to make sufficient bona fide efforts legally to acquire the resources to pay\" can they be imprisoned or jailed. The ruling also held that courts must consider alternatives to imprisonment and determine that they are insufficient to \"meet the state's interest in punishment and deterrence\" before sending someone to prison for nonpayment of a fine.\n\nImpact\nAlthough the Bearden ruling required that the defendant in a case regarding not paying court fines can only be imprisoned if they \"willfully\" chose not to pay them, the Court did not define what \"willfully\" meant in this context. This has frequently led to judges having to determine whether someone who did not pay a fine was too poor to do so or not. Some attorneys with many poor clients have argued that the requirement in Bearden that judges consider a defendant's ability to pay is almost never enforced. In 2015, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of Kevin Thompson, who had spent five days in a Georgia jail for not paying a traffic ticket, arguing that Bearden was intended to prevent just such situations from happening. Thompson's lawyer also claimed that the court did not consider alternatives to imprisonment, like community service, as required by Bearden.\n\nSee also\nList of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 461\nTate v. Short\nWilliams v. Illinois\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\nUnited States Supreme Court cases\nUnited States Supreme Court cases of the Burger Court\nUnited States Fourteenth Amendment case law\n1983 in United States case law\nDebtors' prisons", "Mason Fine (born April 19, 1997) is an American football quarterback for the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League (CFL). He played his college career with the North Texas Mean Green.\n\nEarly years\nFine, who is one-quarter Cherokee, grew up in Peggs, Oklahoma. He has Cherokee lineage on both sides of his family and is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. According to a 2020 story by Yahoo Sports journalist Jeff Eisenberg, Fine's development as a quarterback began in the summer before his sixth-grade year, during which he attended a quarterback camp at the University of Oklahoma. The young Fine paid special attention to former Oklahoma star quarterback and then-current Sooners assistant Josh Heupel, observing Heupel's throwing motion and paying attention to the advice he offered. During each day's drive home from the camp, he wrote down what he had learned. After the camp, Fine and his father Dale typed up the notes, and he went so far as to place a printed copy next to his bed.\n\nFine was initially trained by his father, who had never played football at any level. Each day, the two would teach one another proper throwing motion via the notes they took at the aforementioned camp. In Eisenberg's story, Dale recalled, \"It was hours and days and months and years of repetition. The motto we went by was that it wasn’t just practice that made perfect. It was perfect practice that made perfect.\" By the time Mason finished his eighth-grade year, they no longer worked on his mechanics. The following summer, he attended a quarterback camp at which an instructor praised his throwing motion and asked about his quarterbacks coach. Eisenberg noted, \"The instructor couldn’t believe it was his dad, let alone that Dale Fine had no previous football experience.\"\n\nHigh school\nSince his hometown of fewer than 1,000 operated only a K–8 school, Fine had a choice between several nearby high schools, and enrolled at Locust Grove High School in Locust Grove in 2012. The Pirates had just hired a new head coach Matt Hennesy after winning only two games in the previous three seasons. Eisenberg noted that the new coach had to make a decision regarding his new talent—while Fine was the team's best passer, \"Hennesy feared putting a 5-foot-9, 135-pound freshman behind a patchwork offensive line.\" Hennesy decided to start Fine as a wide receiver, but designed a series of trick plays to utilize Fine's throwing ability; Fine threw for more than 600 yards as a freshman despite not playing quarterback. He went on to start at quarterback in his remaining three high school seasons, setting the all-time Oklahoma high school record for passing yards and touchdowns and becoming the first player to ever win the state's Gatorade Player of the Year award twice.\n\nRecruitment\nDespite his gaudy high school statistics, Fine finished his senior season without a single scholarship offer, largely due to his lack of size. During a summer camp before his senior season, an assistant for Arkansas State pulled him aside, praising his arm strength and ability to escape a collapsing pocket. However, he then told Fine that his small size made it unlikely that he would ever play at a Division I FBS school, instead offering to recommend him to Division I FCS or Division II schools. Fine would tell Eisenberg, \"I was polite and told him that I appreciated it, but inside I was fuming.\" This coach was not alone in his sentiment; Fine went without an offer even after sending out numerous highlight tapes and attending camps at four other FBS schools. Rice showed strong interest after Fine's junior season, but went with a considerably taller prospect; Oklahoma State recruited him only as a walk-on, and did not make him an offer even after its main quarterback target rescinded a verbal commitment to the school; and when Hennesy called Kansas State's Bill Snyder about Fine, Snyder responded that he didn't recruit quarterbacks under 6 feet tall.\n\nFine caught a break when North Texas hired Seth Littrell as head coach shortly after the end of the 2015 season. Littrell, a former Oklahoma player who grew up in Muskogee, Oklahoma, was a close friend of Hennesy who operated an Air Raid offense similar to the one that Fine quarterbacked at Locust Grove. Shortly after his hiring, Littrell called Hennesy to ask about available quarterbacks; while North Texas had an incoming graduate transfer from Alabama for the 2016 season, Littrell sought a future prospect. Littrell and his staff were sold on Fine's ability; he would tell Eisenberg,\n\nSensing that this was his best chance at an FBS offer, Fine made makeshift lifts for his shoes in order to appear taller for his North Texas visit. For his part, Littrell would say, \"He could have shown up in combat boots with four-inch heels and we’d have taken him.\" On February 3, 2016, Fine signed a National Letter of Intent with North Texas.\n\nCollege career\n\nNorth Texas\n\n2016 \nFine started nine games for North Texas as a true freshman in 2016, throwing for 1,572 yards and breaking the school record for longest play from scrimmage with an 80-yard touchdown run against UTSA to earn a spot on the Conference USA All-Freshman team\n\n2017–2018 \nOver his sophomore and junior years, Fine led the Mean Green to 9 victories in each season and threw for a total of 7,845 yards and 58 touchdowns. He earned back-to-back CUSA Offensive Player of the Year awards and broke the school's career passing yards record along the way.\n\n2019 \nGoing into Fine's senior season in 2019, he was named as the top college quarterback in Texas by Dave Campbell's Texas Football and received national media attention for the Heisman campaign started on his behalf by the UNT athletic department.\n\nStatistics\n\nProfessional career\nAfter going undrafted in the 2020 NFL Draft, Fine had a tryout with the Chicago Bears on August 17, 2020. He signed with the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the CFL on December 30, 2020.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n UNT Football bio\n\nLiving people\n1997 births\nAmerican football quarterbacks\nCherokee Nation people\nNative American sportspeople\nNorth Texas Mean Green football players\nPeople from Cherokee County, Oklahoma\nPlayers of American football from Oklahoma\nSaskatchewan Roughriders players\n21st-century Native Americans" ]
[ "George Stephanopoulos", "Real estate loan controversy", "What year did this occur?", "In 1994,", "Was he directly involved?", "Stephanopoulos sealed an $835,000 commercial real estate deal consisting of a two-story apartment, including an eyewear retailer, with a below-market loan rate from a bank", "Was this something he was charged criminally with?", "I don't know.", "Did he end up paying a fine?", "I don't know." ]
C_f443454d631b4be6916844adb42f9739_0
What happened to him because of this?
5
What happened to the real estate loan controversy because of the real estate loan controversy?
George Stephanopoulos
In 1994, columnist Jack Anderson reported that Stephanopoulos sealed an $835,000 commercial real estate deal consisting of a two-story apartment, including an eyewear retailer, with a below-market loan rate from a bank owned by Hugh McColl, who had been called by President Clinton "the most enlightened banker in America". A NationsBank commercial loan officer said that this loan did "not fit our product matrix" as banks typically offer such loans for only those customers who have deep pockets and on a short-term adjustable rate basis. Stephanopoulos's real estate agent explained that "nobody making $125,000 could qualify for the property without the commercial property (lease)." One former senior bank regulator told Anderson that, "If his name were George Smith, and he didn't work in the White House, this loan wouldn't have gotten made." Regarding the controversy, NationsBank stated, "The loan described by Jack Anderson as a commercial loan to George Stephanopoulos was, in fact, a residential mortgage loan. At the time the loan commitment was made, Mr. Anderson (or his imaginary 'George Smith' who 'doesn't work in the White House') could have walked into any NationsBank Mortgage Company office in the D.C. area and received the same excellent rate and term for the same deal." However, Stephanopoulos's realtor states that he would not have qualified for the loan without the commercial property rent. One NationsBank source states that the issuance of a residential loan on mixed-use properties is such a rarity that it was not even addressed in the "NationsBank Mortgage Corporation's Program Summary" or its "Credit Policy Manual." A NationsBank underwriting memo revealed that one of the three restrictions for mixed-use properties is that "the borrower must be the owner of the business entity." The source claims that NationsBank told the listing agent that, "We're not (interested in mixed-use properties), but we do have an appetite for this particular loan." NationsBank's primary regulator at the time was Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig, a Rhodes scholar who attended Yale Law School with President Clinton, and who had been asked to investigate NationsBank by Democratic congressmen Henry B. Gonzalez and John Dingell. CANNOTANSWER
source claims that NationsBank told the listing agent that, "We're not (interested in mixed-use properties
George Robert Stephanopoulos (born February 10, 1961) is an American television host, political commentator, and former Democratic advisor. Stephanopoulos currently is a coanchor with Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan on Good Morning America, and host of This Week, ABC's Sunday morning current events news program. Before his career as a journalist, Stephanopoulos was an advisor to the Democratic Party. He rose to early prominence as a communications director for the 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton and subsequently became White House communications director. He was later senior advisor for policy and strategy, before departing in December 1996. Early life and education George Stephanopoulos was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, the son of Nickolitsa "Nikki" Gloria (née Chafos) and Robert George Stephanopoulos. His parents are of Greek descent. His father is a Greek Orthodox priest and dean emeritus of the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in New York City. His father is a retired priest at Sts. Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox church in Cleveland Heights, OH. His mother was the director of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America National News Service for many years. Following some time in Purchase, New York, Stephanopoulos moved to the eastern suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, where he graduated in 1978 from Orange High School in Pepper Pike. In 1982, Stephanopoulos received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science summa cum laude from Columbia University in New York and was the salutatorian of his class. While at Columbia, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa his junior year and was awarded a Harry S. Truman Scholarship. He was also a sports broadcaster for 89.9 WKCR-FM, the university's radio station. Promising his father that he would attend law school eventually, George took a job in Washington, D.C., as an aide to Democratic Congressman Ed Feighan of Ohio. He became Feighan's chief of staff. Stephanopoulos attended Balliol College at the University of Oxford in England, as a Rhodes Scholar, earning a Master of Arts in Theology in 1984. Career Politics 1988 U.S. presidential election In 1988, Stephanopoulos worked on the Michael Dukakis 1988 U.S. presidential campaign. He has noted that one of his attractions to this campaign was that Dukakis was a Greek-American liberal from Massachusetts. After this campaign, Stephanopoulos became an executive floor assistant to Dick Gephardt, U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader; he held this position until he joined the Clinton campaign. Clinton administration Stephanopoulos was, along with David Wilhelm and James Carville, a leading member of Clinton's 1992 U.S. presidential campaign. His role on the campaign is portrayed in the documentary film The War Room (1993). In the Clinton administration, Stephanopoulos served as a senior advisor for policy and strategy. His initiatives focused on crime legislation, affirmative action, and health care. At the outset of Clinton's presidency, Stephanopoulos also served as the de facto press secretary, briefing the press even though Dee Dee Myers was officially the White House Press Secretary. In 1994, after Paula Jones accused Bill Clinton of Sexual harassment, Stephanopoulos and James Carville sought to discredit her allegations against Clinton. Both men suggested that Jones was just seeking cash for her story. Stephanopoulos also successfully sought to keep Jones' news conference off television. Stephanopoulos called NBC journalist Tim Russert, CNN chairman Tom Johnson, as well as several others, whom he convinced to keep her conference off television. On February 25, 1994, Stephanopoulos and Harold Ickes had a conference call with Roger Altman to discuss the Resolution Trust Corporation's choice of Republican lawyer Jay Stephens to head the Madison Guaranty investigation, that later turned into the Whitewater controversy. In 1999 Stephanopoulos and James Carville were sued for defamation by Gennifer Flowers. Stephanopoulos had made comments about her allegations that she had an affair with Bill Clinton. He accused Flowers of doctoring her taped conversation with Clinton to make her story look creditable. Stephanopoulos also called her story "tabloid trash", "garbage", and "crap". The suit was dismissed since his comments were not the basis for defamation. Stephanopoulos resigned from the Clinton administration shortly after Clinton was re-elected in 1996. His memoir, All Too Human: A Political Education (1999), was published after he left the White House during Clinton's second term. It quickly became a number-one bestseller on The New York Times Best Seller list. In the book, Stephanopoulos spoke of his depression and how his face broke out into hives due to the pressures of conveying the Clinton White House message. Clinton referred to the book in his autobiography, My Life, apologizing for what he felt in retrospect to be excessive demands placed on the young staffer. Stephanopoulos's book covers his time with Clinton from the day he met him in September 1991, to the day Stephanopoulos left the White House in December 1996, through two presidential campaigns and four years in the White House. Stephanopoulos describes Clinton in the book as a "complicated man responding to the pressures and pleasures of public life in ways I found both awesome and appalling". Journalism After leaving the White House at the end of Clinton's first term, Stephanopoulos became a political analyst for ABC News, and served as a correspondent on This Week, ABC's Sunday morning public affairs program; World News Tonight, the evening news broadcast; Good Morning America, the morning news program; along with other various special broadcasts. In September 2002, Stephanopoulos became host of This Week, and ABC News officially named him "Chief Washington Correspondent" in December 2005. The program's title added the new host's name. When named to the position, Stephanopoulos was a relative newcomer to the show, usurping longtime panelists and short-term co-hosts Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts who, for a few years, briefly replaced the longtime original host, David Brinkley. ABC News executives reportedly offered Ted Koppel, former Nightline anchor, the This Week host job in 2005 after the program's ratings had become a regular third-, fourth-, and sometimes fifth-place finish after competitors NBC, CBS, Fox, and syndicated programs. However, This Week beat Meet the Press on January 11, 2009, when Stephanopoulos interviewed president-elect Barack Obama. On April 16, 2008, Stephanopoulos co-moderated, with Charles Gibson, the twenty-first, and ultimately final, Democratic Party presidential debate between Illinois Senator Barack Obama and New York Senator Hillary Clinton for the 2008 election cycle. While the debate received record ratings, the co-moderators were heavily criticized for focusing most of the first hour of the debate on controversies that occurred during the campaign rather than issues such as the economy and the Iraq War. Stephanopoulos acknowledged the legitimacy of the concerns over the order of the questions, but said they were issues in the campaign that had not been covered in previous debates. ABC had sought out a woman who opposed Obama and aired a video of her asking a trivial question, repeated by Stephanopoulos, about why Obama wasn't wearing a flag pin. The question brought widespread criticism from the media. During the 2008 presidential election campaign, Stephanopoulos launched a blog George's Bottom Line on the ABC News website. Stephanopoulos blogged about political news and analysis from Washington. In December 2009, ABC News president David Westin offered Stephanopoulos Diane Sawyer's job on Good Morning America after Sawyer was named anchor of World News. Stephanopoulos accepted the new position and began co-anchoring GMA on December 14, 2009. Stephanopoulos announced on January 10, 2010, that that would be his last broadcast as the permanent host of This Week. However, after his successor, Christiane Amanpour, left the show amid sagging ratings, it was announced that Stephanopoulos would return as host of This Week in December 2011. He signed a deal to stay with ABC until 2021 worth $105 million. On January 7, 2012, Stephanopoulos was the co-moderator of a debate among Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. During the debate, Stephanopoulos repeatedly asked Romney whether the former Massachusetts governor believes the U.S. Supreme Court should overturn a 1965 ruling that a constitutional right to privacy bars states from banning contraception. During the debate, Romney said it was a preposterous question. Following Diane Sawyer's departure from World News at the end of August 2014, Stephanopoulos was the Chief Anchor at ABC News 2014–2020 while retaining his roles on GMA and This Week. Stephanopoulos leads a new documentary unit for Disney's digital platforms and hosts four primetime hour-long specials on the ABC network annually. Speaking engagements In 2009, Stephanopoulos spoke at the annual Tri-C Presidential Scholarship Luncheon held at the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel and praised Cuyahoga Community College. Controversies Real estate loan controversy In 1994, columnist Jack Anderson reported that Stephanopoulos signed an $835,000 commercial real estate deal consisting of a two-story apartment, including an eyewear retailer, with a below-market loan rate from a bank owned by Hugh McColl, who had been called by President Clinton "the most enlightened banker in America". A NationsBank commercial loan officer said that this loan did "not fit our product matrix" as banks typically offer such loans for only those customers who have deep pockets and on a short-term adjustable rate basis. Stephanopoulos's real estate agent explained that "nobody making $125,000 could qualify for the property without the commercial property (lease)." One former senior bank regulator told Anderson, "If his name were George Smith, and he didn't work in the White House, this loan wouldn't have gotten made." Regarding the controversy, NationsBank stated, "The loan described by Jack Anderson as a commercial loan to George Stephanopoulos was, in fact, a residential mortgage loan. At the time the loan commitment was made, Mr. Anderson (or his imaginary 'George Smith' who 'doesn't work in the White House') could have walked into any NationsBank Mortgage Company office in the D.C. area and received the same excellent rate and term for the same deal." However, Stephanopoulos's realtor states that he would not have qualified for the loan without the commercial property rent. One NationsBank source states that the issuance of a residential loan on mixed-use properties is such a rarity that it was not even addressed in the "NationsBank Mortgage Corporation's Program Summary" or its "Credit Policy Manual". A NationsBank underwriting memo revealed that one of the three restrictions for mixed-use properties is that "the borrower must be the owner of the business entity". The source claims that NationsBank told the listing agent that, "We're not (interested in mixed-use properties), but we do have an appetite for this particular loan." NationsBank's primary regulator at the time was Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig, a Rhodes scholar who attended Yale Law School with President Clinton, and who had been asked to investigate NationsBank by Democratic congressmen Henry B. Gonzalez and John Dingell. Clinton Foundation charity donations and conflict of interest as a journalist Stephanopoulos donated $25,000 in 2012, 2013, and 2014, a total of $75,000, to the Clinton Foundation, but did not disclose the donations to ABC News, his employer, or to his viewers. Stephanopoulos failed to reveal the donations even on April 26, 2015, while interviewing Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, a book which alleges that donations to the Foundation influenced some of Hillary Clinton's actions as Secretary of State. After exposure of the donations by Politico on May 14, 2015, Stephanopoulos apologized and admitted he should have disclosed the donations to ABC News and its viewers. The story was broken by The Washington Free Beacon, which had questioned ABC News regarding the matter. The donations had been reported by the Clinton Foundation, which Stephanopoulos had considered sufficient, a reliance ABC News characterized as "an honest mistake." Based on Stephanopoulos's donations to The Clinton Foundation charity and his behavior during prior interviews and presidential debates, Republican party leaders and candidates expressed their distrust, and called for him to be banned from moderating 2016 Presidential debates, due to bias and conflict of interest. He agreed to drop out as a moderator of the scheduled February 2016 Republican presidential primary debate. In the month prior to his revelation, Stephanopoulos told Jon Stewart on The Daily Show that when money is given to the Clinton Foundation "everybody" knows there's "a hope that that's going to lead to something, and that's what you have to be careful of." Jeffrey Epstein association In 2010, Stephanopoulos attended a dinner party at the home of convicted sex offender socialite Jeffrey Epstein alongside Chelsea Handler, Woody Allen, Katie Couric, Prince Andrew, Charlie Rose and Eva Andersson-Dubin. Following Epstein's arrest in July 2019, the party resurfaced online, with those attending receiving backlash, Stephanopoulos denied being friends with Epstein, with the party being the only encounter. Stephanopoulos told The New York Times: "That dinner was the first and last time I’ve seen him, I should have done more due diligence. It was a mistake to go.” In popular culture In the fourth episode of the first season of the NBC television series Friends, entitled The One with George Stephanopoulos and originally aired 13 October, 1994, the girls spy on Stephanopoulos across the street, after they were delivered his pizza by accident. Stephanopoulos was the inspiration for the character of Henry Burton in Joe Klein's novel Primary Colors (1996). Burton was subsequently portrayed by Adrian Lester in the 1998 film adaptation. Michael J. Fox's character, Lewis Rothschild, in the film The American President (1995), written by Aaron Sorkin was modeled after Stephanopoulos. He was also used by Sorkin as the model for Rob Lowe's character, Sam Seaborn, on the television drama series The West Wing. According to Stephanopoulos, his role in the Clinton administration was more like Bradley Whitford's character Josh Lyman than Seaborn or Rothschild. Stephanopoulos returned to his alma mater, Columbia University, in 2003, serving as the keynote speaker at Columbia College's Class Day. In 2013, Stephanopoulos played himself in House of Cards and in 2014 he played himself in an episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. In September 2016, Stephanopoulos was featured on a €1 (1 euro) Greek postage stamp, along with other notable Greek-Americans. In 2021, Stephanopoulos was portrayed by George H. Xanthis in Impeachment: American Crime Story; the third season of the FX true-crime anthology television series American Crime Story. Personal life Stephanopoulos is a Greek Orthodox Christian and has earned a master's degree in theology. In 1995, as he was pulling out of a parking space in front of a restaurant in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., he had a collision with a parked vehicle. Stephanopoulos was arrested and charged with leaving the scene of an accident and driving with an expired license and license plates. The charge of leaving the scene of an accident was subsequently dropped. Stephanopoulos married Ali Wentworth, an actress, comedian, and writer, in 2001 at the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity on New York's Upper East Side. They have two daughters, one born in 2002 and one born in 2005. Stephanopoulos was introduced to transcendental meditation by Jerry Seinfeld. Conducting an interview on Good Morning America, he said, "We’re all here because we all have something in common—we all practice Transcendental Meditation. … I think that people don’t really understand exactly what it is and what a difference it has made in people’s lives." Wentworth posted on Instagram April 1, 2020, that she was struggling with COVID-19 while self-quarantining in their New York home. Stephanopoulos announced on April 13, 2020, that he had tested positive for COVID-19 but was asymptomatic. Honors In May 2007, Stephanopoulos received an Honorary Doctor of Laws from St. John's University in New York City. See also List of Balliol College people List of Columbia University alumni List of Eastern Orthodox Christians List of Greek Americans List of people from Cleveland List of people from Massachusetts List of people from New York City List of people from Washington, D.C. List of Rhodes Scholars List of television reporters List of talk show hosts Lists of American writers New Yorkers in journalism References Citations Sources External links abcnews.com/thisweek, This Week with George Stephanopoulos official website Membership at the Council on Foreign Relations |- |- |- |- 1961 births 20th-century American journalists American male journalists 20th-century American writers 21st-century American journalists 21st-century American writers ABC News personalities Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford American bloggers American memoirists American political consultants American Rhodes Scholars American television news anchors American television reporters and correspondents American television talk show hosts American people of Greek descent American writers of Greek descent Clinton administration personnel Columbia College (New York) alumni Journalists from New York City Journalists from Washington, D.C. Greek Orthodox Christians from the United States Living people Massachusetts Democrats Members of the Council on Foreign Relations Television personalities from Cleveland People from Fall River, Massachusetts People from Purchase, New York Senior Advisors to the President of the United States Washington, D.C. Democrats White House Communications Directors Writers from Massachusetts Writers from New York City Writers from Cleveland Liberalism in the United States
true
[ "Don Juan Manuel's Tales of Count Lucanor, in Spanish Libro de los ejemplos del conde Lucanor y de Patronio (Book of the Examples of Count Lucanor and of Patronio), also commonly known as El Conde Lucanor, Libro de Patronio, or Libro de los ejemplos (original Old Castilian: Libro de los enxiemplos del Conde Lucanor et de Patronio), is one of the earliest works of prose in Castilian Spanish. It was first written in 1335.\n\nThe book is divided into four parts. The first and most well-known part is a series of 51 short stories (some no more than a page or two) drawn from various sources, such as Aesop and other classical writers, and Arabic folktales.\n\nTales of Count Lucanor was first printed in 1575 when it was published at Seville under the auspices of Argote de Molina. It was again printed at Madrid in 1642, after which it lay forgotten for nearly two centuries.\n\nPurpose and structure\n\nA didactic, moralistic purpose, which would color so much of the Spanish literature to follow (see Novela picaresca), is the mark of this book. Count Lucanor engages in conversation with his advisor Patronio, putting to him a problem (\"Some man has made me a proposition...\" or \"I fear that such and such person intends to...\") and asking for advice. Patronio responds always with the greatest humility, claiming not to wish to offer advice to so illustrious a person as the Count, but offering to tell him a story of which the Count's problem reminds him. (Thus, the stories are \"examples\" [ejemplos] of wise action.) At the end he advises the Count to do as the protagonist of his story did.\n\nEach chapter ends in more or less the same way, with slight variations on: \"And this pleased the Count greatly and he did just so, and found it well. And Don Johán (Juan) saw that this example was very good, and had it written in this book, and composed the following verses.\" A rhymed couplet closes, giving the moral of the story.\n\nOrigin of stories and influence on later literature\nMany of the stories written in the book are the first examples written in a modern European language of various stories, which many other writers would use in the proceeding centuries. Many of the stories he included were themselves derived from other stories, coming from western and Arab sources.\n\nShakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew has the basic elements of Tale 35, \"What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman\".\n\nTale 32, \"What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth\" tells the story that Hans Christian Andersen made popular as The Emperor's New Clothes.\n\nStory 7, \"What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana\", a version of Aesop's The Milkmaid and Her Pail, was claimed by Max Müller to originate in the Hindu cycle Panchatantra.\n\nTale 2, \"What happened to a good Man and his Son, leading a beast to market,\" is the familiar fable The miller, his son and the donkey.\n\nIn 2016, Baroque Decay released a game under the name \"The Count Lucanor\". As well as some protagonists' names, certain events from the books inspired past events in the game.\n\nThe stories\n\nThe book opens with a prologue which introduces the characters of the Count and Patronio. The titles in the following list are those given in Keller and Keating's 1977 translation into English. James York's 1868 translation into English gives a significantly different ordering of the stories and omits the fifty-first.\n\n What Happened to a King and His Favorite \n What Happened to a Good Man and His Son \n How King Richard of England Leapt into the Sea against the Moors\n What a Genoese Said to His Soul When He Was about to Die \n What Happened to a Fox and a Crow Who Had a Piece of Cheese in His Beak\n How the Swallow Warned the Other Birds When She Saw Flax Being Sown \n What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana \n What Happened to a Man Whose Liver Had to Be Washed \n What Happened to Two Horses Which Were Thrown to the Lion \n What Happened to a Man Who on Account of Poverty and Lack of Other Food Was Eating Bitter Lentils \n What Happened to a Dean of Santiago de Compostela and Don Yllán, the Grand Master of Toledo\n What Happened to the Fox and the Rooster \n What Happened to a Man Who Was Hunting Partridges \n The Miracle of Saint Dominick When He Preached against the Usurer \n What Happened to Lorenzo Suárez at the Siege of Seville \n The Reply that count Fernán González Gave to His Relative Núño Laynes \n What Happened to a Very Hungry Man Who Was Half-heartedly Invited to Dinner \n What Happened to Pero Meléndez de Valdés When He Broke His Leg \n What Happened to the Crows and the Owls \n What Happened to a King for Whom a Man Promised to Perform Alchemy \n What Happened to a Young King and a Philosopher to Whom his Father Commended Him \n What Happened to the Lion and the Bull \n How the Ants Provide for Themselves \n What Happened to the King Who Wanted to Test His Three Sons \n What Happened to the Count of Provence and How He Was Freed from Prison by the Advice of Saladin\n What Happened to the Tree of Lies \n What Happened to an Emperor and to Don Alvarfáñez Minaya and Their Wives \n What Happened in Granada to Don Lorenzo Suárez Gallinato When He Beheaded the Renegade Chaplain \n What Happened to a Fox Who Lay down in the Street to Play Dead \n What Happened to King Abenabet of Seville and Ramayquía His Wife \n How a Cardinal Judged between the Canons of Paris and the Friars Minor \n What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth \n What Happened to Don Juan Manuel's Saker Falcon and an Eagle and a Heron \n What Happened to a Blind Man Who Was Leading Another \n What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman\n What Happened to a Merchant When He Found His Son and His Wife Sleeping Together \n What Happened to Count Fernán González with His Men after He Had Won the Battle of Hacinas \n What Happened to a Man Who Was Loaded down with Precious Stones and Drowned in the River \n What Happened to a Man and a Swallow and a Sparrow \n Why the Seneschal of Carcassonne Lost His Soul \n What Happened to a King of Córdova Named Al-Haquem \n What Happened to a Woman of Sham Piety \n What Happened to Good and Evil and the Wise Man and the Madman \n What Happened to Don Pero Núñez the Loyal, to Don Ruy González de Zavallos, and to Don Gutier Roiz de Blaguiello with Don Rodrigo the Generous \n What Happened to a Man Who Became the Devil's Friend and Vassal \n What Happened to a Philosopher who by Accident Went down a Street Where Prostitutes Lived \n What Befell a Moor and His Sister Who Pretended That She Was Timid \n What Happened to a Man Who Tested His Friends \n What Happened to the Man Whom They Cast out Naked on an Island When They Took away from Him the Kingdom He Ruled \n What Happened to Saladin and a Lady, the Wife of a Knight Who Was His Vassal \n What Happened to a Christian King Who Was Very Powerful and Haughty\n\nReferences\n\nNotes\n\nBibliography\n\n Sturm, Harlan\n\n Wacks, David\n\nExternal links\n\nThe Internet Archive provides free access to the 1868 translation by James York.\nJSTOR has the to the 1977 translation by Keller and Keating.\nSelections in English and Spanish (pedagogical edition) with introduction, notes, and bibliography in Open Iberia/América (open access teaching anthology)\n\n14th-century books\nSpanish literature\n1335 books", "Dražen Erdemović (born 25 November 1971) fought during the Bosnian War for the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) and was later sentenced for his enforced participation in the 1995 Srebrenica genocide.\n\nBackground\nErdemović was born in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslavia to a Croat mother and a Serb father. He was mobilized into the VRS 10th Sabotage Detachment, a part of the Army of Republika Srpska.\n\nSrebrenica\n\nIn July 1995, Erdemović and his unit were sent to Branjevo military farm in the village of Pilica, north of Zvornik. After the VRS forces took over Srebrenica on 11 July, the Serbs began to send male Bosniaks to various locations for execution.\n\nOne of those places was the farm in Pilica, 15 kilometers from the border with Serbia, where Erdemović and the 10th Sabotage Detachment were tasked by General Ratko Mladić to execute about 1,200 Bosniak men and boys between the ages of approximately 17 and 60 years, who had surrendered to the members of the Bosnian Serb police or army near Srebrenica. On 16 July, the prisoners were bused to the farm and gunned down in groups of ten. Erdemović allegedly resisted the order, but was then told that he either shot them, or hand his gun to another, and join those to be killed. After the murders were over the victims were buried in mass graves. While it is unknown exactly how many people were personally killed by Erdemović, he estimated it was around 70 men and boys.\n\nAfter the massacre, Erdemović returned home, but reportedly felt guilt-ridden over the crimes he had committed. Fellow soldiers of the 10th Sabotage put pressure on him not to say anything, including a Serbian soldier, Stanko Savanović. One evening, while meeting in an undisclosed bar, Savanović shot Erdemović, wounding him badly in the torso. In early 1996, Erdemović sought out an ABC field reporter and testified on camera about what happened at Srebrenica. Several days later, he was arrested and charged with war crimes in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.\n\nTrial\nThis Erdemović case was significant in the Tribunal being it was the first application of the defence of duress, claiming that his life had been threatened and that he had no choice. It was found that it did not absolve him of guilt, but could be a mitigating factor in his sentencing. On 29 November 1996, Erdemović was sentenced to ten years in prison, convicted of murder as a crime against humanity. He was the first person to enter a guilty plea at the Tribunal, He was the only member of the 10th Sabotage Detachment to actually be tried for the war crimes, while the rest remained on the Tribunal's most wanted list.\n\nErdemović appealed and his sentence was later reduced by ICTY to five years in 1998, accepting that he committed the offences under threat of death had he disobeyed the order. Credit was given for time served since 28 March 1996. On 13 August 1999, he was granted early release. Upon serving his sentence in a Norwegian prison, Erdemović entered the Tribunal Court's witness protection program and testified at the trial of Slobodan Milošević.I wish to say that I feel sorry for all the victims, not only for the ones who were killed then at that farm, I feel sorry for all the victims in the former Bosnia and Herzegovina regardless of their nationality. I have lost many very good friends of all nationalities only because of that war, and I am convinced that all of them, all of my friends, were not in favour of a war. I am convinced of that. But simply they had no other choice. This war came and there was no way out. The same happened to me. Because of my case, because of everything that happened, I of my own will, without being either arrested and interrogated or put under pressure, admitted even before I was arrested in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, I admitted to what I did to this journalist and I told her at that time that I wanted to go to the International Tribunal, that I wanted to help the International Tribunal understand what happened to ordinary people like myself in Yugoslavia... in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia I admitted to what I did before the authorities, judicial authorities, and the authorities of the Ministry of the Interior, like I did here. My lawyer, when he first arrived here, he told me, \"Dražen, can you change your mind, your decision? I do not know what can happen. I do not know what will happen.\" I told him because of those victims, because of my consciousness, because of my life, because of my child and my wife, I cannot change what I said to this journalist and what I said in Novi Sad, because of the peace of my mind, my soul, my honesty, because of the victims and war and because of everything. Although I knew that my family, my parents, my brother, my sister, would have problems because of that, I did not want to change it. Because of everything that happened I feel terribly sorry, but I could not do anything. When I could do something, I did it.\n\nIn the media\n\nThe story of Erdemovic's trial in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia forms the basis of the 2005 play A Patch of Earth, written by Kitty Felde and collected in the anthology The Theatre of Genocide: Four Plays about Mass Murder in Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Armenia (University of Wisconsin Press, 2008).\n\nReferences\n\nSources\nGerminal Civikov - Srebrenica. Der Kronzeuge, Promedia Verlag, Vienna. 2009,\n\nExternal links\nICTY case information sheet\nTrial Watch : Drazen Erdemovic\n\n1971 births\nBosnia and Herzegovina mass murderers\nBosnia and Herzegovina people imprisoned abroad\nCroats of Bosnia and Herzegovina convicted of war crimes\nLiving people\nPeople convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia\nPeople from Tuzla\nPrisoners and detainees of Norway\nBosnia and Herzegovina whistleblowers" ]
[ "George Stephanopoulos", "Real estate loan controversy", "What year did this occur?", "In 1994,", "Was he directly involved?", "Stephanopoulos sealed an $835,000 commercial real estate deal consisting of a two-story apartment, including an eyewear retailer, with a below-market loan rate from a bank", "Was this something he was charged criminally with?", "I don't know.", "Did he end up paying a fine?", "I don't know.", "What happened to him because of this?", "source claims that NationsBank told the listing agent that, \"We're not (interested in mixed-use properties" ]
C_f443454d631b4be6916844adb42f9739_0
Did this hurt his career?
6
Did the real estate loan controversy hurt the real estate loan controversy's career?
George Stephanopoulos
In 1994, columnist Jack Anderson reported that Stephanopoulos sealed an $835,000 commercial real estate deal consisting of a two-story apartment, including an eyewear retailer, with a below-market loan rate from a bank owned by Hugh McColl, who had been called by President Clinton "the most enlightened banker in America". A NationsBank commercial loan officer said that this loan did "not fit our product matrix" as banks typically offer such loans for only those customers who have deep pockets and on a short-term adjustable rate basis. Stephanopoulos's real estate agent explained that "nobody making $125,000 could qualify for the property without the commercial property (lease)." One former senior bank regulator told Anderson that, "If his name were George Smith, and he didn't work in the White House, this loan wouldn't have gotten made." Regarding the controversy, NationsBank stated, "The loan described by Jack Anderson as a commercial loan to George Stephanopoulos was, in fact, a residential mortgage loan. At the time the loan commitment was made, Mr. Anderson (or his imaginary 'George Smith' who 'doesn't work in the White House') could have walked into any NationsBank Mortgage Company office in the D.C. area and received the same excellent rate and term for the same deal." However, Stephanopoulos's realtor states that he would not have qualified for the loan without the commercial property rent. One NationsBank source states that the issuance of a residential loan on mixed-use properties is such a rarity that it was not even addressed in the "NationsBank Mortgage Corporation's Program Summary" or its "Credit Policy Manual." A NationsBank underwriting memo revealed that one of the three restrictions for mixed-use properties is that "the borrower must be the owner of the business entity." The source claims that NationsBank told the listing agent that, "We're not (interested in mixed-use properties), but we do have an appetite for this particular loan." NationsBank's primary regulator at the time was Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig, a Rhodes scholar who attended Yale Law School with President Clinton, and who had been asked to investigate NationsBank by Democratic congressmen Henry B. Gonzalez and John Dingell. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
George Robert Stephanopoulos (born February 10, 1961) is an American television host, political commentator, and former Democratic advisor. Stephanopoulos currently is a coanchor with Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan on Good Morning America, and host of This Week, ABC's Sunday morning current events news program. Before his career as a journalist, Stephanopoulos was an advisor to the Democratic Party. He rose to early prominence as a communications director for the 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton and subsequently became White House communications director. He was later senior advisor for policy and strategy, before departing in December 1996. Early life and education George Stephanopoulos was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, the son of Nickolitsa "Nikki" Gloria (née Chafos) and Robert George Stephanopoulos. His parents are of Greek descent. His father is a Greek Orthodox priest and dean emeritus of the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in New York City. His father is a retired priest at Sts. Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox church in Cleveland Heights, OH. His mother was the director of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America National News Service for many years. Following some time in Purchase, New York, Stephanopoulos moved to the eastern suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, where he graduated in 1978 from Orange High School in Pepper Pike. In 1982, Stephanopoulos received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science summa cum laude from Columbia University in New York and was the salutatorian of his class. While at Columbia, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa his junior year and was awarded a Harry S. Truman Scholarship. He was also a sports broadcaster for 89.9 WKCR-FM, the university's radio station. Promising his father that he would attend law school eventually, George took a job in Washington, D.C., as an aide to Democratic Congressman Ed Feighan of Ohio. He became Feighan's chief of staff. Stephanopoulos attended Balliol College at the University of Oxford in England, as a Rhodes Scholar, earning a Master of Arts in Theology in 1984. Career Politics 1988 U.S. presidential election In 1988, Stephanopoulos worked on the Michael Dukakis 1988 U.S. presidential campaign. He has noted that one of his attractions to this campaign was that Dukakis was a Greek-American liberal from Massachusetts. After this campaign, Stephanopoulos became an executive floor assistant to Dick Gephardt, U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader; he held this position until he joined the Clinton campaign. Clinton administration Stephanopoulos was, along with David Wilhelm and James Carville, a leading member of Clinton's 1992 U.S. presidential campaign. His role on the campaign is portrayed in the documentary film The War Room (1993). In the Clinton administration, Stephanopoulos served as a senior advisor for policy and strategy. His initiatives focused on crime legislation, affirmative action, and health care. At the outset of Clinton's presidency, Stephanopoulos also served as the de facto press secretary, briefing the press even though Dee Dee Myers was officially the White House Press Secretary. In 1994, after Paula Jones accused Bill Clinton of Sexual harassment, Stephanopoulos and James Carville sought to discredit her allegations against Clinton. Both men suggested that Jones was just seeking cash for her story. Stephanopoulos also successfully sought to keep Jones' news conference off television. Stephanopoulos called NBC journalist Tim Russert, CNN chairman Tom Johnson, as well as several others, whom he convinced to keep her conference off television. On February 25, 1994, Stephanopoulos and Harold Ickes had a conference call with Roger Altman to discuss the Resolution Trust Corporation's choice of Republican lawyer Jay Stephens to head the Madison Guaranty investigation, that later turned into the Whitewater controversy. In 1999 Stephanopoulos and James Carville were sued for defamation by Gennifer Flowers. Stephanopoulos had made comments about her allegations that she had an affair with Bill Clinton. He accused Flowers of doctoring her taped conversation with Clinton to make her story look creditable. Stephanopoulos also called her story "tabloid trash", "garbage", and "crap". The suit was dismissed since his comments were not the basis for defamation. Stephanopoulos resigned from the Clinton administration shortly after Clinton was re-elected in 1996. His memoir, All Too Human: A Political Education (1999), was published after he left the White House during Clinton's second term. It quickly became a number-one bestseller on The New York Times Best Seller list. In the book, Stephanopoulos spoke of his depression and how his face broke out into hives due to the pressures of conveying the Clinton White House message. Clinton referred to the book in his autobiography, My Life, apologizing for what he felt in retrospect to be excessive demands placed on the young staffer. Stephanopoulos's book covers his time with Clinton from the day he met him in September 1991, to the day Stephanopoulos left the White House in December 1996, through two presidential campaigns and four years in the White House. Stephanopoulos describes Clinton in the book as a "complicated man responding to the pressures and pleasures of public life in ways I found both awesome and appalling". Journalism After leaving the White House at the end of Clinton's first term, Stephanopoulos became a political analyst for ABC News, and served as a correspondent on This Week, ABC's Sunday morning public affairs program; World News Tonight, the evening news broadcast; Good Morning America, the morning news program; along with other various special broadcasts. In September 2002, Stephanopoulos became host of This Week, and ABC News officially named him "Chief Washington Correspondent" in December 2005. The program's title added the new host's name. When named to the position, Stephanopoulos was a relative newcomer to the show, usurping longtime panelists and short-term co-hosts Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts who, for a few years, briefly replaced the longtime original host, David Brinkley. ABC News executives reportedly offered Ted Koppel, former Nightline anchor, the This Week host job in 2005 after the program's ratings had become a regular third-, fourth-, and sometimes fifth-place finish after competitors NBC, CBS, Fox, and syndicated programs. However, This Week beat Meet the Press on January 11, 2009, when Stephanopoulos interviewed president-elect Barack Obama. On April 16, 2008, Stephanopoulos co-moderated, with Charles Gibson, the twenty-first, and ultimately final, Democratic Party presidential debate between Illinois Senator Barack Obama and New York Senator Hillary Clinton for the 2008 election cycle. While the debate received record ratings, the co-moderators were heavily criticized for focusing most of the first hour of the debate on controversies that occurred during the campaign rather than issues such as the economy and the Iraq War. Stephanopoulos acknowledged the legitimacy of the concerns over the order of the questions, but said they were issues in the campaign that had not been covered in previous debates. ABC had sought out a woman who opposed Obama and aired a video of her asking a trivial question, repeated by Stephanopoulos, about why Obama wasn't wearing a flag pin. The question brought widespread criticism from the media. During the 2008 presidential election campaign, Stephanopoulos launched a blog George's Bottom Line on the ABC News website. Stephanopoulos blogged about political news and analysis from Washington. In December 2009, ABC News president David Westin offered Stephanopoulos Diane Sawyer's job on Good Morning America after Sawyer was named anchor of World News. Stephanopoulos accepted the new position and began co-anchoring GMA on December 14, 2009. Stephanopoulos announced on January 10, 2010, that that would be his last broadcast as the permanent host of This Week. However, after his successor, Christiane Amanpour, left the show amid sagging ratings, it was announced that Stephanopoulos would return as host of This Week in December 2011. He signed a deal to stay with ABC until 2021 worth $105 million. On January 7, 2012, Stephanopoulos was the co-moderator of a debate among Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. During the debate, Stephanopoulos repeatedly asked Romney whether the former Massachusetts governor believes the U.S. Supreme Court should overturn a 1965 ruling that a constitutional right to privacy bars states from banning contraception. During the debate, Romney said it was a preposterous question. Following Diane Sawyer's departure from World News at the end of August 2014, Stephanopoulos was the Chief Anchor at ABC News 2014–2020 while retaining his roles on GMA and This Week. Stephanopoulos leads a new documentary unit for Disney's digital platforms and hosts four primetime hour-long specials on the ABC network annually. Speaking engagements In 2009, Stephanopoulos spoke at the annual Tri-C Presidential Scholarship Luncheon held at the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel and praised Cuyahoga Community College. Controversies Real estate loan controversy In 1994, columnist Jack Anderson reported that Stephanopoulos signed an $835,000 commercial real estate deal consisting of a two-story apartment, including an eyewear retailer, with a below-market loan rate from a bank owned by Hugh McColl, who had been called by President Clinton "the most enlightened banker in America". A NationsBank commercial loan officer said that this loan did "not fit our product matrix" as banks typically offer such loans for only those customers who have deep pockets and on a short-term adjustable rate basis. Stephanopoulos's real estate agent explained that "nobody making $125,000 could qualify for the property without the commercial property (lease)." One former senior bank regulator told Anderson, "If his name were George Smith, and he didn't work in the White House, this loan wouldn't have gotten made." Regarding the controversy, NationsBank stated, "The loan described by Jack Anderson as a commercial loan to George Stephanopoulos was, in fact, a residential mortgage loan. At the time the loan commitment was made, Mr. Anderson (or his imaginary 'George Smith' who 'doesn't work in the White House') could have walked into any NationsBank Mortgage Company office in the D.C. area and received the same excellent rate and term for the same deal." However, Stephanopoulos's realtor states that he would not have qualified for the loan without the commercial property rent. One NationsBank source states that the issuance of a residential loan on mixed-use properties is such a rarity that it was not even addressed in the "NationsBank Mortgage Corporation's Program Summary" or its "Credit Policy Manual". A NationsBank underwriting memo revealed that one of the three restrictions for mixed-use properties is that "the borrower must be the owner of the business entity". The source claims that NationsBank told the listing agent that, "We're not (interested in mixed-use properties), but we do have an appetite for this particular loan." NationsBank's primary regulator at the time was Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig, a Rhodes scholar who attended Yale Law School with President Clinton, and who had been asked to investigate NationsBank by Democratic congressmen Henry B. Gonzalez and John Dingell. Clinton Foundation charity donations and conflict of interest as a journalist Stephanopoulos donated $25,000 in 2012, 2013, and 2014, a total of $75,000, to the Clinton Foundation, but did not disclose the donations to ABC News, his employer, or to his viewers. Stephanopoulos failed to reveal the donations even on April 26, 2015, while interviewing Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, a book which alleges that donations to the Foundation influenced some of Hillary Clinton's actions as Secretary of State. After exposure of the donations by Politico on May 14, 2015, Stephanopoulos apologized and admitted he should have disclosed the donations to ABC News and its viewers. The story was broken by The Washington Free Beacon, which had questioned ABC News regarding the matter. The donations had been reported by the Clinton Foundation, which Stephanopoulos had considered sufficient, a reliance ABC News characterized as "an honest mistake." Based on Stephanopoulos's donations to The Clinton Foundation charity and his behavior during prior interviews and presidential debates, Republican party leaders and candidates expressed their distrust, and called for him to be banned from moderating 2016 Presidential debates, due to bias and conflict of interest. He agreed to drop out as a moderator of the scheduled February 2016 Republican presidential primary debate. In the month prior to his revelation, Stephanopoulos told Jon Stewart on The Daily Show that when money is given to the Clinton Foundation "everybody" knows there's "a hope that that's going to lead to something, and that's what you have to be careful of." Jeffrey Epstein association In 2010, Stephanopoulos attended a dinner party at the home of convicted sex offender socialite Jeffrey Epstein alongside Chelsea Handler, Woody Allen, Katie Couric, Prince Andrew, Charlie Rose and Eva Andersson-Dubin. Following Epstein's arrest in July 2019, the party resurfaced online, with those attending receiving backlash, Stephanopoulos denied being friends with Epstein, with the party being the only encounter. Stephanopoulos told The New York Times: "That dinner was the first and last time I’ve seen him, I should have done more due diligence. It was a mistake to go.” In popular culture In the fourth episode of the first season of the NBC television series Friends, entitled The One with George Stephanopoulos and originally aired 13 October, 1994, the girls spy on Stephanopoulos across the street, after they were delivered his pizza by accident. Stephanopoulos was the inspiration for the character of Henry Burton in Joe Klein's novel Primary Colors (1996). Burton was subsequently portrayed by Adrian Lester in the 1998 film adaptation. Michael J. Fox's character, Lewis Rothschild, in the film The American President (1995), written by Aaron Sorkin was modeled after Stephanopoulos. He was also used by Sorkin as the model for Rob Lowe's character, Sam Seaborn, on the television drama series The West Wing. According to Stephanopoulos, his role in the Clinton administration was more like Bradley Whitford's character Josh Lyman than Seaborn or Rothschild. Stephanopoulos returned to his alma mater, Columbia University, in 2003, serving as the keynote speaker at Columbia College's Class Day. In 2013, Stephanopoulos played himself in House of Cards and in 2014 he played himself in an episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. In September 2016, Stephanopoulos was featured on a €1 (1 euro) Greek postage stamp, along with other notable Greek-Americans. In 2021, Stephanopoulos was portrayed by George H. Xanthis in Impeachment: American Crime Story; the third season of the FX true-crime anthology television series American Crime Story. Personal life Stephanopoulos is a Greek Orthodox Christian and has earned a master's degree in theology. In 1995, as he was pulling out of a parking space in front of a restaurant in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., he had a collision with a parked vehicle. Stephanopoulos was arrested and charged with leaving the scene of an accident and driving with an expired license and license plates. The charge of leaving the scene of an accident was subsequently dropped. Stephanopoulos married Ali Wentworth, an actress, comedian, and writer, in 2001 at the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity on New York's Upper East Side. They have two daughters, one born in 2002 and one born in 2005. Stephanopoulos was introduced to transcendental meditation by Jerry Seinfeld. Conducting an interview on Good Morning America, he said, "We’re all here because we all have something in common—we all practice Transcendental Meditation. … I think that people don’t really understand exactly what it is and what a difference it has made in people’s lives." Wentworth posted on Instagram April 1, 2020, that she was struggling with COVID-19 while self-quarantining in their New York home. Stephanopoulos announced on April 13, 2020, that he had tested positive for COVID-19 but was asymptomatic. Honors In May 2007, Stephanopoulos received an Honorary Doctor of Laws from St. John's University in New York City. See also List of Balliol College people List of Columbia University alumni List of Eastern Orthodox Christians List of Greek Americans List of people from Cleveland List of people from Massachusetts List of people from New York City List of people from Washington, D.C. List of Rhodes Scholars List of television reporters List of talk show hosts Lists of American writers New Yorkers in journalism References Citations Sources External links abcnews.com/thisweek, This Week with George Stephanopoulos official website Membership at the Council on Foreign Relations |- |- |- |- 1961 births 20th-century American journalists American male journalists 20th-century American writers 21st-century American journalists 21st-century American writers ABC News personalities Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford American bloggers American memoirists American political consultants American Rhodes Scholars American television news anchors American television reporters and correspondents American television talk show hosts American people of Greek descent American writers of Greek descent Clinton administration personnel Columbia College (New York) alumni Journalists from New York City Journalists from Washington, D.C. Greek Orthodox Christians from the United States Living people Massachusetts Democrats Members of the Council on Foreign Relations Television personalities from Cleveland People from Fall River, Massachusetts People from Purchase, New York Senior Advisors to the President of the United States Washington, D.C. Democrats White House Communications Directors Writers from Massachusetts Writers from New York City Writers from Cleveland Liberalism in the United States
false
[ "Matthew Christopher Hurt (born April 20, 2000) is an American professional basketball player who last played for the Memphis Hustle of the NBA G League. He played college basketball for the Duke Blue Devils.\n\nHigh school career\nHurt attended John Marshall High School in Rochester, Minnesota for four years. As a freshman in 2015–16, helped his team to a 26–4 record. As a sophomore in 2016–17, helped his team to a 25–4 record. As a junior in 2017–18, averaged 33.9 points, 15.1 rebounds, 3.6 assists, and 4.3 blocks to help his team to a 26–3 record and the section title game. Hurt averaged 17.0 points, 7.0 rebounds, and 1.0 blocks per game on the Adidas Guantlet Circuit for his AAU team, D1 Minnesota. As a senior, Hurt averaged 36.8 points, 12.4 rebounds, and 5.0 assist per game and was named Minnesota Mr. Basketball. Hurt played in the 2019 McDonald's All-American Boys Game and Nike Hoop Summit.\n\nRecruiting\nOn April 19, 2019, Hurt committed to Duke University, choosing Duke over other offers from North Carolina, Kentucky, and Kansas.\n\nHurt was rated as a five-star recruit and considered one of the best high school prospects in the 2019 class. Hurt was ranked the No. 10 overall recruit and No. 2 power forward in the 2019 high school class.\n\nCollege career\n\nFreshman Season (2019–20)\nOn November 13, Hurt scored 19 points, 3 assist, and 2 blocks in a 105–54 blowout win against Central Arkansas. On November 29, Hurt notched a career high 20 points and 8 rebounds in a 83–70 victory over Winthrop. On December 31, Hurt scored a new career-high 25 points and 4 rebounds in a 88–49 win over Boston College. For the season, he averaged 9.7 points and 3.8 rebounds in 31 games with 22 starts.\n\nSophomore Season (2020–21)\nBefore the start of his sophomore season, Hurt was named to preseason watch lists for the John R. Wooden Award, Naismith Trophy, and Karl Malone Award. On December 16, 2020, Hurt scored 18 points in a 75–65 win over Notre Dame. On January 9, 2021, Hurt scored 26 points and 6 rebounds in a 79–68 victory against Wake Forest. On January 11, 2021, Hurt was named ACC Player of the week. On February 13, 2021, Hurt scored 24 points in a 69–53 win over NC State. On February 17, 2021, Hurt put up 22 points in a 84–60 victory against Wake Forest. On February 20, 2021, Hurt scored 22 points in a 66–65 win over Virginia. On February 22, 2021, Hurt was named Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the week for the second consecutive time. At the conclusion of the regular season, Hurt averaged 18.3 points and 6.1 rebounds per game and was named ACC Most Improved Player and First-Team All-ACC. \n\nAfter the conclusion of his sophomore season, Hurt would forgo his final two years at Duke and enter the 2021 NBA draft.\n\nProfessional career\n\nMemphis Hustle (2021–2022)\nAfter going undrafted in the 2021 NBA draft, Hurt signed a two-way contract with the Houston Rockets on August 13, 2021, splitting time with their G League affiliate, the Rio Grande Valley Vipers. However, he was waived on September 24, before training camp. On October 14, Hurt signed with the Memphis Grizzlies, but was waived two days later. On October 23, he signed with the Memphis Hustle as an affiliate player.\nMatthew Hurt suffered a season-ending injury according to the NBA G League's transaction page on January 24, 2022 and was no longer listed on the Memphis Hustle's roster on their website. He averaged 12.1 points and 5.1 rebounds a game in his first season of professional basketball. Matthew's season high was 20 points in a game against the Austin Spurs on November 26.\n\nNational team career\nHurt played for the United States under-18 basketball team at the 2018 FIBA Under-18 Americas Championship. He helped his team win the gold medal.\n\nCareer statistics\n\nCollege\n\n|-\n| style=\"text-align:left;\"| 2019–20\n| style=\"text-align:left;\"| Duke\n| 31 || 22 || 20.5 || .487 || .393 || .741 || 3.8 || .9 || .5 || .7 || 9.7\n|-\n| style=\"text-align:left;\"| 2020–21\n| style=\"text-align:left;\"| Duke\n| 24 || 23 || 32.7 || .556 || .444 || .724 || 6.1 || 1.4 || .7 || .7 || 18.3\n|- class=\"sortbottom\"\n| style=\"text-align:center;\" colspan=\"2\"| Career\n| 55 || 45 || 25.8 || .526 || .421 || .731 || 4.8 || 1.1 || .6 || .7 || 13.5\n\nPersonal life\nHurt's older brother Michael played college basketball for Minnesota.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nDuke Blue Devils bio\nUSA Basketball bio\n\n2000 births\nLiving people\nAmerican men's basketball players\nBasketball players from Minnesota\nDuke Blue Devils men's basketball players\nMcDonald's High School All-Americans\nMemphis Hustle players\nPower forwards (basketball)\nSportspeople from Rochester, Minnesota", "Charles Hurt (born 1971) is an American journalist and political commentator. He is currently the opinion editor of The Washington Times, Fox News contributor, Breitbart News contributor, and a Drudge Report editor. Hurt's views have been considered to be by and large Republican-leaning.\n\nEarly career\nHurt began his newspaper career during college at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia with stints at the Danville Register & Bee, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His first full-time job after graduating in 1995 was at The Detroit News. He worked at the paper until 2001, when he moved to the Washington, D.C. area to join the staff of The Charlotte Observer.\n\nHurt was The New York Post's D.C. Bureau Chief and news columnist covering the White House for five years.\n\nFrom 2003 to 2007, Hurt covered the U.S. Congress as a reporter for The Washington Times before leaving to join The New York Post. In 2011, he rejoined The Washington Times as a political columnist. In December 2016, Hurt was named the opinion editor.\n\nNational Review editor Rich Lowry described Hurt as, \"an early adopter of Trumpite populism.\" Hurt has written numerous opinion pieces lauding Trump since the 2016 election.\n\nPersonal life\nHurt is a native of Chatham, Virginia. Hurt is the son of investigative journalist and former Reader's Digest editor Henry C. Hurt and his wife, Margaret Nolting Williams. His older brother, Robert Hurt, is a former United States Congressman. Charles Hurt had been listed as a possible congressional candidate before his brother's term ended in 2016. Hurt and his wife, Stephanie, have three children.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n1971 births\nLiving people\nPlace of birth missing (living people)\nSt. Louis Post-Dispatch people\nNew York Post people\nThe Washington Times people\nThe Detroit News people\nAmerican reporters and correspondents\nAmerican political writers\nAmerican male non-fiction writers\nPeople from Chatham, Virginia" ]
[ "Muse (band)", "2003-05: Absolution" ]
C_cfd5834ac91842f7998ba845142ff4ac_0
What album number was this for Muse?
1
What album number was Absolution for Muse?
Muse (band)
Muse's third album, Absolution, produced by Rich Costey, Paul Reeve and John Cornfield was released in September 2003. It debuted at number one in the UK and produced Muse's first top-ten hit, "Time Is Running Out", and three top-twenty hits: "Hysteria", "Sing for Absolution" and "Butterflies and Hurricanes". Absolution was eventually certified gold in the US. Muse undertook a year-long international tour in support of the album, visiting Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, and France. On the 2004 US leg of the tour, Bellamy injured himself onstage during the opening show in Atlanta; the tour resumed after Bellamy received stitches. In June 2004, Muse headlined the Glastonbury Festival, which they later described as "the best gig of our lives". Howard's father, William Howard, who attended the festival to watch the band, died from a heart attack shortly after the performance. Bellamy said: "It was the biggest feeling of achievement we've ever had after coming offstage. It was almost surreal that an hour later his dad died. It was almost not believable. We spent about a week sort of just with Dom trying to support him. I think he was happy that at least his dad got to see him at probably what was the finest moment so far of the band's life." Muse won two MTV Europe awards, including "Best Alternative Act", and a Q Award for "Best Live Act", and received an award for "Best British Live Act" at the Brit Awards. In July 2005, they participated in the Live 8 concert in Paris. In 2003, the band successfully sued Nestle for using their cover "Feeling Good" for a Nescafe advertisement without permission and donated the money won from the lawsuit to Oxfam. An unofficial DVD biography, Manic Depression, was released in April 2005. Muse released another live DVD on 12 December 2005, Absolution Tour, containing edited and remastered highlights from their Glastonbury performance unseen footage from their performances at London Earls Court, Wembley Arena, and the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles. CANNOTANSWER
Muse's third album, Absolution, produced by Rich Costey, Paul Reeve and John Cornfield was released in September 2003.
Muse are an English rock band from Teignmouth, Devon, formed in 1994. The band consists of Matt Bellamy (lead vocals, guitar, keyboards), Chris Wolstenholme (bass guitar, backing vocals), and Dominic Howard (drums). Muse released their debut album, Showbiz, in 1999, showcasing Bellamy's falsetto and a melancholic alternative rock style. Their second album, Origin of Symmetry (2001), incorporated wider instrumentation and romantic classical influences and earned them a reputation for energetic live performances. Absolution (2003) saw further classical influence, with strings on tracks such as "Butterflies and Hurricanes", and was the first of six consecutive UK number-one albums. Black Holes and Revelations (2006) incorporated electronic and pop elements, displayed in singles such as "Supermassive Black Hole", and brought Muse wider international success. The Resistance (2009) and The 2nd Law (2012) explored themes of government oppression and civil uprising and cemented Muse as one of the world's major stadium acts. Rolling Stone stated the band possessed "stadium-crushing songs". Topping the US Billboard 200, their seventh album, Drones (2015), was a concept album about drone warfare and returned to a harder rock sound. Their eighth album, Simulation Theory (2018), prominently featured synthesisers and was influenced by science fiction and the simulation hypothesis. Muse have won numerous awards, including two Grammy Awards, two Brit Awards, five MTV Europe Music Awards and eight NME Awards. In 2012 they received the Ivor Novello Award for International Achievement from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. , they have sold over 30 million albums worldwide. History Early years (1994–1997) The members of Muse played in separate school bands during their time at Teignmouth Community College in the early 1990s. Guitarist Matt Bellamy successfully auditioned for drummer Dominic Howard's band, Carnage Mayhem, becoming its singer and songwriter. They renamed the band Gothic Plague. They asked Chris Wolstenholme – at that time the drummer for Fixed Penalty – to join as bassist; he agreed and took up bass lessons. The band was renamed Rocket Baby Dolls and adopted a goth-glam image. Around this time, they received a £150 grant from the Prince's Trust for equipment. In 1994, Rocket Baby Dolls won a local battle of the bands, smashing their equipment in the process. Bellamy said, "It was supposed to be a protest, a statement, so, when we actually won, it was a real shock, a massive shock. After that, we started taking ourselves seriously." The band quit their jobs, changed their name to Muse, and moved away from Teignmouth. The band liked that the new name was short and thought that it looked good on a poster. According to journalist Mark Beaumont, the band wanted the name to reflect "the sense Matt had that he had somehow 'summoned up' this band, the way mediums could summon up inspirational spirits at times of emotional need". First EPs and Showbiz (1998–2000) After a few years building a fanbase, Muse played their first gigs in London and Manchester supporting Skunk Anansie on tour. They had a significant meeting with Dennis Smith, the owner of Sawmills Studio, situated in a converted water mill in Cornwall. He had seen the three boys grow up as he knew their parents, and had a production company with their future manager Safta Jaffery, with whom he had recently started the record label Taste Media. The meeting led to their first serious recordings and the release of the Muse EP on 11 May 1998 on Sawmills' in-house Dangerous label, produced by Paul Reeve. Their second EP, the Muscle Museum EP, also produced by Reeve, was released on 11 January 1999. It reached number 3 in the indie singles chart and attracted the attention of British radio broadcaster Steve Lamacq and the weekly British music publication NME. Later in 1999, Muse performed on the Emerging Artist's stage at Woodstock '99 and signed with Smith and Jaffery. Despite the success of their second EP, British record companies were reluctant to sign Muse. After a trip to New York's CMJ Festival, Nanci Walker, then Sr. Director of A&R at Columbia Records, flew Muse to the US to showcase for Columbia Records' then-Senior Vice-President of A&R, Tim Devine, as well as for American Recording's Rick Rubin. During this trip, on 24 December 1998, Muse signed a deal with American record label Maverick Records. Upon their return to England, Taste Media arranged deals for Muse with various record labels in Europe and Australia, allowing them control over their career in individual countries. John Leckie was brought in alongside Reeve to produce the band's first album, Showbiz (1999). The album showcased Muse's aggressive yet melancholic musical style, with lyrics about relationships and their difficulties trying to establish themselves in their hometown. Origin of Symmetry and Hullabaloo (2000–2002) During the production of their second album, Origin of Symmetry (2001), Muse experimented with instrumentation such as a church organ, Mellotron, animal bones, and an expanded drum kit. There was more of Bellamy's falsetto, arpeggiated guitar, and piano playing. Bellamy cites guitar influences such as Jimi Hendrix and Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine), the latter evident in the more riff-based songs in Origin of Symmetry and in Bellamy's use of guitar pitch-shifting effects. The album features a cover of Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse's "Feeling Good", voted in various polls one of the greatest cover versions of all time. It was released as a double A-side single, "Hyper Music/Feeling Good". Origin of Symmetry received positive reviews by critics; NME gave the album 9/10 and wrote: "It's amazing for such a young band to load up with a heritage that includes the darker visions of Cobain and Kafka, Mahler and The Tiger Lillies, Cronenberg and Schoenberg, and make a sexy, populist album." Maverick, Muse's American label, did not consider Bellamy's vocals "radio-friendly" and asked Muse to rerecord the song for the US release. The band refused and left Maverick; the album was not released in the US until September 2005, after Muse signed to Warner Bros. Origin of Symmetry has made appearances on lists of the greatest rock albums of the 2000s, both poll-based and on publication lists. In 2006, it placed at number 74 on Q magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Albums of All-Time, while in February 2008, the album placed at number 28 on a list of the Best British Albums of All Time determined by the magazine's readers. Kerrang! placed the album at number 20 in its 100 Best British Rock Albums Ever! List and at number 13 on its 50 Best Albums of the 21st Century list. Acclaimed Music ranks Origin of Symmetry as the 1,247th greatest album of all time. In 2002, Muse released the first live DVD, Hullabaloo, featuring footage recorded during Muse's two gigs at Le Zenith in Paris in 2001, and a documentary film of the band on tour. A double album, Hullabaloo Soundtrack, was released at the same time, containing a compilation of B-sides and a disc of recordings of songs from the Le Zenith performances. A double-A side single was also released featuring the new songs "In Your World" and "Dead Star". In 2002, Muse threatened Celine Dion with legal action when she planned to name her Las Vegas show "Muse", as Muse have worldwide performing rights to the name. Dion offered Muse $50,000 for the rights, but they turned it down and Dion backed down. Bellamy said: "We don't want to turn up there with people thinking we're Celine Dion's backing band." Absolution (2003–2005) Muse's third album, Absolution, produced by Rich Costey, Paul Reeve and John Cornfield was released on 15 September 2003. It debuted at number one in the UK and produced Muse's first top-ten hit, "Time Is Running Out", and three top-twenty hits: "Hysteria", "Sing for Absolution" and "Butterflies and Hurricanes". Absolution was eventually certified gold in the US. Muse undertook a year-long international tour in support of the album, visiting Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, and France. On the 2004 US leg of the tour, Bellamy injured himself onstage during the opening show in Atlanta; the tour resumed after Bellamy received stitches. In June 2004, Muse headlined the Glastonbury Festival, which they later described as "the best gig of our lives". Howard's father, William Howard, who attended the festival to watch the band, died from a heart attack shortly after the performance. Bellamy said: "It was the biggest feeling of achievement we've ever had after coming offstage. It was almost surreal that an hour later his dad died. It was almost not believable. We spent about a week sort of just with Dom trying to support him. I think he was happy that at least his dad got to see him at probably what was the finest moment so far of the band's life." Muse won two MTV Europe awards, including "Best Alternative Act", and a Q Award for "Best Live Act", and received an award for "Best British Live Act" at the Brit Awards. On 2 July 2005, they participated in the Live 8 concert in Paris. In 2003, the band successfully sued Nestlé for using their cover "Feeling Good" for a Nescafé advertisement without permission and donated the money won from the lawsuit to Oxfam. An unofficial DVD biography, Manic Depression, was released in April 2005. Muse released another live DVD on 12 December 2005, Absolution Tour, containing edited and remastered highlights from their Glastonbury performance unseen footage from their performances at London Earls Court, Wembley Arena, and the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles. During the 2004 Absolution tour, Bellamy smashed 140 guitars, a world record for the most guitars smashed in a tour. Black Holes and Revelations and HAARP (2006–2008) In 2006, Muse released their fourth album, Black Holes and Revelations, co-produced once again with Rich Costey. The album's title and themes reflect the band's interest in science fiction. The album charted at number one in the UK, much of Europe, and Australia. In the US, it reached number nine on the Billboard 200. Before the release of the new album, Muse made several promotional TV appearances starting on 13 May 2006 at BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend. The Black Holes and Revelations Tour started before the release of their album and initially consisted mostly of festival appearances, including a headline slot at the Reading and Leeds Festivals in August 2006. The band's main touring itinerary started with a tour of North America from late July to early August 2006. After the last of the summer festivals, a tour of Europe began, including a large arena tour of the UK. Black Holes and Revelations was nominated for the 2006 Mercury Music Prize, but lost to Arctic Monkeys. It earned a Platinum Europe Award after selling one million copies in Europe. The first single from the album, "Supermassive Black Hole", was released as a download in May 2006. In August 2006, Muse recorded a live session at Abbey Road Studios for the Live from Abbey Road television show. The second single, "Starlight", was released in September 2006. "Knights of Cydonia" was released in the US as a radio-only single in June 2006 and in the UK in November 2006. The fourth single, "Invincible", was released in April 2007. Another single, "Map of the Problematique", was released for download only in June 2007, following the band's performance at Wembley Stadium. Muse spent November and much of December 2006 touring Europe with British band Noisettes as the supporting act. The tour continued in Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia in early 2007 before returning to England for the summer. At the 2007 Brit Awards in February, Muse received their second award for Best British Live Act. They performed two gigs at the newly rebuilt Wembley Stadium on 16 and 17 June 2007, where they became the first band to sell out the venue. Both concerts were recorded for a DVD/CD, HAARP, released in early 2008. It was named the 40th greatest live album of all time by NME. The tour continued across Europe in July 2007 before returning to the US in August, where Muse played to a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden, New York City. They headlined the second night of the Austin City Limits Music Festival on 15 September 2007, and performed at the October 2007 Vegoose in Las Vegas with bands including Rage Against the Machine, Daft Punk and Queens of the Stone Age. Muse continued touring in Eastern Europe, Russia, Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand in 2007 before going to South Africa, Portugal, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Ireland, and the UK in 2008. On 12 April, they played a one-off concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust. Muse performed at Rock in Rio Lisboa on 6 June 2008, alongside bands including Kaiser Chiefs, The Offspring and Linkin Park. They also performed in Marlay Park, Dublin, on 13 August. A few days later, Muse headlined the 2008 V Festival, playing in Chelmsford on Saturday 16 August and Staffordshire on Sunday 17 August. On 25 September 2008, Bellamy, Howard and Wolstenholme all received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Plymouth for their contributions to music. The Resistance (2009–2011) During the recording of Muse's fifth studio album The Resistance, Wolstenholme checked into rehab to deal with his alcoholism, which was threatening the band's future. Howard said: "I've always believed in band integrity and sticking together. There's something about the fact we all grew up together. We've been together for 18 years now, which is over half our lives." The Resistance was released in September 2009, the first album produced by Muse, with engineering by Adrian Bushby and mixing by Mark Stent. It topped album charts in 19 countries, became the band's third number one album in the UK, and reached number three on the Billboard 200. Reviews were mostly positive, with praise for its ambition, classical influences and the three-part "Exogenesis: Symphony". The Resistance beat its predecessor Black Holes and Revelations in album sales in its debut week in the UK with approximately 148,000 copies sold. The first single, "Uprising", was released seven days earlier. On 13 September, Muse performed "Uprising" at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards in New York City. The Resistance Tour began with A Seaside Rendezvous in Muse's hometown of Teignmouth, Devon, in September 2009. It included headline slots the following year at festivals including Coachella, Glastonbury, Oxegen, Hovefestivalen, T in the Park, Austin City Limits and the Australian Big Day Out. Between September and November, Muse toured North America. Muse provided the lead single for the film The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, "Neutron Star Collision (Love Is Forever)", released on 17 May 2010. In June, Muse headlined Glastonbury Festival for the second time; after U2 canceled their headline slot following singer Bono's back injury, U2 guitarist the Edge joined Muse to play the U2 track "Where the Streets Have No Name". For their live performances, Muse received the O2 Silver Clef Award in London on 2 July 2010, presented by Roger Taylor and Brian May of Queen; Taylor described the trio as "probably the greatest live act in the world today". On 12 September 2010, Muse won an MTV Video Music Award in the category of Best Special Effects, for the "Uprising" video. On 21 November, Muse took home an American Music Award for Favorite Artist in the Alternative Rock Music Category. On 2 December, Muse were nominated for three awards for the 53rd Grammy Awards on 13 February 2011, for which they won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album for The Resistance. Based on having the largest airplay and sales in the US, Muse were named the Billboard Alternative Songs and Rock Songs artist for 2010 with "Uprising", "Resistance" and "Undisclosed Desires" achieving 1st, 6th and 49th on the year end Alternative Song chart respectively. On 30 July 2011, Muse supported Rage Against the Machine at their only 2011 gig at the L.A. Rising festival. On 13 August, Muse headlined the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in San Francisco. Muse headlined the Reading and Leeds Festivals in August 2011. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of their second studio album Origin of Symmetry (2001), the band performed all eleven tracks. Muse also headlined Lollapalooza in Chicago's Grant Park in August 2011. The 2nd Law and Live at Rome Olympic Stadium (2012–2013) In an April 2012 interview, Bellamy said Muse's next album would include influences from acts such as French house duo Justice and UK electronic rock group Does It Offend You, Yeah?. On 6 June 2012, Muse released a trailer for their next album, The 2nd Law, with a countdown on the band's website. The trailer, which included dubstep elements, was met with mixed reactions. On 7 June, Muse announced a European Arena tour, the first leg of The 2nd Law Tour. The leg included dates in France, Spain and the UK. The first single from the album, "Survival", was the official song of the London 2012 Summer Olympics, and Muse performed it at the Olympics closing ceremony. Muse revealed the 2nd Law tracklist on 13 July 2012. The second single, "Madness", was released on 20 August 2012, with a music video on 5 September. Muse played at the Roundhouse on 30 September as part of the iTunes Festival. The 2nd Law was released worldwide on 1 October, and on 2 October 2012 in the US; it reached number one in the UK Albums Chart, and number two on the US Billboard 200. The song "Madness" earned a nomination in the Best Rock Song category and the album itself was nominated for the Best Rock Album at the 55th Grammy Awards, 2013. The band performed the album's opening song, "Supremacy", with an orchestra at the 2013 Brit Awards on 20 February 2013. The album was a nominee for Best Rock Album at the 2013 Grammy Awards. The song "Madness" was also nominated for Best Rock Song. The album listed at number 46 on Rolling Stones list of the top 50 albums of 2012, saying "In an era of diminished expectations, Muse make stadium-crushing songs that mix the legacies of Queen, King Crimson, Led Zeppelin and Radiohead while making almost every other current band seem tiny." Muse released their fourth live album, Live at Rome Olympic Stadium, on 29 November 2013 on CD/DVD and CD/Blu-ray formats. In November 2013, the film had theatrical screenings in 20 cities worldwide. The album contains the band's performance at Rome's Stadio Olimpico on 6 July 2013, in front of over 60,000 people; it was the first concert filmed in 4K format. The concert was a part of the Unsustainable Tour, Muse's mid-2013 tour of Europe. Drones (2014–2016) Muse began writing their seventh album soon after the Rome concert. The band felt that the electronic side of their music was becoming too dominant, and wanted to return to a simpler rock sound. After self-producing their previous two albums, the band hired producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange so they could focus on performance and spend less time mixing and reviewing takes. Recording took place in the Vancouver Warehouse Studio from October 2014 to April 2015. Muse announced their seventh album, Drones, on 11 March 2015. The following day, they released a lyric video for "Psycho" on their YouTube channel, and made the song available for instant download with the album pre-order. Another single, "Dead Inside", was released on 23 March. From 15 March to 16 May, Muse embarked on a short tour in small venues throughout the UK and the US, the Psycho Tour. Live performances of new songs from these concerts are included on the DVD accompanying the album along with bonus studio footage. On 18 May 2015, Muse released a lyric video for "Mercy" on their YouTube channel, and made the song available for instant download with the album pre-order. Drones was released on 8 June 2015. A concept album about the dehumanisation of modern warfare, it returned to a simpler rock sound with less elaborate production and genre experimentation. It topped the album charts in the UK, the US, Australia and most major markets. Muse headlined Lollapalooza Berlin on 13 September 2015. On 15 February 2016, Drones won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album at the 58th Grammy Awards. On 24 June, Muse headlined the Glastonbury Festival for a third time, becoming the first act to have headlined each day of the festival (Friday, Saturday and Sunday). On 30 November 2016, Muse were announced to headline Reading and Leeds 2017. Simulation Theory and reissues (2017–2021) In 2017, Muse toured North America supported by Thirty Seconds to Mars and PVRIS. Howard confirmed in February that the band were back in the studio. On 18 May, Muse released "Dig Down", the first single from their eighth album. In November, they performed at the BlizzCon festival. "Thought Contagion", the second single, was released on 15 February 2018, accompanied by an 1980s-styled music video. In June, Muse opened the Rock In Rio festival. On 24 February, they played a one-off show at La Cigale in France with a setlist voted for fans online. A concert video, Muse: Drones World Tour, was released in cinemas worldwide on 12 July 2018. On 19 July 2018, Muse released the third single from their upcoming album, "Something Human". On 30 August 2018, they announced their eighth studio album, Simulation Theory, to be released on 9 November. The announcement was accompanied by another single and video, "The Dark Side". The fifth single, "Pressure", was released on 27 September. The Simulation Theory world tour began in Houston on 3 February 2019 and concluded on 15 October in Lima. A film based on the album and tour, Muse – Simulation Theory, combining concert footage and narrative scenes, was released in August 2020. In December 2019, Muse released Origin of Muse, a box set comprising remastered versions of Showbiz and Origin of Symmetry plus previously unreleased material. For the 20th anniversary of Origin of Symmetry in June 2021, Muse released a remixed and remastered version, Origin of Symmetry: XX Anniversary RemiXX. Upcoming ninth album (2022–present) On 13 January 2022, Muse released a new single, titled "Won't Stand Down", which marked a return to the band's heavier early sound. Musical style Described as an alternative rock, progressive rock, space rock, hard rock, art rock, electronic rock, progressive metal, and pop. Muse mix sounds from genres such as electronica, R&B, progressive metal, and art rock, and forms such as classical music, rock opera and many others. In 2002, Bellamy described Muse as a "trashy three-piece". In 2005, Pitchfork described Muse's music as "firmly ol' skool at heart: proggy hard rock that forgoes any pretensions to restraint ... their songs use full-stacked guitars and thunderous drums to evoke God's footsteps". AllMusic described their sound as a "fusion of progressive rock, glam, electronica, and Radiohead-influenced experimentation". On the band's association with progressive rock, Howard said: "I associate it [progressive rock] with 10-minute guitar solos, but I guess we kind of come into the category. A lot of bands are quite ambitious with their music, mixing lots of different styles – and when I see that I think it's great. I've noticed that kind of thing becoming a bit more mainstream." For their second album, Origin of Symmetry (2001), Muse wanted to craft a more aggressive sound. In 2000, Wolstenholme said: "Looking back, there isn't much difference sonically between the mellow stuff and the heavier tracks [on Showbiz]. The heavy stuff really could have been a lot heavier and that's what we want to do with [Origin of Symmetry]." Their third album, Absolution (2003), features prominent string arrangements and drew influences from artists such as Queen. Their fourth album, Black Holes and Revelations (2006) was influenced by artists including Depeche Mode and Lightning Bolt, as well as Asian and European music such as Naples music. The band listened to radio stations from the Middle East during the album's recording sessions. Queen guitarist Brian May has praised Muse's work, calling the band "extraordinary musicians", who "let their madness show through, always a good thing in an artist." Muse's sixth album, The 2nd Law (2012) has a broader range of influences, ranging from funk and film scores to electronica and dubstep. The 2nd Law is influenced by rock acts such as Queen and Led Zeppelin (on "Supremacy") as well as dubstep producer Skrillex and Nero (on "The 2nd Law: Unsustainable" and "Follow Me", with the latter being co-produced by Nero), Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder (on "Panic Station" which features musicians who performed on Stevie Wonder's "Superstition") and Hans Zimmer. The album features two songs with lyrics written and sung by bassist Wolstenholme, who wrote about his battle with alcoholism. It features extensive electronic instrumentation, including Modular synthesisers and the French Connection, a synthesiser controller similar to the ondes martenot. Musicianship Many Muse songs are recognisable by vocalist Matt Bellamy's use of vibrato, falsetto, and melismatic phrasing, influenced by Jeff Buckley. As a pianist, Bellamy often uses arpeggios. Bellamy's compositions often suggest or quote late classical and romantic era composers such as Sergei Rachmaninov (in "Space Dementia" and "Butterflies and Hurricanes"), Camille Saint-Saëns (in "I Belong to You (+Mon Cœur S'ouvre a ta Voix)") and Frédéric Chopin (in "United States of Eurasia"). As a guitarist, Bellamy often uses arpeggiator and pitch-shift effects to create a more "electronic" sound, citing Jimi Hendrix and Tom Morello as influences. His guitar playing is also influenced by Latin and Spanish guitar music; Bellamy said: "I just think that music is really passionate...It has so much feel and flair to it. I’ve spent important times of my life in Spain and Greece, and various deep things happened there – falling in love, stuff like that. So maybe that rubbed off somewhere." Wolstenholme's basslines provide a motif for many Muse songs; the band combines bass guitar with effects and synthesisers to create overdriven fuzz bass tones. Bellamy and Wolstenholme use touch-screen controllers, often built into their instruments, to control synthesisers and effects including Kaoss Pads and Digitech Whammy pedals. Lyrics Most earlier Muse songs lyrically dealt with introspective themes, including relationships, social alienation, and difficulties they had encountered while trying to establish themselves in their hometown. However, with the band's progress, their song concepts have become more ambitious, addressing issues such as the fear of the evolution of technology in their Origin of Symmetry (2001) album. They deal mainly with the apocalypse in Absolution (2003) and with catastrophic war in Black Holes and Revelations (2006). The Resistance (2009) focused on themes of government oppression, uprising, love, and panspermia. The album itself was mainly inspired by Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Their sixth studio album, The 2nd Law (2012) relates to economics, thermodynamics, and apocalyptic themes. Their 2015 album Drones, is a concept album that uses autonomous killing drones as a metaphor for brainwashing and loss of empathy. Books that have influenced Muse's lyrical themes include Nineteen Eighty-Four, Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins, Hyperspace by Michio Kaku, The 12th Planet by Zecharia Sitchin, Rule by Secrecy by Jim Marrs and Trance Formation of America by Cathy O'Brien. Band members Matt Bellamy – lead vocals, guitars, keyboards, piano, synthesisers Dominic Howard – drums, percussions Chris Wolstenholme – bass guitar, backing vocals, occasional keyboards and guitar Touring musicians Morgan Nicholls – guitars, keyboards and synthesisers, backing vocals, samples, bass (2004, 2006–present) Dan "The Trumpet Man" Newell – trumpet (2006–2008) Alessandro Cortini – keyboards, synthesisers (2009, substitute) Discography Showbiz (1999) Origin of Symmetry (2001) Absolution (2003) Black Holes and Revelations (2006) The Resistance (2009) The 2nd Law (2012) Drones (2015) Simulation Theory (2018) Concert tours Showbiz Tour (1998–2000) Origin of Symmetry Tour (2000–2002) Absolution Tour (2003–2004) US Campus Invasion Tour 2005 (2005) Black Holes and Revelations Tour (2006–2008) The Resistance Tour (2009–2011) The 2nd Law World Tour (2012–2014) Psycho Tour (2015) Drones World Tour (2015–2016) North American Tour (with Thirty Seconds to Mars and Pvris) (2017) Simulation Theory World Tour (2019) See also List of awards and nominations received by Muse List of Muse songs References External links English art rock groups Brit Award winners Grammy Award winners English alternative rock groups English hard rock musical groups English progressive rock groups Kerrang! Awards winners NME Awards winners British musical trios Musical groups established in 1994 Maverick Records artists Warner Records artists Musical groups from Devon Ivor Novello Award winners Space rock musical groups Political music groups MTV Europe Music Award winners
false
[ "Paul Reeve is a record producer from Cornwall, UK. Working alongside John Leckie, he co-produced five tracks on Muse's acclaimed debut album Showbiz. During his time as chief engineer at The Airfield Studios in Cornwall and during regular stints at the nearby Sawmills Studios and air studios in London he has assisted some highly respected and regarded producers, including the afore mentioned John Leckie as well as John Cornfield, Sam Williams and Chris Allison. He currently resides in Cornwall, UK.\n\nReeve has worked with many artists, including Beta Band, Muse, Steve Harley, Ruarri Joseph, Andrew Bate, Razorlight, Supergrass, and Armonite. He also produced Muse's debut EPs Muse and Muscle Museum EP, of which three tracks, \"Uno\", \"Muscle Museum\", and \"Unintended\" have been released as singles, the last entering the UK chart at number 20. As well as co-production on Muse's 'Showbiz' and 'Absolution' albums, Paul co-produced and mixed a large selection of b-sides for the Muse compilation Hullabaloo Soundtrack.\n\nAfter mixing COX’s ‘Rien A Perdre’ album for Barclay in early 2003, Paul was called in to co-produce tracks for the number one MUSE album, ‘Absolution’ for Taste Media.\n\n2004 saw him Producing and Mixing a new album and DVD by DAVID HALLYDAY/NOVA 6 for Mercury Records, France, and has co-producing material for the debut RAZORLIGHT album for Universal.\n\nIn 2005, he finished Producing and mixing the new album for THE GENERAL STORE and was developing new projects with Dangerous Records. He also was guitarist and Musical Director for the NOVA 6 European tour for Alias productions.\n\nIn 2007, Paul worked with Alan Smyth as engineer on the MILBURN album for Universal and produced tracks for the RUARRI JOSEPH debut album for Atlantic.\n\nIn 2009, Paul was asked to produce the vocals for the hugely successful Muse single 'Uprising'\n\nIn 2010-2011 Paul produced the Fainting in Coils EP by Andrew Bate. \n\nIn 2012, Paul co-produced vocals for the forthcoming 2012 Muse album, as well as developing promising artists in the UK and Europe.\n\nPaul Reeve has BPI awards for over 5 million record sales.\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n https://www.discogs.com/artist/198609-Paul-Reeve\n\nEnglish record producers\nLiving people\nMusicians from Cornwall\nYear of birth missing (living people)", "Muse are an English rock band from Teignmouth, Devon, formed in 1994. The band consists of Matt Bellamy (lead vocals, guitar, keyboards), Chris Wolstenholme (bass guitar, backing vocals), and Dominic Howard (drums).\n\nMuse released their debut album, Showbiz, in 1999, showcasing Bellamy's falsetto and a melancholic alternative rock style. Their second album, Origin of Symmetry (2001), incorporated wider instrumentation and romantic classical influences and earned them a reputation for energetic live performances. Absolution (2003) saw further classical influence, with strings on tracks such as \"Butterflies and Hurricanes\", and was the first of six consecutive UK number-one albums.\n\nBlack Holes and Revelations (2006) incorporated electronic and pop elements, displayed in singles such as \"Supermassive Black Hole\", and brought Muse wider international success. The Resistance (2009) and The 2nd Law (2012) explored themes of government oppression and civil uprising and cemented Muse as one of the world's major stadium acts. Rolling Stone stated the band possessed \"stadium-crushing songs\". Topping the US Billboard 200, their seventh album, Drones (2015), was a concept album about drone warfare and returned to a harder rock sound. Their eighth album, Simulation Theory (2018), prominently featured synthesisers and was influenced by science fiction and the simulation hypothesis.\n\nMuse have won numerous awards, including two Grammy Awards, two Brit Awards, five MTV Europe Music Awards and eight NME Awards. In 2012 they received the Ivor Novello Award for International Achievement from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. , they have sold over 30 million albums worldwide.\n\nHistory\n\nEarly years (1994–1997)\nThe members of Muse played in separate school bands during their time at Teignmouth Community College in the early 1990s. Guitarist Matt Bellamy successfully auditioned for drummer Dominic Howard's band, Carnage Mayhem, becoming its singer and songwriter. They renamed the band Gothic Plague. They asked Chris Wolstenholme – at that time the drummer for Fixed Penalty – to join as bassist; he agreed and took up bass lessons. The band was renamed Rocket Baby Dolls and adopted a goth-glam image. Around this time, they received a £150 grant from the Prince's Trust for equipment.\n\nIn 1994, Rocket Baby Dolls won a local battle of the bands, smashing their equipment in the process. Bellamy said, \"It was supposed to be a protest, a statement, so, when we actually won, it was a real shock, a massive shock. After that, we started taking ourselves seriously.\" The band quit their jobs, changed their name to Muse, and moved away from Teignmouth. The band liked that the new name was short and thought that it looked good on a poster. According to journalist Mark Beaumont, the band wanted the name to reflect \"the sense Matt had that he had somehow 'summoned up' this band, the way mediums could summon up inspirational spirits at times of emotional need\".\n\nFirst EPs and Showbiz (1998–2000)\n\nAfter a few years building a fanbase, Muse played their first gigs in London and Manchester supporting Skunk Anansie on tour. They had a significant meeting with Dennis Smith, the owner of Sawmills Studio, situated in a converted water mill in Cornwall. He had seen the three boys grow up as he knew their parents, and had a production company with their future manager Safta Jaffery, with whom he had recently started the record label Taste Media. The meeting led to their first serious recordings and the release of the Muse EP on 11 May 1998 on Sawmills' in-house Dangerous label, produced by Paul Reeve. Their second EP, the Muscle Museum EP, also produced by Reeve, was released on 11 January 1999. It reached number 3 in the indie singles chart and attracted the attention of British radio broadcaster Steve Lamacq and the weekly British music publication NME. Later in 1999, Muse performed on the Emerging Artist's stage at Woodstock '99 and signed with Smith and Jaffery. Despite the success of their second EP, British record companies were reluctant to sign Muse. After a trip to New York's CMJ Festival, Nanci Walker, then Sr. Director of A&R at Columbia Records, flew Muse to the US to showcase for Columbia Records' then-Senior Vice-President of A&R, Tim Devine, as well as for American Recording's Rick Rubin. During this trip, on 24 December 1998, Muse signed a deal with American record label Maverick Records. Upon their return to England, Taste Media arranged deals for Muse with various record labels in Europe and Australia, allowing them control over their career in individual countries. John Leckie was brought in alongside Reeve to produce the band's first album, Showbiz (1999). The album showcased Muse's aggressive yet melancholic musical style, with lyrics about relationships and their difficulties trying to establish themselves in their hometown.\n\nOrigin of Symmetry and Hullabaloo (2000–2002)\n\nDuring the production of their second album, Origin of Symmetry (2001), Muse experimented with instrumentation such as a church organ, Mellotron, animal bones, and an expanded drum kit. There was more of Bellamy's falsetto, arpeggiated guitar, and piano playing. Bellamy cites guitar influences such as Jimi Hendrix and Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine), the latter evident in the more riff-based songs in Origin of Symmetry and in Bellamy's use of guitar pitch-shifting effects. The album features a cover of Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse's \"Feeling Good\", voted in various polls one of the greatest cover versions of all time. It was released as a double A-side single, \"Hyper Music/Feeling Good\".\n\nOrigin of Symmetry received positive reviews by critics; NME gave the album 9/10 and wrote: \"It's amazing for such a young band to load up with a heritage that includes the darker visions of Cobain and Kafka, Mahler and The Tiger Lillies, Cronenberg and Schoenberg, and make a sexy, populist album.\" Maverick, Muse's American label, did not consider Bellamy's vocals \"radio-friendly\" and asked Muse to rerecord the song for the US release. The band refused and left Maverick; the album was not released in the US until September 2005, after Muse signed to Warner Bros.\n\nOrigin of Symmetry has made appearances on lists of the greatest rock albums of the 2000s, both poll-based and on publication lists. In 2006, it placed at number 74 on Q magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Albums of All-Time, while in February 2008, the album placed at number 28 on a list of the Best British Albums of All Time determined by the magazine's readers. Kerrang! placed the album at number 20 in its 100 Best British Rock Albums Ever! List and at number 13 on its 50 Best Albums of the 21st Century list. Acclaimed Music ranks Origin of Symmetry as the 1,247th greatest album of all time.\n\nIn 2002, Muse released the first live DVD, Hullabaloo, featuring footage recorded during Muse's two gigs at Le Zenith in Paris in 2001, and a documentary film of the band on tour. A double album, Hullabaloo Soundtrack, was released at the same time, containing a compilation of B-sides and a disc of recordings of songs from the Le Zenith performances. A double-A side single was also released featuring the new songs \"In Your World\" and \"Dead Star\".\n\nIn 2002, Muse threatened Celine Dion with legal action when she planned to name her Las Vegas show \"Muse\", as Muse have worldwide performing rights to the name. Dion offered Muse $50,000 for the rights, but they turned it down and Dion backed down. Bellamy said: \"We don't want to turn up there with people thinking we're Celine Dion's backing band.\"\n\nAbsolution (2003–2005)\n\nMuse's third album, Absolution, produced by Rich Costey, Paul Reeve and John Cornfield was released on 15 September 2003. It debuted at number one in the UK and produced Muse's first top-ten hit, \"Time Is Running Out\", and three top-twenty hits: \"Hysteria\", \"Sing for Absolution\" and \"Butterflies and Hurricanes\". Absolution was eventually certified gold in the US. Muse undertook a year-long international tour in support of the album, visiting Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, and France. On the 2004 US leg of the tour, Bellamy injured himself onstage during the opening show in Atlanta; the tour resumed after Bellamy received stitches.\n\nIn June 2004, Muse headlined the Glastonbury Festival, which they later described as \"the best gig of our lives\". Howard's father, William Howard, who attended the festival to watch the band, died from a heart attack shortly after the performance. Bellamy said: \"It was the biggest feeling of achievement we've ever had after coming offstage. It was almost surreal that an hour later his dad died. It was almost not believable. We spent about a week sort of just with Dom trying to support him. I think he was happy that at least his dad got to see him at probably what was the finest moment so far of the band's life.\"\n\nMuse won two MTV Europe awards, including \"Best Alternative Act\", and a Q Award for \"Best Live Act\", and received an award for \"Best British Live Act\" at the Brit Awards. On 2 July 2005, they participated in the Live 8 concert in Paris. In 2003, the band successfully sued Nestlé for using their cover \"Feeling Good\" for a Nescafé advertisement without permission and donated the money won from the lawsuit to Oxfam. An unofficial DVD biography, Manic Depression, was released in April 2005.\n\nMuse released another live DVD on 12 December 2005, Absolution Tour, containing edited and remastered highlights from their Glastonbury performance unseen footage from their performances at London Earls Court, Wembley Arena, and the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles. During the 2004 Absolution tour, Bellamy smashed 140 guitars, a world record for the most guitars smashed in a tour.\n\nBlack Holes and Revelations and HAARP (2006–2008)\n\nIn 2006, Muse released their fourth album, Black Holes and Revelations, co-produced once again with Rich Costey. The album's title and themes reflect the band's interest in science fiction. The album charted at number one in the UK, much of Europe, and Australia. In the US, it reached number nine on the Billboard 200.\n\nBefore the release of the new album, Muse made several promotional TV appearances starting on 13 May 2006 at BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend. The Black Holes and Revelations Tour started before the release of their album and initially consisted mostly of festival appearances, including a headline slot at the Reading and Leeds Festivals in August 2006. The band's main touring itinerary started with a tour of North America from late July to early August 2006. After the last of the summer festivals, a tour of Europe began, including a large arena tour of the UK.\n\nBlack Holes and Revelations was nominated for the 2006 Mercury Music Prize, but lost to Arctic Monkeys. It earned a Platinum Europe Award after selling one million copies in Europe. The first single from the album, \"Supermassive Black Hole\", was released as a download in May 2006. In August 2006, Muse recorded a live session at Abbey Road Studios for the Live from Abbey Road television show. The second single, \"Starlight\", was released in September 2006. \"Knights of Cydonia\" was released in the US as a radio-only single in June 2006 and in the UK in November 2006. The fourth single, \"Invincible\", was released in April 2007. Another single, \"Map of the Problematique\", was released for download only in June 2007, following the band's performance at Wembley Stadium.\n\nMuse spent November and much of December 2006 touring Europe with British band Noisettes as the supporting act. The tour continued in Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia in early 2007 before returning to England for the summer. At the 2007 Brit Awards in February, Muse received their second award for Best British Live Act. They performed two gigs at the newly rebuilt Wembley Stadium on 16 and 17 June 2007, where they became the first band to sell out the venue. Both concerts were recorded for a DVD/CD, HAARP, released in early 2008. It was named the 40th greatest live album of all time by NME.\n\nThe tour continued across Europe in July 2007 before returning to the US in August, where Muse played to a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden, New York City. They headlined the second night of the Austin City Limits Music Festival on 15 September 2007, and performed at the October 2007 Vegoose in Las Vegas with bands including Rage Against the Machine, Daft Punk and Queens of the Stone Age. Muse continued touring in Eastern Europe, Russia, Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand in 2007 before going to South Africa, Portugal, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Ireland, and the UK in 2008. On 12 April, they played a one-off concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust.\n\nMuse performed at Rock in Rio Lisboa on 6 June 2008, alongside bands including Kaiser Chiefs, The Offspring and Linkin Park. They also performed in Marlay Park, Dublin, on 13 August. A few days later, Muse headlined the 2008 V Festival, playing in Chelmsford on Saturday 16 August and Staffordshire on Sunday 17 August. On 25 September 2008, Bellamy, Howard and Wolstenholme all received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Plymouth for their contributions to music.\n\nThe Resistance (2009–2011)\n\nDuring the recording of Muse's fifth studio album The Resistance, Wolstenholme checked into rehab to deal with his alcoholism, which was threatening the band's future. Howard said: \"I've always believed in band integrity and sticking together. There's something about the fact we all grew up together. We've been together for 18 years now, which is over half our lives.\"\n\nThe Resistance was released in September 2009, the first album produced by Muse, with engineering by Adrian Bushby and mixing by Mark Stent. It topped album charts in 19 countries, became the band's third number one album in the UK, and reached number three on the Billboard 200. Reviews were mostly positive, with praise for its ambition, classical influences and the three-part \"Exogenesis: Symphony\". The Resistance beat its predecessor Black Holes and Revelations in album sales in its debut week in the UK with approximately 148,000 copies sold. The first single, \"Uprising\", was released seven days earlier. On 13 September, Muse performed \"Uprising\" at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards in New York City.\n\nThe Resistance Tour began with A Seaside Rendezvous in Muse's hometown of Teignmouth, Devon, in September 2009. It included headline slots the following year at festivals including Coachella, Glastonbury, Oxegen, Hovefestivalen, T in the Park, Austin City Limits and the Australian Big Day Out. Between September and November, Muse toured North America.\n\nMuse provided the lead single for the film The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, \"Neutron Star Collision (Love Is Forever)\", released on 17 May 2010. In June, Muse headlined Glastonbury Festival for the second time; after U2 canceled their headline slot following singer Bono's back injury, U2 guitarist the Edge joined Muse to play the U2 track \"Where the Streets Have No Name\".\n\nFor their live performances, Muse received the O2 Silver Clef Award in London on 2 July 2010, presented by Roger Taylor and Brian May of Queen; Taylor described the trio as \"probably the greatest live act in the world today\". On 12 September 2010, Muse won an MTV Video Music Award in the category of Best Special Effects, for the \"Uprising\" video. On 21 November, Muse took home an American Music Award for Favorite Artist in the Alternative Rock Music Category. On 2 December, Muse were nominated for three awards for the 53rd Grammy Awards on 13 February 2011, for which they won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album for The Resistance.\n\nBased on having the largest airplay and sales in the US, Muse were named the Billboard Alternative Songs and Rock Songs artist for 2010 with \"Uprising\", \"Resistance\" and \"Undisclosed Desires\" achieving 1st, 6th and 49th on the year end Alternative Song chart respectively. On 30 July 2011, Muse supported Rage Against the Machine at their only 2011 gig at the L.A. Rising festival. On 13 August, Muse headlined the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in San Francisco. Muse headlined the Reading and Leeds Festivals in August 2011. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of their second studio album Origin of Symmetry (2001), the band performed all eleven tracks. Muse also headlined Lollapalooza in Chicago's Grant Park in August 2011.\n\nThe 2nd Law and Live at Rome Olympic Stadium (2012–2013)\n\nIn an April 2012 interview, Bellamy said Muse's next album would include influences from acts such as French house duo Justice and UK electronic rock group Does It Offend You, Yeah?. On 6 June 2012, Muse released a trailer for their next album, The 2nd Law, with a countdown on the band's website. The trailer, which included dubstep elements, was met with mixed reactions. On 7 June, Muse announced a European Arena tour, the first leg of The 2nd Law Tour. The leg included dates in France, Spain and the UK. The first single from the album, \"Survival\", was the official song of the London 2012 Summer Olympics, and Muse performed it at the Olympics closing ceremony.\n\nMuse revealed the 2nd Law tracklist on 13 July 2012. The second single, \"Madness\", was released on 20 August 2012, with a music video on 5 September. Muse played at the Roundhouse on 30 September as part of the iTunes Festival. The 2nd Law was released worldwide on 1 October, and on 2 October 2012 in the US; it reached number one in the UK Albums Chart, and number two on the US Billboard 200. The song \"Madness\" earned a nomination in the Best Rock Song category and the album itself was nominated for the Best Rock Album at the 55th Grammy Awards, 2013. The band performed the album's opening song, \"Supremacy\", with an orchestra at the 2013 Brit Awards on 20 February 2013. The album was a nominee for Best Rock Album at the 2013 Grammy Awards. The song \"Madness\" was also nominated for Best Rock Song. The album listed at number 46 on Rolling Stones list of the top 50 albums of 2012, saying \"In an era of diminished expectations, Muse make stadium-crushing songs that mix the legacies of Queen, King Crimson, Led Zeppelin and Radiohead while making almost every other current band seem tiny.\"\n\nMuse released their fourth live album, Live at Rome Olympic Stadium, on 29 November 2013 on CD/DVD and CD/Blu-ray formats. In November 2013, the film had theatrical screenings in 20 cities worldwide. The album contains the band's performance at Rome's Stadio Olimpico on 6 July 2013, in front of over 60,000 people; it was the first concert filmed in 4K format. The concert was a part of the Unsustainable Tour, Muse's mid-2013 tour of Europe.\n\nDrones (2014–2016)\n\nMuse began writing their seventh album soon after the Rome concert. The band felt that the electronic side of their music was becoming too dominant, and wanted to return to a simpler rock sound. After self-producing their previous two albums, the band hired producer Robert John \"Mutt\" Lange so they could focus on performance and spend less time mixing and reviewing takes. Recording took place in the Vancouver Warehouse Studio from October 2014 to April 2015.\n\nMuse announced their seventh album, Drones, on 11 March 2015. The following day, they released a lyric video for \"Psycho\" on their YouTube channel, and made the song available for instant download with the album pre-order. Another single, \"Dead Inside\", was released on 23 March.\n\nFrom 15 March to 16 May, Muse embarked on a short tour in small venues throughout the UK and the US, the Psycho Tour. Live performances of new songs from these concerts are included on the DVD accompanying the album along with bonus studio footage. On 18 May 2015, Muse released a lyric video for \"Mercy\" on their YouTube channel, and made the song available for instant download with the album pre-order.\n\nDrones was released on 8 June 2015. A concept album about the dehumanisation of modern warfare, it returned to a simpler rock sound with less elaborate production and genre experimentation. It topped the album charts in the UK, the US, Australia and most major markets. Muse headlined Lollapalooza Berlin on 13 September 2015. On 15 February 2016, Drones won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album at the 58th Grammy Awards. On 24 June, Muse headlined the Glastonbury Festival for a third time, becoming the first act to have headlined each day of the festival (Friday, Saturday and Sunday). On 30 November 2016, Muse were announced to headline Reading and Leeds 2017.\n\nSimulation Theory and reissues (2017–2021)\n\nIn 2017, Muse toured North America supported by Thirty Seconds to Mars and PVRIS. Howard confirmed in February that the band were back in the studio. On 18 May, Muse released \"Dig Down\", the first single from their eighth album. In November, they performed at the BlizzCon festival. \"Thought Contagion\", the second single, was released on 15 February 2018, accompanied by an 1980s-styled music video. In June, Muse opened the Rock In Rio festival. On 24 February, they played a one-off show at La Cigale in France with a setlist voted for fans online. A concert video, Muse: Drones World Tour, was released in cinemas worldwide on 12 July 2018.\n\nOn 19 July 2018, Muse released the third single from their upcoming album, \"Something Human\". On 30 August 2018, they announced their eighth studio album, Simulation Theory, to be released on 9 November. The announcement was accompanied by another single and video, \"The Dark Side\". The fifth single, \"Pressure\", was released on 27 September. The Simulation Theory world tour began in Houston on 3 February 2019 and concluded on 15 October in Lima. A film based on the album and tour, Muse – Simulation Theory, combining concert footage and narrative scenes, was released in August 2020. \n\nIn December 2019, Muse released Origin of Muse, a box set comprising remastered versions of Showbiz and Origin of Symmetry plus previously unreleased material. For the 20th anniversary of Origin of Symmetry in June 2021, Muse released a remixed and remastered version, Origin of Symmetry: XX Anniversary RemiXX.\n\nUpcoming ninth album (2022–present)\nOn 13 January 2022, Muse released a new single, titled \"Won't Stand Down\", which marked a return to the band's heavier early sound.\n\nMusical style\nDescribed as an alternative rock, progressive rock, space rock, hard rock, art rock, electronic rock, progressive metal, and pop. Muse mix sounds from genres such as electronica, R&B, progressive metal, and art rock, and forms such as classical music, rock opera and many others. In 2002, Bellamy described Muse as a \"trashy three-piece\". In 2005, Pitchfork described Muse's music as \"firmly ol' skool at heart: proggy hard rock that forgoes any pretensions to restraint ... their songs use full-stacked guitars and thunderous drums to evoke God's footsteps\". AllMusic described their sound as a \"fusion of progressive rock, glam, electronica, and Radiohead-influenced experimentation\". On the band's association with progressive rock, Howard said: \"I associate it [progressive rock] with 10-minute guitar solos, but I guess we kind of come into the category. A lot of bands are quite ambitious with their music, mixing lots of different styles – and when I see that I think it's great. I've noticed that kind of thing becoming a bit more mainstream.\"\n\nFor their second album, Origin of Symmetry (2001), Muse wanted to craft a more aggressive sound. In 2000, Wolstenholme said: \"Looking back, there isn't much difference sonically between the mellow stuff and the heavier tracks [on Showbiz]. The heavy stuff really could have been a lot heavier and that's what we want to do with [Origin of Symmetry].\" Their third album, Absolution (2003), features prominent string arrangements and drew influences from artists such as Queen. Their fourth album, Black Holes and Revelations (2006) was influenced by artists including Depeche Mode and Lightning Bolt, as well as Asian and European music such as Naples music. The band listened to radio stations from the Middle East during the album's recording sessions. Queen guitarist Brian May has praised Muse's work, calling the band \"extraordinary musicians\", who \"let their madness show through, always a good thing in an artist.\"\n\nMuse's sixth album, The 2nd Law (2012) has a broader range of influences, ranging from funk and film scores to electronica and dubstep. The 2nd Law is influenced by rock acts such as Queen and Led Zeppelin (on \"Supremacy\") as well as dubstep producer Skrillex and Nero (on \"The 2nd Law: Unsustainable\" and \"Follow Me\", with the latter being co-produced by Nero), Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder (on \"Panic Station\" which features musicians who performed on Stevie Wonder's \"Superstition\") and Hans Zimmer. The album features two songs with lyrics written and sung by bassist Wolstenholme, who wrote about his battle with alcoholism. It features extensive electronic instrumentation, including Modular synthesisers and the French Connection, a synthesiser controller similar to the ondes martenot.\n\nMusicianship\nMany Muse songs are recognisable by vocalist Matt Bellamy's use of vibrato, falsetto, and melismatic phrasing, influenced by Jeff Buckley. As a pianist, Bellamy often uses arpeggios. Bellamy's compositions often suggest or quote late classical and romantic era composers such as Sergei Rachmaninov (in \"Space Dementia\" and \"Butterflies and Hurricanes\"), Camille Saint-Saëns (in \"I Belong to You (+Mon Cœur S'ouvre a ta Voix)\") and Frédéric Chopin (in \"United States of Eurasia\"). As a guitarist, Bellamy often uses arpeggiator and pitch-shift effects to create a more \"electronic\" sound, citing Jimi Hendrix and Tom Morello as influences. His guitar playing is also influenced by Latin and Spanish guitar music; Bellamy said: \"I just think that music is really passionate...It has so much feel and flair to it. I’ve spent important times of my life in Spain and Greece, and various deep things happened there – falling in love, stuff like that. So maybe that rubbed off somewhere.\"\n\nWolstenholme's basslines provide a motif for many Muse songs; the band combines bass guitar with effects and synthesisers to create overdriven fuzz bass tones. Bellamy and Wolstenholme use touch-screen controllers, often built into their instruments, to control synthesisers and effects including Kaoss Pads and Digitech Whammy pedals.\n\nLyrics\nMost earlier Muse songs lyrically dealt with introspective themes, including relationships, social alienation, and difficulties they had encountered while trying to establish themselves in their hometown. However, with the band's progress, their song concepts have become more ambitious, addressing issues such as the fear of the evolution of technology in their Origin of Symmetry (2001) album. They deal mainly with the apocalypse in Absolution (2003) and with catastrophic war in Black Holes and Revelations (2006). The Resistance (2009) focused on themes of government oppression, uprising, love, and panspermia. The album itself was mainly inspired by Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Their sixth studio album, The 2nd Law (2012) relates to economics, thermodynamics, and apocalyptic themes. Their 2015 album Drones, is a concept album that uses autonomous killing drones as a metaphor for brainwashing and loss of empathy.\n\nBooks that have influenced Muse's lyrical themes include Nineteen Eighty-Four, Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins, Hyperspace by Michio Kaku, The 12th Planet by Zecharia Sitchin, Rule by Secrecy by Jim Marrs and Trance Formation of America by Cathy O'Brien.\n\nBand members\n\n Matt Bellamy – lead vocals, guitars, keyboards, piano, synthesisers\n Dominic Howard – drums, percussions\n Chris Wolstenholme – bass guitar, backing vocals, occasional keyboards and guitar\n\nTouring musicians\n Morgan Nicholls – guitars, keyboards and synthesisers, backing vocals, samples, bass (2004, 2006–present)\n Dan \"The Trumpet Man\" Newell – trumpet (2006–2008)\n Alessandro Cortini – keyboards, synthesisers (2009, substitute)\n\nDiscography\n\n Showbiz (1999)\n Origin of Symmetry (2001)\n Absolution (2003)\n Black Holes and Revelations (2006)\n The Resistance (2009)\n The 2nd Law (2012)\n Drones (2015)\n Simulation Theory (2018)\n\nConcert tours\n Showbiz Tour (1998–2000)\n Origin of Symmetry Tour (2000–2002)\n Absolution Tour (2003–2004)\n US Campus Invasion Tour 2005 (2005)\n Black Holes and Revelations Tour (2006–2008)\n The Resistance Tour (2009–2011)\n The 2nd Law World Tour (2012–2014)\n Psycho Tour (2015)\n Drones World Tour (2015–2016)\n North American Tour (with Thirty Seconds to Mars and Pvris) (2017)\n Simulation Theory World Tour (2019)\n\nSee also\n List of awards and nominations received by Muse\n List of Muse songs\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n \n \n\n \nEnglish art rock groups\nBrit Award winners\nGrammy Award winners\nEnglish alternative rock groups\nEnglish hard rock musical groups\nEnglish progressive rock groups\nKerrang! Awards winners\nNME Awards winners\nBritish musical trios\nMusical groups established in 1994\nMaverick Records artists\nWarner Records artists\nMusical groups from Devon\nIvor Novello Award winners\nSpace rock musical groups\nPolitical music groups\nMTV Europe Music Award winners" ]
[ "Muse (band)", "2003-05: Absolution", "What album number was this for Muse?", "Muse's third album, Absolution, produced by Rich Costey, Paul Reeve and John Cornfield was released in September 2003." ]
C_cfd5834ac91842f7998ba845142ff4ac_0
How did it rank among its release?
2
How did Absolution by Muse rank among its release?
Muse (band)
Muse's third album, Absolution, produced by Rich Costey, Paul Reeve and John Cornfield was released in September 2003. It debuted at number one in the UK and produced Muse's first top-ten hit, "Time Is Running Out", and three top-twenty hits: "Hysteria", "Sing for Absolution" and "Butterflies and Hurricanes". Absolution was eventually certified gold in the US. Muse undertook a year-long international tour in support of the album, visiting Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, and France. On the 2004 US leg of the tour, Bellamy injured himself onstage during the opening show in Atlanta; the tour resumed after Bellamy received stitches. In June 2004, Muse headlined the Glastonbury Festival, which they later described as "the best gig of our lives". Howard's father, William Howard, who attended the festival to watch the band, died from a heart attack shortly after the performance. Bellamy said: "It was the biggest feeling of achievement we've ever had after coming offstage. It was almost surreal that an hour later his dad died. It was almost not believable. We spent about a week sort of just with Dom trying to support him. I think he was happy that at least his dad got to see him at probably what was the finest moment so far of the band's life." Muse won two MTV Europe awards, including "Best Alternative Act", and a Q Award for "Best Live Act", and received an award for "Best British Live Act" at the Brit Awards. In July 2005, they participated in the Live 8 concert in Paris. In 2003, the band successfully sued Nestle for using their cover "Feeling Good" for a Nescafe advertisement without permission and donated the money won from the lawsuit to Oxfam. An unofficial DVD biography, Manic Depression, was released in April 2005. Muse released another live DVD on 12 December 2005, Absolution Tour, containing edited and remastered highlights from their Glastonbury performance unseen footage from their performances at London Earls Court, Wembley Arena, and the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles. CANNOTANSWER
It debuted at number one in the UK and produced Muse's first top-ten hit, "Time Is Running Out", and three top-twenty hits:
Muse are an English rock band from Teignmouth, Devon, formed in 1994. The band consists of Matt Bellamy (lead vocals, guitar, keyboards), Chris Wolstenholme (bass guitar, backing vocals), and Dominic Howard (drums). Muse released their debut album, Showbiz, in 1999, showcasing Bellamy's falsetto and a melancholic alternative rock style. Their second album, Origin of Symmetry (2001), incorporated wider instrumentation and romantic classical influences and earned them a reputation for energetic live performances. Absolution (2003) saw further classical influence, with strings on tracks such as "Butterflies and Hurricanes", and was the first of six consecutive UK number-one albums. Black Holes and Revelations (2006) incorporated electronic and pop elements, displayed in singles such as "Supermassive Black Hole", and brought Muse wider international success. The Resistance (2009) and The 2nd Law (2012) explored themes of government oppression and civil uprising and cemented Muse as one of the world's major stadium acts. Rolling Stone stated the band possessed "stadium-crushing songs". Topping the US Billboard 200, their seventh album, Drones (2015), was a concept album about drone warfare and returned to a harder rock sound. Their eighth album, Simulation Theory (2018), prominently featured synthesisers and was influenced by science fiction and the simulation hypothesis. Muse have won numerous awards, including two Grammy Awards, two Brit Awards, five MTV Europe Music Awards and eight NME Awards. In 2012 they received the Ivor Novello Award for International Achievement from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. , they have sold over 30 million albums worldwide. History Early years (1994–1997) The members of Muse played in separate school bands during their time at Teignmouth Community College in the early 1990s. Guitarist Matt Bellamy successfully auditioned for drummer Dominic Howard's band, Carnage Mayhem, becoming its singer and songwriter. They renamed the band Gothic Plague. They asked Chris Wolstenholme – at that time the drummer for Fixed Penalty – to join as bassist; he agreed and took up bass lessons. The band was renamed Rocket Baby Dolls and adopted a goth-glam image. Around this time, they received a £150 grant from the Prince's Trust for equipment. In 1994, Rocket Baby Dolls won a local battle of the bands, smashing their equipment in the process. Bellamy said, "It was supposed to be a protest, a statement, so, when we actually won, it was a real shock, a massive shock. After that, we started taking ourselves seriously." The band quit their jobs, changed their name to Muse, and moved away from Teignmouth. The band liked that the new name was short and thought that it looked good on a poster. According to journalist Mark Beaumont, the band wanted the name to reflect "the sense Matt had that he had somehow 'summoned up' this band, the way mediums could summon up inspirational spirits at times of emotional need". First EPs and Showbiz (1998–2000) After a few years building a fanbase, Muse played their first gigs in London and Manchester supporting Skunk Anansie on tour. They had a significant meeting with Dennis Smith, the owner of Sawmills Studio, situated in a converted water mill in Cornwall. He had seen the three boys grow up as he knew their parents, and had a production company with their future manager Safta Jaffery, with whom he had recently started the record label Taste Media. The meeting led to their first serious recordings and the release of the Muse EP on 11 May 1998 on Sawmills' in-house Dangerous label, produced by Paul Reeve. Their second EP, the Muscle Museum EP, also produced by Reeve, was released on 11 January 1999. It reached number 3 in the indie singles chart and attracted the attention of British radio broadcaster Steve Lamacq and the weekly British music publication NME. Later in 1999, Muse performed on the Emerging Artist's stage at Woodstock '99 and signed with Smith and Jaffery. Despite the success of their second EP, British record companies were reluctant to sign Muse. After a trip to New York's CMJ Festival, Nanci Walker, then Sr. Director of A&R at Columbia Records, flew Muse to the US to showcase for Columbia Records' then-Senior Vice-President of A&R, Tim Devine, as well as for American Recording's Rick Rubin. During this trip, on 24 December 1998, Muse signed a deal with American record label Maverick Records. Upon their return to England, Taste Media arranged deals for Muse with various record labels in Europe and Australia, allowing them control over their career in individual countries. John Leckie was brought in alongside Reeve to produce the band's first album, Showbiz (1999). The album showcased Muse's aggressive yet melancholic musical style, with lyrics about relationships and their difficulties trying to establish themselves in their hometown. Origin of Symmetry and Hullabaloo (2000–2002) During the production of their second album, Origin of Symmetry (2001), Muse experimented with instrumentation such as a church organ, Mellotron, animal bones, and an expanded drum kit. There was more of Bellamy's falsetto, arpeggiated guitar, and piano playing. Bellamy cites guitar influences such as Jimi Hendrix and Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine), the latter evident in the more riff-based songs in Origin of Symmetry and in Bellamy's use of guitar pitch-shifting effects. The album features a cover of Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse's "Feeling Good", voted in various polls one of the greatest cover versions of all time. It was released as a double A-side single, "Hyper Music/Feeling Good". Origin of Symmetry received positive reviews by critics; NME gave the album 9/10 and wrote: "It's amazing for such a young band to load up with a heritage that includes the darker visions of Cobain and Kafka, Mahler and The Tiger Lillies, Cronenberg and Schoenberg, and make a sexy, populist album." Maverick, Muse's American label, did not consider Bellamy's vocals "radio-friendly" and asked Muse to rerecord the song for the US release. The band refused and left Maverick; the album was not released in the US until September 2005, after Muse signed to Warner Bros. Origin of Symmetry has made appearances on lists of the greatest rock albums of the 2000s, both poll-based and on publication lists. In 2006, it placed at number 74 on Q magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Albums of All-Time, while in February 2008, the album placed at number 28 on a list of the Best British Albums of All Time determined by the magazine's readers. Kerrang! placed the album at number 20 in its 100 Best British Rock Albums Ever! List and at number 13 on its 50 Best Albums of the 21st Century list. Acclaimed Music ranks Origin of Symmetry as the 1,247th greatest album of all time. In 2002, Muse released the first live DVD, Hullabaloo, featuring footage recorded during Muse's two gigs at Le Zenith in Paris in 2001, and a documentary film of the band on tour. A double album, Hullabaloo Soundtrack, was released at the same time, containing a compilation of B-sides and a disc of recordings of songs from the Le Zenith performances. A double-A side single was also released featuring the new songs "In Your World" and "Dead Star". In 2002, Muse threatened Celine Dion with legal action when she planned to name her Las Vegas show "Muse", as Muse have worldwide performing rights to the name. Dion offered Muse $50,000 for the rights, but they turned it down and Dion backed down. Bellamy said: "We don't want to turn up there with people thinking we're Celine Dion's backing band." Absolution (2003–2005) Muse's third album, Absolution, produced by Rich Costey, Paul Reeve and John Cornfield was released on 15 September 2003. It debuted at number one in the UK and produced Muse's first top-ten hit, "Time Is Running Out", and three top-twenty hits: "Hysteria", "Sing for Absolution" and "Butterflies and Hurricanes". Absolution was eventually certified gold in the US. Muse undertook a year-long international tour in support of the album, visiting Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, and France. On the 2004 US leg of the tour, Bellamy injured himself onstage during the opening show in Atlanta; the tour resumed after Bellamy received stitches. In June 2004, Muse headlined the Glastonbury Festival, which they later described as "the best gig of our lives". Howard's father, William Howard, who attended the festival to watch the band, died from a heart attack shortly after the performance. Bellamy said: "It was the biggest feeling of achievement we've ever had after coming offstage. It was almost surreal that an hour later his dad died. It was almost not believable. We spent about a week sort of just with Dom trying to support him. I think he was happy that at least his dad got to see him at probably what was the finest moment so far of the band's life." Muse won two MTV Europe awards, including "Best Alternative Act", and a Q Award for "Best Live Act", and received an award for "Best British Live Act" at the Brit Awards. On 2 July 2005, they participated in the Live 8 concert in Paris. In 2003, the band successfully sued Nestlé for using their cover "Feeling Good" for a Nescafé advertisement without permission and donated the money won from the lawsuit to Oxfam. An unofficial DVD biography, Manic Depression, was released in April 2005. Muse released another live DVD on 12 December 2005, Absolution Tour, containing edited and remastered highlights from their Glastonbury performance unseen footage from their performances at London Earls Court, Wembley Arena, and the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles. During the 2004 Absolution tour, Bellamy smashed 140 guitars, a world record for the most guitars smashed in a tour. Black Holes and Revelations and HAARP (2006–2008) In 2006, Muse released their fourth album, Black Holes and Revelations, co-produced once again with Rich Costey. The album's title and themes reflect the band's interest in science fiction. The album charted at number one in the UK, much of Europe, and Australia. In the US, it reached number nine on the Billboard 200. Before the release of the new album, Muse made several promotional TV appearances starting on 13 May 2006 at BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend. The Black Holes and Revelations Tour started before the release of their album and initially consisted mostly of festival appearances, including a headline slot at the Reading and Leeds Festivals in August 2006. The band's main touring itinerary started with a tour of North America from late July to early August 2006. After the last of the summer festivals, a tour of Europe began, including a large arena tour of the UK. Black Holes and Revelations was nominated for the 2006 Mercury Music Prize, but lost to Arctic Monkeys. It earned a Platinum Europe Award after selling one million copies in Europe. The first single from the album, "Supermassive Black Hole", was released as a download in May 2006. In August 2006, Muse recorded a live session at Abbey Road Studios for the Live from Abbey Road television show. The second single, "Starlight", was released in September 2006. "Knights of Cydonia" was released in the US as a radio-only single in June 2006 and in the UK in November 2006. The fourth single, "Invincible", was released in April 2007. Another single, "Map of the Problematique", was released for download only in June 2007, following the band's performance at Wembley Stadium. Muse spent November and much of December 2006 touring Europe with British band Noisettes as the supporting act. The tour continued in Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia in early 2007 before returning to England for the summer. At the 2007 Brit Awards in February, Muse received their second award for Best British Live Act. They performed two gigs at the newly rebuilt Wembley Stadium on 16 and 17 June 2007, where they became the first band to sell out the venue. Both concerts were recorded for a DVD/CD, HAARP, released in early 2008. It was named the 40th greatest live album of all time by NME. The tour continued across Europe in July 2007 before returning to the US in August, where Muse played to a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden, New York City. They headlined the second night of the Austin City Limits Music Festival on 15 September 2007, and performed at the October 2007 Vegoose in Las Vegas with bands including Rage Against the Machine, Daft Punk and Queens of the Stone Age. Muse continued touring in Eastern Europe, Russia, Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand in 2007 before going to South Africa, Portugal, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Ireland, and the UK in 2008. On 12 April, they played a one-off concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust. Muse performed at Rock in Rio Lisboa on 6 June 2008, alongside bands including Kaiser Chiefs, The Offspring and Linkin Park. They also performed in Marlay Park, Dublin, on 13 August. A few days later, Muse headlined the 2008 V Festival, playing in Chelmsford on Saturday 16 August and Staffordshire on Sunday 17 August. On 25 September 2008, Bellamy, Howard and Wolstenholme all received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Plymouth for their contributions to music. The Resistance (2009–2011) During the recording of Muse's fifth studio album The Resistance, Wolstenholme checked into rehab to deal with his alcoholism, which was threatening the band's future. Howard said: "I've always believed in band integrity and sticking together. There's something about the fact we all grew up together. We've been together for 18 years now, which is over half our lives." The Resistance was released in September 2009, the first album produced by Muse, with engineering by Adrian Bushby and mixing by Mark Stent. It topped album charts in 19 countries, became the band's third number one album in the UK, and reached number three on the Billboard 200. Reviews were mostly positive, with praise for its ambition, classical influences and the three-part "Exogenesis: Symphony". The Resistance beat its predecessor Black Holes and Revelations in album sales in its debut week in the UK with approximately 148,000 copies sold. The first single, "Uprising", was released seven days earlier. On 13 September, Muse performed "Uprising" at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards in New York City. The Resistance Tour began with A Seaside Rendezvous in Muse's hometown of Teignmouth, Devon, in September 2009. It included headline slots the following year at festivals including Coachella, Glastonbury, Oxegen, Hovefestivalen, T in the Park, Austin City Limits and the Australian Big Day Out. Between September and November, Muse toured North America. Muse provided the lead single for the film The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, "Neutron Star Collision (Love Is Forever)", released on 17 May 2010. In June, Muse headlined Glastonbury Festival for the second time; after U2 canceled their headline slot following singer Bono's back injury, U2 guitarist the Edge joined Muse to play the U2 track "Where the Streets Have No Name". For their live performances, Muse received the O2 Silver Clef Award in London on 2 July 2010, presented by Roger Taylor and Brian May of Queen; Taylor described the trio as "probably the greatest live act in the world today". On 12 September 2010, Muse won an MTV Video Music Award in the category of Best Special Effects, for the "Uprising" video. On 21 November, Muse took home an American Music Award for Favorite Artist in the Alternative Rock Music Category. On 2 December, Muse were nominated for three awards for the 53rd Grammy Awards on 13 February 2011, for which they won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album for The Resistance. Based on having the largest airplay and sales in the US, Muse were named the Billboard Alternative Songs and Rock Songs artist for 2010 with "Uprising", "Resistance" and "Undisclosed Desires" achieving 1st, 6th and 49th on the year end Alternative Song chart respectively. On 30 July 2011, Muse supported Rage Against the Machine at their only 2011 gig at the L.A. Rising festival. On 13 August, Muse headlined the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in San Francisco. Muse headlined the Reading and Leeds Festivals in August 2011. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of their second studio album Origin of Symmetry (2001), the band performed all eleven tracks. Muse also headlined Lollapalooza in Chicago's Grant Park in August 2011. The 2nd Law and Live at Rome Olympic Stadium (2012–2013) In an April 2012 interview, Bellamy said Muse's next album would include influences from acts such as French house duo Justice and UK electronic rock group Does It Offend You, Yeah?. On 6 June 2012, Muse released a trailer for their next album, The 2nd Law, with a countdown on the band's website. The trailer, which included dubstep elements, was met with mixed reactions. On 7 June, Muse announced a European Arena tour, the first leg of The 2nd Law Tour. The leg included dates in France, Spain and the UK. The first single from the album, "Survival", was the official song of the London 2012 Summer Olympics, and Muse performed it at the Olympics closing ceremony. Muse revealed the 2nd Law tracklist on 13 July 2012. The second single, "Madness", was released on 20 August 2012, with a music video on 5 September. Muse played at the Roundhouse on 30 September as part of the iTunes Festival. The 2nd Law was released worldwide on 1 October, and on 2 October 2012 in the US; it reached number one in the UK Albums Chart, and number two on the US Billboard 200. The song "Madness" earned a nomination in the Best Rock Song category and the album itself was nominated for the Best Rock Album at the 55th Grammy Awards, 2013. The band performed the album's opening song, "Supremacy", with an orchestra at the 2013 Brit Awards on 20 February 2013. The album was a nominee for Best Rock Album at the 2013 Grammy Awards. The song "Madness" was also nominated for Best Rock Song. The album listed at number 46 on Rolling Stones list of the top 50 albums of 2012, saying "In an era of diminished expectations, Muse make stadium-crushing songs that mix the legacies of Queen, King Crimson, Led Zeppelin and Radiohead while making almost every other current band seem tiny." Muse released their fourth live album, Live at Rome Olympic Stadium, on 29 November 2013 on CD/DVD and CD/Blu-ray formats. In November 2013, the film had theatrical screenings in 20 cities worldwide. The album contains the band's performance at Rome's Stadio Olimpico on 6 July 2013, in front of over 60,000 people; it was the first concert filmed in 4K format. The concert was a part of the Unsustainable Tour, Muse's mid-2013 tour of Europe. Drones (2014–2016) Muse began writing their seventh album soon after the Rome concert. The band felt that the electronic side of their music was becoming too dominant, and wanted to return to a simpler rock sound. After self-producing their previous two albums, the band hired producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange so they could focus on performance and spend less time mixing and reviewing takes. Recording took place in the Vancouver Warehouse Studio from October 2014 to April 2015. Muse announced their seventh album, Drones, on 11 March 2015. The following day, they released a lyric video for "Psycho" on their YouTube channel, and made the song available for instant download with the album pre-order. Another single, "Dead Inside", was released on 23 March. From 15 March to 16 May, Muse embarked on a short tour in small venues throughout the UK and the US, the Psycho Tour. Live performances of new songs from these concerts are included on the DVD accompanying the album along with bonus studio footage. On 18 May 2015, Muse released a lyric video for "Mercy" on their YouTube channel, and made the song available for instant download with the album pre-order. Drones was released on 8 June 2015. A concept album about the dehumanisation of modern warfare, it returned to a simpler rock sound with less elaborate production and genre experimentation. It topped the album charts in the UK, the US, Australia and most major markets. Muse headlined Lollapalooza Berlin on 13 September 2015. On 15 February 2016, Drones won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album at the 58th Grammy Awards. On 24 June, Muse headlined the Glastonbury Festival for a third time, becoming the first act to have headlined each day of the festival (Friday, Saturday and Sunday). On 30 November 2016, Muse were announced to headline Reading and Leeds 2017. Simulation Theory and reissues (2017–2021) In 2017, Muse toured North America supported by Thirty Seconds to Mars and PVRIS. Howard confirmed in February that the band were back in the studio. On 18 May, Muse released "Dig Down", the first single from their eighth album. In November, they performed at the BlizzCon festival. "Thought Contagion", the second single, was released on 15 February 2018, accompanied by an 1980s-styled music video. In June, Muse opened the Rock In Rio festival. On 24 February, they played a one-off show at La Cigale in France with a setlist voted for fans online. A concert video, Muse: Drones World Tour, was released in cinemas worldwide on 12 July 2018. On 19 July 2018, Muse released the third single from their upcoming album, "Something Human". On 30 August 2018, they announced their eighth studio album, Simulation Theory, to be released on 9 November. The announcement was accompanied by another single and video, "The Dark Side". The fifth single, "Pressure", was released on 27 September. The Simulation Theory world tour began in Houston on 3 February 2019 and concluded on 15 October in Lima. A film based on the album and tour, Muse – Simulation Theory, combining concert footage and narrative scenes, was released in August 2020. In December 2019, Muse released Origin of Muse, a box set comprising remastered versions of Showbiz and Origin of Symmetry plus previously unreleased material. For the 20th anniversary of Origin of Symmetry in June 2021, Muse released a remixed and remastered version, Origin of Symmetry: XX Anniversary RemiXX. Upcoming ninth album (2022–present) On 13 January 2022, Muse released a new single, titled "Won't Stand Down", which marked a return to the band's heavier early sound. Musical style Described as an alternative rock, progressive rock, space rock, hard rock, art rock, electronic rock, progressive metal, and pop. Muse mix sounds from genres such as electronica, R&B, progressive metal, and art rock, and forms such as classical music, rock opera and many others. In 2002, Bellamy described Muse as a "trashy three-piece". In 2005, Pitchfork described Muse's music as "firmly ol' skool at heart: proggy hard rock that forgoes any pretensions to restraint ... their songs use full-stacked guitars and thunderous drums to evoke God's footsteps". AllMusic described their sound as a "fusion of progressive rock, glam, electronica, and Radiohead-influenced experimentation". On the band's association with progressive rock, Howard said: "I associate it [progressive rock] with 10-minute guitar solos, but I guess we kind of come into the category. A lot of bands are quite ambitious with their music, mixing lots of different styles – and when I see that I think it's great. I've noticed that kind of thing becoming a bit more mainstream." For their second album, Origin of Symmetry (2001), Muse wanted to craft a more aggressive sound. In 2000, Wolstenholme said: "Looking back, there isn't much difference sonically between the mellow stuff and the heavier tracks [on Showbiz]. The heavy stuff really could have been a lot heavier and that's what we want to do with [Origin of Symmetry]." Their third album, Absolution (2003), features prominent string arrangements and drew influences from artists such as Queen. Their fourth album, Black Holes and Revelations (2006) was influenced by artists including Depeche Mode and Lightning Bolt, as well as Asian and European music such as Naples music. The band listened to radio stations from the Middle East during the album's recording sessions. Queen guitarist Brian May has praised Muse's work, calling the band "extraordinary musicians", who "let their madness show through, always a good thing in an artist." Muse's sixth album, The 2nd Law (2012) has a broader range of influences, ranging from funk and film scores to electronica and dubstep. The 2nd Law is influenced by rock acts such as Queen and Led Zeppelin (on "Supremacy") as well as dubstep producer Skrillex and Nero (on "The 2nd Law: Unsustainable" and "Follow Me", with the latter being co-produced by Nero), Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder (on "Panic Station" which features musicians who performed on Stevie Wonder's "Superstition") and Hans Zimmer. The album features two songs with lyrics written and sung by bassist Wolstenholme, who wrote about his battle with alcoholism. It features extensive electronic instrumentation, including Modular synthesisers and the French Connection, a synthesiser controller similar to the ondes martenot. Musicianship Many Muse songs are recognisable by vocalist Matt Bellamy's use of vibrato, falsetto, and melismatic phrasing, influenced by Jeff Buckley. As a pianist, Bellamy often uses arpeggios. Bellamy's compositions often suggest or quote late classical and romantic era composers such as Sergei Rachmaninov (in "Space Dementia" and "Butterflies and Hurricanes"), Camille Saint-Saëns (in "I Belong to You (+Mon Cœur S'ouvre a ta Voix)") and Frédéric Chopin (in "United States of Eurasia"). As a guitarist, Bellamy often uses arpeggiator and pitch-shift effects to create a more "electronic" sound, citing Jimi Hendrix and Tom Morello as influences. His guitar playing is also influenced by Latin and Spanish guitar music; Bellamy said: "I just think that music is really passionate...It has so much feel and flair to it. I’ve spent important times of my life in Spain and Greece, and various deep things happened there – falling in love, stuff like that. So maybe that rubbed off somewhere." Wolstenholme's basslines provide a motif for many Muse songs; the band combines bass guitar with effects and synthesisers to create overdriven fuzz bass tones. Bellamy and Wolstenholme use touch-screen controllers, often built into their instruments, to control synthesisers and effects including Kaoss Pads and Digitech Whammy pedals. Lyrics Most earlier Muse songs lyrically dealt with introspective themes, including relationships, social alienation, and difficulties they had encountered while trying to establish themselves in their hometown. However, with the band's progress, their song concepts have become more ambitious, addressing issues such as the fear of the evolution of technology in their Origin of Symmetry (2001) album. They deal mainly with the apocalypse in Absolution (2003) and with catastrophic war in Black Holes and Revelations (2006). The Resistance (2009) focused on themes of government oppression, uprising, love, and panspermia. The album itself was mainly inspired by Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Their sixth studio album, The 2nd Law (2012) relates to economics, thermodynamics, and apocalyptic themes. Their 2015 album Drones, is a concept album that uses autonomous killing drones as a metaphor for brainwashing and loss of empathy. Books that have influenced Muse's lyrical themes include Nineteen Eighty-Four, Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins, Hyperspace by Michio Kaku, The 12th Planet by Zecharia Sitchin, Rule by Secrecy by Jim Marrs and Trance Formation of America by Cathy O'Brien. Band members Matt Bellamy – lead vocals, guitars, keyboards, piano, synthesisers Dominic Howard – drums, percussions Chris Wolstenholme – bass guitar, backing vocals, occasional keyboards and guitar Touring musicians Morgan Nicholls – guitars, keyboards and synthesisers, backing vocals, samples, bass (2004, 2006–present) Dan "The Trumpet Man" Newell – trumpet (2006–2008) Alessandro Cortini – keyboards, synthesisers (2009, substitute) Discography Showbiz (1999) Origin of Symmetry (2001) Absolution (2003) Black Holes and Revelations (2006) The Resistance (2009) The 2nd Law (2012) Drones (2015) Simulation Theory (2018) Concert tours Showbiz Tour (1998–2000) Origin of Symmetry Tour (2000–2002) Absolution Tour (2003–2004) US Campus Invasion Tour 2005 (2005) Black Holes and Revelations Tour (2006–2008) The Resistance Tour (2009–2011) The 2nd Law World Tour (2012–2014) Psycho Tour (2015) Drones World Tour (2015–2016) North American Tour (with Thirty Seconds to Mars and Pvris) (2017) Simulation Theory World Tour (2019) See also List of awards and nominations received by Muse List of Muse songs References External links English art rock groups Brit Award winners Grammy Award winners English alternative rock groups English hard rock musical groups English progressive rock groups Kerrang! Awards winners NME Awards winners British musical trios Musical groups established in 1994 Maverick Records artists Warner Records artists Musical groups from Devon Ivor Novello Award winners Space rock musical groups Political music groups MTV Europe Music Award winners
true
[ "was a stable of sumo wrestlers, one of the Nishonoseki ichimon or group of stables. As of September 2010 it had eight active wrestlers.\n\nThe stable was established in 1981 by former ōzeki Kaiketsu Masateru, as a breakaway from Hanakago stable. Among the wrestlers who went with him was Ōnokuni, who reached the top makuuchi division in 1983. In 1985 its parent stable folded and it took in the remaining Hanakago wrestlers, including future makuuchi Hananoumi and Hananokuni. Ōnokuni became the 62nd yokozuna in 1987. The stable had less success in later years, and did not have a sekitori ranked wrestler after the retirement of Shunketsu in 2008.\n\nIn August 2010, Hanaregoma became the head of the Japan Sumo Association, a position he held until 2012.\n\nOn 7 February 2013, due to Hanaregoma′s imminent mandatory retirement, the stable was absorbed into Ōnokuni′s Shibatayama stable, which had branched off from its parent in 1999.\n\nOwner\n1981-2013: 19th Hanaregoma (former ōzeki Kaiketsu Masateru)\n\nNotable wrestlers\nŌnokuni – best rank yokozuna\nHananoumi – best rank komusubi\nHananokuni – best rank maegashira 1\nMisugiiso - best rank maegashira 2\nShunketsu – best rank maegashira 12\nKomafudō - best rank maegashira 13\nHidenohana – best rank jūryō\nMaeta - best rank makushita\n\nReferees\nTamamitsu Kimura (real name Nobuhide Ueda) - san'yaku referee\nKichijiro Kimura (Masahiro Nishino) - makushita referee\n\nUsher\nKatsuyuki (Katsuyuki Koyama) - san'yaku usher\n\nSee also \nList of sumo stables\n\nReferences\n\nDefunct sumo stables", "How Did You Know is an extended play (EP) by Jamaican electronic dance musician Kurtis Mantronik. The EP was released in 2003 on the Southern Fried Records label, and features British singer Mim on vocals. \"How Did You Know (77 Strings)\" was released as a single from the EP, reaching number 16 on the UK Singles Chart and number three in Romania. The title track peaked atop the US Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart in May 2004.\n\nTrack listing\n \"How Did You Know (Radio Edit)\" (Kurtis Mantronik, Miriam Grey - vocals) – 3:33 \n \"How Did You Know (Original Vocal)\" (Mantronik, Grey - vocals) – 6:35 \n \"How Did You Know (Tony Senghore Vocal)\" (Mantronik, Grey - vocals, Tony Senghore - remix) – 6:31 \n \"77 Strings (Original Instrumental)\" (Mantronik) – 7:57\n\nCharts\nThe following chart entries are for \"How Did You Know (77 Strings)\".\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\n2003 EPs\n2003 singles\nAlbums produced by Kurtis Mantronik\nSouthern Fried Records albums" ]
[ "Muse (band)", "2003-05: Absolution", "What album number was this for Muse?", "Muse's third album, Absolution, produced by Rich Costey, Paul Reeve and John Cornfield was released in September 2003.", "How did it rank among its release?", "It debuted at number one in the UK and produced Muse's first top-ten hit, \"Time Is Running Out\", and three top-twenty hits:" ]
C_cfd5834ac91842f7998ba845142ff4ac_0
Was it platinum or gold?
3
Was Absolution by Muse platinum or gold?
Muse (band)
Muse's third album, Absolution, produced by Rich Costey, Paul Reeve and John Cornfield was released in September 2003. It debuted at number one in the UK and produced Muse's first top-ten hit, "Time Is Running Out", and three top-twenty hits: "Hysteria", "Sing for Absolution" and "Butterflies and Hurricanes". Absolution was eventually certified gold in the US. Muse undertook a year-long international tour in support of the album, visiting Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, and France. On the 2004 US leg of the tour, Bellamy injured himself onstage during the opening show in Atlanta; the tour resumed after Bellamy received stitches. In June 2004, Muse headlined the Glastonbury Festival, which they later described as "the best gig of our lives". Howard's father, William Howard, who attended the festival to watch the band, died from a heart attack shortly after the performance. Bellamy said: "It was the biggest feeling of achievement we've ever had after coming offstage. It was almost surreal that an hour later his dad died. It was almost not believable. We spent about a week sort of just with Dom trying to support him. I think he was happy that at least his dad got to see him at probably what was the finest moment so far of the band's life." Muse won two MTV Europe awards, including "Best Alternative Act", and a Q Award for "Best Live Act", and received an award for "Best British Live Act" at the Brit Awards. In July 2005, they participated in the Live 8 concert in Paris. In 2003, the band successfully sued Nestle for using their cover "Feeling Good" for a Nescafe advertisement without permission and donated the money won from the lawsuit to Oxfam. An unofficial DVD biography, Manic Depression, was released in April 2005. Muse released another live DVD on 12 December 2005, Absolution Tour, containing edited and remastered highlights from their Glastonbury performance unseen footage from their performances at London Earls Court, Wembley Arena, and the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles. CANNOTANSWER
Absolution was eventually certified gold in the US.
Muse are an English rock band from Teignmouth, Devon, formed in 1994. The band consists of Matt Bellamy (lead vocals, guitar, keyboards), Chris Wolstenholme (bass guitar, backing vocals), and Dominic Howard (drums). Muse released their debut album, Showbiz, in 1999, showcasing Bellamy's falsetto and a melancholic alternative rock style. Their second album, Origin of Symmetry (2001), incorporated wider instrumentation and romantic classical influences and earned them a reputation for energetic live performances. Absolution (2003) saw further classical influence, with strings on tracks such as "Butterflies and Hurricanes", and was the first of six consecutive UK number-one albums. Black Holes and Revelations (2006) incorporated electronic and pop elements, displayed in singles such as "Supermassive Black Hole", and brought Muse wider international success. The Resistance (2009) and The 2nd Law (2012) explored themes of government oppression and civil uprising and cemented Muse as one of the world's major stadium acts. Rolling Stone stated the band possessed "stadium-crushing songs". Topping the US Billboard 200, their seventh album, Drones (2015), was a concept album about drone warfare and returned to a harder rock sound. Their eighth album, Simulation Theory (2018), prominently featured synthesisers and was influenced by science fiction and the simulation hypothesis. Muse have won numerous awards, including two Grammy Awards, two Brit Awards, five MTV Europe Music Awards and eight NME Awards. In 2012 they received the Ivor Novello Award for International Achievement from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. , they have sold over 30 million albums worldwide. History Early years (1994–1997) The members of Muse played in separate school bands during their time at Teignmouth Community College in the early 1990s. Guitarist Matt Bellamy successfully auditioned for drummer Dominic Howard's band, Carnage Mayhem, becoming its singer and songwriter. They renamed the band Gothic Plague. They asked Chris Wolstenholme – at that time the drummer for Fixed Penalty – to join as bassist; he agreed and took up bass lessons. The band was renamed Rocket Baby Dolls and adopted a goth-glam image. Around this time, they received a £150 grant from the Prince's Trust for equipment. In 1994, Rocket Baby Dolls won a local battle of the bands, smashing their equipment in the process. Bellamy said, "It was supposed to be a protest, a statement, so, when we actually won, it was a real shock, a massive shock. After that, we started taking ourselves seriously." The band quit their jobs, changed their name to Muse, and moved away from Teignmouth. The band liked that the new name was short and thought that it looked good on a poster. According to journalist Mark Beaumont, the band wanted the name to reflect "the sense Matt had that he had somehow 'summoned up' this band, the way mediums could summon up inspirational spirits at times of emotional need". First EPs and Showbiz (1998–2000) After a few years building a fanbase, Muse played their first gigs in London and Manchester supporting Skunk Anansie on tour. They had a significant meeting with Dennis Smith, the owner of Sawmills Studio, situated in a converted water mill in Cornwall. He had seen the three boys grow up as he knew their parents, and had a production company with their future manager Safta Jaffery, with whom he had recently started the record label Taste Media. The meeting led to their first serious recordings and the release of the Muse EP on 11 May 1998 on Sawmills' in-house Dangerous label, produced by Paul Reeve. Their second EP, the Muscle Museum EP, also produced by Reeve, was released on 11 January 1999. It reached number 3 in the indie singles chart and attracted the attention of British radio broadcaster Steve Lamacq and the weekly British music publication NME. Later in 1999, Muse performed on the Emerging Artist's stage at Woodstock '99 and signed with Smith and Jaffery. Despite the success of their second EP, British record companies were reluctant to sign Muse. After a trip to New York's CMJ Festival, Nanci Walker, then Sr. Director of A&R at Columbia Records, flew Muse to the US to showcase for Columbia Records' then-Senior Vice-President of A&R, Tim Devine, as well as for American Recording's Rick Rubin. During this trip, on 24 December 1998, Muse signed a deal with American record label Maverick Records. Upon their return to England, Taste Media arranged deals for Muse with various record labels in Europe and Australia, allowing them control over their career in individual countries. John Leckie was brought in alongside Reeve to produce the band's first album, Showbiz (1999). The album showcased Muse's aggressive yet melancholic musical style, with lyrics about relationships and their difficulties trying to establish themselves in their hometown. Origin of Symmetry and Hullabaloo (2000–2002) During the production of their second album, Origin of Symmetry (2001), Muse experimented with instrumentation such as a church organ, Mellotron, animal bones, and an expanded drum kit. There was more of Bellamy's falsetto, arpeggiated guitar, and piano playing. Bellamy cites guitar influences such as Jimi Hendrix and Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine), the latter evident in the more riff-based songs in Origin of Symmetry and in Bellamy's use of guitar pitch-shifting effects. The album features a cover of Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse's "Feeling Good", voted in various polls one of the greatest cover versions of all time. It was released as a double A-side single, "Hyper Music/Feeling Good". Origin of Symmetry received positive reviews by critics; NME gave the album 9/10 and wrote: "It's amazing for such a young band to load up with a heritage that includes the darker visions of Cobain and Kafka, Mahler and The Tiger Lillies, Cronenberg and Schoenberg, and make a sexy, populist album." Maverick, Muse's American label, did not consider Bellamy's vocals "radio-friendly" and asked Muse to rerecord the song for the US release. The band refused and left Maverick; the album was not released in the US until September 2005, after Muse signed to Warner Bros. Origin of Symmetry has made appearances on lists of the greatest rock albums of the 2000s, both poll-based and on publication lists. In 2006, it placed at number 74 on Q magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Albums of All-Time, while in February 2008, the album placed at number 28 on a list of the Best British Albums of All Time determined by the magazine's readers. Kerrang! placed the album at number 20 in its 100 Best British Rock Albums Ever! List and at number 13 on its 50 Best Albums of the 21st Century list. Acclaimed Music ranks Origin of Symmetry as the 1,247th greatest album of all time. In 2002, Muse released the first live DVD, Hullabaloo, featuring footage recorded during Muse's two gigs at Le Zenith in Paris in 2001, and a documentary film of the band on tour. A double album, Hullabaloo Soundtrack, was released at the same time, containing a compilation of B-sides and a disc of recordings of songs from the Le Zenith performances. A double-A side single was also released featuring the new songs "In Your World" and "Dead Star". In 2002, Muse threatened Celine Dion with legal action when she planned to name her Las Vegas show "Muse", as Muse have worldwide performing rights to the name. Dion offered Muse $50,000 for the rights, but they turned it down and Dion backed down. Bellamy said: "We don't want to turn up there with people thinking we're Celine Dion's backing band." Absolution (2003–2005) Muse's third album, Absolution, produced by Rich Costey, Paul Reeve and John Cornfield was released on 15 September 2003. It debuted at number one in the UK and produced Muse's first top-ten hit, "Time Is Running Out", and three top-twenty hits: "Hysteria", "Sing for Absolution" and "Butterflies and Hurricanes". Absolution was eventually certified gold in the US. Muse undertook a year-long international tour in support of the album, visiting Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, and France. On the 2004 US leg of the tour, Bellamy injured himself onstage during the opening show in Atlanta; the tour resumed after Bellamy received stitches. In June 2004, Muse headlined the Glastonbury Festival, which they later described as "the best gig of our lives". Howard's father, William Howard, who attended the festival to watch the band, died from a heart attack shortly after the performance. Bellamy said: "It was the biggest feeling of achievement we've ever had after coming offstage. It was almost surreal that an hour later his dad died. It was almost not believable. We spent about a week sort of just with Dom trying to support him. I think he was happy that at least his dad got to see him at probably what was the finest moment so far of the band's life." Muse won two MTV Europe awards, including "Best Alternative Act", and a Q Award for "Best Live Act", and received an award for "Best British Live Act" at the Brit Awards. On 2 July 2005, they participated in the Live 8 concert in Paris. In 2003, the band successfully sued Nestlé for using their cover "Feeling Good" for a Nescafé advertisement without permission and donated the money won from the lawsuit to Oxfam. An unofficial DVD biography, Manic Depression, was released in April 2005. Muse released another live DVD on 12 December 2005, Absolution Tour, containing edited and remastered highlights from their Glastonbury performance unseen footage from their performances at London Earls Court, Wembley Arena, and the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles. During the 2004 Absolution tour, Bellamy smashed 140 guitars, a world record for the most guitars smashed in a tour. Black Holes and Revelations and HAARP (2006–2008) In 2006, Muse released their fourth album, Black Holes and Revelations, co-produced once again with Rich Costey. The album's title and themes reflect the band's interest in science fiction. The album charted at number one in the UK, much of Europe, and Australia. In the US, it reached number nine on the Billboard 200. Before the release of the new album, Muse made several promotional TV appearances starting on 13 May 2006 at BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend. The Black Holes and Revelations Tour started before the release of their album and initially consisted mostly of festival appearances, including a headline slot at the Reading and Leeds Festivals in August 2006. The band's main touring itinerary started with a tour of North America from late July to early August 2006. After the last of the summer festivals, a tour of Europe began, including a large arena tour of the UK. Black Holes and Revelations was nominated for the 2006 Mercury Music Prize, but lost to Arctic Monkeys. It earned a Platinum Europe Award after selling one million copies in Europe. The first single from the album, "Supermassive Black Hole", was released as a download in May 2006. In August 2006, Muse recorded a live session at Abbey Road Studios for the Live from Abbey Road television show. The second single, "Starlight", was released in September 2006. "Knights of Cydonia" was released in the US as a radio-only single in June 2006 and in the UK in November 2006. The fourth single, "Invincible", was released in April 2007. Another single, "Map of the Problematique", was released for download only in June 2007, following the band's performance at Wembley Stadium. Muse spent November and much of December 2006 touring Europe with British band Noisettes as the supporting act. The tour continued in Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia in early 2007 before returning to England for the summer. At the 2007 Brit Awards in February, Muse received their second award for Best British Live Act. They performed two gigs at the newly rebuilt Wembley Stadium on 16 and 17 June 2007, where they became the first band to sell out the venue. Both concerts were recorded for a DVD/CD, HAARP, released in early 2008. It was named the 40th greatest live album of all time by NME. The tour continued across Europe in July 2007 before returning to the US in August, where Muse played to a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden, New York City. They headlined the second night of the Austin City Limits Music Festival on 15 September 2007, and performed at the October 2007 Vegoose in Las Vegas with bands including Rage Against the Machine, Daft Punk and Queens of the Stone Age. Muse continued touring in Eastern Europe, Russia, Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand in 2007 before going to South Africa, Portugal, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Ireland, and the UK in 2008. On 12 April, they played a one-off concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust. Muse performed at Rock in Rio Lisboa on 6 June 2008, alongside bands including Kaiser Chiefs, The Offspring and Linkin Park. They also performed in Marlay Park, Dublin, on 13 August. A few days later, Muse headlined the 2008 V Festival, playing in Chelmsford on Saturday 16 August and Staffordshire on Sunday 17 August. On 25 September 2008, Bellamy, Howard and Wolstenholme all received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Plymouth for their contributions to music. The Resistance (2009–2011) During the recording of Muse's fifth studio album The Resistance, Wolstenholme checked into rehab to deal with his alcoholism, which was threatening the band's future. Howard said: "I've always believed in band integrity and sticking together. There's something about the fact we all grew up together. We've been together for 18 years now, which is over half our lives." The Resistance was released in September 2009, the first album produced by Muse, with engineering by Adrian Bushby and mixing by Mark Stent. It topped album charts in 19 countries, became the band's third number one album in the UK, and reached number three on the Billboard 200. Reviews were mostly positive, with praise for its ambition, classical influences and the three-part "Exogenesis: Symphony". The Resistance beat its predecessor Black Holes and Revelations in album sales in its debut week in the UK with approximately 148,000 copies sold. The first single, "Uprising", was released seven days earlier. On 13 September, Muse performed "Uprising" at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards in New York City. The Resistance Tour began with A Seaside Rendezvous in Muse's hometown of Teignmouth, Devon, in September 2009. It included headline slots the following year at festivals including Coachella, Glastonbury, Oxegen, Hovefestivalen, T in the Park, Austin City Limits and the Australian Big Day Out. Between September and November, Muse toured North America. Muse provided the lead single for the film The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, "Neutron Star Collision (Love Is Forever)", released on 17 May 2010. In June, Muse headlined Glastonbury Festival for the second time; after U2 canceled their headline slot following singer Bono's back injury, U2 guitarist the Edge joined Muse to play the U2 track "Where the Streets Have No Name". For their live performances, Muse received the O2 Silver Clef Award in London on 2 July 2010, presented by Roger Taylor and Brian May of Queen; Taylor described the trio as "probably the greatest live act in the world today". On 12 September 2010, Muse won an MTV Video Music Award in the category of Best Special Effects, for the "Uprising" video. On 21 November, Muse took home an American Music Award for Favorite Artist in the Alternative Rock Music Category. On 2 December, Muse were nominated for three awards for the 53rd Grammy Awards on 13 February 2011, for which they won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album for The Resistance. Based on having the largest airplay and sales in the US, Muse were named the Billboard Alternative Songs and Rock Songs artist for 2010 with "Uprising", "Resistance" and "Undisclosed Desires" achieving 1st, 6th and 49th on the year end Alternative Song chart respectively. On 30 July 2011, Muse supported Rage Against the Machine at their only 2011 gig at the L.A. Rising festival. On 13 August, Muse headlined the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in San Francisco. Muse headlined the Reading and Leeds Festivals in August 2011. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of their second studio album Origin of Symmetry (2001), the band performed all eleven tracks. Muse also headlined Lollapalooza in Chicago's Grant Park in August 2011. The 2nd Law and Live at Rome Olympic Stadium (2012–2013) In an April 2012 interview, Bellamy said Muse's next album would include influences from acts such as French house duo Justice and UK electronic rock group Does It Offend You, Yeah?. On 6 June 2012, Muse released a trailer for their next album, The 2nd Law, with a countdown on the band's website. The trailer, which included dubstep elements, was met with mixed reactions. On 7 June, Muse announced a European Arena tour, the first leg of The 2nd Law Tour. The leg included dates in France, Spain and the UK. The first single from the album, "Survival", was the official song of the London 2012 Summer Olympics, and Muse performed it at the Olympics closing ceremony. Muse revealed the 2nd Law tracklist on 13 July 2012. The second single, "Madness", was released on 20 August 2012, with a music video on 5 September. Muse played at the Roundhouse on 30 September as part of the iTunes Festival. The 2nd Law was released worldwide on 1 October, and on 2 October 2012 in the US; it reached number one in the UK Albums Chart, and number two on the US Billboard 200. The song "Madness" earned a nomination in the Best Rock Song category and the album itself was nominated for the Best Rock Album at the 55th Grammy Awards, 2013. The band performed the album's opening song, "Supremacy", with an orchestra at the 2013 Brit Awards on 20 February 2013. The album was a nominee for Best Rock Album at the 2013 Grammy Awards. The song "Madness" was also nominated for Best Rock Song. The album listed at number 46 on Rolling Stones list of the top 50 albums of 2012, saying "In an era of diminished expectations, Muse make stadium-crushing songs that mix the legacies of Queen, King Crimson, Led Zeppelin and Radiohead while making almost every other current band seem tiny." Muse released their fourth live album, Live at Rome Olympic Stadium, on 29 November 2013 on CD/DVD and CD/Blu-ray formats. In November 2013, the film had theatrical screenings in 20 cities worldwide. The album contains the band's performance at Rome's Stadio Olimpico on 6 July 2013, in front of over 60,000 people; it was the first concert filmed in 4K format. The concert was a part of the Unsustainable Tour, Muse's mid-2013 tour of Europe. Drones (2014–2016) Muse began writing their seventh album soon after the Rome concert. The band felt that the electronic side of their music was becoming too dominant, and wanted to return to a simpler rock sound. After self-producing their previous two albums, the band hired producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange so they could focus on performance and spend less time mixing and reviewing takes. Recording took place in the Vancouver Warehouse Studio from October 2014 to April 2015. Muse announced their seventh album, Drones, on 11 March 2015. The following day, they released a lyric video for "Psycho" on their YouTube channel, and made the song available for instant download with the album pre-order. Another single, "Dead Inside", was released on 23 March. From 15 March to 16 May, Muse embarked on a short tour in small venues throughout the UK and the US, the Psycho Tour. Live performances of new songs from these concerts are included on the DVD accompanying the album along with bonus studio footage. On 18 May 2015, Muse released a lyric video for "Mercy" on their YouTube channel, and made the song available for instant download with the album pre-order. Drones was released on 8 June 2015. A concept album about the dehumanisation of modern warfare, it returned to a simpler rock sound with less elaborate production and genre experimentation. It topped the album charts in the UK, the US, Australia and most major markets. Muse headlined Lollapalooza Berlin on 13 September 2015. On 15 February 2016, Drones won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album at the 58th Grammy Awards. On 24 June, Muse headlined the Glastonbury Festival for a third time, becoming the first act to have headlined each day of the festival (Friday, Saturday and Sunday). On 30 November 2016, Muse were announced to headline Reading and Leeds 2017. Simulation Theory and reissues (2017–2021) In 2017, Muse toured North America supported by Thirty Seconds to Mars and PVRIS. Howard confirmed in February that the band were back in the studio. On 18 May, Muse released "Dig Down", the first single from their eighth album. In November, they performed at the BlizzCon festival. "Thought Contagion", the second single, was released on 15 February 2018, accompanied by an 1980s-styled music video. In June, Muse opened the Rock In Rio festival. On 24 February, they played a one-off show at La Cigale in France with a setlist voted for fans online. A concert video, Muse: Drones World Tour, was released in cinemas worldwide on 12 July 2018. On 19 July 2018, Muse released the third single from their upcoming album, "Something Human". On 30 August 2018, they announced their eighth studio album, Simulation Theory, to be released on 9 November. The announcement was accompanied by another single and video, "The Dark Side". The fifth single, "Pressure", was released on 27 September. The Simulation Theory world tour began in Houston on 3 February 2019 and concluded on 15 October in Lima. A film based on the album and tour, Muse – Simulation Theory, combining concert footage and narrative scenes, was released in August 2020. In December 2019, Muse released Origin of Muse, a box set comprising remastered versions of Showbiz and Origin of Symmetry plus previously unreleased material. For the 20th anniversary of Origin of Symmetry in June 2021, Muse released a remixed and remastered version, Origin of Symmetry: XX Anniversary RemiXX. Upcoming ninth album (2022–present) On 13 January 2022, Muse released a new single, titled "Won't Stand Down", which marked a return to the band's heavier early sound. Musical style Described as an alternative rock, progressive rock, space rock, hard rock, art rock, electronic rock, progressive metal, and pop. Muse mix sounds from genres such as electronica, R&B, progressive metal, and art rock, and forms such as classical music, rock opera and many others. In 2002, Bellamy described Muse as a "trashy three-piece". In 2005, Pitchfork described Muse's music as "firmly ol' skool at heart: proggy hard rock that forgoes any pretensions to restraint ... their songs use full-stacked guitars and thunderous drums to evoke God's footsteps". AllMusic described their sound as a "fusion of progressive rock, glam, electronica, and Radiohead-influenced experimentation". On the band's association with progressive rock, Howard said: "I associate it [progressive rock] with 10-minute guitar solos, but I guess we kind of come into the category. A lot of bands are quite ambitious with their music, mixing lots of different styles – and when I see that I think it's great. I've noticed that kind of thing becoming a bit more mainstream." For their second album, Origin of Symmetry (2001), Muse wanted to craft a more aggressive sound. In 2000, Wolstenholme said: "Looking back, there isn't much difference sonically between the mellow stuff and the heavier tracks [on Showbiz]. The heavy stuff really could have been a lot heavier and that's what we want to do with [Origin of Symmetry]." Their third album, Absolution (2003), features prominent string arrangements and drew influences from artists such as Queen. Their fourth album, Black Holes and Revelations (2006) was influenced by artists including Depeche Mode and Lightning Bolt, as well as Asian and European music such as Naples music. The band listened to radio stations from the Middle East during the album's recording sessions. Queen guitarist Brian May has praised Muse's work, calling the band "extraordinary musicians", who "let their madness show through, always a good thing in an artist." Muse's sixth album, The 2nd Law (2012) has a broader range of influences, ranging from funk and film scores to electronica and dubstep. The 2nd Law is influenced by rock acts such as Queen and Led Zeppelin (on "Supremacy") as well as dubstep producer Skrillex and Nero (on "The 2nd Law: Unsustainable" and "Follow Me", with the latter being co-produced by Nero), Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder (on "Panic Station" which features musicians who performed on Stevie Wonder's "Superstition") and Hans Zimmer. The album features two songs with lyrics written and sung by bassist Wolstenholme, who wrote about his battle with alcoholism. It features extensive electronic instrumentation, including Modular synthesisers and the French Connection, a synthesiser controller similar to the ondes martenot. Musicianship Many Muse songs are recognisable by vocalist Matt Bellamy's use of vibrato, falsetto, and melismatic phrasing, influenced by Jeff Buckley. As a pianist, Bellamy often uses arpeggios. Bellamy's compositions often suggest or quote late classical and romantic era composers such as Sergei Rachmaninov (in "Space Dementia" and "Butterflies and Hurricanes"), Camille Saint-Saëns (in "I Belong to You (+Mon Cœur S'ouvre a ta Voix)") and Frédéric Chopin (in "United States of Eurasia"). As a guitarist, Bellamy often uses arpeggiator and pitch-shift effects to create a more "electronic" sound, citing Jimi Hendrix and Tom Morello as influences. His guitar playing is also influenced by Latin and Spanish guitar music; Bellamy said: "I just think that music is really passionate...It has so much feel and flair to it. I’ve spent important times of my life in Spain and Greece, and various deep things happened there – falling in love, stuff like that. So maybe that rubbed off somewhere." Wolstenholme's basslines provide a motif for many Muse songs; the band combines bass guitar with effects and synthesisers to create overdriven fuzz bass tones. Bellamy and Wolstenholme use touch-screen controllers, often built into their instruments, to control synthesisers and effects including Kaoss Pads and Digitech Whammy pedals. Lyrics Most earlier Muse songs lyrically dealt with introspective themes, including relationships, social alienation, and difficulties they had encountered while trying to establish themselves in their hometown. However, with the band's progress, their song concepts have become more ambitious, addressing issues such as the fear of the evolution of technology in their Origin of Symmetry (2001) album. They deal mainly with the apocalypse in Absolution (2003) and with catastrophic war in Black Holes and Revelations (2006). The Resistance (2009) focused on themes of government oppression, uprising, love, and panspermia. The album itself was mainly inspired by Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Their sixth studio album, The 2nd Law (2012) relates to economics, thermodynamics, and apocalyptic themes. Their 2015 album Drones, is a concept album that uses autonomous killing drones as a metaphor for brainwashing and loss of empathy. Books that have influenced Muse's lyrical themes include Nineteen Eighty-Four, Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins, Hyperspace by Michio Kaku, The 12th Planet by Zecharia Sitchin, Rule by Secrecy by Jim Marrs and Trance Formation of America by Cathy O'Brien. Band members Matt Bellamy – lead vocals, guitars, keyboards, piano, synthesisers Dominic Howard – drums, percussions Chris Wolstenholme – bass guitar, backing vocals, occasional keyboards and guitar Touring musicians Morgan Nicholls – guitars, keyboards and synthesisers, backing vocals, samples, bass (2004, 2006–present) Dan "The Trumpet Man" Newell – trumpet (2006–2008) Alessandro Cortini – keyboards, synthesisers (2009, substitute) Discography Showbiz (1999) Origin of Symmetry (2001) Absolution (2003) Black Holes and Revelations (2006) The Resistance (2009) The 2nd Law (2012) Drones (2015) Simulation Theory (2018) Concert tours Showbiz Tour (1998–2000) Origin of Symmetry Tour (2000–2002) Absolution Tour (2003–2004) US Campus Invasion Tour 2005 (2005) Black Holes and Revelations Tour (2006–2008) The Resistance Tour (2009–2011) The 2nd Law World Tour (2012–2014) Psycho Tour (2015) Drones World Tour (2015–2016) North American Tour (with Thirty Seconds to Mars and Pvris) (2017) Simulation Theory World Tour (2019) See also List of awards and nominations received by Muse List of Muse songs References External links English art rock groups Brit Award winners Grammy Award winners English alternative rock groups English hard rock musical groups English progressive rock groups Kerrang! Awards winners NME Awards winners British musical trios Musical groups established in 1994 Maverick Records artists Warner Records artists Musical groups from Devon Ivor Novello Award winners Space rock musical groups Political music groups MTV Europe Music Award winners
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[ "The Manx Noble are platinum, gold or silver bullion coins distributed by the Isle of Man and minted by private companies. While platinum coins have been minted since the early 1800s, the Noble is the first platinum coin created for investors. The coins are not minted every year, but have an erratic schedule. Nobles are legal tender but they do not have a fixed face value; instead, like the Krugerrand or Mexico's Libertad, they are legal tender to the value of their precious metal content.\n\nSpecifications\n\nThe platinum coins contains 99.5% platinum (.995 fine). The gold coins contains 99.99% gold (.9999 fine) and silver coins contains 99.9% silver (.999 fine).\n\nDesign \n\nObverse: It shows a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II with the text Isle of Man and Elizabeth II in capitals. There have been four different portraits of Queen Elizabeth used on the coins. The 1984 coin showed the second coin portrait, done when the Queen was in her early 40s. The third coin portrait, of the Queen in her 50s, was used between 1985 and 1997. The fourth portrait, of the 70-year old Queen, was used between 1998 and 2014. Since 2015, the fifth coin portrait has been used.\n\nReverse: shows a viking ship and four birds with the denomination. In small lettering beneath the ship, metal content, coin size and fineness are given. The design is framed by an elaborate Viking knit motif border with the island's coat of arms, the triskele, appearing at the top, above the ship's flag.\n\nHistory \n\nThe first platinum coins regularly minted were Russian platinum rubles from 1828 to 1845. Only occasional commemorative coins were minted till the 1970s when Isle of Man started regularly issuing commemorative platinum coins. Isle of Man has used three private mints to make their coins, the English Pobjoy Mint from 1983 until 2016, Liechtenstein's Coin Investment Trust (CIT) in 2017, and the 2018 version was minted by the English Tower Mint. \n\nSeveral one-off coins were minted. What is claimed to be the world's first holographic coin is a 1996 platinum Noble whose viking ship's sail is made from a patterned hologram. A one-quarter ounce bimetallic coin, ring made of gold with the center platinum, was minted in 1995. A one-ounce bimetallic coin, ring of silver with a center of gold, was produced in 2009. A one-ounce palladium coin was issued in 2012. There were 26, five-ounce platinum coins minted in 1986 and another 15 coins in 1988. The same amount of ten-ounce platinum coins were also released in 1986 and 1988. The 2017 and 2018 silver coins came in both proof and reverse proof versions.\n\nThe following table shows mintages of proof coins unless noted with a (b).\n\nNR - Mintage numbers not released\n(b) - Brilliant uncirculated finish. Not a proof coin\n\nSee also \n\n Angel (Manx coin)\n Bullion\n Bullion coin\n Gold as an investment\n Inflation hedge\n Noble (English coin)\n Platinum as an investment\n Silver as an investment\n\nReferences\n\nBirds on coins\nShips on coins\nBullion coins of the Isle of Man\nGold bullion coins\nSilver bullion coins\nPlatinum bullion coins\nPalladium bullion coins", "In the United States, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) awards certification based on the number of albums and singles sold through retail and other ancillary markets. Other countries have similar awards (see music recording certification). Certification is not automatic; for an award to be made, the record label must request certification. The audit is conducted against net shipments after returns (most often an artist's royalty statement is used), which includes albums sold directly to retailers and one-stops, direct-to-consumer sales (music clubs and mail order) and other outlets.\n\nDescription and qualifications \n\nA Gold record is a single or album that sells 500,000 units (records, tapes or compact discs). The award was launched in 1958; originally, the requirement for a Gold single was one million units sold and a Gold album represented $1 million in sales (at wholesale value, around a third of the list price). In 1975, the additional requirement of 500,000 units sold was added for Gold albums. Reflecting growth in record sales, the Platinum award was added in 1976, for albums able to sell one million units, and singles selling two million units. The Multi-Platinum award was introduced in 1984, signifying multiple Platinum levels of albums and singles. In 1989, the sales thresholds for singles were reduced to 500,000 for Gold and 1,000,000 for Platinum, reflecting a decrease in sales of singles. In 1992, RIAA began counting each disc in a multi-disc set as one unit toward certification. Reflecting additional growth in music sales, the Diamond award was instituted in 1999 for albums or singles selling ten million units. Because of these changes in criteria, the sales level associated with a particular award depends on when the award was made.\n\nNielsen SoundScan figures are not used in RIAA certification; the RIAA system predates Nielsen SoundScan and includes sales outlets Nielsen misses. Prior to Nielsen SoundScan, RIAA certification was the only audited and verifiable system for tracking music sales in the U.S.; it is still the only system capable of tracking 100% of sales (albeit as shipments less returns, not actual sales like Nielsen SoundScan). This system has permitted, at times, record labels to promote an album as Gold or Platinum simply based on large shipments. For instance, in 1978 the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band soundtrack shipped Platinum but was a sales bust, with two million returns. Similarly, all four solo albums by the members of Kiss simultaneously shipped Platinum that same year but did not reach the top 20 of the Billboard 200 album chart. The following year, the RIAA began requiring 120 days from the release date before recordings were eligible for certification, although that requirement has been reduced over the years and currently stands at 30 days. Sony was widely criticized in 1995 for hyping Michael Jackson's double album HIStory as five times Platinum, based on shipments of 2.5 million and using the RIAA's recently adopted practice of counting each disc toward certification, while SoundScan was reporting only 1.3 million copies sold. A similar discrepancy between shipments and sales was reported with The Lion King soundtrack.\n\nIn the digital era, changes in the way music is consumed resulted in changes in the certification criteria. Actual album sales had dropped significantly, while digital download followed by streaming became increasingly dominant. On-demand audio and video streams started to be counted towards Digital Single units consumed in 2013. Track downloads and audio and video streams were then included in album certification in 2016 using formulas converting downloads and streams into the album units for certification purpose.\n\nList of certifications\n\nRecords\n 500,000 units: Gold album\n 1,000,000 units: Platinum album\n 2,000,000+ units: Multi-Platinum album\n 10,000,000 units: Diamond album\n\nStarting from February 1, 2016, each album unit may be one of the following:\n One digital or physical album sold or shipped;\n 10 tracks from the album downloaded;\n 1,500 on-demand audio or video streams of songs from the album.\n\nMulti-disc\nMulti-disc albums are counted once for each disc within the album if it is over 100 minutes in length or is from the vinyl era. For example, the Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (running time of 121:39) and OutKast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (running time of 134:56), both double albums, were counted twice, meaning each album was certified diamond after 5 million copies were shipped. Pink Floyd's The Wall and the Beatles' White Album, both vinyl-era, are also counted as double even though their running times are under the minimum requirement. Rules may or may not apply depending on most recent staff within the Distributions position.\n\nSpanish\nSince 2000, the RIAA also awards Los Premios de Oro y De Platino (Gold and Platinum Awards in Spanish) to Latin albums which are defined by the RIAA as a type of product that features at least 51% of content in Spanish.\n\nAs of December 20, 2013, the award levels for Latin certifications are:\n\n 30,000 units: Disco de Oro\n 60,000 units: Disco de Platino\n 120,000 units: Disco de Multi-Platino\n 600,000 units: Disco de Diamante\n\nFor certifications made before December 20, 2013, the award levels are:\n 50,000 units: Disco de Oro\n 100,000 units: Disco de Platino\n 200,000 units: Disco de Multi-Platino\n 1,000,000 units: Disco de Diamante\n\nNote: The number of sales required to qualify for Oro and Platino awards was higher prior to January 1, 2008. The thresholds were 100,000 units (Oro) and 200,000 units (Platino). All Spanish-language albums certified prior to 2008 were updated to match the current certification at the time. \"La Bomba\" by Bolivian group Azul Azul is the only single to receive a Latin certification based on shipments before the creation of the Latin digital singles awards in 2013. The Disco de Diamante award was introduced after the RIAA updated the thresholds for Latin certifications on December 20, 2013. The Disco de Diamante is awarded to Latin albums that have been certified 10× Platinum.\n\nSingles\nStandard singles are certified:\n Gold when it ships 500,000 copies\n Platinum when it ships 1,000,000 copies\n Multi-Platinum when it ships at least 2,000,000 copies\n\nNote: The number of sales required to qualify for Gold and Platinum discs was higher prior to January 1, 1989. The thresholds were previously 1,000,000 units (Gold) and 2,000,000 units (Platinum).\n\nDigital singles are certified:\n Gold means 500,000 certification units\n Platinum means 1,000,000 certification units\n Multi-Platinum means 2,000,000+ certification units\n\nFrom 2004 through July 2006, the certification level was 100,000 downloads for Gold and 200,000 for Platinum. When the RIAA changed the certification standards to match retail distribution in August 2006, all Platinum and Multi-Platinum awards for a digital release were withdrawn. Gold certifications, however, were not, meaning a song that was downloaded over 100,000 times and certified so by the RIAA during that time frame retains its Gold status.\n\nStarting May 9, 2013, RIAA certifications for singles in the \"digital\" category include on-demand audio and/or video song streams in addition to downloads at a rate of 100 streams=1 certification \"unit\". On January 2, 2016, this rate was updated to 150 streams = 1 certification unit.\n\nLatin digital singles are certified:\n Disco de Oro (Gold) means 30,000 certification units\n Disco de Platino (Platinum) means 60,000 certification units\n Disco de Multi-Platino (Multi-Platinum) means 120,000+ certification units\n\nThe Latin Digital Single Awards began on December 20, 2013. As with the digital sales, 100 streams count as one download sale.\n\nVideo Longform\nAlong with albums, digital albums, and singles there is another classification of music release called \"Video Longform.\" This release format includes DVD and VHS releases, and certain live albums and compilation albums. The certification criteria are slightly different from other styles.\n\nGold: 50,000 copies\nPlatinum: 100,000 copies\n Multi-Platinum: 200,000 copies\n\nVideo Single\nFor Video Single certification, the title must contain no more than two songs and must have a running time of no more than 15 minutes. The certification criteria are:\n\nGold: 25,000 copies\nPlatinum: 50,000 copies\n Multi-Platinum: 100,000 copies\n\n, the titles certified the most Video Single awards are \"Here Without You\" by 3 Doors Down and Elvis Presley's \"A Little Less Conversation\", both winning 6× Platinum for 300,000 copies. Since 2010, only 5 titles have been certified Video Single. The latest Gold was awarded to \"R40\" by Rush in 2017.\n\nVideo Box Set \nThe \"Video Box Set\" (or \"Multi-Box Music Video Set\") award is a classification for video compilations that include three or more videos that are grouped and marketed together as a set. Like Video Longform, this includes DVD and VHS releases and the certification criteria are the same. Each individual video within set is counted as one toward certification.\n\nGold: 50,000 copies\nPlatinum: 100,000 copies\nMulti-Platinum: 200,000 copies\n\nThe best-selling video box set as certified by the RIAA is the Rolling Stones' Four Flicks DVD compilation from their Licks World Tour, with a 19X Multi-Platinum designation. This was likely achieved due to exclusive distribution rights owned by Best Buy by their short-lived music production company, Redline Entertainment.\n\nMaster Ringtone \nMaster Ringtone (mastertone) awards were introduced in 2006. Certification levels are identical to those of singles, 500,000 for Gold and 1,000,000 for Platinum and Multi-Platinum.\n\nMany Master Ringtone certifications were awarded until 2009, but since then only ten certifications were awarded in 2010, three in 2012 and three in 2019, all three to AC/DC.\n\nRecords\nLists from RIAA site showing current status holders of RIAA Certifications:\nList of highest-certified music artists in the United States\nList of best-selling albums in the United States\nList of best-selling singles in the United States\nList of best-selling Latin albums in the United States\n\nArtists with the most album certifications\n\nMost Platinum\n\nThis list show the artists with at least 10 platinum albums (excluding compilations)\n\nMost Diamond\n\nArtists with the most single certifications\n\nMost Platinum\nThis table tracks artists with some number of singles that have received at least 10 digital platinum certifications (excluding features).\n\nMost Diamond\nThis table tracks artists with some number of singles that have received at least 2 Diamond certifications.\n\nNote: The RIAA provides the Detailed List of Artists with Most Singles Certified Units\n\nRIAA Diamond certifications\nDiamond (10+ million) certified albums and singles\n\nRIAA Diamante Latin certifications\n\nDiamante certified Latin albums and singles (1+ million for Latin albums certified before December 2013 and 600,000+ for Latin albums and singles certified after December 2013)\n\nSee also\n List of best-selling albums\n List of best-selling music artists\n List of best-selling singles worldwide\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n RIAA Website\n Detailed List of Artists with Most Album Certified Units\n Detailed List of Artists with Most Singles Certified Units\n Search RIAA Gold and Platinum Database\n\nCertification\nMusic recording certifications" ]
[ "Muse (band)", "2003-05: Absolution", "What album number was this for Muse?", "Muse's third album, Absolution, produced by Rich Costey, Paul Reeve and John Cornfield was released in September 2003.", "How did it rank among its release?", "It debuted at number one in the UK and produced Muse's first top-ten hit, \"Time Is Running Out\", and three top-twenty hits:", "Was it platinum or gold?", "Absolution was eventually certified gold in the US." ]
C_cfd5834ac91842f7998ba845142ff4ac_0
Did they win any awards for the album?
4
Did Muse win any awards for Absolution?
Muse (band)
Muse's third album, Absolution, produced by Rich Costey, Paul Reeve and John Cornfield was released in September 2003. It debuted at number one in the UK and produced Muse's first top-ten hit, "Time Is Running Out", and three top-twenty hits: "Hysteria", "Sing for Absolution" and "Butterflies and Hurricanes". Absolution was eventually certified gold in the US. Muse undertook a year-long international tour in support of the album, visiting Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, and France. On the 2004 US leg of the tour, Bellamy injured himself onstage during the opening show in Atlanta; the tour resumed after Bellamy received stitches. In June 2004, Muse headlined the Glastonbury Festival, which they later described as "the best gig of our lives". Howard's father, William Howard, who attended the festival to watch the band, died from a heart attack shortly after the performance. Bellamy said: "It was the biggest feeling of achievement we've ever had after coming offstage. It was almost surreal that an hour later his dad died. It was almost not believable. We spent about a week sort of just with Dom trying to support him. I think he was happy that at least his dad got to see him at probably what was the finest moment so far of the band's life." Muse won two MTV Europe awards, including "Best Alternative Act", and a Q Award for "Best Live Act", and received an award for "Best British Live Act" at the Brit Awards. In July 2005, they participated in the Live 8 concert in Paris. In 2003, the band successfully sued Nestle for using their cover "Feeling Good" for a Nescafe advertisement without permission and donated the money won from the lawsuit to Oxfam. An unofficial DVD biography, Manic Depression, was released in April 2005. Muse released another live DVD on 12 December 2005, Absolution Tour, containing edited and remastered highlights from their Glastonbury performance unseen footage from their performances at London Earls Court, Wembley Arena, and the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles. CANNOTANSWER
Muse won two MTV Europe awards, including "Best Alternative Act", and a Q Award for "Best Live Act",
Muse are an English rock band from Teignmouth, Devon, formed in 1994. The band consists of Matt Bellamy (lead vocals, guitar, keyboards), Chris Wolstenholme (bass guitar, backing vocals), and Dominic Howard (drums). Muse released their debut album, Showbiz, in 1999, showcasing Bellamy's falsetto and a melancholic alternative rock style. Their second album, Origin of Symmetry (2001), incorporated wider instrumentation and romantic classical influences and earned them a reputation for energetic live performances. Absolution (2003) saw further classical influence, with strings on tracks such as "Butterflies and Hurricanes", and was the first of six consecutive UK number-one albums. Black Holes and Revelations (2006) incorporated electronic and pop elements, displayed in singles such as "Supermassive Black Hole", and brought Muse wider international success. The Resistance (2009) and The 2nd Law (2012) explored themes of government oppression and civil uprising and cemented Muse as one of the world's major stadium acts. Rolling Stone stated the band possessed "stadium-crushing songs". Topping the US Billboard 200, their seventh album, Drones (2015), was a concept album about drone warfare and returned to a harder rock sound. Their eighth album, Simulation Theory (2018), prominently featured synthesisers and was influenced by science fiction and the simulation hypothesis. Muse have won numerous awards, including two Grammy Awards, two Brit Awards, five MTV Europe Music Awards and eight NME Awards. In 2012 they received the Ivor Novello Award for International Achievement from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. , they have sold over 30 million albums worldwide. History Early years (1994–1997) The members of Muse played in separate school bands during their time at Teignmouth Community College in the early 1990s. Guitarist Matt Bellamy successfully auditioned for drummer Dominic Howard's band, Carnage Mayhem, becoming its singer and songwriter. They renamed the band Gothic Plague. They asked Chris Wolstenholme – at that time the drummer for Fixed Penalty – to join as bassist; he agreed and took up bass lessons. The band was renamed Rocket Baby Dolls and adopted a goth-glam image. Around this time, they received a £150 grant from the Prince's Trust for equipment. In 1994, Rocket Baby Dolls won a local battle of the bands, smashing their equipment in the process. Bellamy said, "It was supposed to be a protest, a statement, so, when we actually won, it was a real shock, a massive shock. After that, we started taking ourselves seriously." The band quit their jobs, changed their name to Muse, and moved away from Teignmouth. The band liked that the new name was short and thought that it looked good on a poster. According to journalist Mark Beaumont, the band wanted the name to reflect "the sense Matt had that he had somehow 'summoned up' this band, the way mediums could summon up inspirational spirits at times of emotional need". First EPs and Showbiz (1998–2000) After a few years building a fanbase, Muse played their first gigs in London and Manchester supporting Skunk Anansie on tour. They had a significant meeting with Dennis Smith, the owner of Sawmills Studio, situated in a converted water mill in Cornwall. He had seen the three boys grow up as he knew their parents, and had a production company with their future manager Safta Jaffery, with whom he had recently started the record label Taste Media. The meeting led to their first serious recordings and the release of the Muse EP on 11 May 1998 on Sawmills' in-house Dangerous label, produced by Paul Reeve. Their second EP, the Muscle Museum EP, also produced by Reeve, was released on 11 January 1999. It reached number 3 in the indie singles chart and attracted the attention of British radio broadcaster Steve Lamacq and the weekly British music publication NME. Later in 1999, Muse performed on the Emerging Artist's stage at Woodstock '99 and signed with Smith and Jaffery. Despite the success of their second EP, British record companies were reluctant to sign Muse. After a trip to New York's CMJ Festival, Nanci Walker, then Sr. Director of A&R at Columbia Records, flew Muse to the US to showcase for Columbia Records' then-Senior Vice-President of A&R, Tim Devine, as well as for American Recording's Rick Rubin. During this trip, on 24 December 1998, Muse signed a deal with American record label Maverick Records. Upon their return to England, Taste Media arranged deals for Muse with various record labels in Europe and Australia, allowing them control over their career in individual countries. John Leckie was brought in alongside Reeve to produce the band's first album, Showbiz (1999). The album showcased Muse's aggressive yet melancholic musical style, with lyrics about relationships and their difficulties trying to establish themselves in their hometown. Origin of Symmetry and Hullabaloo (2000–2002) During the production of their second album, Origin of Symmetry (2001), Muse experimented with instrumentation such as a church organ, Mellotron, animal bones, and an expanded drum kit. There was more of Bellamy's falsetto, arpeggiated guitar, and piano playing. Bellamy cites guitar influences such as Jimi Hendrix and Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine), the latter evident in the more riff-based songs in Origin of Symmetry and in Bellamy's use of guitar pitch-shifting effects. The album features a cover of Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse's "Feeling Good", voted in various polls one of the greatest cover versions of all time. It was released as a double A-side single, "Hyper Music/Feeling Good". Origin of Symmetry received positive reviews by critics; NME gave the album 9/10 and wrote: "It's amazing for such a young band to load up with a heritage that includes the darker visions of Cobain and Kafka, Mahler and The Tiger Lillies, Cronenberg and Schoenberg, and make a sexy, populist album." Maverick, Muse's American label, did not consider Bellamy's vocals "radio-friendly" and asked Muse to rerecord the song for the US release. The band refused and left Maverick; the album was not released in the US until September 2005, after Muse signed to Warner Bros. Origin of Symmetry has made appearances on lists of the greatest rock albums of the 2000s, both poll-based and on publication lists. In 2006, it placed at number 74 on Q magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Albums of All-Time, while in February 2008, the album placed at number 28 on a list of the Best British Albums of All Time determined by the magazine's readers. Kerrang! placed the album at number 20 in its 100 Best British Rock Albums Ever! List and at number 13 on its 50 Best Albums of the 21st Century list. Acclaimed Music ranks Origin of Symmetry as the 1,247th greatest album of all time. In 2002, Muse released the first live DVD, Hullabaloo, featuring footage recorded during Muse's two gigs at Le Zenith in Paris in 2001, and a documentary film of the band on tour. A double album, Hullabaloo Soundtrack, was released at the same time, containing a compilation of B-sides and a disc of recordings of songs from the Le Zenith performances. A double-A side single was also released featuring the new songs "In Your World" and "Dead Star". In 2002, Muse threatened Celine Dion with legal action when she planned to name her Las Vegas show "Muse", as Muse have worldwide performing rights to the name. Dion offered Muse $50,000 for the rights, but they turned it down and Dion backed down. Bellamy said: "We don't want to turn up there with people thinking we're Celine Dion's backing band." Absolution (2003–2005) Muse's third album, Absolution, produced by Rich Costey, Paul Reeve and John Cornfield was released on 15 September 2003. It debuted at number one in the UK and produced Muse's first top-ten hit, "Time Is Running Out", and three top-twenty hits: "Hysteria", "Sing for Absolution" and "Butterflies and Hurricanes". Absolution was eventually certified gold in the US. Muse undertook a year-long international tour in support of the album, visiting Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, and France. On the 2004 US leg of the tour, Bellamy injured himself onstage during the opening show in Atlanta; the tour resumed after Bellamy received stitches. In June 2004, Muse headlined the Glastonbury Festival, which they later described as "the best gig of our lives". Howard's father, William Howard, who attended the festival to watch the band, died from a heart attack shortly after the performance. Bellamy said: "It was the biggest feeling of achievement we've ever had after coming offstage. It was almost surreal that an hour later his dad died. It was almost not believable. We spent about a week sort of just with Dom trying to support him. I think he was happy that at least his dad got to see him at probably what was the finest moment so far of the band's life." Muse won two MTV Europe awards, including "Best Alternative Act", and a Q Award for "Best Live Act", and received an award for "Best British Live Act" at the Brit Awards. On 2 July 2005, they participated in the Live 8 concert in Paris. In 2003, the band successfully sued Nestlé for using their cover "Feeling Good" for a Nescafé advertisement without permission and donated the money won from the lawsuit to Oxfam. An unofficial DVD biography, Manic Depression, was released in April 2005. Muse released another live DVD on 12 December 2005, Absolution Tour, containing edited and remastered highlights from their Glastonbury performance unseen footage from their performances at London Earls Court, Wembley Arena, and the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles. During the 2004 Absolution tour, Bellamy smashed 140 guitars, a world record for the most guitars smashed in a tour. Black Holes and Revelations and HAARP (2006–2008) In 2006, Muse released their fourth album, Black Holes and Revelations, co-produced once again with Rich Costey. The album's title and themes reflect the band's interest in science fiction. The album charted at number one in the UK, much of Europe, and Australia. In the US, it reached number nine on the Billboard 200. Before the release of the new album, Muse made several promotional TV appearances starting on 13 May 2006 at BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend. The Black Holes and Revelations Tour started before the release of their album and initially consisted mostly of festival appearances, including a headline slot at the Reading and Leeds Festivals in August 2006. The band's main touring itinerary started with a tour of North America from late July to early August 2006. After the last of the summer festivals, a tour of Europe began, including a large arena tour of the UK. Black Holes and Revelations was nominated for the 2006 Mercury Music Prize, but lost to Arctic Monkeys. It earned a Platinum Europe Award after selling one million copies in Europe. The first single from the album, "Supermassive Black Hole", was released as a download in May 2006. In August 2006, Muse recorded a live session at Abbey Road Studios for the Live from Abbey Road television show. The second single, "Starlight", was released in September 2006. "Knights of Cydonia" was released in the US as a radio-only single in June 2006 and in the UK in November 2006. The fourth single, "Invincible", was released in April 2007. Another single, "Map of the Problematique", was released for download only in June 2007, following the band's performance at Wembley Stadium. Muse spent November and much of December 2006 touring Europe with British band Noisettes as the supporting act. The tour continued in Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia in early 2007 before returning to England for the summer. At the 2007 Brit Awards in February, Muse received their second award for Best British Live Act. They performed two gigs at the newly rebuilt Wembley Stadium on 16 and 17 June 2007, where they became the first band to sell out the venue. Both concerts were recorded for a DVD/CD, HAARP, released in early 2008. It was named the 40th greatest live album of all time by NME. The tour continued across Europe in July 2007 before returning to the US in August, where Muse played to a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden, New York City. They headlined the second night of the Austin City Limits Music Festival on 15 September 2007, and performed at the October 2007 Vegoose in Las Vegas with bands including Rage Against the Machine, Daft Punk and Queens of the Stone Age. Muse continued touring in Eastern Europe, Russia, Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand in 2007 before going to South Africa, Portugal, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Ireland, and the UK in 2008. On 12 April, they played a one-off concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust. Muse performed at Rock in Rio Lisboa on 6 June 2008, alongside bands including Kaiser Chiefs, The Offspring and Linkin Park. They also performed in Marlay Park, Dublin, on 13 August. A few days later, Muse headlined the 2008 V Festival, playing in Chelmsford on Saturday 16 August and Staffordshire on Sunday 17 August. On 25 September 2008, Bellamy, Howard and Wolstenholme all received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Plymouth for their contributions to music. The Resistance (2009–2011) During the recording of Muse's fifth studio album The Resistance, Wolstenholme checked into rehab to deal with his alcoholism, which was threatening the band's future. Howard said: "I've always believed in band integrity and sticking together. There's something about the fact we all grew up together. We've been together for 18 years now, which is over half our lives." The Resistance was released in September 2009, the first album produced by Muse, with engineering by Adrian Bushby and mixing by Mark Stent. It topped album charts in 19 countries, became the band's third number one album in the UK, and reached number three on the Billboard 200. Reviews were mostly positive, with praise for its ambition, classical influences and the three-part "Exogenesis: Symphony". The Resistance beat its predecessor Black Holes and Revelations in album sales in its debut week in the UK with approximately 148,000 copies sold. The first single, "Uprising", was released seven days earlier. On 13 September, Muse performed "Uprising" at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards in New York City. The Resistance Tour began with A Seaside Rendezvous in Muse's hometown of Teignmouth, Devon, in September 2009. It included headline slots the following year at festivals including Coachella, Glastonbury, Oxegen, Hovefestivalen, T in the Park, Austin City Limits and the Australian Big Day Out. Between September and November, Muse toured North America. Muse provided the lead single for the film The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, "Neutron Star Collision (Love Is Forever)", released on 17 May 2010. In June, Muse headlined Glastonbury Festival for the second time; after U2 canceled their headline slot following singer Bono's back injury, U2 guitarist the Edge joined Muse to play the U2 track "Where the Streets Have No Name". For their live performances, Muse received the O2 Silver Clef Award in London on 2 July 2010, presented by Roger Taylor and Brian May of Queen; Taylor described the trio as "probably the greatest live act in the world today". On 12 September 2010, Muse won an MTV Video Music Award in the category of Best Special Effects, for the "Uprising" video. On 21 November, Muse took home an American Music Award for Favorite Artist in the Alternative Rock Music Category. On 2 December, Muse were nominated for three awards for the 53rd Grammy Awards on 13 February 2011, for which they won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album for The Resistance. Based on having the largest airplay and sales in the US, Muse were named the Billboard Alternative Songs and Rock Songs artist for 2010 with "Uprising", "Resistance" and "Undisclosed Desires" achieving 1st, 6th and 49th on the year end Alternative Song chart respectively. On 30 July 2011, Muse supported Rage Against the Machine at their only 2011 gig at the L.A. Rising festival. On 13 August, Muse headlined the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in San Francisco. Muse headlined the Reading and Leeds Festivals in August 2011. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of their second studio album Origin of Symmetry (2001), the band performed all eleven tracks. Muse also headlined Lollapalooza in Chicago's Grant Park in August 2011. The 2nd Law and Live at Rome Olympic Stadium (2012–2013) In an April 2012 interview, Bellamy said Muse's next album would include influences from acts such as French house duo Justice and UK electronic rock group Does It Offend You, Yeah?. On 6 June 2012, Muse released a trailer for their next album, The 2nd Law, with a countdown on the band's website. The trailer, which included dubstep elements, was met with mixed reactions. On 7 June, Muse announced a European Arena tour, the first leg of The 2nd Law Tour. The leg included dates in France, Spain and the UK. The first single from the album, "Survival", was the official song of the London 2012 Summer Olympics, and Muse performed it at the Olympics closing ceremony. Muse revealed the 2nd Law tracklist on 13 July 2012. The second single, "Madness", was released on 20 August 2012, with a music video on 5 September. Muse played at the Roundhouse on 30 September as part of the iTunes Festival. The 2nd Law was released worldwide on 1 October, and on 2 October 2012 in the US; it reached number one in the UK Albums Chart, and number two on the US Billboard 200. The song "Madness" earned a nomination in the Best Rock Song category and the album itself was nominated for the Best Rock Album at the 55th Grammy Awards, 2013. The band performed the album's opening song, "Supremacy", with an orchestra at the 2013 Brit Awards on 20 February 2013. The album was a nominee for Best Rock Album at the 2013 Grammy Awards. The song "Madness" was also nominated for Best Rock Song. The album listed at number 46 on Rolling Stones list of the top 50 albums of 2012, saying "In an era of diminished expectations, Muse make stadium-crushing songs that mix the legacies of Queen, King Crimson, Led Zeppelin and Radiohead while making almost every other current band seem tiny." Muse released their fourth live album, Live at Rome Olympic Stadium, on 29 November 2013 on CD/DVD and CD/Blu-ray formats. In November 2013, the film had theatrical screenings in 20 cities worldwide. The album contains the band's performance at Rome's Stadio Olimpico on 6 July 2013, in front of over 60,000 people; it was the first concert filmed in 4K format. The concert was a part of the Unsustainable Tour, Muse's mid-2013 tour of Europe. Drones (2014–2016) Muse began writing their seventh album soon after the Rome concert. The band felt that the electronic side of their music was becoming too dominant, and wanted to return to a simpler rock sound. After self-producing their previous two albums, the band hired producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange so they could focus on performance and spend less time mixing and reviewing takes. Recording took place in the Vancouver Warehouse Studio from October 2014 to April 2015. Muse announced their seventh album, Drones, on 11 March 2015. The following day, they released a lyric video for "Psycho" on their YouTube channel, and made the song available for instant download with the album pre-order. Another single, "Dead Inside", was released on 23 March. From 15 March to 16 May, Muse embarked on a short tour in small venues throughout the UK and the US, the Psycho Tour. Live performances of new songs from these concerts are included on the DVD accompanying the album along with bonus studio footage. On 18 May 2015, Muse released a lyric video for "Mercy" on their YouTube channel, and made the song available for instant download with the album pre-order. Drones was released on 8 June 2015. A concept album about the dehumanisation of modern warfare, it returned to a simpler rock sound with less elaborate production and genre experimentation. It topped the album charts in the UK, the US, Australia and most major markets. Muse headlined Lollapalooza Berlin on 13 September 2015. On 15 February 2016, Drones won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album at the 58th Grammy Awards. On 24 June, Muse headlined the Glastonbury Festival for a third time, becoming the first act to have headlined each day of the festival (Friday, Saturday and Sunday). On 30 November 2016, Muse were announced to headline Reading and Leeds 2017. Simulation Theory and reissues (2017–2021) In 2017, Muse toured North America supported by Thirty Seconds to Mars and PVRIS. Howard confirmed in February that the band were back in the studio. On 18 May, Muse released "Dig Down", the first single from their eighth album. In November, they performed at the BlizzCon festival. "Thought Contagion", the second single, was released on 15 February 2018, accompanied by an 1980s-styled music video. In June, Muse opened the Rock In Rio festival. On 24 February, they played a one-off show at La Cigale in France with a setlist voted for fans online. A concert video, Muse: Drones World Tour, was released in cinemas worldwide on 12 July 2018. On 19 July 2018, Muse released the third single from their upcoming album, "Something Human". On 30 August 2018, they announced their eighth studio album, Simulation Theory, to be released on 9 November. The announcement was accompanied by another single and video, "The Dark Side". The fifth single, "Pressure", was released on 27 September. The Simulation Theory world tour began in Houston on 3 February 2019 and concluded on 15 October in Lima. A film based on the album and tour, Muse – Simulation Theory, combining concert footage and narrative scenes, was released in August 2020. In December 2019, Muse released Origin of Muse, a box set comprising remastered versions of Showbiz and Origin of Symmetry plus previously unreleased material. For the 20th anniversary of Origin of Symmetry in June 2021, Muse released a remixed and remastered version, Origin of Symmetry: XX Anniversary RemiXX. Upcoming ninth album (2022–present) On 13 January 2022, Muse released a new single, titled "Won't Stand Down", which marked a return to the band's heavier early sound. Musical style Described as an alternative rock, progressive rock, space rock, hard rock, art rock, electronic rock, progressive metal, and pop. Muse mix sounds from genres such as electronica, R&B, progressive metal, and art rock, and forms such as classical music, rock opera and many others. In 2002, Bellamy described Muse as a "trashy three-piece". In 2005, Pitchfork described Muse's music as "firmly ol' skool at heart: proggy hard rock that forgoes any pretensions to restraint ... their songs use full-stacked guitars and thunderous drums to evoke God's footsteps". AllMusic described their sound as a "fusion of progressive rock, glam, electronica, and Radiohead-influenced experimentation". On the band's association with progressive rock, Howard said: "I associate it [progressive rock] with 10-minute guitar solos, but I guess we kind of come into the category. A lot of bands are quite ambitious with their music, mixing lots of different styles – and when I see that I think it's great. I've noticed that kind of thing becoming a bit more mainstream." For their second album, Origin of Symmetry (2001), Muse wanted to craft a more aggressive sound. In 2000, Wolstenholme said: "Looking back, there isn't much difference sonically between the mellow stuff and the heavier tracks [on Showbiz]. The heavy stuff really could have been a lot heavier and that's what we want to do with [Origin of Symmetry]." Their third album, Absolution (2003), features prominent string arrangements and drew influences from artists such as Queen. Their fourth album, Black Holes and Revelations (2006) was influenced by artists including Depeche Mode and Lightning Bolt, as well as Asian and European music such as Naples music. The band listened to radio stations from the Middle East during the album's recording sessions. Queen guitarist Brian May has praised Muse's work, calling the band "extraordinary musicians", who "let their madness show through, always a good thing in an artist." Muse's sixth album, The 2nd Law (2012) has a broader range of influences, ranging from funk and film scores to electronica and dubstep. The 2nd Law is influenced by rock acts such as Queen and Led Zeppelin (on "Supremacy") as well as dubstep producer Skrillex and Nero (on "The 2nd Law: Unsustainable" and "Follow Me", with the latter being co-produced by Nero), Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder (on "Panic Station" which features musicians who performed on Stevie Wonder's "Superstition") and Hans Zimmer. The album features two songs with lyrics written and sung by bassist Wolstenholme, who wrote about his battle with alcoholism. It features extensive electronic instrumentation, including Modular synthesisers and the French Connection, a synthesiser controller similar to the ondes martenot. Musicianship Many Muse songs are recognisable by vocalist Matt Bellamy's use of vibrato, falsetto, and melismatic phrasing, influenced by Jeff Buckley. As a pianist, Bellamy often uses arpeggios. Bellamy's compositions often suggest or quote late classical and romantic era composers such as Sergei Rachmaninov (in "Space Dementia" and "Butterflies and Hurricanes"), Camille Saint-Saëns (in "I Belong to You (+Mon Cœur S'ouvre a ta Voix)") and Frédéric Chopin (in "United States of Eurasia"). As a guitarist, Bellamy often uses arpeggiator and pitch-shift effects to create a more "electronic" sound, citing Jimi Hendrix and Tom Morello as influences. His guitar playing is also influenced by Latin and Spanish guitar music; Bellamy said: "I just think that music is really passionate...It has so much feel and flair to it. I’ve spent important times of my life in Spain and Greece, and various deep things happened there – falling in love, stuff like that. So maybe that rubbed off somewhere." Wolstenholme's basslines provide a motif for many Muse songs; the band combines bass guitar with effects and synthesisers to create overdriven fuzz bass tones. Bellamy and Wolstenholme use touch-screen controllers, often built into their instruments, to control synthesisers and effects including Kaoss Pads and Digitech Whammy pedals. Lyrics Most earlier Muse songs lyrically dealt with introspective themes, including relationships, social alienation, and difficulties they had encountered while trying to establish themselves in their hometown. However, with the band's progress, their song concepts have become more ambitious, addressing issues such as the fear of the evolution of technology in their Origin of Symmetry (2001) album. They deal mainly with the apocalypse in Absolution (2003) and with catastrophic war in Black Holes and Revelations (2006). The Resistance (2009) focused on themes of government oppression, uprising, love, and panspermia. The album itself was mainly inspired by Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Their sixth studio album, The 2nd Law (2012) relates to economics, thermodynamics, and apocalyptic themes. Their 2015 album Drones, is a concept album that uses autonomous killing drones as a metaphor for brainwashing and loss of empathy. Books that have influenced Muse's lyrical themes include Nineteen Eighty-Four, Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins, Hyperspace by Michio Kaku, The 12th Planet by Zecharia Sitchin, Rule by Secrecy by Jim Marrs and Trance Formation of America by Cathy O'Brien. Band members Matt Bellamy – lead vocals, guitars, keyboards, piano, synthesisers Dominic Howard – drums, percussions Chris Wolstenholme – bass guitar, backing vocals, occasional keyboards and guitar Touring musicians Morgan Nicholls – guitars, keyboards and synthesisers, backing vocals, samples, bass (2004, 2006–present) Dan "The Trumpet Man" Newell – trumpet (2006–2008) Alessandro Cortini – keyboards, synthesisers (2009, substitute) Discography Showbiz (1999) Origin of Symmetry (2001) Absolution (2003) Black Holes and Revelations (2006) The Resistance (2009) The 2nd Law (2012) Drones (2015) Simulation Theory (2018) Concert tours Showbiz Tour (1998–2000) Origin of Symmetry Tour (2000–2002) Absolution Tour (2003–2004) US Campus Invasion Tour 2005 (2005) Black Holes and Revelations Tour (2006–2008) The Resistance Tour (2009–2011) The 2nd Law World Tour (2012–2014) Psycho Tour (2015) Drones World Tour (2015–2016) North American Tour (with Thirty Seconds to Mars and Pvris) (2017) Simulation Theory World Tour (2019) See also List of awards and nominations received by Muse List of Muse songs References External links English art rock groups Brit Award winners Grammy Award winners English alternative rock groups English hard rock musical groups English progressive rock groups Kerrang! Awards winners NME Awards winners British musical trios Musical groups established in 1994 Maverick Records artists Warner Records artists Musical groups from Devon Ivor Novello Award winners Space rock musical groups Political music groups MTV Europe Music Award winners
true
[ "Simply Majestic was a Canadian hip hop and dance music collective, active in the early 1990s. They are most noted for winning the Juno Award for Best R&B/Soul Recording at the Juno Awards of 1991 for their single \"Dance to the Music (Work Your Body)\". Members of the collective included producer Anthony Bond, rappers B-Kool, Frank Morrell, The Russian Prince and MC A-OK, rap groups Point Blank, Brothers from the Ghetto, the Boys of the Greenhouse and the Forbidden Ones, and rhythm and blues singer Porsha-Lee.\n\nThe band signed to Capitol-EMI Canada in 1990 as part of the first significant wave of signings of Canadian hip hop acts, and released the EP Simply Majestic featuring B-Kool that year. The single \"Dance to the Music (Work Your Body)\" won the Juno for Best R&B/Soul Recording Juno and was a nominated finalist for Rap Recording of the Year, but did not win in that category. B-Kool was also a contributor to Dance Appeal, a supergroup of dance, hip hop, rhythm and blues and reggae musicians who released the one-off single \"Can't Repress the Cause\" in 1990.\n\nThey followed up in 1991 with the album We United to Do Dis. The album again received two Juno Award nominations at the Juno Awards of 1992, in the R&B/Soul category for the single \"Destiny\" and in the Rap category for the single \"Play the Music DJ\".\n\nSimply Majestic did not release any further recordings as a collective. B-Kool released the solo album Mellow Madness in 1994, and received another Juno Award nomination for Best Rap Recording at the Juno Awards of 1994 for the single \"Got to Get Over\".\n\nReferences\n\nCanadian hip hop groups\nCanadian dance music groups\nMusical groups from Toronto\nHip hop collectives\nJuno Award for R&B/Soul Recording of the Year winners", "2Frères is a Canadian folk rock duo from Chapais, Quebec, consisting of brothers Erik and Sonny Caouette. They are most noted as two-time winners of the Félix Award for Group of the Year, winning at the 38th Félix Awards in 2016 and at the 40th Félix Awards in 2018.\n\nFormed in 2008, they released their debut album Nous autres in April 2015. The album sold 80,000 copies in Quebec and was certified platinum, and the band were the most-played artists of any genre on francophone radio in Canada in 2016. In addition to their Group of the Year win at the Felix Awards in 2016, the album also won Pop Album of the Year.\n\nTheir second album, La Route, was released in November 2017. The album's single \"Comme avant\" spent a record 25 weeks as the most-played song on Quebec radio, and the album was again certified gold.\n\nTheir third album, À tous les vents, followed in February 2020. The album debuted at #1 on Quebec's pop charts. With touring impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, the album was partially promoted by a documentary special on the duo, 2Frères : L’improbable parcours, which was broadcast by TVA on September 27, 2020, as well as a companion book, 2Frères, À tous les vents : L’histoire d’un improbable parcours, by François Couture.\n\nThey received three Felix nominations at the 42nd Félix Awards in 2020, for Group of the Year, Adult Contemporary Album of the Year for À tous les vents, and Song of the Year for the album's title track.\n\nThey received two Juno Award nominations at the Juno Awards of 2021, for Breakthrough Group of the Year and Francophone Album of the Year for À tous les vents.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nCanadian folk rock groups\nMusical groups from Quebec\nFélix Award winners" ]
[ "Muse (band)", "2003-05: Absolution", "What album number was this for Muse?", "Muse's third album, Absolution, produced by Rich Costey, Paul Reeve and John Cornfield was released in September 2003.", "How did it rank among its release?", "It debuted at number one in the UK and produced Muse's first top-ten hit, \"Time Is Running Out\", and three top-twenty hits:", "Was it platinum or gold?", "Absolution was eventually certified gold in the US.", "Did they win any awards for the album?", "Muse won two MTV Europe awards, including \"Best Alternative Act\", and a Q Award for \"Best Live Act\"," ]
C_cfd5834ac91842f7998ba845142ff4ac_0
Did any DVDs come with the album?
5
Did any DVDs come with Absolution by Muse?
Muse (band)
Muse's third album, Absolution, produced by Rich Costey, Paul Reeve and John Cornfield was released in September 2003. It debuted at number one in the UK and produced Muse's first top-ten hit, "Time Is Running Out", and three top-twenty hits: "Hysteria", "Sing for Absolution" and "Butterflies and Hurricanes". Absolution was eventually certified gold in the US. Muse undertook a year-long international tour in support of the album, visiting Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, and France. On the 2004 US leg of the tour, Bellamy injured himself onstage during the opening show in Atlanta; the tour resumed after Bellamy received stitches. In June 2004, Muse headlined the Glastonbury Festival, which they later described as "the best gig of our lives". Howard's father, William Howard, who attended the festival to watch the band, died from a heart attack shortly after the performance. Bellamy said: "It was the biggest feeling of achievement we've ever had after coming offstage. It was almost surreal that an hour later his dad died. It was almost not believable. We spent about a week sort of just with Dom trying to support him. I think he was happy that at least his dad got to see him at probably what was the finest moment so far of the band's life." Muse won two MTV Europe awards, including "Best Alternative Act", and a Q Award for "Best Live Act", and received an award for "Best British Live Act" at the Brit Awards. In July 2005, they participated in the Live 8 concert in Paris. In 2003, the band successfully sued Nestle for using their cover "Feeling Good" for a Nescafe advertisement without permission and donated the money won from the lawsuit to Oxfam. An unofficial DVD biography, Manic Depression, was released in April 2005. Muse released another live DVD on 12 December 2005, Absolution Tour, containing edited and remastered highlights from their Glastonbury performance unseen footage from their performances at London Earls Court, Wembley Arena, and the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles. CANNOTANSWER
Muse released another live DVD on 12 December 2005, Absolution Tour,
Muse are an English rock band from Teignmouth, Devon, formed in 1994. The band consists of Matt Bellamy (lead vocals, guitar, keyboards), Chris Wolstenholme (bass guitar, backing vocals), and Dominic Howard (drums). Muse released their debut album, Showbiz, in 1999, showcasing Bellamy's falsetto and a melancholic alternative rock style. Their second album, Origin of Symmetry (2001), incorporated wider instrumentation and romantic classical influences and earned them a reputation for energetic live performances. Absolution (2003) saw further classical influence, with strings on tracks such as "Butterflies and Hurricanes", and was the first of six consecutive UK number-one albums. Black Holes and Revelations (2006) incorporated electronic and pop elements, displayed in singles such as "Supermassive Black Hole", and brought Muse wider international success. The Resistance (2009) and The 2nd Law (2012) explored themes of government oppression and civil uprising and cemented Muse as one of the world's major stadium acts. Rolling Stone stated the band possessed "stadium-crushing songs". Topping the US Billboard 200, their seventh album, Drones (2015), was a concept album about drone warfare and returned to a harder rock sound. Their eighth album, Simulation Theory (2018), prominently featured synthesisers and was influenced by science fiction and the simulation hypothesis. Muse have won numerous awards, including two Grammy Awards, two Brit Awards, five MTV Europe Music Awards and eight NME Awards. In 2012 they received the Ivor Novello Award for International Achievement from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. , they have sold over 30 million albums worldwide. History Early years (1994–1997) The members of Muse played in separate school bands during their time at Teignmouth Community College in the early 1990s. Guitarist Matt Bellamy successfully auditioned for drummer Dominic Howard's band, Carnage Mayhem, becoming its singer and songwriter. They renamed the band Gothic Plague. They asked Chris Wolstenholme – at that time the drummer for Fixed Penalty – to join as bassist; he agreed and took up bass lessons. The band was renamed Rocket Baby Dolls and adopted a goth-glam image. Around this time, they received a £150 grant from the Prince's Trust for equipment. In 1994, Rocket Baby Dolls won a local battle of the bands, smashing their equipment in the process. Bellamy said, "It was supposed to be a protest, a statement, so, when we actually won, it was a real shock, a massive shock. After that, we started taking ourselves seriously." The band quit their jobs, changed their name to Muse, and moved away from Teignmouth. The band liked that the new name was short and thought that it looked good on a poster. According to journalist Mark Beaumont, the band wanted the name to reflect "the sense Matt had that he had somehow 'summoned up' this band, the way mediums could summon up inspirational spirits at times of emotional need". First EPs and Showbiz (1998–2000) After a few years building a fanbase, Muse played their first gigs in London and Manchester supporting Skunk Anansie on tour. They had a significant meeting with Dennis Smith, the owner of Sawmills Studio, situated in a converted water mill in Cornwall. He had seen the three boys grow up as he knew their parents, and had a production company with their future manager Safta Jaffery, with whom he had recently started the record label Taste Media. The meeting led to their first serious recordings and the release of the Muse EP on 11 May 1998 on Sawmills' in-house Dangerous label, produced by Paul Reeve. Their second EP, the Muscle Museum EP, also produced by Reeve, was released on 11 January 1999. It reached number 3 in the indie singles chart and attracted the attention of British radio broadcaster Steve Lamacq and the weekly British music publication NME. Later in 1999, Muse performed on the Emerging Artist's stage at Woodstock '99 and signed with Smith and Jaffery. Despite the success of their second EP, British record companies were reluctant to sign Muse. After a trip to New York's CMJ Festival, Nanci Walker, then Sr. Director of A&R at Columbia Records, flew Muse to the US to showcase for Columbia Records' then-Senior Vice-President of A&R, Tim Devine, as well as for American Recording's Rick Rubin. During this trip, on 24 December 1998, Muse signed a deal with American record label Maverick Records. Upon their return to England, Taste Media arranged deals for Muse with various record labels in Europe and Australia, allowing them control over their career in individual countries. John Leckie was brought in alongside Reeve to produce the band's first album, Showbiz (1999). The album showcased Muse's aggressive yet melancholic musical style, with lyrics about relationships and their difficulties trying to establish themselves in their hometown. Origin of Symmetry and Hullabaloo (2000–2002) During the production of their second album, Origin of Symmetry (2001), Muse experimented with instrumentation such as a church organ, Mellotron, animal bones, and an expanded drum kit. There was more of Bellamy's falsetto, arpeggiated guitar, and piano playing. Bellamy cites guitar influences such as Jimi Hendrix and Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine), the latter evident in the more riff-based songs in Origin of Symmetry and in Bellamy's use of guitar pitch-shifting effects. The album features a cover of Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse's "Feeling Good", voted in various polls one of the greatest cover versions of all time. It was released as a double A-side single, "Hyper Music/Feeling Good". Origin of Symmetry received positive reviews by critics; NME gave the album 9/10 and wrote: "It's amazing for such a young band to load up with a heritage that includes the darker visions of Cobain and Kafka, Mahler and The Tiger Lillies, Cronenberg and Schoenberg, and make a sexy, populist album." Maverick, Muse's American label, did not consider Bellamy's vocals "radio-friendly" and asked Muse to rerecord the song for the US release. The band refused and left Maverick; the album was not released in the US until September 2005, after Muse signed to Warner Bros. Origin of Symmetry has made appearances on lists of the greatest rock albums of the 2000s, both poll-based and on publication lists. In 2006, it placed at number 74 on Q magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Albums of All-Time, while in February 2008, the album placed at number 28 on a list of the Best British Albums of All Time determined by the magazine's readers. Kerrang! placed the album at number 20 in its 100 Best British Rock Albums Ever! List and at number 13 on its 50 Best Albums of the 21st Century list. Acclaimed Music ranks Origin of Symmetry as the 1,247th greatest album of all time. In 2002, Muse released the first live DVD, Hullabaloo, featuring footage recorded during Muse's two gigs at Le Zenith in Paris in 2001, and a documentary film of the band on tour. A double album, Hullabaloo Soundtrack, was released at the same time, containing a compilation of B-sides and a disc of recordings of songs from the Le Zenith performances. A double-A side single was also released featuring the new songs "In Your World" and "Dead Star". In 2002, Muse threatened Celine Dion with legal action when she planned to name her Las Vegas show "Muse", as Muse have worldwide performing rights to the name. Dion offered Muse $50,000 for the rights, but they turned it down and Dion backed down. Bellamy said: "We don't want to turn up there with people thinking we're Celine Dion's backing band." Absolution (2003–2005) Muse's third album, Absolution, produced by Rich Costey, Paul Reeve and John Cornfield was released on 15 September 2003. It debuted at number one in the UK and produced Muse's first top-ten hit, "Time Is Running Out", and three top-twenty hits: "Hysteria", "Sing for Absolution" and "Butterflies and Hurricanes". Absolution was eventually certified gold in the US. Muse undertook a year-long international tour in support of the album, visiting Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, and France. On the 2004 US leg of the tour, Bellamy injured himself onstage during the opening show in Atlanta; the tour resumed after Bellamy received stitches. In June 2004, Muse headlined the Glastonbury Festival, which they later described as "the best gig of our lives". Howard's father, William Howard, who attended the festival to watch the band, died from a heart attack shortly after the performance. Bellamy said: "It was the biggest feeling of achievement we've ever had after coming offstage. It was almost surreal that an hour later his dad died. It was almost not believable. We spent about a week sort of just with Dom trying to support him. I think he was happy that at least his dad got to see him at probably what was the finest moment so far of the band's life." Muse won two MTV Europe awards, including "Best Alternative Act", and a Q Award for "Best Live Act", and received an award for "Best British Live Act" at the Brit Awards. On 2 July 2005, they participated in the Live 8 concert in Paris. In 2003, the band successfully sued Nestlé for using their cover "Feeling Good" for a Nescafé advertisement without permission and donated the money won from the lawsuit to Oxfam. An unofficial DVD biography, Manic Depression, was released in April 2005. Muse released another live DVD on 12 December 2005, Absolution Tour, containing edited and remastered highlights from their Glastonbury performance unseen footage from their performances at London Earls Court, Wembley Arena, and the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles. During the 2004 Absolution tour, Bellamy smashed 140 guitars, a world record for the most guitars smashed in a tour. Black Holes and Revelations and HAARP (2006–2008) In 2006, Muse released their fourth album, Black Holes and Revelations, co-produced once again with Rich Costey. The album's title and themes reflect the band's interest in science fiction. The album charted at number one in the UK, much of Europe, and Australia. In the US, it reached number nine on the Billboard 200. Before the release of the new album, Muse made several promotional TV appearances starting on 13 May 2006 at BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend. The Black Holes and Revelations Tour started before the release of their album and initially consisted mostly of festival appearances, including a headline slot at the Reading and Leeds Festivals in August 2006. The band's main touring itinerary started with a tour of North America from late July to early August 2006. After the last of the summer festivals, a tour of Europe began, including a large arena tour of the UK. Black Holes and Revelations was nominated for the 2006 Mercury Music Prize, but lost to Arctic Monkeys. It earned a Platinum Europe Award after selling one million copies in Europe. The first single from the album, "Supermassive Black Hole", was released as a download in May 2006. In August 2006, Muse recorded a live session at Abbey Road Studios for the Live from Abbey Road television show. The second single, "Starlight", was released in September 2006. "Knights of Cydonia" was released in the US as a radio-only single in June 2006 and in the UK in November 2006. The fourth single, "Invincible", was released in April 2007. Another single, "Map of the Problematique", was released for download only in June 2007, following the band's performance at Wembley Stadium. Muse spent November and much of December 2006 touring Europe with British band Noisettes as the supporting act. The tour continued in Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia in early 2007 before returning to England for the summer. At the 2007 Brit Awards in February, Muse received their second award for Best British Live Act. They performed two gigs at the newly rebuilt Wembley Stadium on 16 and 17 June 2007, where they became the first band to sell out the venue. Both concerts were recorded for a DVD/CD, HAARP, released in early 2008. It was named the 40th greatest live album of all time by NME. The tour continued across Europe in July 2007 before returning to the US in August, where Muse played to a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden, New York City. They headlined the second night of the Austin City Limits Music Festival on 15 September 2007, and performed at the October 2007 Vegoose in Las Vegas with bands including Rage Against the Machine, Daft Punk and Queens of the Stone Age. Muse continued touring in Eastern Europe, Russia, Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand in 2007 before going to South Africa, Portugal, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Ireland, and the UK in 2008. On 12 April, they played a one-off concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust. Muse performed at Rock in Rio Lisboa on 6 June 2008, alongside bands including Kaiser Chiefs, The Offspring and Linkin Park. They also performed in Marlay Park, Dublin, on 13 August. A few days later, Muse headlined the 2008 V Festival, playing in Chelmsford on Saturday 16 August and Staffordshire on Sunday 17 August. On 25 September 2008, Bellamy, Howard and Wolstenholme all received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Plymouth for their contributions to music. The Resistance (2009–2011) During the recording of Muse's fifth studio album The Resistance, Wolstenholme checked into rehab to deal with his alcoholism, which was threatening the band's future. Howard said: "I've always believed in band integrity and sticking together. There's something about the fact we all grew up together. We've been together for 18 years now, which is over half our lives." The Resistance was released in September 2009, the first album produced by Muse, with engineering by Adrian Bushby and mixing by Mark Stent. It topped album charts in 19 countries, became the band's third number one album in the UK, and reached number three on the Billboard 200. Reviews were mostly positive, with praise for its ambition, classical influences and the three-part "Exogenesis: Symphony". The Resistance beat its predecessor Black Holes and Revelations in album sales in its debut week in the UK with approximately 148,000 copies sold. The first single, "Uprising", was released seven days earlier. On 13 September, Muse performed "Uprising" at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards in New York City. The Resistance Tour began with A Seaside Rendezvous in Muse's hometown of Teignmouth, Devon, in September 2009. It included headline slots the following year at festivals including Coachella, Glastonbury, Oxegen, Hovefestivalen, T in the Park, Austin City Limits and the Australian Big Day Out. Between September and November, Muse toured North America. Muse provided the lead single for the film The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, "Neutron Star Collision (Love Is Forever)", released on 17 May 2010. In June, Muse headlined Glastonbury Festival for the second time; after U2 canceled their headline slot following singer Bono's back injury, U2 guitarist the Edge joined Muse to play the U2 track "Where the Streets Have No Name". For their live performances, Muse received the O2 Silver Clef Award in London on 2 July 2010, presented by Roger Taylor and Brian May of Queen; Taylor described the trio as "probably the greatest live act in the world today". On 12 September 2010, Muse won an MTV Video Music Award in the category of Best Special Effects, for the "Uprising" video. On 21 November, Muse took home an American Music Award for Favorite Artist in the Alternative Rock Music Category. On 2 December, Muse were nominated for three awards for the 53rd Grammy Awards on 13 February 2011, for which they won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album for The Resistance. Based on having the largest airplay and sales in the US, Muse were named the Billboard Alternative Songs and Rock Songs artist for 2010 with "Uprising", "Resistance" and "Undisclosed Desires" achieving 1st, 6th and 49th on the year end Alternative Song chart respectively. On 30 July 2011, Muse supported Rage Against the Machine at their only 2011 gig at the L.A. Rising festival. On 13 August, Muse headlined the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in San Francisco. Muse headlined the Reading and Leeds Festivals in August 2011. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of their second studio album Origin of Symmetry (2001), the band performed all eleven tracks. Muse also headlined Lollapalooza in Chicago's Grant Park in August 2011. The 2nd Law and Live at Rome Olympic Stadium (2012–2013) In an April 2012 interview, Bellamy said Muse's next album would include influences from acts such as French house duo Justice and UK electronic rock group Does It Offend You, Yeah?. On 6 June 2012, Muse released a trailer for their next album, The 2nd Law, with a countdown on the band's website. The trailer, which included dubstep elements, was met with mixed reactions. On 7 June, Muse announced a European Arena tour, the first leg of The 2nd Law Tour. The leg included dates in France, Spain and the UK. The first single from the album, "Survival", was the official song of the London 2012 Summer Olympics, and Muse performed it at the Olympics closing ceremony. Muse revealed the 2nd Law tracklist on 13 July 2012. The second single, "Madness", was released on 20 August 2012, with a music video on 5 September. Muse played at the Roundhouse on 30 September as part of the iTunes Festival. The 2nd Law was released worldwide on 1 October, and on 2 October 2012 in the US; it reached number one in the UK Albums Chart, and number two on the US Billboard 200. The song "Madness" earned a nomination in the Best Rock Song category and the album itself was nominated for the Best Rock Album at the 55th Grammy Awards, 2013. The band performed the album's opening song, "Supremacy", with an orchestra at the 2013 Brit Awards on 20 February 2013. The album was a nominee for Best Rock Album at the 2013 Grammy Awards. The song "Madness" was also nominated for Best Rock Song. The album listed at number 46 on Rolling Stones list of the top 50 albums of 2012, saying "In an era of diminished expectations, Muse make stadium-crushing songs that mix the legacies of Queen, King Crimson, Led Zeppelin and Radiohead while making almost every other current band seem tiny." Muse released their fourth live album, Live at Rome Olympic Stadium, on 29 November 2013 on CD/DVD and CD/Blu-ray formats. In November 2013, the film had theatrical screenings in 20 cities worldwide. The album contains the band's performance at Rome's Stadio Olimpico on 6 July 2013, in front of over 60,000 people; it was the first concert filmed in 4K format. The concert was a part of the Unsustainable Tour, Muse's mid-2013 tour of Europe. Drones (2014–2016) Muse began writing their seventh album soon after the Rome concert. The band felt that the electronic side of their music was becoming too dominant, and wanted to return to a simpler rock sound. After self-producing their previous two albums, the band hired producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange so they could focus on performance and spend less time mixing and reviewing takes. Recording took place in the Vancouver Warehouse Studio from October 2014 to April 2015. Muse announced their seventh album, Drones, on 11 March 2015. The following day, they released a lyric video for "Psycho" on their YouTube channel, and made the song available for instant download with the album pre-order. Another single, "Dead Inside", was released on 23 March. From 15 March to 16 May, Muse embarked on a short tour in small venues throughout the UK and the US, the Psycho Tour. Live performances of new songs from these concerts are included on the DVD accompanying the album along with bonus studio footage. On 18 May 2015, Muse released a lyric video for "Mercy" on their YouTube channel, and made the song available for instant download with the album pre-order. Drones was released on 8 June 2015. A concept album about the dehumanisation of modern warfare, it returned to a simpler rock sound with less elaborate production and genre experimentation. It topped the album charts in the UK, the US, Australia and most major markets. Muse headlined Lollapalooza Berlin on 13 September 2015. On 15 February 2016, Drones won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album at the 58th Grammy Awards. On 24 June, Muse headlined the Glastonbury Festival for a third time, becoming the first act to have headlined each day of the festival (Friday, Saturday and Sunday). On 30 November 2016, Muse were announced to headline Reading and Leeds 2017. Simulation Theory and reissues (2017–2021) In 2017, Muse toured North America supported by Thirty Seconds to Mars and PVRIS. Howard confirmed in February that the band were back in the studio. On 18 May, Muse released "Dig Down", the first single from their eighth album. In November, they performed at the BlizzCon festival. "Thought Contagion", the second single, was released on 15 February 2018, accompanied by an 1980s-styled music video. In June, Muse opened the Rock In Rio festival. On 24 February, they played a one-off show at La Cigale in France with a setlist voted for fans online. A concert video, Muse: Drones World Tour, was released in cinemas worldwide on 12 July 2018. On 19 July 2018, Muse released the third single from their upcoming album, "Something Human". On 30 August 2018, they announced their eighth studio album, Simulation Theory, to be released on 9 November. The announcement was accompanied by another single and video, "The Dark Side". The fifth single, "Pressure", was released on 27 September. The Simulation Theory world tour began in Houston on 3 February 2019 and concluded on 15 October in Lima. A film based on the album and tour, Muse – Simulation Theory, combining concert footage and narrative scenes, was released in August 2020. In December 2019, Muse released Origin of Muse, a box set comprising remastered versions of Showbiz and Origin of Symmetry plus previously unreleased material. For the 20th anniversary of Origin of Symmetry in June 2021, Muse released a remixed and remastered version, Origin of Symmetry: XX Anniversary RemiXX. Upcoming ninth album (2022–present) On 13 January 2022, Muse released a new single, titled "Won't Stand Down", which marked a return to the band's heavier early sound. Musical style Described as an alternative rock, progressive rock, space rock, hard rock, art rock, electronic rock, progressive metal, and pop. Muse mix sounds from genres such as electronica, R&B, progressive metal, and art rock, and forms such as classical music, rock opera and many others. In 2002, Bellamy described Muse as a "trashy three-piece". In 2005, Pitchfork described Muse's music as "firmly ol' skool at heart: proggy hard rock that forgoes any pretensions to restraint ... their songs use full-stacked guitars and thunderous drums to evoke God's footsteps". AllMusic described their sound as a "fusion of progressive rock, glam, electronica, and Radiohead-influenced experimentation". On the band's association with progressive rock, Howard said: "I associate it [progressive rock] with 10-minute guitar solos, but I guess we kind of come into the category. A lot of bands are quite ambitious with their music, mixing lots of different styles – and when I see that I think it's great. I've noticed that kind of thing becoming a bit more mainstream." For their second album, Origin of Symmetry (2001), Muse wanted to craft a more aggressive sound. In 2000, Wolstenholme said: "Looking back, there isn't much difference sonically between the mellow stuff and the heavier tracks [on Showbiz]. The heavy stuff really could have been a lot heavier and that's what we want to do with [Origin of Symmetry]." Their third album, Absolution (2003), features prominent string arrangements and drew influences from artists such as Queen. Their fourth album, Black Holes and Revelations (2006) was influenced by artists including Depeche Mode and Lightning Bolt, as well as Asian and European music such as Naples music. The band listened to radio stations from the Middle East during the album's recording sessions. Queen guitarist Brian May has praised Muse's work, calling the band "extraordinary musicians", who "let their madness show through, always a good thing in an artist." Muse's sixth album, The 2nd Law (2012) has a broader range of influences, ranging from funk and film scores to electronica and dubstep. The 2nd Law is influenced by rock acts such as Queen and Led Zeppelin (on "Supremacy") as well as dubstep producer Skrillex and Nero (on "The 2nd Law: Unsustainable" and "Follow Me", with the latter being co-produced by Nero), Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder (on "Panic Station" which features musicians who performed on Stevie Wonder's "Superstition") and Hans Zimmer. The album features two songs with lyrics written and sung by bassist Wolstenholme, who wrote about his battle with alcoholism. It features extensive electronic instrumentation, including Modular synthesisers and the French Connection, a synthesiser controller similar to the ondes martenot. Musicianship Many Muse songs are recognisable by vocalist Matt Bellamy's use of vibrato, falsetto, and melismatic phrasing, influenced by Jeff Buckley. As a pianist, Bellamy often uses arpeggios. Bellamy's compositions often suggest or quote late classical and romantic era composers such as Sergei Rachmaninov (in "Space Dementia" and "Butterflies and Hurricanes"), Camille Saint-Saëns (in "I Belong to You (+Mon Cœur S'ouvre a ta Voix)") and Frédéric Chopin (in "United States of Eurasia"). As a guitarist, Bellamy often uses arpeggiator and pitch-shift effects to create a more "electronic" sound, citing Jimi Hendrix and Tom Morello as influences. His guitar playing is also influenced by Latin and Spanish guitar music; Bellamy said: "I just think that music is really passionate...It has so much feel and flair to it. I’ve spent important times of my life in Spain and Greece, and various deep things happened there – falling in love, stuff like that. So maybe that rubbed off somewhere." Wolstenholme's basslines provide a motif for many Muse songs; the band combines bass guitar with effects and synthesisers to create overdriven fuzz bass tones. Bellamy and Wolstenholme use touch-screen controllers, often built into their instruments, to control synthesisers and effects including Kaoss Pads and Digitech Whammy pedals. Lyrics Most earlier Muse songs lyrically dealt with introspective themes, including relationships, social alienation, and difficulties they had encountered while trying to establish themselves in their hometown. However, with the band's progress, their song concepts have become more ambitious, addressing issues such as the fear of the evolution of technology in their Origin of Symmetry (2001) album. They deal mainly with the apocalypse in Absolution (2003) and with catastrophic war in Black Holes and Revelations (2006). The Resistance (2009) focused on themes of government oppression, uprising, love, and panspermia. The album itself was mainly inspired by Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Their sixth studio album, The 2nd Law (2012) relates to economics, thermodynamics, and apocalyptic themes. Their 2015 album Drones, is a concept album that uses autonomous killing drones as a metaphor for brainwashing and loss of empathy. Books that have influenced Muse's lyrical themes include Nineteen Eighty-Four, Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins, Hyperspace by Michio Kaku, The 12th Planet by Zecharia Sitchin, Rule by Secrecy by Jim Marrs and Trance Formation of America by Cathy O'Brien. Band members Matt Bellamy – lead vocals, guitars, keyboards, piano, synthesisers Dominic Howard – drums, percussions Chris Wolstenholme – bass guitar, backing vocals, occasional keyboards and guitar Touring musicians Morgan Nicholls – guitars, keyboards and synthesisers, backing vocals, samples, bass (2004, 2006–present) Dan "The Trumpet Man" Newell – trumpet (2006–2008) Alessandro Cortini – keyboards, synthesisers (2009, substitute) Discography Showbiz (1999) Origin of Symmetry (2001) Absolution (2003) Black Holes and Revelations (2006) The Resistance (2009) The 2nd Law (2012) Drones (2015) Simulation Theory (2018) Concert tours Showbiz Tour (1998–2000) Origin of Symmetry Tour (2000–2002) Absolution Tour (2003–2004) US Campus Invasion Tour 2005 (2005) Black Holes and Revelations Tour (2006–2008) The Resistance Tour (2009–2011) The 2nd Law World Tour (2012–2014) Psycho Tour (2015) Drones World Tour (2015–2016) North American Tour (with Thirty Seconds to Mars and Pvris) (2017) Simulation Theory World Tour (2019) See also List of awards and nominations received by Muse List of Muse songs References External links English art rock groups Brit Award winners Grammy Award winners English alternative rock groups English hard rock musical groups English progressive rock groups Kerrang! Awards winners NME Awards winners British musical trios Musical groups established in 1994 Maverick Records artists Warner Records artists Musical groups from Devon Ivor Novello Award winners Space rock musical groups Political music groups MTV Europe Music Award winners
true
[ "This is a list of episodes of the 1962–67 ABC war drama Combat!.\n\nNote that the episodes are not in order on the DVDs. Season 1 DVDs do contain Season 1 episodes, but in random order. Use the chart below.\nHint: The Series should be watched following the Production Number (Prod. No.) of episodes, which show the progression of events as traced in WWII history.\n\nSeries overview\n\nEpisodes\n\nSeason 1 (1962–63)\n\nThe first-season DVDs come in two sets, \"Campaign 1\" and \"Campaign 2,\" which are sold separately. Each \"Campaign\" contains four discs. Each disc contains four episodes plus bonus material. There are eight discs total in both \"Campaigns,\" with 16 episodes in each, for a combined 32 episodes, which are listed in order below.\n\nSeason 2 (1963–64)\nThe second-season DVDs come in two sets, \"Mission 1\" and \"Mission 2,\" which, like the \"Campaigns\" of the first-season DVDs, are sold separately. Each \"Mission\" contains four discs. Each disc contains four episodes plus bonus material. There are eight discs total in both \"Missions,\" with 16 episodes in each, for a combined 32 episodes, which are listed in order below.\n\nSeason 3 (1964–65)\nThe third-season DVDs come in two sets, \"Operation 1\" and \"Operation 2,\" which, like the first-season \"Campaigns\" and the second-season \"Missions,\" are sold separately. Each \"Operation\" contains four discs. Each disc contains four episodes plus bonus material. There are eight discs total in both \"Operations,\" with 16 episodes in each, for a combined 32 episodes, which are listed in order below.\n\nSeason 4 (1965–66)\nThe fourth-season DVDs come in two sets, \"Conflict 1\" and \"Conflict 2,\" which, like the first-season \"Campaigns,\" the second-season \"Missions,\" and the third-season \"Operations,\" are sold separately. Each \"Conflict\" contains four discs. Each disc contains four episodes, except from the last CD which contains three episodes, plus bonus material. There are eight discs total in both \"Conflicts,\" with 16 episodes in \"Conflict 1\" and 15 episodes in \"Conflict 2,\" for a combined 31 episodes, which are listed in order below.\n\nSeason 5 (1966–67)\nAs pointed out in the main article on Combat!, this is the only season of the program produced in color.\n\nThe fifth-season DVDs come in two sets, \"Invasion 1\" and \"Invasion 2,\" which, like the first-season \"Campaigns,\" the second-season \"Missions,\" the third-season \"Operations,\" and the fourth-season \"Conflicts,\" are sold separately. Each \"Invasion\" contains four discs. Each disc contains three episodes plus bonus material except the first disc of \"Invasion 1,\" which contains four episodes plus bonus material. There are eight discs total in both \"Invasions,\" with 13 episodes in \"Invasion 1\" and 12 episodes in \"Invasion 2,\" for a combined 25 episodes, which are listed in order below.\n\nExternal links \n\n \n\nCombat!", "Come Along and Walk with Me is the seventeenth studio album by American country artist, Connie Smith. The album was released in October 1971 by RCA Records and was produced by Bob Ferguson. It was Smith's third album of Gospel music, and her second solo Gospel album.\n\nCome Along and Walk with Me contained ten tracks of Gospel music material, ranging from songs written by Dallas Frazier to songs by Bill Gaither. The album was released on a 12-inch LP album, with five songs on each side of the record. The album did not chart the Billboard Top Country Albums chart, nor were any singles released.\n\nTrack listing\n\nReferences \n\n1971 albums\nConnie Smith albums\nRCA Victor albums\nAlbums produced by Bob Ferguson (music)\nGospel albums by American artists" ]
[ "Take That", "1995-1996: Robbie Williams's first departure, break-up and Greatest Hits" ]
C_93f5c84a4b2e459c97d351f6a21ea1d5_0
Why did Williams leave?
1
Why did Robbie Williams leave?
Take That
Robbie Williams's drug abuse had escalated to a near drug overdose the night before the group was scheduled to perform at the MTV Europe Music Awards in 1994. In June 1995, Williams was photographed by the press partying with Oasis at the Glastonbury Festival. During this month the band offered him an ultimatum; he was to adhere to the band's responsibilities or leave before their scheduled world tour. Williams chose the latter. Orange pressured Williams to quit because of Williams's behavior. Williams claimed he was bored with Barlow's leadership and jealous of Barlow. Despite the loss of Williams, Take That continued to promote Nobody Else as a four-piece, scoring a further hit single with Donald's "Never Forget". They subsequently went to America and completed the Nobody Else Tour in October 1995. Following the tour, the band began to plan for their next album; however, when they spent Christmas together, they mutually agreed it was time to part ways. On 13 February 1996, Take That formally announced that they were disbanding. This was followed by the Greatest Hits compilation in 1996, which contained a new recording, a cover of the Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love". The single went on to become what was to be the band's final UK number one until their 2006 comeback a decade later. Take That gave what was thought to be their final performance in April 1996 at Amsterdam. Following the band's announcement, millions of their fans were distraught around the world and in the UK alone, teenage girls threatened suicide and were seen lining streets in tears, to the point that telephone hotlines were set up by the government to deal with counselling them. After the band broke up, highly respected music figures such as Elton John noted that Take That were different from other boy bands before and after them, in that they wrote their own material through Gary Barlow, the only boy band member who won an Ivor Novello award during his time in a boy band (although George Michael won it while in Wham!). Take That had also left a legacy of being immaculate performers with a very high work ethic, causing them to be voted in as the greatest boy band of all time. CANNOTANSWER
Robbie Williams's drug abuse had escalated to a near drug overdose
Take That are an English pop group formed in Manchester in 1990. The group currently consists of Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen. The original line-up also featured Jason Orange and Robbie Williams. Barlow is the group's lead singer and primary songwriter, with Owen and Williams initially providing backing vocals and Donald and Orange serving primarily as dancers. The group have had 28 top 40 singles and 17 top 5 singles on the UK Singles Chart, 12 of which have reached number one, including "Back for Good", "Never Forget", "Patience" and "Greatest Day". They have also had eight number one albums on the UK Albums Chart. Internationally, the band have had 56 number one singles and 39 number one albums. They have received eight Brit Awards—winning for Best British Group and Best British Live Act. In 2012 they received an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. According to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), Take That has been certified for 14 million albums and 11.4 million singles in the UK. Williams left the band in 1995 while the four remaining members completed their world tour and released a final single before splitting up in 1996. After filming a 2005 Take That: For the Record about the group and releasing a new greatest hits album, a four-piece Take That without Williams officially announced a 2006 reunion tour around the UK, entitled The Ultimate Tour. On 9 May 2006, it was announced that the group were set to record new material together once again; their fourth studio album, Beautiful World, was released in 2006 and was followed up with The Circus, in 2008. The group achieved new success as a four-piece, scoring a string of chart hits across the UK and Europe while selling over 45 million records worldwide. Williams rejoined Take That in 2010 for the band's sixth studio album, Progress. Released on 15 November of that year, it was the first album of new material to feature Take That's original line-up since their 1995 album, Nobody Else. It became the fastest-selling album of the 21st century and the second fastest-selling album in British history. In 2014, the band recorded a seventh studio album, this time as a trio without Williams and Orange. The album, titled III, was released in November 2014 and became the band's seventh number one. It was preceded by the single "These Days", which became the band's 12th number one single in the UK. In 2011, Take That set the new record for the fastest-selling tour of all time in the UK with Progress Live, beating the previous record set by their Circus Live Tour in 2009. At the 2011 Brit Awards they won Best British Group. In 2012, Forbes named them the fifth highest-earning music stars in the world. The group performed at the London 2012 Olympic Games closing ceremony, playing "Rule the World" while the Olympic Flame was extinguished. In the same year, the Official Charts Company revealed the biggest-selling singles artists in British music chart history with Take That currently placed at 15th overall, making them the most successful boy band in UK chart history. Four of their albums are listed in the best-selling albums of the millennium, with three of them among the 60 best-selling albums in UK chart history. History 1989–1990: Formation In 1989, Manchester-based Nigel Martin-Smith sought to create a British male vocal singing group modelled on New Kids on the Block. Martin-Smith's vision, however, was a teen-orientated group that would appeal to more than one demographic segment of the music industry. Martin-Smith was then introduced to young singer-songwriter Gary Barlow, who had been performing in clubs since the age of 15. Impressed with Barlow's catalogue of self-written material, Martin-Smith decided to build his new-look boy band around Barlow's musical abilities. A campaign to audition young men with abilities in dancing and singing followed and took place in Manchester and other surrounding cities in 1990. At 22, Howard Donald was one of the oldest to audition, but he was chosen after he got time off work as a vehicle painter to continue the process. Prior to auditioning, Jason Orange had appeared as a breakdancer on the popular television programme The Hit Man and Her. Martin-Smith also selected 18-year-old bank employee Mark Owen and finally 16-year-old Robbie Williams to round out the group, which initially went by the name Kick It. 1990–1992: Take That & Party Take That's first TV appearance was on The Hit Man and Her in 1990, where they performed Barlow's self-written, unreleased song, "My Kind of Girl". They later appeared a second time to perform "Waiting Around", which would become the B-side for the first single, "Do What U Like". "Promises" and "Once You've Tasted Love" were also released as singles but were minor hits in the UK. Take That initially worked the same territory as their American counterparts, singing new jack R&B, urban soul, and mainstream pop. However, they worked their way toward Hi-NRG dance music, while also pursuing an adult contemporary ballad direction. As they aimed to break into the mainstream music industry, they worked a number of small clubs, schools, and events across the country building up a fanbase as they travelled to gigs constantly for months. Take That's breakthrough single was a cover of the 1975 Tavares hit "It Only Takes a Minute", which peaked at number seven on the UK Singles Chart in June 1992. This success was followed by "I Found Heaven", then by the first Barlow ballad "A Million Love Songs", which also reached number seven in October. Their cover of the Barry Manilow hit "Could It Be Magic" gave them their first big success, peaking at number three in the UK in the first chart of 1993. Their first album, Take That & Party, was released in 1992, and included all the hit singles to date. 1993–1995: Everything Changes, Nobody Else and superstardom 1993 saw the release of Everything Changes, based on Barlow's original material. It peaked at number one in the UK and spawned six singles, with four being consecutive UK number one singles – their first number one "Pray", "Relight My Fire", "Babe" and the title track "Everything Changes". The lead single "Why Can't I Wake Up with You" had narrowly missed the top spot in the UK peaking at number two and the sixth and final single "Love Ain't Here Anymore" taken from the album reached number three on the UK charts. Everything Changes saw the band gain international success with the album being nominated for the 1994 Mercury Prize, but it failed to crack the U.S. market, where an exclusive remix of "Love Ain't Here Anymore" (U.S. version) gained little success. By 1994, Take That had become radio and television stars across Europe and Asia, but it was not until 1995 that they did their first World Tour. It was during the years 1993–95 that the band fronted scores of magazine covers ranging from Smash Hits to GQ, becoming mass merchandised on all sorts of paraphernalia ranging from picture books, to posters, stickers, their own dolls, jewellery, caps, T-shirts, toothbrushes and even had their own annuals released. The band had also developed a large female teenage fanbase at the time. During this time, they performed at numerous music awards shows and chart shows such as the BRIT Awards and Top of the Pops, also winning the Best Live Act award in 1995 at the MTV Europe Music Awards, having been renowned for their breakdance routines, high energy and creative tour productions. In 1995, Take That released their third studio album Nobody Else, again based on Barlow's own material which reached number 1 in the UK and across Europe, capturing new audiences along the way, with Take That also able to make inroads in the adult audience in Britain through Barlow's melodic, sensitive ballads. For nearly five years, Take That's popularity was unsurpassed in Britain. The release of the first single from the album, "Sure", achieved yet another number one in the UK charts. It was not until their second release from that album, however, that they would experience what would become their biggest hit single, "Back for Good", which reached number one in many countries including the UK, Germany, Australia, and Norway. It was also their only US hit, where it reached number seven. The song was initially unveiled for the first time via live performance while at the 1995 BRIT Awards, and based on the reception of that performance, the record pre-sold more records than expected and forced the record label to bring the release date forward by an unprecedented six weeks. The album was also noted for its cover, which was a parody of the famed cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover sleeve. 1995–1996: Break-up and Greatest Hits Robbie Williams's drug abuse had escalated to a near drug overdose the night before the group was scheduled to perform at the MTV Europe Music Awards in 1994. In June 1995, Williams was photographed by the press partying with Oasis at the Glastonbury Festival. The following month, the band offered him an ultimatum; he was to adhere to the band's responsibilities or leave before their scheduled world tour. Williams chose the latter. Williams claimed he was bored with Barlow's leadership and jealous of Barlow. Despite the loss of Williams, Take That continued to promote Nobody Else as a four-piece, scoring a further hit single with "Never Forget" with Donald on lead vocal. They subsequently went to America and completed the Nobody Else Tour in October 1995. Following the tour, the band began to plan for their next album; however, when they spent Christmas together, they mutually agreed it was time to part ways. On 13 February 1996, Take That formally announced that they were disbanding. This was followed by the Greatest Hits compilation in 1996, which contained a new recording, a cover of the Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love". The single went on to become what was to be the band's final UK number one until their 2006 comeback a decade later. Take That gave what was thought to be their final performance in April 1996 at Amsterdam. Following the band's announcement, millions of their fans were distraught around the world and in the UK alone, teenage girls threatened suicide and were seen lining streets in tears, to the point that telephone hotlines were set up by the government to deal with counselling them. After the band broke up, highly respected music figures such as Elton John noted that Take That were different from other boy bands before and after them, in that they wrote their own material through Gary Barlow. Barlow is one of only a small number of people who have won an Ivor Novello award during their time in a boy band, with George Michael whilst in Wham! and Tony Mortimer whilst in East 17 being two others who have achieved this feat. Take That had also left a legacy of being immaculate performers with a very high work ethic, causing them to be voted in as the greatest boy band of all time. 2005–2006: Reunion as a quartet and Never Forget – The Ultimate Collection On 14 November 2005, Never Forget – The Ultimate Collection, a new compilation of their hit singles including a new previously unreleased song, also achieved great success and peaked at number 2 on UK charts, selling over 2.1 million copies in the UK alone. The new song "Today I've Lost You" (recorded in September 2005) was originally written by Barlow as the follow up to "Back for Good" but was never recorded. On 16 November 2005, the group got back together for the ITV documentary Take That: For the Record, in which they aired their views over their fame, success, the split and what the post-Williams line-up had done since. On 25 November 2005, there was an official press conference by the band announcing that the post-Robbie Williams line-up was going to tour in 2006. The tour, entitled The Ultimate Tour, ran from April to June 2006. The tour featured a guest appearance by British soul singer Beverley Knight, who replaced Lulu's vocals on the song "Relight My Fire"; although Lulu did appear during the stadium shows on "Relight My Fire" and "Never Forget". The American female ensemble Pussycat Dolls supported the group at their Dublin concert, and the Sugababes supported the group on the final five dates of the stadium leg. In a seven-year study analysing over one billion online searches via Google conducted by AccuraCast, a leading digital search agency, their comeback was ranked at number one in the UK. 2006–2007: Beautiful World On 9 May 2006, Take That returned to the recorded music scene after more than ten years of absence, signing with Polydor Records. The band's comeback album, Beautiful World, entered the UK Albums Chart at no. 1 and, as of June 2009, had sold over 2.8 million copies in the UK. It is the 35th best selling album in UK music history. On Beautiful World, all four members of the band had the opportunity to sing lead vocals and contribute in the songwriting. Unlike the band's earlier works, where the majority of their material was written by Barlow who received sole credit, all four band members are credited as co-writers, along with John Shanks. The comeback single, "Patience", was released on 20 November 2006, with a special event launching it on 5 November. On 26 November "Patience" hit number 1 in the UK in its second week of chart entry, making it the group's ninth No. 1, and staying there for 4 weeks. Take That also accompanied eventual winner Leona Lewis on a live version of "A Million Love Songs" during the final of The X Factor on 16 December 2006. The week after Beautiful World was released, it was announced that Take That had become the first artists ever to top the UK official single and album charts along with the download single, download album and DVD charts in the same week, as well as topping the radio charts. The video for the number 1 hit single "Shine", the follow-up to "Patience", premiered on 25 January 2007 on Channel 4, ahead of its release on 26 February 2007. The band's success continued on 14 February 2007 when Take That performed live at the BRIT Awards ceremony at Earl's Court. Their single "Patience" won the Best British Single category. The third single chosen from Beautiful World was "I'd Wait For Life", released on 18 June 2007 in the UK. The single reached 17 in the UK Singles Chart. This may have been due to lack of promotion, as the band decided to take a pre-tour break rather than do any promotion for the single. The single "Rule the World", included on the deluxe version of Beautiful World, was recorded for the soundtrack of the film Stardust (2007). It reached number two in the UK and went on to become the group's second best selling single, shifting over 1.2 million units in the UK. Beautiful World was the fourth biggest-selling album of 2007. It was announced at the start of 2007 that Take That signed a record deal with American label Interscope, and would also release their album in Canada. Starting on 11 October 2007, Take That began their Beautiful World Tour 2007 in Belfast. The tour included 49 shows throughout Europe and the UK and ended in Manchester on 23 December 2007. The band received four nominations at the 2008 BRIT Awards. Nominated for Best British Group, Best British Single ("Shine"), Best British Album (Beautiful World) and Best Live Act, they took home the Best Live Act and the Best British Single awards. According to a 2007 MSN UK internet poll, Take That were voted as the "comeback kings" of the year. 2008–2009: The Circus "Greatest Day", the first single from the album The Circus, made its radio premiere on 13 October 2008 and it was released on 24 November. It debuted at number 1 on the UK Singles Chart on 30 November 2008. An album launch party for The Circus was held in Paris on 2 December. On its first day of release The Circus sold 133,000 copies, and after four days on sale it sold 306,000 copies (going platinum) making The Circus the fastest selling album of the year. The album reached number 1 on the UK Albums Chart on 7 December 2008 with total first-week sales of 432,490, the third highest opening sales week in UK history. On 28 October 2008, on the Radio 1 Chris Moyles show, it was announced that Take That would be touring again in June/July 2009, covering the UK and Ireland. Tickets for the Take That Present: The Circus Live tour went on sale on 31 October. The promoters, SJM, have said that the band's tour is "the fastest selling in UK history". On 22 May 2008, Barlow and Donald attended the 2008 Ivor Novello Awards where Take That won the award for Most Performed Work with their single "Shine". Take That won the Sony Ericsson Tour of the Year award at the Vodafone music awards on 18 September 2008. They were unable to attend as they were in LA finishing off The Circus. They did send a video link message, which was shown at the awards. On 22 November 2008, Take That appeared on week 7 of the talent show The X Factor where the finalists performed some of their greatest hits and Owen and Barlow made a guest appearance to personally coach the contestants. The band also performed on Children in Need 2008, singing their new single, "Greatest Day", before donating £250,000 to the charity from their Marks and Spencer fee. The band were also voted the Greatest Boy Band of All Time, reflecting their ongoing marketability and success in the pop arena, even after two decades. At the 2009 Brit Awards they were nominated for Best British Group and they performed "Greatest Day" at the ceremony. "Up All Night", the second single from The Circus, was released on 2 March 2009, and peaked at number 14 on the UK Singles Chart, despite heavy airplay. In Germany and Australia, "The Garden" was released as the second single instead. On 7 May 2009, Take That's official website confirmed that the third single from The Circus would be "Said It All" which was released on 15 June 2009, peaking at number 9 on the UK Singles chart. The video premiered on GMTV on 8 May 2009. It features all four band members dressed up as vintage circus clowns, which tied in with their forthcoming Take That Present: The Circus Live tour. Take That started their Circus Live tour at the Stadium of Light on 5 June 2009 in Sunderland and ended at the Wembley Stadium in London on 5 July 2009, which over 80,000 people attended. This tour quickly became the fastest-selling of all time, breaking all records by selling all of their 650,000 tickets in less than four and a half hours. In November 2009 Take That released the official DVD of their Circus tour, which became the fastest-selling music DVD of all time in the UK on its first day of release and stayed in the top 10 of the videos chart for over a year. This overtook the previous record sales holder, which was Take That's Beautiful World Live tour and stayed at the number 1 spot for 8 weeks. The following week Take That released their first live album, The Greatest Day – Take That Present: The Circus Live, which sold 98,000 copies on its first day of release and was certified Platinum in July 2013. "Hold up a Light" was released as the fifth and final single from The Circus to radio stations and as a digital download to promote the release of the live album. The live album also featured a stripped down session recorded live at the famous Abbey Road Studios in London. It featured the members singing the setlist from the preceding tour, albeit in a studio setting. 2010–2011: Williams' return and Progress On 7 June 2010, the news broke of a single called "Shame", which had been written by Barlow and Williams and would feature the vocals of both artists. This was the first time the pair had worked together since 1995 and would appear on the second greatest hits collection of Williams. "Heart and I", another track from the same album, was also co-written by Williams and Barlow. The single "Shame" peaked at number 2 on the UK Singles Chart while also achieving success throughout Europe, charting in over 19 countries. After working with the band on new material in Los Angeles, on 15 July 2010 Robbie Williams announced he was returning to Take That. After months of working together, assembling new songs for a new album and even debating a band-name change to "The English", a joint statement between Williams and the group read, "The rumours are true ... Take That: the original lineup, have written and recorded a new album for release later this year." The statement went on to say, "Following months of speculation Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Jason Orange, Mark Owen, and Robbie Williams confirmed they have been recording a new studio album as a five-piece, which they will release in November." The lead single from Take That's album Progress was announced as "The Flood" and was released 7 November as a digital download, and on 8 November as a physical copy, with the album released a week later on 15 November. The single peaked at number 2 in the UK Singles Charts and to date has sold over 500,000 copies in the UK alone. The single also achieved success across Europe, charting inside the top 10 in ten countries while also charting in another nine countries whilst also being nominated for an Ivor Novello Award for best work. On 26 October the band announced that they would be embarking on a huge UK stadium tour entitled Progress Live, starting in Sunderland on 27 May, and finishing with a record-breaking 8 nights at London's Wembley Stadium in July 2011. It was also announced that Williams would perform hit singles from his solo career during the tour. The band then played at some of the biggest venues across Europe for the second leg of the tour. The phenomenal demand for tickets across the country led to the web sites of all the major UK ticket suppliers either crashing or considerably slowing for hours on end. The demand and sheer volume of fans also created problems for the UK telephone network. Take That's Progress Live also broke all records for ticket sales selling over 1.1 million tickets in one day, smashing the previous box office record set by Take That's Circus tour in 2008. On the first day of release Progress became the fastest selling album of the century, with 235,000 copies sold in just one day. The album reached number 1 in the UK, selling around 520,000 copies in its first week, becoming the second fastest-selling album in history. After the release of Progress it was announced that Take That have become Amazon UK's top-selling music artist of all time. The album retained the number one spot for six consecutive weeks in the UK since its release, selling 2.8 million copies in the UK alone and becoming the best selling album of 2010 Progress also achieved success across Europe where it debuted at number one in Ireland, Greece, Germany and Denmark. and the European Top 100 Albums chart. It also debuted inside the top 10 of the charts in Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. "Kidz" was announced as the second single from Progress, it was released 21 February 2011 and charted well across Europe. The band performed the song live at the 2011 Brit Awards hosted at The O2 Arena, where they won a Brit for Best British Group and were nominated for Best British Album. Their performance of "Kidz", praised by critics, involved a highly choreographed routine featuring dancers dressed in police-styled riot gear bearing the Take That symbol on the uniform and shields. On 19 May 2011, Take That announced a new EP entitled Progressed, which contained eight tracks written by the band since they had reunited as a five-piece. It was packaged alongside the album Progress and returned the band to number 1 in the UK Album Chart the week after it was released on 13 June 2011. Take That announced that the Progress Live tour would be released worldwide as their second live album to date and would also be released on home media formats across the UK and Europe on 21 November 2011. The DVD debuted at number 1 on the UK Music Video top 40 in its first week on release and sold over 200,000 copies in two weeks of release in the UK alone. Take That's efforts were recognised further when they were awarded Virgin Media's Best Live Act of 2012. On 4 October, it was reported that Take That were to take a break after the completion of the Progress tour, with Barlow continuing his role as a judge on The X Factor and Williams recording new solo material. Take That were presented with an Ivor Novello Award for their Outstanding Contribution to British Music in May 2012. In August 2012, Take That performed at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics, despite Barlow announcing that his daughter had been stillborn the previous week. The performance earned him praise for appearing live so soon after the tragedy. Williams was due to perform with the band but dropped out due to his wife giving birth at around the same time and thus the group performed as a four-piece. In November 2012, Take That reunited as a five-piece for the last time to perform "Never Forget" at the Music Industry Trust Awards. In 2013, Donald became a judge on the German version of the television dancing show Got to Dance. 2014–2015: Line-up change and III In May 2013, Owen announced that Take That was to begin recording their seventh studio album in 2014, and on 14 January 2014, Donald and Barlow both tweeted that Take That had entered the studio to begin recording the album, although it was not initially clear if Williams was present at these recording sessions. On 28 April 2014, Williams announced on Twitter he was to become a father for a second time, and consequently suggested he would be unable to join Take That on their album and tour. Although welcome to return to the band at any time, Williams chose not to return for group's seventh and eighth studio albums and their accompanying tours, focusing instead on his solo commitments. He continued to write music with his colleagues and has performed with the group on several occasions since 2011's Progress tour and plans on returning at some point in the future. On 24 September 2014, it was announced that Jason Orange had left the band. He said: 'At a band meeting last week I confirmed to Mark, Gary and Howard that I do not wish to commit to recording and promoting a new album. 'At the end of The Progress Tour I began to question whether it might be the right time for me to not continue on with Take That,' he continued. 'There have been no fallings out, only a decision on my part that I no longer wish to do this,' he added. Barlow, Donald, and Owen issued a joint statement about Orange's decision which said: "This is a sad day for us. Jason leaving is a huge loss both professionally and even more so personally ... Jason's energy and belief in what this band could achieve has made it what it is today, and we'll forever be grateful for his enthusiasm, dedication and inspiration over the years." A day after the announcement, Robbie Williams took to Twitter to show support of Orange's decision. "Mr Orange. Until we ride again. Much love, Bro.", Williams tweeted. On 10 October 2014, Take That unveiled their first song as a three-piece and lead single from their upcoming album. Titled "These Days", it was released on 23 November 2014 and went to No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart, knocking Band Aid 30 off the top spot and becoming their 12th number one single. The album itself, called III, was released on 28 November 2014 and became the band's seventh No. 1 album. It was then followed by a sell-out arena tour entitled Take That Live. On 14 October 2015, the band announced their new single "Hey Boy", released on 16 October, which is the first single from the 2015 re-release of III. The 2015 edition of the album was released on 20 November. In December 2015, British media buzzed about the group embarking on a stint in Las Vegas, starting 2017. Reports indicated the group impressed U.S. promoters and would headline their own residency show. Many venues circulated, including The AXIS at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino, The Foundry at SLS Las Vegas and the Linq Theater at The LINQ Hotel & Casino. Local newspaper, the Las Vegas Sun writes that everything is still unconfirmed, despite Barlow confirming the rumour on Twitter. 2016–2017: Wonderland On 2 February 2016, in an interview with The Sun, Barlow revealed that Take That would release their eighth studio album later in the year. On 4 May 2016, English drum and bass duo Sigma announced their newest single would feature Take That. "Cry" received its first radio play on 20 May 2016 and was released on that date. On 21 October 2016, the band posted a teaser on their social media pages and website depicting the logo of the band flickering with the hashtag "#WONDERLAND". The following day, it was announced that their new album, titled Wonderland, was scheduled to be released on 24 March 2017. It was then followed by a UK and Ireland arena tour entitled Wonderland Live, that commenced on 5 May 2017 at the Genting Arena in Birmingham. On 17 February 2017, the lead single of Wonderland was released. Titled "Giants", it debuted at 13 in the UK charts, which became the band's 24th UK top 20 single. On 8 April 2017, ITV aired a specially commissioned hour-length television special titled An Evening with Take That, where the band performed some songs from the album, along with some old classics including "Never Forget", "Back for Good" and "Rule the World". The band also took part in a Q&A session with the audience members. On 27 April, it was announced on Twitter that "New Day" would be released as the next single from the album Wonderland. The band were seen recording the music video in a field in Luton the days leading up the opening night of the Wonderland Live tour. Due to the Manchester Arena bombing just days before they were due to perform at the venue, their Manchester and Liverpool dates were rescheduled or relocated. The band returned a month later to perform at the One Love Manchester benefit concert. On 16 September 2017, Barlow, Owen and Donald were set to perform a special one-off show in Jersey after a fan bid more than £1.2 million to win a performance from the band. This then turned in to a ticketed charity event where the money from tickets sold would go towards benefiting Children in Need. The auction was held on BBC Radio 2. On 11 November 2017, Take That began their foreign tour in Perth, Australia, the first time they have performed in the country in over twenty years. They also played in New Zealand, United Arab Emirates and Israel for the first time. Unlike the other tours, a DVD for Wonderland Live was not released. Instead, it was broadcast on Sky 1 on 23 December and in cinemas. 2018–2020: The 30th Anniversary, and Odyssey On 16 July 2018, while performing at first ever Hits Radio Live at the Manchester Arena, Barlow, Donald and Owen confirmed that they would be touring in 2019. The tour was a Greatest Hits tour and celebrated the 30th anniversary of the band. There was also a Greatest Hits album, Odyssey, which was released on 23 November 2018. The Greatest Hits album features existing songs from their back catalogue that have been re-imagined and 3 brand new songs. It also includes collaborations with Boyz II Men, Lulu, Sigma and Barry Gibb. Odyssey reached number one in the UK album chart and was certified as a platinum selling record. The following year, Odyssey Live, the recording of their tour, reached number 5, becoming the band's 13th top 5 album, with the DVD becoming the biggest live music sale of 2019. In May 2020, Barlow, Donald, and Owen reunited with Williams for a virtual performance from their respective homes, hosted by price comparison website comparethemarket.com, to raise money for the music charity Nordoff Robbins and Crew Nation. In other media In April 2006, EMI licensed the band's songs to be used in the musical Never Forget, a musical based on songs of the band from the 1990s. Take That posted and then later removed a statement on their website distancing themselves from it. Take That wrote and recorded the theme song "Rule the World" for the film Stardust directed by Matthew Vaughn, which was released in cinemas across the globe in October 2007. In 2007, their song "Back for Good" was used as part of the soundtrack for popular Korean drama The 1st Shop of Coffee Prince. Take That presented their own TV show Take That Come to Town, a variety show in which they performed some of their biggest hits. The show also featured comedy sketches with one of Peter Kay's alter egos Geraldine McQueen. It aired on 7 December 2008 on ITV1. Sony launched their first Take That video game, SingStar Take That in 2009 for the PlayStation 3. In November 2010, ITV aired Take That: Look Back, Don't Stare, a black-and-white documentary which focused on the band working together for the first time in 15 years. Through a series of interviews, the band look back at their achievements while also looking forward to what the future holds for them. On 18 November 2010, Williams and Barlow appeared together live on television for the first time on the Popstars program in Germany singing their hit "Shame". In 2011, Take That's song "Love Love" was used in the credits of the 2011 film X-Men: First Class and later, "When We Were Young" was chosen as the main theme for The Three Musketeers movie. In 2015, the song "Get Ready for It" from their album III, was chosen as the theme song for the film Kingsman: The Secret Service. In 2017, Take That launched The Band, a musical written by Tim Firth featuring the five winners of Let It Shine and some of Take That's biggest hits. Take That, including Robbie Williams, were billed as executive producers. The group's music is regularly featured in the Channel 4 show Derry Girls, notably in the third episode of the second series, when the lead characters sneak off to attend the 1993 Take That concert in Belfast; the episode features the music video for "Pray" and ends on footage of the band performing "Everything Changes". Artistry Early in their career, Take That were known for party anthems such as "Do What U Like" and more mature ballads such as "A Million Love Songs" and "Back for Good". Since reuniting in 2006, they have become more experimental: their post-2006 albums Beautiful World and The Circus have featured "stadium-filling pop-rock" while Progress largely leaned towards electropop. Having been dubbed the "comeback kings" by the media for their highly successful reunion, the group has won widespread praise for their seamless transformation from teen idols to "man band" without overly relying on nostalgia, instead showcasing a more mature image and sound and reinventing themselves while maintaining their artistic integrity. Jude Rogers of The Guardian commented on Take That's post-reunion success, in light of a string of reunions by the group's disbanded counterparts from the 1990s: "Only Take That are penetrating pop's wider consciousness by becoming a man-band rather than a boy-band, singing mature, proper pop songs that cross the generations." Take That have garnered critical acclaim and popularity as consummate live performers and for their musical output. Their domestic concert tours have been described as "some of the most flamboyant, imaginative and extravagant pop tours around". Aside from covers, all of their material is composed by the members themselves; Barlow was initially the principal songwriter who received sole credit but the other members have since taken a more active role in the composition and production process, including playing instruments for the backing track. Band members Current members Gary Barlow (1990–1996, 2005–present) Howard Donald (1990–1996, 2005–present) Mark Owen (1990–1996, 2005–present) Former members Robbie Williams (1990–1995, 2010–2012) Jason Orange (1990–1996, 2005–2014) Timeline Awards and nominations |- | 2016 | Take That | Silver Clef Award for Best Live Act | |- | style="text-align:center;"|2015 | "These Days" | UK Music Video Awards for Best Art Direction | |- | rowspan="6" style="text-align:center;"|2012 | "Pray" |The Guardian Music Award for Best Number 1 Single | |- | Take That |Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music | |- | "Back for Good" |The Official Charts Company UK Recognition award for United Kingdom's Favourite Number One Single | |- | "The Flood" |Ivor Novello Award for PRS Most Performed Work | |- | Take That |Virgin Media Music Awards for Best Live Act | |- | "Kidz" |Virgin Media Music Awards for Best Music Video | |- | rowspan="10" style="text-align:center;"|2011 |- | Progress Live |Audio Pro International Awards for Best Live Sound Event | |- | Progress Live |Audio Pro International Awards Grand Prix Award | |- | Take That |Phonographic Performance Limited Award for most played UK artist | |- | "Kidz" |Spex German Entertainment for Best Music Video | |- | The Circus Live Tour | Greatest Event ever at Wembley Stadium | |- | Take That |ECHO Award for Best International Group | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Group | |- | Progress | BRIT Award for MasterCard Album of the Year | |- | Take That |Virgin Media for Best Group | |- | rowspan="6" style="text-align:center;"|2010 |- | "Up All Night" | UK Music Video Awards for Best Art Direction | |- | "The Flood" |iTunes Award for Best Single | |- | Progress | iTunes Award for Best Album | |- | Take That |Q Award Hall of Fame | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best Live Performance of the past 30 Years | |- | rowspan="5" style="text-align:center;"|2009 | Take That |GQ Men of the Year Awards for Best Band | |- | Take That |Q Award for Best Live Act | |- | "Greatest Day" |Q Award for Best Single | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Group | |- | Take That | Silver Clef Award | |- | rowspan="7" style="text-align:center;"|2008 | "Shine" |Ivor Novello Award for PRS Most Performed Work | |- | "Rule the World" |Virgin for Best Single | |- | Take That |Sony Ericsson Tour of the Year Award for Take That Arena Tour | |- | "Shine" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Live Act | |- | Beautiful World |BRIT Award for Best British Album | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Group | |- | style="text-align:center;"|2007 | "Patience" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | style="text-align:center;"|2006 | Take That |Q Idol Award | |- | rowspan="3" style="text-align:center;"|1996 | "Back for Good" |Billboard International Hit of the Year | |- | "Never Forget" |Ivor Novello Award for Most Performed Song | |- | "Back for Good" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | rowspan="3" style="text-align:center;"|1995 | "Back for Good" |Ivor Novello Award for the Song of the Year | |- | Take That |MTV Europe Music Awards for Best Live Act | |- | Take That | Silver Clef Award | |- | rowspan="6" style="text-align:center;"|1994 | "Babe" |MTV Video Music Award for International Viewer's Choice Award for MTV Europe | |- | Everything Changes |Mercury Prize for Best Album | |- | "Pray" |Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song | |- | "Pray" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | "Pray" |BRIT Award for Best British Video | |- | Take That |MTV Europe Music Awards for Best Group | |- | rowspan="4" style="text-align:center;"|1993 | "Could It Be Magic" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | "A Million Love Songs" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | "It Only Takes a Minute" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | Take That | Silver Clef Award for Best Newcomer | |} Discography Take That & Party (1992) Everything Changes (1993) Nobody Else (1995) Beautiful World (2006) The Circus (2008) Progress (2010) III (2014) Wonderland (2017) Tours Party Tour (1992–93) Everything Changes Tour (1993–94) Pops Tour (1994–95) Nobody Else Tour (1995) The Ultimate Tour (2006) Beautiful World Tour 2007 (2007) Take That Present: The Circus Live (2009) Progress Live (2011) Take That Live (2015) Wonderland Live (2017) Greatest Hits Live (2019) See also List of best-selling boy bands References External links Chinese Fansite 1990 establishments in England 1996 disestablishments in England 2005 establishments in England Brit Award winners Dance-pop groups Echo (music award) winners English boy bands English dance music groups Interscope Records artists Ivor Novello Award winners MTV Europe Music Award winners Musical groups disestablished in 1996 Musical groups established in 1990 Musical groups from Cheshire Musical groups from Manchester Musical groups reestablished in 2005 Polydor Records artists Teen pop groups Universal Music Group artists Vocal quartets Vocal quintets Vocal trios
true
[ "\"Llangollen Market\" is a song from early 19th century Wales. It is known to have been performed at an eisteddfod at Llangollen in 1858.\n\nThe text of the song survives in a manuscript held by the National Museum of Wales, which came into the possession of singer Mary Davies, a co-founder of the Welsh Folk-Song Society.\n\nThe song tells the tale of a young man from the Llangollen area going off to war and leaving behind his broken-hearted girlfriend. Originally written in English, the song has been translated into Welsh and recorded by several artists such as Siân James, Siobhan Owen, Calennig and Siwsann George.\n\nLyrics\nIt’s far beyond the mountains that look so distant here,\nTo fight his country’s battles, last Mayday went my dear;\nAh, well shall I remember with bitter sighs the day,\nWhy, Owen, did you leave me? At home why did I stay?\n\nAh, cruel was my father that did my flight restrain,\nAnd I was cruel-hearted that did at home remain,\nWith you, my love, contented, I’d journey far away;\nWhy, Owen, did you leave me? At home why did I stay?\n\nWhile thinking of my Owen, my eyes with tears do fill,\nAnd then my mother chides me because my wheel stands still,\nBut how can I think of spinning when my Owen’s far away;\nWhy, Owen, did you leave me? At home why did I stay?\n\nTo market at Llangollen each morning do I go,\nBut how to strike a bargain no longer do I know;\nMy father chides at evening, my mother all the day;\nWhy, Owen, did you leave me, at home why did I stay?\n\nOh, would it please kind heaven to shield my love from harm,\nTo clasp him to my bosom would every care disarm,\nBut alas, I fear, 'tis distant - that happy, happy day;\nWhy, Owen, did you leave me, at home why did stay?\n\nReferences\n\nWelsh folk songs", "Leih Sebtaha (Why Did You Leave Her') is the fifteenth full-length Arabic studio album from Egyptian pop singer Angham, launched in Egypt in 2001.\n\nTrack listing\n\n Sidi Wisalak (Your Charm) (Lyrics by: Ezzat elGendy | Music composed by: Sheriff Tagg | Music arrangements by: Tarek Akef)\n Leih Sebtaha (Why Did You Leave Her) (Lyrics by: Baha' elDeen Mohammad | Music composed by: Sheriff Tagg | Music arrangements by: Tarek Madkour)\n Rahet Layali (Nights Have Gone) (Lyrics by: Mohammad elRifai | Music composed by: Sheriff Tagg | Music arrangements by: Yahya elMougi)\n Magabsh Serty (Did He Mention Me) (Lyrics by: Ayman Bahgat Amar | Music composed by: Riyad elHamshari | Music arrangements by: Tarek Akef)\n Leih Sebtaha (instrumental) (Why Did You Leave Her) Lyrics by: Baha' elDeen Mohammad | Music composed by: Sheriff Tagg | Music arrangements by: Tarek Madkour)\n Tedhak Alaya (You Laugh At Me) (Lyrics by: Saoud elSharabtli | Music composed by: elFaissal | Music arrangements by: Mahmoud Sadek)\n Noujoum elLeil (Stars Of the Night) (Lyrics by: Wael Helal | Music composed by: Ameer Abdel Majeed | Music arrangements by: Ashraf Mahrous)\n Habbeitak Leih (Why Did I Even Love You) (Lyrics by: Nader Abdallah | Music composed by: Sheriff Tagg | Music arrangements by: Ashraf Mahrous)\n Hayran (Confused) (Lyrics by: Naser Rashwan | Music composed by: Ameer Abdel Majeed | Music arrangements by: Hisham Niyaz)\n Ana Indak (I'm At Your Place)''''' (Lyrics by: Bahaa elDeen Mohammad | Music composed by: Sheriff Tagg | Music arrangements by: Tarek Madkour)\n\nReferences\n\nAngham albums\nArabic-language albums\n2001 albums\nAlam elPhan Records albums" ]
[ "Take That", "1995-1996: Robbie Williams's first departure, break-up and Greatest Hits", "Why did Williams leave?", "Robbie Williams's drug abuse had escalated to a near drug overdose" ]
C_93f5c84a4b2e459c97d351f6a21ea1d5_0
What was the result of this?
2
What was the result of Robbie Williams near drug overdose?
Take That
Robbie Williams's drug abuse had escalated to a near drug overdose the night before the group was scheduled to perform at the MTV Europe Music Awards in 1994. In June 1995, Williams was photographed by the press partying with Oasis at the Glastonbury Festival. During this month the band offered him an ultimatum; he was to adhere to the band's responsibilities or leave before their scheduled world tour. Williams chose the latter. Orange pressured Williams to quit because of Williams's behavior. Williams claimed he was bored with Barlow's leadership and jealous of Barlow. Despite the loss of Williams, Take That continued to promote Nobody Else as a four-piece, scoring a further hit single with Donald's "Never Forget". They subsequently went to America and completed the Nobody Else Tour in October 1995. Following the tour, the band began to plan for their next album; however, when they spent Christmas together, they mutually agreed it was time to part ways. On 13 February 1996, Take That formally announced that they were disbanding. This was followed by the Greatest Hits compilation in 1996, which contained a new recording, a cover of the Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love". The single went on to become what was to be the band's final UK number one until their 2006 comeback a decade later. Take That gave what was thought to be their final performance in April 1996 at Amsterdam. Following the band's announcement, millions of their fans were distraught around the world and in the UK alone, teenage girls threatened suicide and were seen lining streets in tears, to the point that telephone hotlines were set up by the government to deal with counselling them. After the band broke up, highly respected music figures such as Elton John noted that Take That were different from other boy bands before and after them, in that they wrote their own material through Gary Barlow, the only boy band member who won an Ivor Novello award during his time in a boy band (although George Michael won it while in Wham!). Take That had also left a legacy of being immaculate performers with a very high work ethic, causing them to be voted in as the greatest boy band of all time. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
Take That are an English pop group formed in Manchester in 1990. The group currently consists of Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen. The original line-up also featured Jason Orange and Robbie Williams. Barlow is the group's lead singer and primary songwriter, with Owen and Williams initially providing backing vocals and Donald and Orange serving primarily as dancers. The group have had 28 top 40 singles and 17 top 5 singles on the UK Singles Chart, 12 of which have reached number one, including "Back for Good", "Never Forget", "Patience" and "Greatest Day". They have also had eight number one albums on the UK Albums Chart. Internationally, the band have had 56 number one singles and 39 number one albums. They have received eight Brit Awards—winning for Best British Group and Best British Live Act. In 2012 they received an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. According to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), Take That has been certified for 14 million albums and 11.4 million singles in the UK. Williams left the band in 1995 while the four remaining members completed their world tour and released a final single before splitting up in 1996. After filming a 2005 Take That: For the Record about the group and releasing a new greatest hits album, a four-piece Take That without Williams officially announced a 2006 reunion tour around the UK, entitled The Ultimate Tour. On 9 May 2006, it was announced that the group were set to record new material together once again; their fourth studio album, Beautiful World, was released in 2006 and was followed up with The Circus, in 2008. The group achieved new success as a four-piece, scoring a string of chart hits across the UK and Europe while selling over 45 million records worldwide. Williams rejoined Take That in 2010 for the band's sixth studio album, Progress. Released on 15 November of that year, it was the first album of new material to feature Take That's original line-up since their 1995 album, Nobody Else. It became the fastest-selling album of the 21st century and the second fastest-selling album in British history. In 2014, the band recorded a seventh studio album, this time as a trio without Williams and Orange. The album, titled III, was released in November 2014 and became the band's seventh number one. It was preceded by the single "These Days", which became the band's 12th number one single in the UK. In 2011, Take That set the new record for the fastest-selling tour of all time in the UK with Progress Live, beating the previous record set by their Circus Live Tour in 2009. At the 2011 Brit Awards they won Best British Group. In 2012, Forbes named them the fifth highest-earning music stars in the world. The group performed at the London 2012 Olympic Games closing ceremony, playing "Rule the World" while the Olympic Flame was extinguished. In the same year, the Official Charts Company revealed the biggest-selling singles artists in British music chart history with Take That currently placed at 15th overall, making them the most successful boy band in UK chart history. Four of their albums are listed in the best-selling albums of the millennium, with three of them among the 60 best-selling albums in UK chart history. History 1989–1990: Formation In 1989, Manchester-based Nigel Martin-Smith sought to create a British male vocal singing group modelled on New Kids on the Block. Martin-Smith's vision, however, was a teen-orientated group that would appeal to more than one demographic segment of the music industry. Martin-Smith was then introduced to young singer-songwriter Gary Barlow, who had been performing in clubs since the age of 15. Impressed with Barlow's catalogue of self-written material, Martin-Smith decided to build his new-look boy band around Barlow's musical abilities. A campaign to audition young men with abilities in dancing and singing followed and took place in Manchester and other surrounding cities in 1990. At 22, Howard Donald was one of the oldest to audition, but he was chosen after he got time off work as a vehicle painter to continue the process. Prior to auditioning, Jason Orange had appeared as a breakdancer on the popular television programme The Hit Man and Her. Martin-Smith also selected 18-year-old bank employee Mark Owen and finally 16-year-old Robbie Williams to round out the group, which initially went by the name Kick It. 1990–1992: Take That & Party Take That's first TV appearance was on The Hit Man and Her in 1990, where they performed Barlow's self-written, unreleased song, "My Kind of Girl". They later appeared a second time to perform "Waiting Around", which would become the B-side for the first single, "Do What U Like". "Promises" and "Once You've Tasted Love" were also released as singles but were minor hits in the UK. Take That initially worked the same territory as their American counterparts, singing new jack R&B, urban soul, and mainstream pop. However, they worked their way toward Hi-NRG dance music, while also pursuing an adult contemporary ballad direction. As they aimed to break into the mainstream music industry, they worked a number of small clubs, schools, and events across the country building up a fanbase as they travelled to gigs constantly for months. Take That's breakthrough single was a cover of the 1975 Tavares hit "It Only Takes a Minute", which peaked at number seven on the UK Singles Chart in June 1992. This success was followed by "I Found Heaven", then by the first Barlow ballad "A Million Love Songs", which also reached number seven in October. Their cover of the Barry Manilow hit "Could It Be Magic" gave them their first big success, peaking at number three in the UK in the first chart of 1993. Their first album, Take That & Party, was released in 1992, and included all the hit singles to date. 1993–1995: Everything Changes, Nobody Else and superstardom 1993 saw the release of Everything Changes, based on Barlow's original material. It peaked at number one in the UK and spawned six singles, with four being consecutive UK number one singles – their first number one "Pray", "Relight My Fire", "Babe" and the title track "Everything Changes". The lead single "Why Can't I Wake Up with You" had narrowly missed the top spot in the UK peaking at number two and the sixth and final single "Love Ain't Here Anymore" taken from the album reached number three on the UK charts. Everything Changes saw the band gain international success with the album being nominated for the 1994 Mercury Prize, but it failed to crack the U.S. market, where an exclusive remix of "Love Ain't Here Anymore" (U.S. version) gained little success. By 1994, Take That had become radio and television stars across Europe and Asia, but it was not until 1995 that they did their first World Tour. It was during the years 1993–95 that the band fronted scores of magazine covers ranging from Smash Hits to GQ, becoming mass merchandised on all sorts of paraphernalia ranging from picture books, to posters, stickers, their own dolls, jewellery, caps, T-shirts, toothbrushes and even had their own annuals released. The band had also developed a large female teenage fanbase at the time. During this time, they performed at numerous music awards shows and chart shows such as the BRIT Awards and Top of the Pops, also winning the Best Live Act award in 1995 at the MTV Europe Music Awards, having been renowned for their breakdance routines, high energy and creative tour productions. In 1995, Take That released their third studio album Nobody Else, again based on Barlow's own material which reached number 1 in the UK and across Europe, capturing new audiences along the way, with Take That also able to make inroads in the adult audience in Britain through Barlow's melodic, sensitive ballads. For nearly five years, Take That's popularity was unsurpassed in Britain. The release of the first single from the album, "Sure", achieved yet another number one in the UK charts. It was not until their second release from that album, however, that they would experience what would become their biggest hit single, "Back for Good", which reached number one in many countries including the UK, Germany, Australia, and Norway. It was also their only US hit, where it reached number seven. The song was initially unveiled for the first time via live performance while at the 1995 BRIT Awards, and based on the reception of that performance, the record pre-sold more records than expected and forced the record label to bring the release date forward by an unprecedented six weeks. The album was also noted for its cover, which was a parody of the famed cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover sleeve. 1995–1996: Break-up and Greatest Hits Robbie Williams's drug abuse had escalated to a near drug overdose the night before the group was scheduled to perform at the MTV Europe Music Awards in 1994. In June 1995, Williams was photographed by the press partying with Oasis at the Glastonbury Festival. The following month, the band offered him an ultimatum; he was to adhere to the band's responsibilities or leave before their scheduled world tour. Williams chose the latter. Williams claimed he was bored with Barlow's leadership and jealous of Barlow. Despite the loss of Williams, Take That continued to promote Nobody Else as a four-piece, scoring a further hit single with "Never Forget" with Donald on lead vocal. They subsequently went to America and completed the Nobody Else Tour in October 1995. Following the tour, the band began to plan for their next album; however, when they spent Christmas together, they mutually agreed it was time to part ways. On 13 February 1996, Take That formally announced that they were disbanding. This was followed by the Greatest Hits compilation in 1996, which contained a new recording, a cover of the Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love". The single went on to become what was to be the band's final UK number one until their 2006 comeback a decade later. Take That gave what was thought to be their final performance in April 1996 at Amsterdam. Following the band's announcement, millions of their fans were distraught around the world and in the UK alone, teenage girls threatened suicide and were seen lining streets in tears, to the point that telephone hotlines were set up by the government to deal with counselling them. After the band broke up, highly respected music figures such as Elton John noted that Take That were different from other boy bands before and after them, in that they wrote their own material through Gary Barlow. Barlow is one of only a small number of people who have won an Ivor Novello award during their time in a boy band, with George Michael whilst in Wham! and Tony Mortimer whilst in East 17 being two others who have achieved this feat. Take That had also left a legacy of being immaculate performers with a very high work ethic, causing them to be voted in as the greatest boy band of all time. 2005–2006: Reunion as a quartet and Never Forget – The Ultimate Collection On 14 November 2005, Never Forget – The Ultimate Collection, a new compilation of their hit singles including a new previously unreleased song, also achieved great success and peaked at number 2 on UK charts, selling over 2.1 million copies in the UK alone. The new song "Today I've Lost You" (recorded in September 2005) was originally written by Barlow as the follow up to "Back for Good" but was never recorded. On 16 November 2005, the group got back together for the ITV documentary Take That: For the Record, in which they aired their views over their fame, success, the split and what the post-Williams line-up had done since. On 25 November 2005, there was an official press conference by the band announcing that the post-Robbie Williams line-up was going to tour in 2006. The tour, entitled The Ultimate Tour, ran from April to June 2006. The tour featured a guest appearance by British soul singer Beverley Knight, who replaced Lulu's vocals on the song "Relight My Fire"; although Lulu did appear during the stadium shows on "Relight My Fire" and "Never Forget". The American female ensemble Pussycat Dolls supported the group at their Dublin concert, and the Sugababes supported the group on the final five dates of the stadium leg. In a seven-year study analysing over one billion online searches via Google conducted by AccuraCast, a leading digital search agency, their comeback was ranked at number one in the UK. 2006–2007: Beautiful World On 9 May 2006, Take That returned to the recorded music scene after more than ten years of absence, signing with Polydor Records. The band's comeback album, Beautiful World, entered the UK Albums Chart at no. 1 and, as of June 2009, had sold over 2.8 million copies in the UK. It is the 35th best selling album in UK music history. On Beautiful World, all four members of the band had the opportunity to sing lead vocals and contribute in the songwriting. Unlike the band's earlier works, where the majority of their material was written by Barlow who received sole credit, all four band members are credited as co-writers, along with John Shanks. The comeback single, "Patience", was released on 20 November 2006, with a special event launching it on 5 November. On 26 November "Patience" hit number 1 in the UK in its second week of chart entry, making it the group's ninth No. 1, and staying there for 4 weeks. Take That also accompanied eventual winner Leona Lewis on a live version of "A Million Love Songs" during the final of The X Factor on 16 December 2006. The week after Beautiful World was released, it was announced that Take That had become the first artists ever to top the UK official single and album charts along with the download single, download album and DVD charts in the same week, as well as topping the radio charts. The video for the number 1 hit single "Shine", the follow-up to "Patience", premiered on 25 January 2007 on Channel 4, ahead of its release on 26 February 2007. The band's success continued on 14 February 2007 when Take That performed live at the BRIT Awards ceremony at Earl's Court. Their single "Patience" won the Best British Single category. The third single chosen from Beautiful World was "I'd Wait For Life", released on 18 June 2007 in the UK. The single reached 17 in the UK Singles Chart. This may have been due to lack of promotion, as the band decided to take a pre-tour break rather than do any promotion for the single. The single "Rule the World", included on the deluxe version of Beautiful World, was recorded for the soundtrack of the film Stardust (2007). It reached number two in the UK and went on to become the group's second best selling single, shifting over 1.2 million units in the UK. Beautiful World was the fourth biggest-selling album of 2007. It was announced at the start of 2007 that Take That signed a record deal with American label Interscope, and would also release their album in Canada. Starting on 11 October 2007, Take That began their Beautiful World Tour 2007 in Belfast. The tour included 49 shows throughout Europe and the UK and ended in Manchester on 23 December 2007. The band received four nominations at the 2008 BRIT Awards. Nominated for Best British Group, Best British Single ("Shine"), Best British Album (Beautiful World) and Best Live Act, they took home the Best Live Act and the Best British Single awards. According to a 2007 MSN UK internet poll, Take That were voted as the "comeback kings" of the year. 2008–2009: The Circus "Greatest Day", the first single from the album The Circus, made its radio premiere on 13 October 2008 and it was released on 24 November. It debuted at number 1 on the UK Singles Chart on 30 November 2008. An album launch party for The Circus was held in Paris on 2 December. On its first day of release The Circus sold 133,000 copies, and after four days on sale it sold 306,000 copies (going platinum) making The Circus the fastest selling album of the year. The album reached number 1 on the UK Albums Chart on 7 December 2008 with total first-week sales of 432,490, the third highest opening sales week in UK history. On 28 October 2008, on the Radio 1 Chris Moyles show, it was announced that Take That would be touring again in June/July 2009, covering the UK and Ireland. Tickets for the Take That Present: The Circus Live tour went on sale on 31 October. The promoters, SJM, have said that the band's tour is "the fastest selling in UK history". On 22 May 2008, Barlow and Donald attended the 2008 Ivor Novello Awards where Take That won the award for Most Performed Work with their single "Shine". Take That won the Sony Ericsson Tour of the Year award at the Vodafone music awards on 18 September 2008. They were unable to attend as they were in LA finishing off The Circus. They did send a video link message, which was shown at the awards. On 22 November 2008, Take That appeared on week 7 of the talent show The X Factor where the finalists performed some of their greatest hits and Owen and Barlow made a guest appearance to personally coach the contestants. The band also performed on Children in Need 2008, singing their new single, "Greatest Day", before donating £250,000 to the charity from their Marks and Spencer fee. The band were also voted the Greatest Boy Band of All Time, reflecting their ongoing marketability and success in the pop arena, even after two decades. At the 2009 Brit Awards they were nominated for Best British Group and they performed "Greatest Day" at the ceremony. "Up All Night", the second single from The Circus, was released on 2 March 2009, and peaked at number 14 on the UK Singles Chart, despite heavy airplay. In Germany and Australia, "The Garden" was released as the second single instead. On 7 May 2009, Take That's official website confirmed that the third single from The Circus would be "Said It All" which was released on 15 June 2009, peaking at number 9 on the UK Singles chart. The video premiered on GMTV on 8 May 2009. It features all four band members dressed up as vintage circus clowns, which tied in with their forthcoming Take That Present: The Circus Live tour. Take That started their Circus Live tour at the Stadium of Light on 5 June 2009 in Sunderland and ended at the Wembley Stadium in London on 5 July 2009, which over 80,000 people attended. This tour quickly became the fastest-selling of all time, breaking all records by selling all of their 650,000 tickets in less than four and a half hours. In November 2009 Take That released the official DVD of their Circus tour, which became the fastest-selling music DVD of all time in the UK on its first day of release and stayed in the top 10 of the videos chart for over a year. This overtook the previous record sales holder, which was Take That's Beautiful World Live tour and stayed at the number 1 spot for 8 weeks. The following week Take That released their first live album, The Greatest Day – Take That Present: The Circus Live, which sold 98,000 copies on its first day of release and was certified Platinum in July 2013. "Hold up a Light" was released as the fifth and final single from The Circus to radio stations and as a digital download to promote the release of the live album. The live album also featured a stripped down session recorded live at the famous Abbey Road Studios in London. It featured the members singing the setlist from the preceding tour, albeit in a studio setting. 2010–2011: Williams' return and Progress On 7 June 2010, the news broke of a single called "Shame", which had been written by Barlow and Williams and would feature the vocals of both artists. This was the first time the pair had worked together since 1995 and would appear on the second greatest hits collection of Williams. "Heart and I", another track from the same album, was also co-written by Williams and Barlow. The single "Shame" peaked at number 2 on the UK Singles Chart while also achieving success throughout Europe, charting in over 19 countries. After working with the band on new material in Los Angeles, on 15 July 2010 Robbie Williams announced he was returning to Take That. After months of working together, assembling new songs for a new album and even debating a band-name change to "The English", a joint statement between Williams and the group read, "The rumours are true ... Take That: the original lineup, have written and recorded a new album for release later this year." The statement went on to say, "Following months of speculation Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Jason Orange, Mark Owen, and Robbie Williams confirmed they have been recording a new studio album as a five-piece, which they will release in November." The lead single from Take That's album Progress was announced as "The Flood" and was released 7 November as a digital download, and on 8 November as a physical copy, with the album released a week later on 15 November. The single peaked at number 2 in the UK Singles Charts and to date has sold over 500,000 copies in the UK alone. The single also achieved success across Europe, charting inside the top 10 in ten countries while also charting in another nine countries whilst also being nominated for an Ivor Novello Award for best work. On 26 October the band announced that they would be embarking on a huge UK stadium tour entitled Progress Live, starting in Sunderland on 27 May, and finishing with a record-breaking 8 nights at London's Wembley Stadium in July 2011. It was also announced that Williams would perform hit singles from his solo career during the tour. The band then played at some of the biggest venues across Europe for the second leg of the tour. The phenomenal demand for tickets across the country led to the web sites of all the major UK ticket suppliers either crashing or considerably slowing for hours on end. The demand and sheer volume of fans also created problems for the UK telephone network. Take That's Progress Live also broke all records for ticket sales selling over 1.1 million tickets in one day, smashing the previous box office record set by Take That's Circus tour in 2008. On the first day of release Progress became the fastest selling album of the century, with 235,000 copies sold in just one day. The album reached number 1 in the UK, selling around 520,000 copies in its first week, becoming the second fastest-selling album in history. After the release of Progress it was announced that Take That have become Amazon UK's top-selling music artist of all time. The album retained the number one spot for six consecutive weeks in the UK since its release, selling 2.8 million copies in the UK alone and becoming the best selling album of 2010 Progress also achieved success across Europe where it debuted at number one in Ireland, Greece, Germany and Denmark. and the European Top 100 Albums chart. It also debuted inside the top 10 of the charts in Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. "Kidz" was announced as the second single from Progress, it was released 21 February 2011 and charted well across Europe. The band performed the song live at the 2011 Brit Awards hosted at The O2 Arena, where they won a Brit for Best British Group and were nominated for Best British Album. Their performance of "Kidz", praised by critics, involved a highly choreographed routine featuring dancers dressed in police-styled riot gear bearing the Take That symbol on the uniform and shields. On 19 May 2011, Take That announced a new EP entitled Progressed, which contained eight tracks written by the band since they had reunited as a five-piece. It was packaged alongside the album Progress and returned the band to number 1 in the UK Album Chart the week after it was released on 13 June 2011. Take That announced that the Progress Live tour would be released worldwide as their second live album to date and would also be released on home media formats across the UK and Europe on 21 November 2011. The DVD debuted at number 1 on the UK Music Video top 40 in its first week on release and sold over 200,000 copies in two weeks of release in the UK alone. Take That's efforts were recognised further when they were awarded Virgin Media's Best Live Act of 2012. On 4 October, it was reported that Take That were to take a break after the completion of the Progress tour, with Barlow continuing his role as a judge on The X Factor and Williams recording new solo material. Take That were presented with an Ivor Novello Award for their Outstanding Contribution to British Music in May 2012. In August 2012, Take That performed at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics, despite Barlow announcing that his daughter had been stillborn the previous week. The performance earned him praise for appearing live so soon after the tragedy. Williams was due to perform with the band but dropped out due to his wife giving birth at around the same time and thus the group performed as a four-piece. In November 2012, Take That reunited as a five-piece for the last time to perform "Never Forget" at the Music Industry Trust Awards. In 2013, Donald became a judge on the German version of the television dancing show Got to Dance. 2014–2015: Line-up change and III In May 2013, Owen announced that Take That was to begin recording their seventh studio album in 2014, and on 14 January 2014, Donald and Barlow both tweeted that Take That had entered the studio to begin recording the album, although it was not initially clear if Williams was present at these recording sessions. On 28 April 2014, Williams announced on Twitter he was to become a father for a second time, and consequently suggested he would be unable to join Take That on their album and tour. Although welcome to return to the band at any time, Williams chose not to return for group's seventh and eighth studio albums and their accompanying tours, focusing instead on his solo commitments. He continued to write music with his colleagues and has performed with the group on several occasions since 2011's Progress tour and plans on returning at some point in the future. On 24 September 2014, it was announced that Jason Orange had left the band. He said: 'At a band meeting last week I confirmed to Mark, Gary and Howard that I do not wish to commit to recording and promoting a new album. 'At the end of The Progress Tour I began to question whether it might be the right time for me to not continue on with Take That,' he continued. 'There have been no fallings out, only a decision on my part that I no longer wish to do this,' he added. Barlow, Donald, and Owen issued a joint statement about Orange's decision which said: "This is a sad day for us. Jason leaving is a huge loss both professionally and even more so personally ... Jason's energy and belief in what this band could achieve has made it what it is today, and we'll forever be grateful for his enthusiasm, dedication and inspiration over the years." A day after the announcement, Robbie Williams took to Twitter to show support of Orange's decision. "Mr Orange. Until we ride again. Much love, Bro.", Williams tweeted. On 10 October 2014, Take That unveiled their first song as a three-piece and lead single from their upcoming album. Titled "These Days", it was released on 23 November 2014 and went to No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart, knocking Band Aid 30 off the top spot and becoming their 12th number one single. The album itself, called III, was released on 28 November 2014 and became the band's seventh No. 1 album. It was then followed by a sell-out arena tour entitled Take That Live. On 14 October 2015, the band announced their new single "Hey Boy", released on 16 October, which is the first single from the 2015 re-release of III. The 2015 edition of the album was released on 20 November. In December 2015, British media buzzed about the group embarking on a stint in Las Vegas, starting 2017. Reports indicated the group impressed U.S. promoters and would headline their own residency show. Many venues circulated, including The AXIS at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino, The Foundry at SLS Las Vegas and the Linq Theater at The LINQ Hotel & Casino. Local newspaper, the Las Vegas Sun writes that everything is still unconfirmed, despite Barlow confirming the rumour on Twitter. 2016–2017: Wonderland On 2 February 2016, in an interview with The Sun, Barlow revealed that Take That would release their eighth studio album later in the year. On 4 May 2016, English drum and bass duo Sigma announced their newest single would feature Take That. "Cry" received its first radio play on 20 May 2016 and was released on that date. On 21 October 2016, the band posted a teaser on their social media pages and website depicting the logo of the band flickering with the hashtag "#WONDERLAND". The following day, it was announced that their new album, titled Wonderland, was scheduled to be released on 24 March 2017. It was then followed by a UK and Ireland arena tour entitled Wonderland Live, that commenced on 5 May 2017 at the Genting Arena in Birmingham. On 17 February 2017, the lead single of Wonderland was released. Titled "Giants", it debuted at 13 in the UK charts, which became the band's 24th UK top 20 single. On 8 April 2017, ITV aired a specially commissioned hour-length television special titled An Evening with Take That, where the band performed some songs from the album, along with some old classics including "Never Forget", "Back for Good" and "Rule the World". The band also took part in a Q&A session with the audience members. On 27 April, it was announced on Twitter that "New Day" would be released as the next single from the album Wonderland. The band were seen recording the music video in a field in Luton the days leading up the opening night of the Wonderland Live tour. Due to the Manchester Arena bombing just days before they were due to perform at the venue, their Manchester and Liverpool dates were rescheduled or relocated. The band returned a month later to perform at the One Love Manchester benefit concert. On 16 September 2017, Barlow, Owen and Donald were set to perform a special one-off show in Jersey after a fan bid more than £1.2 million to win a performance from the band. This then turned in to a ticketed charity event where the money from tickets sold would go towards benefiting Children in Need. The auction was held on BBC Radio 2. On 11 November 2017, Take That began their foreign tour in Perth, Australia, the first time they have performed in the country in over twenty years. They also played in New Zealand, United Arab Emirates and Israel for the first time. Unlike the other tours, a DVD for Wonderland Live was not released. Instead, it was broadcast on Sky 1 on 23 December and in cinemas. 2018–2020: The 30th Anniversary, and Odyssey On 16 July 2018, while performing at first ever Hits Radio Live at the Manchester Arena, Barlow, Donald and Owen confirmed that they would be touring in 2019. The tour was a Greatest Hits tour and celebrated the 30th anniversary of the band. There was also a Greatest Hits album, Odyssey, which was released on 23 November 2018. The Greatest Hits album features existing songs from their back catalogue that have been re-imagined and 3 brand new songs. It also includes collaborations with Boyz II Men, Lulu, Sigma and Barry Gibb. Odyssey reached number one in the UK album chart and was certified as a platinum selling record. The following year, Odyssey Live, the recording of their tour, reached number 5, becoming the band's 13th top 5 album, with the DVD becoming the biggest live music sale of 2019. In May 2020, Barlow, Donald, and Owen reunited with Williams for a virtual performance from their respective homes, hosted by price comparison website comparethemarket.com, to raise money for the music charity Nordoff Robbins and Crew Nation. In other media In April 2006, EMI licensed the band's songs to be used in the musical Never Forget, a musical based on songs of the band from the 1990s. Take That posted and then later removed a statement on their website distancing themselves from it. Take That wrote and recorded the theme song "Rule the World" for the film Stardust directed by Matthew Vaughn, which was released in cinemas across the globe in October 2007. In 2007, their song "Back for Good" was used as part of the soundtrack for popular Korean drama The 1st Shop of Coffee Prince. Take That presented their own TV show Take That Come to Town, a variety show in which they performed some of their biggest hits. The show also featured comedy sketches with one of Peter Kay's alter egos Geraldine McQueen. It aired on 7 December 2008 on ITV1. Sony launched their first Take That video game, SingStar Take That in 2009 for the PlayStation 3. In November 2010, ITV aired Take That: Look Back, Don't Stare, a black-and-white documentary which focused on the band working together for the first time in 15 years. Through a series of interviews, the band look back at their achievements while also looking forward to what the future holds for them. On 18 November 2010, Williams and Barlow appeared together live on television for the first time on the Popstars program in Germany singing their hit "Shame". In 2011, Take That's song "Love Love" was used in the credits of the 2011 film X-Men: First Class and later, "When We Were Young" was chosen as the main theme for The Three Musketeers movie. In 2015, the song "Get Ready for It" from their album III, was chosen as the theme song for the film Kingsman: The Secret Service. In 2017, Take That launched The Band, a musical written by Tim Firth featuring the five winners of Let It Shine and some of Take That's biggest hits. Take That, including Robbie Williams, were billed as executive producers. The group's music is regularly featured in the Channel 4 show Derry Girls, notably in the third episode of the second series, when the lead characters sneak off to attend the 1993 Take That concert in Belfast; the episode features the music video for "Pray" and ends on footage of the band performing "Everything Changes". Artistry Early in their career, Take That were known for party anthems such as "Do What U Like" and more mature ballads such as "A Million Love Songs" and "Back for Good". Since reuniting in 2006, they have become more experimental: their post-2006 albums Beautiful World and The Circus have featured "stadium-filling pop-rock" while Progress largely leaned towards electropop. Having been dubbed the "comeback kings" by the media for their highly successful reunion, the group has won widespread praise for their seamless transformation from teen idols to "man band" without overly relying on nostalgia, instead showcasing a more mature image and sound and reinventing themselves while maintaining their artistic integrity. Jude Rogers of The Guardian commented on Take That's post-reunion success, in light of a string of reunions by the group's disbanded counterparts from the 1990s: "Only Take That are penetrating pop's wider consciousness by becoming a man-band rather than a boy-band, singing mature, proper pop songs that cross the generations." Take That have garnered critical acclaim and popularity as consummate live performers and for their musical output. Their domestic concert tours have been described as "some of the most flamboyant, imaginative and extravagant pop tours around". Aside from covers, all of their material is composed by the members themselves; Barlow was initially the principal songwriter who received sole credit but the other members have since taken a more active role in the composition and production process, including playing instruments for the backing track. Band members Current members Gary Barlow (1990–1996, 2005–present) Howard Donald (1990–1996, 2005–present) Mark Owen (1990–1996, 2005–present) Former members Robbie Williams (1990–1995, 2010–2012) Jason Orange (1990–1996, 2005–2014) Timeline Awards and nominations |- | 2016 | Take That | Silver Clef Award for Best Live Act | |- | style="text-align:center;"|2015 | "These Days" | UK Music Video Awards for Best Art Direction | |- | rowspan="6" style="text-align:center;"|2012 | "Pray" |The Guardian Music Award for Best Number 1 Single | |- | Take That |Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music | |- | "Back for Good" |The Official Charts Company UK Recognition award for United Kingdom's Favourite Number One Single | |- | "The Flood" |Ivor Novello Award for PRS Most Performed Work | |- | Take That |Virgin Media Music Awards for Best Live Act | |- | "Kidz" |Virgin Media Music Awards for Best Music Video | |- | rowspan="10" style="text-align:center;"|2011 |- | Progress Live |Audio Pro International Awards for Best Live Sound Event | |- | Progress Live |Audio Pro International Awards Grand Prix Award | |- | Take That |Phonographic Performance Limited Award for most played UK artist | |- | "Kidz" |Spex German Entertainment for Best Music Video | |- | The Circus Live Tour | Greatest Event ever at Wembley Stadium | |- | Take That |ECHO Award for Best International Group | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Group | |- | Progress | BRIT Award for MasterCard Album of the Year | |- | Take That |Virgin Media for Best Group | |- | rowspan="6" style="text-align:center;"|2010 |- | "Up All Night" | UK Music Video Awards for Best Art Direction | |- | "The Flood" |iTunes Award for Best Single | |- | Progress | iTunes Award for Best Album | |- | Take That |Q Award Hall of Fame | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best Live Performance of the past 30 Years | |- | rowspan="5" style="text-align:center;"|2009 | Take That |GQ Men of the Year Awards for Best Band | |- | Take That |Q Award for Best Live Act | |- | "Greatest Day" |Q Award for Best Single | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Group | |- | Take That | Silver Clef Award | |- | rowspan="7" style="text-align:center;"|2008 | "Shine" |Ivor Novello Award for PRS Most Performed Work | |- | "Rule the World" |Virgin for Best Single | |- | Take That |Sony Ericsson Tour of the Year Award for Take That Arena Tour | |- | "Shine" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Live Act | |- | Beautiful World |BRIT Award for Best British Album | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Group | |- | style="text-align:center;"|2007 | "Patience" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | style="text-align:center;"|2006 | Take That |Q Idol Award | |- | rowspan="3" style="text-align:center;"|1996 | "Back for Good" |Billboard International Hit of the Year | |- | "Never Forget" |Ivor Novello Award for Most Performed Song | |- | "Back for Good" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | rowspan="3" style="text-align:center;"|1995 | "Back for Good" |Ivor Novello Award for the Song of the Year | |- | Take That |MTV Europe Music Awards for Best Live Act | |- | Take That | Silver Clef Award | |- | rowspan="6" style="text-align:center;"|1994 | "Babe" |MTV Video Music Award for International Viewer's Choice Award for MTV Europe | |- | Everything Changes |Mercury Prize for Best Album | |- | "Pray" |Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song | |- | "Pray" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | "Pray" |BRIT Award for Best British Video | |- | Take That |MTV Europe Music Awards for Best Group | |- | rowspan="4" style="text-align:center;"|1993 | "Could It Be Magic" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | "A Million Love Songs" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | "It Only Takes a Minute" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | Take That | Silver Clef Award for Best Newcomer | |} Discography Take That & Party (1992) Everything Changes (1993) Nobody Else (1995) Beautiful World (2006) The Circus (2008) Progress (2010) III (2014) Wonderland (2017) Tours Party Tour (1992–93) Everything Changes Tour (1993–94) Pops Tour (1994–95) Nobody Else Tour (1995) The Ultimate Tour (2006) Beautiful World Tour 2007 (2007) Take That Present: The Circus Live (2009) Progress Live (2011) Take That Live (2015) Wonderland Live (2017) Greatest Hits Live (2019) See also List of best-selling boy bands References External links Chinese Fansite 1990 establishments in England 1996 disestablishments in England 2005 establishments in England Brit Award winners Dance-pop groups Echo (music award) winners English boy bands English dance music groups Interscope Records artists Ivor Novello Award winners MTV Europe Music Award winners Musical groups disestablished in 1996 Musical groups established in 1990 Musical groups from Cheshire Musical groups from Manchester Musical groups reestablished in 2005 Polydor Records artists Teen pop groups Universal Music Group artists Vocal quartets Vocal quintets Vocal trios
false
[ "Elections to West Lindsey District Council were held on 3 May 2007. One third of the council was up for election and the Liberal Democrat Party held overall control of the council after what was seen as a straight fight with the Conservative Party.\n\nThe election in Scotter ward was decided by the toss of a coin which the Conservative candidate won.\n\nAfter the election, the composition of the council was:\n Liberal Democrat 20\n Conservative 16\n Independent 1\n\nElection result\n\nOne Independent candidate was unopposed.\n\nWard results\n\nReferences\n\n 2007 West Lindsey election result\n Ward results\n\n2007\n2007 English local elections\n2000s in Lincolnshire", "The St. Charles Borromeo Cathedral () Also Chillán Cathedral Is a temple of the Catholic Church, home of the Diocese of Chillán located in the center of the city of Chillán, Chile in front of the Plaza de Armas, in the corner of streets Arauco and Libertad. It is also a symbol and icon of the city, as a result of the city's progress after the Chillan earthquake of 1939. It was declared a National Monument in December 2014.\n\nThe first cathedral of the city of Chillán was established in what today is known as Old Chillán, but this one was destroyed after the earthquake that affected the zone in 1835. As a result, the city was devastated and was transferred and reconstructed in Its current location. The cathedral at that time was made of lime and brick.\n\nAfter the Chillán earthquake of 1939, the cathedral was completely destroyed again, beginning that same year the reconstructions that culminated in 1950. In this new reconstruction, the architect Hernán Larraín Errázuriz was based on ideas of modernism. The figure of the 10 arches represent the prayer and the sign that is made with the hands at the moment of praying intercalando the fingers of the hands and closing them of oval form.\n\nSee also\nRoman Catholicism in Chile\nSt. Charles Borromeo\n\nReferences\n\nRoman Catholic cathedrals in Chile\nRoman Catholic churches completed in 1950\nDiguillín Province\n20th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in Chile\nModernist architecture in Chile\nRebuilt buildings and structures in Chile" ]
[ "Take That", "1995-1996: Robbie Williams's first departure, break-up and Greatest Hits", "Why did Williams leave?", "Robbie Williams's drug abuse had escalated to a near drug overdose", "What was the result of this?", "I don't know." ]
C_93f5c84a4b2e459c97d351f6a21ea1d5_0
When did they break up?
3
When did Robbie Williams break up?
Take That
Robbie Williams's drug abuse had escalated to a near drug overdose the night before the group was scheduled to perform at the MTV Europe Music Awards in 1994. In June 1995, Williams was photographed by the press partying with Oasis at the Glastonbury Festival. During this month the band offered him an ultimatum; he was to adhere to the band's responsibilities or leave before their scheduled world tour. Williams chose the latter. Orange pressured Williams to quit because of Williams's behavior. Williams claimed he was bored with Barlow's leadership and jealous of Barlow. Despite the loss of Williams, Take That continued to promote Nobody Else as a four-piece, scoring a further hit single with Donald's "Never Forget". They subsequently went to America and completed the Nobody Else Tour in October 1995. Following the tour, the band began to plan for their next album; however, when they spent Christmas together, they mutually agreed it was time to part ways. On 13 February 1996, Take That formally announced that they were disbanding. This was followed by the Greatest Hits compilation in 1996, which contained a new recording, a cover of the Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love". The single went on to become what was to be the band's final UK number one until their 2006 comeback a decade later. Take That gave what was thought to be their final performance in April 1996 at Amsterdam. Following the band's announcement, millions of their fans were distraught around the world and in the UK alone, teenage girls threatened suicide and were seen lining streets in tears, to the point that telephone hotlines were set up by the government to deal with counselling them. After the band broke up, highly respected music figures such as Elton John noted that Take That were different from other boy bands before and after them, in that they wrote their own material through Gary Barlow, the only boy band member who won an Ivor Novello award during his time in a boy band (although George Michael won it while in Wham!). Take That had also left a legacy of being immaculate performers with a very high work ethic, causing them to be voted in as the greatest boy band of all time. CANNOTANSWER
On 13 February 1996, Take That formally announced that they were disbanding.
Take That are an English pop group formed in Manchester in 1990. The group currently consists of Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen. The original line-up also featured Jason Orange and Robbie Williams. Barlow is the group's lead singer and primary songwriter, with Owen and Williams initially providing backing vocals and Donald and Orange serving primarily as dancers. The group have had 28 top 40 singles and 17 top 5 singles on the UK Singles Chart, 12 of which have reached number one, including "Back for Good", "Never Forget", "Patience" and "Greatest Day". They have also had eight number one albums on the UK Albums Chart. Internationally, the band have had 56 number one singles and 39 number one albums. They have received eight Brit Awards—winning for Best British Group and Best British Live Act. In 2012 they received an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. According to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), Take That has been certified for 14 million albums and 11.4 million singles in the UK. Williams left the band in 1995 while the four remaining members completed their world tour and released a final single before splitting up in 1996. After filming a 2005 Take That: For the Record about the group and releasing a new greatest hits album, a four-piece Take That without Williams officially announced a 2006 reunion tour around the UK, entitled The Ultimate Tour. On 9 May 2006, it was announced that the group were set to record new material together once again; their fourth studio album, Beautiful World, was released in 2006 and was followed up with The Circus, in 2008. The group achieved new success as a four-piece, scoring a string of chart hits across the UK and Europe while selling over 45 million records worldwide. Williams rejoined Take That in 2010 for the band's sixth studio album, Progress. Released on 15 November of that year, it was the first album of new material to feature Take That's original line-up since their 1995 album, Nobody Else. It became the fastest-selling album of the 21st century and the second fastest-selling album in British history. In 2014, the band recorded a seventh studio album, this time as a trio without Williams and Orange. The album, titled III, was released in November 2014 and became the band's seventh number one. It was preceded by the single "These Days", which became the band's 12th number one single in the UK. In 2011, Take That set the new record for the fastest-selling tour of all time in the UK with Progress Live, beating the previous record set by their Circus Live Tour in 2009. At the 2011 Brit Awards they won Best British Group. In 2012, Forbes named them the fifth highest-earning music stars in the world. The group performed at the London 2012 Olympic Games closing ceremony, playing "Rule the World" while the Olympic Flame was extinguished. In the same year, the Official Charts Company revealed the biggest-selling singles artists in British music chart history with Take That currently placed at 15th overall, making them the most successful boy band in UK chart history. Four of their albums are listed in the best-selling albums of the millennium, with three of them among the 60 best-selling albums in UK chart history. History 1989–1990: Formation In 1989, Manchester-based Nigel Martin-Smith sought to create a British male vocal singing group modelled on New Kids on the Block. Martin-Smith's vision, however, was a teen-orientated group that would appeal to more than one demographic segment of the music industry. Martin-Smith was then introduced to young singer-songwriter Gary Barlow, who had been performing in clubs since the age of 15. Impressed with Barlow's catalogue of self-written material, Martin-Smith decided to build his new-look boy band around Barlow's musical abilities. A campaign to audition young men with abilities in dancing and singing followed and took place in Manchester and other surrounding cities in 1990. At 22, Howard Donald was one of the oldest to audition, but he was chosen after he got time off work as a vehicle painter to continue the process. Prior to auditioning, Jason Orange had appeared as a breakdancer on the popular television programme The Hit Man and Her. Martin-Smith also selected 18-year-old bank employee Mark Owen and finally 16-year-old Robbie Williams to round out the group, which initially went by the name Kick It. 1990–1992: Take That & Party Take That's first TV appearance was on The Hit Man and Her in 1990, where they performed Barlow's self-written, unreleased song, "My Kind of Girl". They later appeared a second time to perform "Waiting Around", which would become the B-side for the first single, "Do What U Like". "Promises" and "Once You've Tasted Love" were also released as singles but were minor hits in the UK. Take That initially worked the same territory as their American counterparts, singing new jack R&B, urban soul, and mainstream pop. However, they worked their way toward Hi-NRG dance music, while also pursuing an adult contemporary ballad direction. As they aimed to break into the mainstream music industry, they worked a number of small clubs, schools, and events across the country building up a fanbase as they travelled to gigs constantly for months. Take That's breakthrough single was a cover of the 1975 Tavares hit "It Only Takes a Minute", which peaked at number seven on the UK Singles Chart in June 1992. This success was followed by "I Found Heaven", then by the first Barlow ballad "A Million Love Songs", which also reached number seven in October. Their cover of the Barry Manilow hit "Could It Be Magic" gave them their first big success, peaking at number three in the UK in the first chart of 1993. Their first album, Take That & Party, was released in 1992, and included all the hit singles to date. 1993–1995: Everything Changes, Nobody Else and superstardom 1993 saw the release of Everything Changes, based on Barlow's original material. It peaked at number one in the UK and spawned six singles, with four being consecutive UK number one singles – their first number one "Pray", "Relight My Fire", "Babe" and the title track "Everything Changes". The lead single "Why Can't I Wake Up with You" had narrowly missed the top spot in the UK peaking at number two and the sixth and final single "Love Ain't Here Anymore" taken from the album reached number three on the UK charts. Everything Changes saw the band gain international success with the album being nominated for the 1994 Mercury Prize, but it failed to crack the U.S. market, where an exclusive remix of "Love Ain't Here Anymore" (U.S. version) gained little success. By 1994, Take That had become radio and television stars across Europe and Asia, but it was not until 1995 that they did their first World Tour. It was during the years 1993–95 that the band fronted scores of magazine covers ranging from Smash Hits to GQ, becoming mass merchandised on all sorts of paraphernalia ranging from picture books, to posters, stickers, their own dolls, jewellery, caps, T-shirts, toothbrushes and even had their own annuals released. The band had also developed a large female teenage fanbase at the time. During this time, they performed at numerous music awards shows and chart shows such as the BRIT Awards and Top of the Pops, also winning the Best Live Act award in 1995 at the MTV Europe Music Awards, having been renowned for their breakdance routines, high energy and creative tour productions. In 1995, Take That released their third studio album Nobody Else, again based on Barlow's own material which reached number 1 in the UK and across Europe, capturing new audiences along the way, with Take That also able to make inroads in the adult audience in Britain through Barlow's melodic, sensitive ballads. For nearly five years, Take That's popularity was unsurpassed in Britain. The release of the first single from the album, "Sure", achieved yet another number one in the UK charts. It was not until their second release from that album, however, that they would experience what would become their biggest hit single, "Back for Good", which reached number one in many countries including the UK, Germany, Australia, and Norway. It was also their only US hit, where it reached number seven. The song was initially unveiled for the first time via live performance while at the 1995 BRIT Awards, and based on the reception of that performance, the record pre-sold more records than expected and forced the record label to bring the release date forward by an unprecedented six weeks. The album was also noted for its cover, which was a parody of the famed cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover sleeve. 1995–1996: Break-up and Greatest Hits Robbie Williams's drug abuse had escalated to a near drug overdose the night before the group was scheduled to perform at the MTV Europe Music Awards in 1994. In June 1995, Williams was photographed by the press partying with Oasis at the Glastonbury Festival. The following month, the band offered him an ultimatum; he was to adhere to the band's responsibilities or leave before their scheduled world tour. Williams chose the latter. Williams claimed he was bored with Barlow's leadership and jealous of Barlow. Despite the loss of Williams, Take That continued to promote Nobody Else as a four-piece, scoring a further hit single with "Never Forget" with Donald on lead vocal. They subsequently went to America and completed the Nobody Else Tour in October 1995. Following the tour, the band began to plan for their next album; however, when they spent Christmas together, they mutually agreed it was time to part ways. On 13 February 1996, Take That formally announced that they were disbanding. This was followed by the Greatest Hits compilation in 1996, which contained a new recording, a cover of the Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love". The single went on to become what was to be the band's final UK number one until their 2006 comeback a decade later. Take That gave what was thought to be their final performance in April 1996 at Amsterdam. Following the band's announcement, millions of their fans were distraught around the world and in the UK alone, teenage girls threatened suicide and were seen lining streets in tears, to the point that telephone hotlines were set up by the government to deal with counselling them. After the band broke up, highly respected music figures such as Elton John noted that Take That were different from other boy bands before and after them, in that they wrote their own material through Gary Barlow. Barlow is one of only a small number of people who have won an Ivor Novello award during their time in a boy band, with George Michael whilst in Wham! and Tony Mortimer whilst in East 17 being two others who have achieved this feat. Take That had also left a legacy of being immaculate performers with a very high work ethic, causing them to be voted in as the greatest boy band of all time. 2005–2006: Reunion as a quartet and Never Forget – The Ultimate Collection On 14 November 2005, Never Forget – The Ultimate Collection, a new compilation of their hit singles including a new previously unreleased song, also achieved great success and peaked at number 2 on UK charts, selling over 2.1 million copies in the UK alone. The new song "Today I've Lost You" (recorded in September 2005) was originally written by Barlow as the follow up to "Back for Good" but was never recorded. On 16 November 2005, the group got back together for the ITV documentary Take That: For the Record, in which they aired their views over their fame, success, the split and what the post-Williams line-up had done since. On 25 November 2005, there was an official press conference by the band announcing that the post-Robbie Williams line-up was going to tour in 2006. The tour, entitled The Ultimate Tour, ran from April to June 2006. The tour featured a guest appearance by British soul singer Beverley Knight, who replaced Lulu's vocals on the song "Relight My Fire"; although Lulu did appear during the stadium shows on "Relight My Fire" and "Never Forget". The American female ensemble Pussycat Dolls supported the group at their Dublin concert, and the Sugababes supported the group on the final five dates of the stadium leg. In a seven-year study analysing over one billion online searches via Google conducted by AccuraCast, a leading digital search agency, their comeback was ranked at number one in the UK. 2006–2007: Beautiful World On 9 May 2006, Take That returned to the recorded music scene after more than ten years of absence, signing with Polydor Records. The band's comeback album, Beautiful World, entered the UK Albums Chart at no. 1 and, as of June 2009, had sold over 2.8 million copies in the UK. It is the 35th best selling album in UK music history. On Beautiful World, all four members of the band had the opportunity to sing lead vocals and contribute in the songwriting. Unlike the band's earlier works, where the majority of their material was written by Barlow who received sole credit, all four band members are credited as co-writers, along with John Shanks. The comeback single, "Patience", was released on 20 November 2006, with a special event launching it on 5 November. On 26 November "Patience" hit number 1 in the UK in its second week of chart entry, making it the group's ninth No. 1, and staying there for 4 weeks. Take That also accompanied eventual winner Leona Lewis on a live version of "A Million Love Songs" during the final of The X Factor on 16 December 2006. The week after Beautiful World was released, it was announced that Take That had become the first artists ever to top the UK official single and album charts along with the download single, download album and DVD charts in the same week, as well as topping the radio charts. The video for the number 1 hit single "Shine", the follow-up to "Patience", premiered on 25 January 2007 on Channel 4, ahead of its release on 26 February 2007. The band's success continued on 14 February 2007 when Take That performed live at the BRIT Awards ceremony at Earl's Court. Their single "Patience" won the Best British Single category. The third single chosen from Beautiful World was "I'd Wait For Life", released on 18 June 2007 in the UK. The single reached 17 in the UK Singles Chart. This may have been due to lack of promotion, as the band decided to take a pre-tour break rather than do any promotion for the single. The single "Rule the World", included on the deluxe version of Beautiful World, was recorded for the soundtrack of the film Stardust (2007). It reached number two in the UK and went on to become the group's second best selling single, shifting over 1.2 million units in the UK. Beautiful World was the fourth biggest-selling album of 2007. It was announced at the start of 2007 that Take That signed a record deal with American label Interscope, and would also release their album in Canada. Starting on 11 October 2007, Take That began their Beautiful World Tour 2007 in Belfast. The tour included 49 shows throughout Europe and the UK and ended in Manchester on 23 December 2007. The band received four nominations at the 2008 BRIT Awards. Nominated for Best British Group, Best British Single ("Shine"), Best British Album (Beautiful World) and Best Live Act, they took home the Best Live Act and the Best British Single awards. According to a 2007 MSN UK internet poll, Take That were voted as the "comeback kings" of the year. 2008–2009: The Circus "Greatest Day", the first single from the album The Circus, made its radio premiere on 13 October 2008 and it was released on 24 November. It debuted at number 1 on the UK Singles Chart on 30 November 2008. An album launch party for The Circus was held in Paris on 2 December. On its first day of release The Circus sold 133,000 copies, and after four days on sale it sold 306,000 copies (going platinum) making The Circus the fastest selling album of the year. The album reached number 1 on the UK Albums Chart on 7 December 2008 with total first-week sales of 432,490, the third highest opening sales week in UK history. On 28 October 2008, on the Radio 1 Chris Moyles show, it was announced that Take That would be touring again in June/July 2009, covering the UK and Ireland. Tickets for the Take That Present: The Circus Live tour went on sale on 31 October. The promoters, SJM, have said that the band's tour is "the fastest selling in UK history". On 22 May 2008, Barlow and Donald attended the 2008 Ivor Novello Awards where Take That won the award for Most Performed Work with their single "Shine". Take That won the Sony Ericsson Tour of the Year award at the Vodafone music awards on 18 September 2008. They were unable to attend as they were in LA finishing off The Circus. They did send a video link message, which was shown at the awards. On 22 November 2008, Take That appeared on week 7 of the talent show The X Factor where the finalists performed some of their greatest hits and Owen and Barlow made a guest appearance to personally coach the contestants. The band also performed on Children in Need 2008, singing their new single, "Greatest Day", before donating £250,000 to the charity from their Marks and Spencer fee. The band were also voted the Greatest Boy Band of All Time, reflecting their ongoing marketability and success in the pop arena, even after two decades. At the 2009 Brit Awards they were nominated for Best British Group and they performed "Greatest Day" at the ceremony. "Up All Night", the second single from The Circus, was released on 2 March 2009, and peaked at number 14 on the UK Singles Chart, despite heavy airplay. In Germany and Australia, "The Garden" was released as the second single instead. On 7 May 2009, Take That's official website confirmed that the third single from The Circus would be "Said It All" which was released on 15 June 2009, peaking at number 9 on the UK Singles chart. The video premiered on GMTV on 8 May 2009. It features all four band members dressed up as vintage circus clowns, which tied in with their forthcoming Take That Present: The Circus Live tour. Take That started their Circus Live tour at the Stadium of Light on 5 June 2009 in Sunderland and ended at the Wembley Stadium in London on 5 July 2009, which over 80,000 people attended. This tour quickly became the fastest-selling of all time, breaking all records by selling all of their 650,000 tickets in less than four and a half hours. In November 2009 Take That released the official DVD of their Circus tour, which became the fastest-selling music DVD of all time in the UK on its first day of release and stayed in the top 10 of the videos chart for over a year. This overtook the previous record sales holder, which was Take That's Beautiful World Live tour and stayed at the number 1 spot for 8 weeks. The following week Take That released their first live album, The Greatest Day – Take That Present: The Circus Live, which sold 98,000 copies on its first day of release and was certified Platinum in July 2013. "Hold up a Light" was released as the fifth and final single from The Circus to radio stations and as a digital download to promote the release of the live album. The live album also featured a stripped down session recorded live at the famous Abbey Road Studios in London. It featured the members singing the setlist from the preceding tour, albeit in a studio setting. 2010–2011: Williams' return and Progress On 7 June 2010, the news broke of a single called "Shame", which had been written by Barlow and Williams and would feature the vocals of both artists. This was the first time the pair had worked together since 1995 and would appear on the second greatest hits collection of Williams. "Heart and I", another track from the same album, was also co-written by Williams and Barlow. The single "Shame" peaked at number 2 on the UK Singles Chart while also achieving success throughout Europe, charting in over 19 countries. After working with the band on new material in Los Angeles, on 15 July 2010 Robbie Williams announced he was returning to Take That. After months of working together, assembling new songs for a new album and even debating a band-name change to "The English", a joint statement between Williams and the group read, "The rumours are true ... Take That: the original lineup, have written and recorded a new album for release later this year." The statement went on to say, "Following months of speculation Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Jason Orange, Mark Owen, and Robbie Williams confirmed they have been recording a new studio album as a five-piece, which they will release in November." The lead single from Take That's album Progress was announced as "The Flood" and was released 7 November as a digital download, and on 8 November as a physical copy, with the album released a week later on 15 November. The single peaked at number 2 in the UK Singles Charts and to date has sold over 500,000 copies in the UK alone. The single also achieved success across Europe, charting inside the top 10 in ten countries while also charting in another nine countries whilst also being nominated for an Ivor Novello Award for best work. On 26 October the band announced that they would be embarking on a huge UK stadium tour entitled Progress Live, starting in Sunderland on 27 May, and finishing with a record-breaking 8 nights at London's Wembley Stadium in July 2011. It was also announced that Williams would perform hit singles from his solo career during the tour. The band then played at some of the biggest venues across Europe for the second leg of the tour. The phenomenal demand for tickets across the country led to the web sites of all the major UK ticket suppliers either crashing or considerably slowing for hours on end. The demand and sheer volume of fans also created problems for the UK telephone network. Take That's Progress Live also broke all records for ticket sales selling over 1.1 million tickets in one day, smashing the previous box office record set by Take That's Circus tour in 2008. On the first day of release Progress became the fastest selling album of the century, with 235,000 copies sold in just one day. The album reached number 1 in the UK, selling around 520,000 copies in its first week, becoming the second fastest-selling album in history. After the release of Progress it was announced that Take That have become Amazon UK's top-selling music artist of all time. The album retained the number one spot for six consecutive weeks in the UK since its release, selling 2.8 million copies in the UK alone and becoming the best selling album of 2010 Progress also achieved success across Europe where it debuted at number one in Ireland, Greece, Germany and Denmark. and the European Top 100 Albums chart. It also debuted inside the top 10 of the charts in Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. "Kidz" was announced as the second single from Progress, it was released 21 February 2011 and charted well across Europe. The band performed the song live at the 2011 Brit Awards hosted at The O2 Arena, where they won a Brit for Best British Group and were nominated for Best British Album. Their performance of "Kidz", praised by critics, involved a highly choreographed routine featuring dancers dressed in police-styled riot gear bearing the Take That symbol on the uniform and shields. On 19 May 2011, Take That announced a new EP entitled Progressed, which contained eight tracks written by the band since they had reunited as a five-piece. It was packaged alongside the album Progress and returned the band to number 1 in the UK Album Chart the week after it was released on 13 June 2011. Take That announced that the Progress Live tour would be released worldwide as their second live album to date and would also be released on home media formats across the UK and Europe on 21 November 2011. The DVD debuted at number 1 on the UK Music Video top 40 in its first week on release and sold over 200,000 copies in two weeks of release in the UK alone. Take That's efforts were recognised further when they were awarded Virgin Media's Best Live Act of 2012. On 4 October, it was reported that Take That were to take a break after the completion of the Progress tour, with Barlow continuing his role as a judge on The X Factor and Williams recording new solo material. Take That were presented with an Ivor Novello Award for their Outstanding Contribution to British Music in May 2012. In August 2012, Take That performed at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics, despite Barlow announcing that his daughter had been stillborn the previous week. The performance earned him praise for appearing live so soon after the tragedy. Williams was due to perform with the band but dropped out due to his wife giving birth at around the same time and thus the group performed as a four-piece. In November 2012, Take That reunited as a five-piece for the last time to perform "Never Forget" at the Music Industry Trust Awards. In 2013, Donald became a judge on the German version of the television dancing show Got to Dance. 2014–2015: Line-up change and III In May 2013, Owen announced that Take That was to begin recording their seventh studio album in 2014, and on 14 January 2014, Donald and Barlow both tweeted that Take That had entered the studio to begin recording the album, although it was not initially clear if Williams was present at these recording sessions. On 28 April 2014, Williams announced on Twitter he was to become a father for a second time, and consequently suggested he would be unable to join Take That on their album and tour. Although welcome to return to the band at any time, Williams chose not to return for group's seventh and eighth studio albums and their accompanying tours, focusing instead on his solo commitments. He continued to write music with his colleagues and has performed with the group on several occasions since 2011's Progress tour and plans on returning at some point in the future. On 24 September 2014, it was announced that Jason Orange had left the band. He said: 'At a band meeting last week I confirmed to Mark, Gary and Howard that I do not wish to commit to recording and promoting a new album. 'At the end of The Progress Tour I began to question whether it might be the right time for me to not continue on with Take That,' he continued. 'There have been no fallings out, only a decision on my part that I no longer wish to do this,' he added. Barlow, Donald, and Owen issued a joint statement about Orange's decision which said: "This is a sad day for us. Jason leaving is a huge loss both professionally and even more so personally ... Jason's energy and belief in what this band could achieve has made it what it is today, and we'll forever be grateful for his enthusiasm, dedication and inspiration over the years." A day after the announcement, Robbie Williams took to Twitter to show support of Orange's decision. "Mr Orange. Until we ride again. Much love, Bro.", Williams tweeted. On 10 October 2014, Take That unveiled their first song as a three-piece and lead single from their upcoming album. Titled "These Days", it was released on 23 November 2014 and went to No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart, knocking Band Aid 30 off the top spot and becoming their 12th number one single. The album itself, called III, was released on 28 November 2014 and became the band's seventh No. 1 album. It was then followed by a sell-out arena tour entitled Take That Live. On 14 October 2015, the band announced their new single "Hey Boy", released on 16 October, which is the first single from the 2015 re-release of III. The 2015 edition of the album was released on 20 November. In December 2015, British media buzzed about the group embarking on a stint in Las Vegas, starting 2017. Reports indicated the group impressed U.S. promoters and would headline their own residency show. Many venues circulated, including The AXIS at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino, The Foundry at SLS Las Vegas and the Linq Theater at The LINQ Hotel & Casino. Local newspaper, the Las Vegas Sun writes that everything is still unconfirmed, despite Barlow confirming the rumour on Twitter. 2016–2017: Wonderland On 2 February 2016, in an interview with The Sun, Barlow revealed that Take That would release their eighth studio album later in the year. On 4 May 2016, English drum and bass duo Sigma announced their newest single would feature Take That. "Cry" received its first radio play on 20 May 2016 and was released on that date. On 21 October 2016, the band posted a teaser on their social media pages and website depicting the logo of the band flickering with the hashtag "#WONDERLAND". The following day, it was announced that their new album, titled Wonderland, was scheduled to be released on 24 March 2017. It was then followed by a UK and Ireland arena tour entitled Wonderland Live, that commenced on 5 May 2017 at the Genting Arena in Birmingham. On 17 February 2017, the lead single of Wonderland was released. Titled "Giants", it debuted at 13 in the UK charts, which became the band's 24th UK top 20 single. On 8 April 2017, ITV aired a specially commissioned hour-length television special titled An Evening with Take That, where the band performed some songs from the album, along with some old classics including "Never Forget", "Back for Good" and "Rule the World". The band also took part in a Q&A session with the audience members. On 27 April, it was announced on Twitter that "New Day" would be released as the next single from the album Wonderland. The band were seen recording the music video in a field in Luton the days leading up the opening night of the Wonderland Live tour. Due to the Manchester Arena bombing just days before they were due to perform at the venue, their Manchester and Liverpool dates were rescheduled or relocated. The band returned a month later to perform at the One Love Manchester benefit concert. On 16 September 2017, Barlow, Owen and Donald were set to perform a special one-off show in Jersey after a fan bid more than £1.2 million to win a performance from the band. This then turned in to a ticketed charity event where the money from tickets sold would go towards benefiting Children in Need. The auction was held on BBC Radio 2. On 11 November 2017, Take That began their foreign tour in Perth, Australia, the first time they have performed in the country in over twenty years. They also played in New Zealand, United Arab Emirates and Israel for the first time. Unlike the other tours, a DVD for Wonderland Live was not released. Instead, it was broadcast on Sky 1 on 23 December and in cinemas. 2018–2020: The 30th Anniversary, and Odyssey On 16 July 2018, while performing at first ever Hits Radio Live at the Manchester Arena, Barlow, Donald and Owen confirmed that they would be touring in 2019. The tour was a Greatest Hits tour and celebrated the 30th anniversary of the band. There was also a Greatest Hits album, Odyssey, which was released on 23 November 2018. The Greatest Hits album features existing songs from their back catalogue that have been re-imagined and 3 brand new songs. It also includes collaborations with Boyz II Men, Lulu, Sigma and Barry Gibb. Odyssey reached number one in the UK album chart and was certified as a platinum selling record. The following year, Odyssey Live, the recording of their tour, reached number 5, becoming the band's 13th top 5 album, with the DVD becoming the biggest live music sale of 2019. In May 2020, Barlow, Donald, and Owen reunited with Williams for a virtual performance from their respective homes, hosted by price comparison website comparethemarket.com, to raise money for the music charity Nordoff Robbins and Crew Nation. In other media In April 2006, EMI licensed the band's songs to be used in the musical Never Forget, a musical based on songs of the band from the 1990s. Take That posted and then later removed a statement on their website distancing themselves from it. Take That wrote and recorded the theme song "Rule the World" for the film Stardust directed by Matthew Vaughn, which was released in cinemas across the globe in October 2007. In 2007, their song "Back for Good" was used as part of the soundtrack for popular Korean drama The 1st Shop of Coffee Prince. Take That presented their own TV show Take That Come to Town, a variety show in which they performed some of their biggest hits. The show also featured comedy sketches with one of Peter Kay's alter egos Geraldine McQueen. It aired on 7 December 2008 on ITV1. Sony launched their first Take That video game, SingStar Take That in 2009 for the PlayStation 3. In November 2010, ITV aired Take That: Look Back, Don't Stare, a black-and-white documentary which focused on the band working together for the first time in 15 years. Through a series of interviews, the band look back at their achievements while also looking forward to what the future holds for them. On 18 November 2010, Williams and Barlow appeared together live on television for the first time on the Popstars program in Germany singing their hit "Shame". In 2011, Take That's song "Love Love" was used in the credits of the 2011 film X-Men: First Class and later, "When We Were Young" was chosen as the main theme for The Three Musketeers movie. In 2015, the song "Get Ready for It" from their album III, was chosen as the theme song for the film Kingsman: The Secret Service. In 2017, Take That launched The Band, a musical written by Tim Firth featuring the five winners of Let It Shine and some of Take That's biggest hits. Take That, including Robbie Williams, were billed as executive producers. The group's music is regularly featured in the Channel 4 show Derry Girls, notably in the third episode of the second series, when the lead characters sneak off to attend the 1993 Take That concert in Belfast; the episode features the music video for "Pray" and ends on footage of the band performing "Everything Changes". Artistry Early in their career, Take That were known for party anthems such as "Do What U Like" and more mature ballads such as "A Million Love Songs" and "Back for Good". Since reuniting in 2006, they have become more experimental: their post-2006 albums Beautiful World and The Circus have featured "stadium-filling pop-rock" while Progress largely leaned towards electropop. Having been dubbed the "comeback kings" by the media for their highly successful reunion, the group has won widespread praise for their seamless transformation from teen idols to "man band" without overly relying on nostalgia, instead showcasing a more mature image and sound and reinventing themselves while maintaining their artistic integrity. Jude Rogers of The Guardian commented on Take That's post-reunion success, in light of a string of reunions by the group's disbanded counterparts from the 1990s: "Only Take That are penetrating pop's wider consciousness by becoming a man-band rather than a boy-band, singing mature, proper pop songs that cross the generations." Take That have garnered critical acclaim and popularity as consummate live performers and for their musical output. Their domestic concert tours have been described as "some of the most flamboyant, imaginative and extravagant pop tours around". Aside from covers, all of their material is composed by the members themselves; Barlow was initially the principal songwriter who received sole credit but the other members have since taken a more active role in the composition and production process, including playing instruments for the backing track. Band members Current members Gary Barlow (1990–1996, 2005–present) Howard Donald (1990–1996, 2005–present) Mark Owen (1990–1996, 2005–present) Former members Robbie Williams (1990–1995, 2010–2012) Jason Orange (1990–1996, 2005–2014) Timeline Awards and nominations |- | 2016 | Take That | Silver Clef Award for Best Live Act | |- | style="text-align:center;"|2015 | "These Days" | UK Music Video Awards for Best Art Direction | |- | rowspan="6" style="text-align:center;"|2012 | "Pray" |The Guardian Music Award for Best Number 1 Single | |- | Take That |Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music | |- | "Back for Good" |The Official Charts Company UK Recognition award for United Kingdom's Favourite Number One Single | |- | "The Flood" |Ivor Novello Award for PRS Most Performed Work | |- | Take That |Virgin Media Music Awards for Best Live Act | |- | "Kidz" |Virgin Media Music Awards for Best Music Video | |- | rowspan="10" style="text-align:center;"|2011 |- | Progress Live |Audio Pro International Awards for Best Live Sound Event | |- | Progress Live |Audio Pro International Awards Grand Prix Award | |- | Take That |Phonographic Performance Limited Award for most played UK artist | |- | "Kidz" |Spex German Entertainment for Best Music Video | |- | The Circus Live Tour | Greatest Event ever at Wembley Stadium | |- | Take That |ECHO Award for Best International Group | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Group | |- | Progress | BRIT Award for MasterCard Album of the Year | |- | Take That |Virgin Media for Best Group | |- | rowspan="6" style="text-align:center;"|2010 |- | "Up All Night" | UK Music Video Awards for Best Art Direction | |- | "The Flood" |iTunes Award for Best Single | |- | Progress | iTunes Award for Best Album | |- | Take That |Q Award Hall of Fame | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best Live Performance of the past 30 Years | |- | rowspan="5" style="text-align:center;"|2009 | Take That |GQ Men of the Year Awards for Best Band | |- | Take That |Q Award for Best Live Act | |- | "Greatest Day" |Q Award for Best Single | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Group | |- | Take That | Silver Clef Award | |- | rowspan="7" style="text-align:center;"|2008 | "Shine" |Ivor Novello Award for PRS Most Performed Work | |- | "Rule the World" |Virgin for Best Single | |- | Take That |Sony Ericsson Tour of the Year Award for Take That Arena Tour | |- | "Shine" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Live Act | |- | Beautiful World |BRIT Award for Best British Album | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Group | |- | style="text-align:center;"|2007 | "Patience" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | style="text-align:center;"|2006 | Take That |Q Idol Award | |- | rowspan="3" style="text-align:center;"|1996 | "Back for Good" |Billboard International Hit of the Year | |- | "Never Forget" |Ivor Novello Award for Most Performed Song | |- | "Back for Good" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | rowspan="3" style="text-align:center;"|1995 | "Back for Good" |Ivor Novello Award for the Song of the Year | |- | Take That |MTV Europe Music Awards for Best Live Act | |- | Take That | Silver Clef Award | |- | rowspan="6" style="text-align:center;"|1994 | "Babe" |MTV Video Music Award for International Viewer's Choice Award for MTV Europe | |- | Everything Changes |Mercury Prize for Best Album | |- | "Pray" |Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song | |- | "Pray" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | "Pray" |BRIT Award for Best British Video | |- | Take That |MTV Europe Music Awards for Best Group | |- | rowspan="4" style="text-align:center;"|1993 | "Could It Be Magic" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | "A Million Love Songs" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | "It Only Takes a Minute" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | Take That | Silver Clef Award for Best Newcomer | |} Discography Take That & Party (1992) Everything Changes (1993) Nobody Else (1995) Beautiful World (2006) The Circus (2008) Progress (2010) III (2014) Wonderland (2017) Tours Party Tour (1992–93) Everything Changes Tour (1993–94) Pops Tour (1994–95) Nobody Else Tour (1995) The Ultimate Tour (2006) Beautiful World Tour 2007 (2007) Take That Present: The Circus Live (2009) Progress Live (2011) Take That Live (2015) Wonderland Live (2017) Greatest Hits Live (2019) See also List of best-selling boy bands References External links Chinese Fansite 1990 establishments in England 1996 disestablishments in England 2005 establishments in England Brit Award winners Dance-pop groups Echo (music award) winners English boy bands English dance music groups Interscope Records artists Ivor Novello Award winners MTV Europe Music Award winners Musical groups disestablished in 1996 Musical groups established in 1990 Musical groups from Cheshire Musical groups from Manchester Musical groups reestablished in 2005 Polydor Records artists Teen pop groups Universal Music Group artists Vocal quartets Vocal quintets Vocal trios
true
[ "Matthias Kirste (born near Berlin), is a German cinematographer.\n\nInternationally, Kirste is mainly known for his work on the feature-films by Alexander Tuschinski. They met when they both studied at Hochschule der Medien. Since then, they often collaborated, and both share the cinematographer-credit, either of them taking turns at operating the camera depending on the scene.\n\nLife \n\nKirste got his first film camera when he was 15 years old and did his first photographic and filmic projects as a teenager. After serving in a PsyOps unit of the German military for a number of years, he started working as a freelance photographer and cinematographer.\n\nNotable works \n2010: Menschenliebe\n2011: Mutant Calculator (short film)\n2012: Hollow Date (short film)\n2014: Break-Up\n2016: Timeless\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n Making-Of documentary about \"Break-Up\". (Video)\n \n\nLiving people\nGerman cinematographers\nFilm people from Berlin\nYear of birth missing (living people)", "Fast break is an offensive strategy in basketball and handball. In a fast break, a team attempts to move the ball up court and into scoring position as quickly as possible, so that the defense is outnumbered and does not have time to set up. The various styles of the fast break–derivative of the original created by Frank Keaney–are seen as the best method of providing action and quick scores. A fast break may result from cherry picking.\n\nDescription\nIn a typical fast-break situation, the defending team obtains the ball and passes it to the fastest player, who sets up the fast break. That player (usually the smaller point guard, in the case of basketball) then speed-dribbles the ball up the court with several players trailing on the wings. He then either passes it to another player for quick scoring or takes the shot himself. If contact is made between him and a defender from behind while on a fast break, an unsportsmanlike foul is called. Recognition, speed, ball-handling skills, and decision making are critical to the success of a fast break.\n\nIn basketball, fast breaks are often the result of good defensive play such as a steal, obtaining the ball off a block, or a missed shot by the opposing team and a rebound, where the defending team takes possession of the ball and the other team has not adjusted.\n\nA fast break can sometimes lead to an alley-oop if there are more offensive players than defenders.\n\nIn basketball, if the fast break did not lead to a basket and an offensive rebound is obtained and put back quickly, this is called a secondary break.\n\nFly fast break\n\nA fly fast break (also known as a one out fast break, the technical term for the play) is a basketball move in which after a shot is attempted, the player who is guarding the shooter does not box out or rebound but instead runs down the court looking for a pass from a rebounding teammate for a quick score.\n\nHow to play the Fly fast break\nThe coach designates a certain guard or guards to carry out the Fly fast break. This is often the guard that defends the opponents' shooting guard. When the designated opposing guard makes an attempted shot. The defending guard (referred to as 'Fly') will contest the shot but then sprints down the court to the other team's key. When the defending team obtains the rebound or has to inbound the ball (after a made basket), they throw the ball into the other team's key, knowing that there is a 'Fly' waiting to catch the ball and score.\n\nStrengths\n Defeats the zone - the other team doesn't have time to set up their zone defense.\n Removes a rebounder - because the shooter has to defend against the Fly, they are removed from rebounding.\n Upsets the shooter - because the shooter has to worry about defense, they are less focused on their shooting.\n\nWeaknesses\n Rebounding weakness - The Fly's team is left with a 4 against 5 rebounding ratio, if the shooter stays to rebound.\n Inbounding - If a shooter scores, the inbounding set up takes longer and the distance to throw the ball is harder.\n Exhausting - The Fly has to sprint on offense, but has to hustle back on defense if the Fly fast break fails.\n\nBreaking Down the Fly fast break\nBreaking down the Fly fast break can be done in two ways:\n Have a confident shooter who can score and force the defending team to inbound while the shooter hustles back to defend against the Fly.\n Use non-shooting plays, where the #4 & #5 forwards do the scoring.\n\nNotes\nThe 'Fly' is a term in fly fishing where the actions of this type of fishing are similar to the actions of the basketball player in Fly fast break.\n\nReferences\n\nhttps://www.uri.edu/anniversary/stories/frank-keaney-and-the-old-gazazza/\n\nFurther reading\n\nBasketball terminology\nBasketball strategy\nHandball terminology" ]
[ "Take That", "1995-1996: Robbie Williams's first departure, break-up and Greatest Hits", "Why did Williams leave?", "Robbie Williams's drug abuse had escalated to a near drug overdose", "What was the result of this?", "I don't know.", "When did they break up?", "On 13 February 1996, Take That formally announced that they were disbanding." ]
C_93f5c84a4b2e459c97d351f6a21ea1d5_0
When did they release their greatest hits?
4
When did Take That release their greatest hits?
Take That
Robbie Williams's drug abuse had escalated to a near drug overdose the night before the group was scheduled to perform at the MTV Europe Music Awards in 1994. In June 1995, Williams was photographed by the press partying with Oasis at the Glastonbury Festival. During this month the band offered him an ultimatum; he was to adhere to the band's responsibilities or leave before their scheduled world tour. Williams chose the latter. Orange pressured Williams to quit because of Williams's behavior. Williams claimed he was bored with Barlow's leadership and jealous of Barlow. Despite the loss of Williams, Take That continued to promote Nobody Else as a four-piece, scoring a further hit single with Donald's "Never Forget". They subsequently went to America and completed the Nobody Else Tour in October 1995. Following the tour, the band began to plan for their next album; however, when they spent Christmas together, they mutually agreed it was time to part ways. On 13 February 1996, Take That formally announced that they were disbanding. This was followed by the Greatest Hits compilation in 1996, which contained a new recording, a cover of the Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love". The single went on to become what was to be the band's final UK number one until their 2006 comeback a decade later. Take That gave what was thought to be their final performance in April 1996 at Amsterdam. Following the band's announcement, millions of their fans were distraught around the world and in the UK alone, teenage girls threatened suicide and were seen lining streets in tears, to the point that telephone hotlines were set up by the government to deal with counselling them. After the band broke up, highly respected music figures such as Elton John noted that Take That were different from other boy bands before and after them, in that they wrote their own material through Gary Barlow, the only boy band member who won an Ivor Novello award during his time in a boy band (although George Michael won it while in Wham!). Take That had also left a legacy of being immaculate performers with a very high work ethic, causing them to be voted in as the greatest boy band of all time. CANNOTANSWER
This was followed by the Greatest Hits compilation in 1996,
Take That are an English pop group formed in Manchester in 1990. The group currently consists of Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen. The original line-up also featured Jason Orange and Robbie Williams. Barlow is the group's lead singer and primary songwriter, with Owen and Williams initially providing backing vocals and Donald and Orange serving primarily as dancers. The group have had 28 top 40 singles and 17 top 5 singles on the UK Singles Chart, 12 of which have reached number one, including "Back for Good", "Never Forget", "Patience" and "Greatest Day". They have also had eight number one albums on the UK Albums Chart. Internationally, the band have had 56 number one singles and 39 number one albums. They have received eight Brit Awards—winning for Best British Group and Best British Live Act. In 2012 they received an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. According to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), Take That has been certified for 14 million albums and 11.4 million singles in the UK. Williams left the band in 1995 while the four remaining members completed their world tour and released a final single before splitting up in 1996. After filming a 2005 Take That: For the Record about the group and releasing a new greatest hits album, a four-piece Take That without Williams officially announced a 2006 reunion tour around the UK, entitled The Ultimate Tour. On 9 May 2006, it was announced that the group were set to record new material together once again; their fourth studio album, Beautiful World, was released in 2006 and was followed up with The Circus, in 2008. The group achieved new success as a four-piece, scoring a string of chart hits across the UK and Europe while selling over 45 million records worldwide. Williams rejoined Take That in 2010 for the band's sixth studio album, Progress. Released on 15 November of that year, it was the first album of new material to feature Take That's original line-up since their 1995 album, Nobody Else. It became the fastest-selling album of the 21st century and the second fastest-selling album in British history. In 2014, the band recorded a seventh studio album, this time as a trio without Williams and Orange. The album, titled III, was released in November 2014 and became the band's seventh number one. It was preceded by the single "These Days", which became the band's 12th number one single in the UK. In 2011, Take That set the new record for the fastest-selling tour of all time in the UK with Progress Live, beating the previous record set by their Circus Live Tour in 2009. At the 2011 Brit Awards they won Best British Group. In 2012, Forbes named them the fifth highest-earning music stars in the world. The group performed at the London 2012 Olympic Games closing ceremony, playing "Rule the World" while the Olympic Flame was extinguished. In the same year, the Official Charts Company revealed the biggest-selling singles artists in British music chart history with Take That currently placed at 15th overall, making them the most successful boy band in UK chart history. Four of their albums are listed in the best-selling albums of the millennium, with three of them among the 60 best-selling albums in UK chart history. History 1989–1990: Formation In 1989, Manchester-based Nigel Martin-Smith sought to create a British male vocal singing group modelled on New Kids on the Block. Martin-Smith's vision, however, was a teen-orientated group that would appeal to more than one demographic segment of the music industry. Martin-Smith was then introduced to young singer-songwriter Gary Barlow, who had been performing in clubs since the age of 15. Impressed with Barlow's catalogue of self-written material, Martin-Smith decided to build his new-look boy band around Barlow's musical abilities. A campaign to audition young men with abilities in dancing and singing followed and took place in Manchester and other surrounding cities in 1990. At 22, Howard Donald was one of the oldest to audition, but he was chosen after he got time off work as a vehicle painter to continue the process. Prior to auditioning, Jason Orange had appeared as a breakdancer on the popular television programme The Hit Man and Her. Martin-Smith also selected 18-year-old bank employee Mark Owen and finally 16-year-old Robbie Williams to round out the group, which initially went by the name Kick It. 1990–1992: Take That & Party Take That's first TV appearance was on The Hit Man and Her in 1990, where they performed Barlow's self-written, unreleased song, "My Kind of Girl". They later appeared a second time to perform "Waiting Around", which would become the B-side for the first single, "Do What U Like". "Promises" and "Once You've Tasted Love" were also released as singles but were minor hits in the UK. Take That initially worked the same territory as their American counterparts, singing new jack R&B, urban soul, and mainstream pop. However, they worked their way toward Hi-NRG dance music, while also pursuing an adult contemporary ballad direction. As they aimed to break into the mainstream music industry, they worked a number of small clubs, schools, and events across the country building up a fanbase as they travelled to gigs constantly for months. Take That's breakthrough single was a cover of the 1975 Tavares hit "It Only Takes a Minute", which peaked at number seven on the UK Singles Chart in June 1992. This success was followed by "I Found Heaven", then by the first Barlow ballad "A Million Love Songs", which also reached number seven in October. Their cover of the Barry Manilow hit "Could It Be Magic" gave them their first big success, peaking at number three in the UK in the first chart of 1993. Their first album, Take That & Party, was released in 1992, and included all the hit singles to date. 1993–1995: Everything Changes, Nobody Else and superstardom 1993 saw the release of Everything Changes, based on Barlow's original material. It peaked at number one in the UK and spawned six singles, with four being consecutive UK number one singles – their first number one "Pray", "Relight My Fire", "Babe" and the title track "Everything Changes". The lead single "Why Can't I Wake Up with You" had narrowly missed the top spot in the UK peaking at number two and the sixth and final single "Love Ain't Here Anymore" taken from the album reached number three on the UK charts. Everything Changes saw the band gain international success with the album being nominated for the 1994 Mercury Prize, but it failed to crack the U.S. market, where an exclusive remix of "Love Ain't Here Anymore" (U.S. version) gained little success. By 1994, Take That had become radio and television stars across Europe and Asia, but it was not until 1995 that they did their first World Tour. It was during the years 1993–95 that the band fronted scores of magazine covers ranging from Smash Hits to GQ, becoming mass merchandised on all sorts of paraphernalia ranging from picture books, to posters, stickers, their own dolls, jewellery, caps, T-shirts, toothbrushes and even had their own annuals released. The band had also developed a large female teenage fanbase at the time. During this time, they performed at numerous music awards shows and chart shows such as the BRIT Awards and Top of the Pops, also winning the Best Live Act award in 1995 at the MTV Europe Music Awards, having been renowned for their breakdance routines, high energy and creative tour productions. In 1995, Take That released their third studio album Nobody Else, again based on Barlow's own material which reached number 1 in the UK and across Europe, capturing new audiences along the way, with Take That also able to make inroads in the adult audience in Britain through Barlow's melodic, sensitive ballads. For nearly five years, Take That's popularity was unsurpassed in Britain. The release of the first single from the album, "Sure", achieved yet another number one in the UK charts. It was not until their second release from that album, however, that they would experience what would become their biggest hit single, "Back for Good", which reached number one in many countries including the UK, Germany, Australia, and Norway. It was also their only US hit, where it reached number seven. The song was initially unveiled for the first time via live performance while at the 1995 BRIT Awards, and based on the reception of that performance, the record pre-sold more records than expected and forced the record label to bring the release date forward by an unprecedented six weeks. The album was also noted for its cover, which was a parody of the famed cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover sleeve. 1995–1996: Break-up and Greatest Hits Robbie Williams's drug abuse had escalated to a near drug overdose the night before the group was scheduled to perform at the MTV Europe Music Awards in 1994. In June 1995, Williams was photographed by the press partying with Oasis at the Glastonbury Festival. The following month, the band offered him an ultimatum; he was to adhere to the band's responsibilities or leave before their scheduled world tour. Williams chose the latter. Williams claimed he was bored with Barlow's leadership and jealous of Barlow. Despite the loss of Williams, Take That continued to promote Nobody Else as a four-piece, scoring a further hit single with "Never Forget" with Donald on lead vocal. They subsequently went to America and completed the Nobody Else Tour in October 1995. Following the tour, the band began to plan for their next album; however, when they spent Christmas together, they mutually agreed it was time to part ways. On 13 February 1996, Take That formally announced that they were disbanding. This was followed by the Greatest Hits compilation in 1996, which contained a new recording, a cover of the Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love". The single went on to become what was to be the band's final UK number one until their 2006 comeback a decade later. Take That gave what was thought to be their final performance in April 1996 at Amsterdam. Following the band's announcement, millions of their fans were distraught around the world and in the UK alone, teenage girls threatened suicide and were seen lining streets in tears, to the point that telephone hotlines were set up by the government to deal with counselling them. After the band broke up, highly respected music figures such as Elton John noted that Take That were different from other boy bands before and after them, in that they wrote their own material through Gary Barlow. Barlow is one of only a small number of people who have won an Ivor Novello award during their time in a boy band, with George Michael whilst in Wham! and Tony Mortimer whilst in East 17 being two others who have achieved this feat. Take That had also left a legacy of being immaculate performers with a very high work ethic, causing them to be voted in as the greatest boy band of all time. 2005–2006: Reunion as a quartet and Never Forget – The Ultimate Collection On 14 November 2005, Never Forget – The Ultimate Collection, a new compilation of their hit singles including a new previously unreleased song, also achieved great success and peaked at number 2 on UK charts, selling over 2.1 million copies in the UK alone. The new song "Today I've Lost You" (recorded in September 2005) was originally written by Barlow as the follow up to "Back for Good" but was never recorded. On 16 November 2005, the group got back together for the ITV documentary Take That: For the Record, in which they aired their views over their fame, success, the split and what the post-Williams line-up had done since. On 25 November 2005, there was an official press conference by the band announcing that the post-Robbie Williams line-up was going to tour in 2006. The tour, entitled The Ultimate Tour, ran from April to June 2006. The tour featured a guest appearance by British soul singer Beverley Knight, who replaced Lulu's vocals on the song "Relight My Fire"; although Lulu did appear during the stadium shows on "Relight My Fire" and "Never Forget". The American female ensemble Pussycat Dolls supported the group at their Dublin concert, and the Sugababes supported the group on the final five dates of the stadium leg. In a seven-year study analysing over one billion online searches via Google conducted by AccuraCast, a leading digital search agency, their comeback was ranked at number one in the UK. 2006–2007: Beautiful World On 9 May 2006, Take That returned to the recorded music scene after more than ten years of absence, signing with Polydor Records. The band's comeback album, Beautiful World, entered the UK Albums Chart at no. 1 and, as of June 2009, had sold over 2.8 million copies in the UK. It is the 35th best selling album in UK music history. On Beautiful World, all four members of the band had the opportunity to sing lead vocals and contribute in the songwriting. Unlike the band's earlier works, where the majority of their material was written by Barlow who received sole credit, all four band members are credited as co-writers, along with John Shanks. The comeback single, "Patience", was released on 20 November 2006, with a special event launching it on 5 November. On 26 November "Patience" hit number 1 in the UK in its second week of chart entry, making it the group's ninth No. 1, and staying there for 4 weeks. Take That also accompanied eventual winner Leona Lewis on a live version of "A Million Love Songs" during the final of The X Factor on 16 December 2006. The week after Beautiful World was released, it was announced that Take That had become the first artists ever to top the UK official single and album charts along with the download single, download album and DVD charts in the same week, as well as topping the radio charts. The video for the number 1 hit single "Shine", the follow-up to "Patience", premiered on 25 January 2007 on Channel 4, ahead of its release on 26 February 2007. The band's success continued on 14 February 2007 when Take That performed live at the BRIT Awards ceremony at Earl's Court. Their single "Patience" won the Best British Single category. The third single chosen from Beautiful World was "I'd Wait For Life", released on 18 June 2007 in the UK. The single reached 17 in the UK Singles Chart. This may have been due to lack of promotion, as the band decided to take a pre-tour break rather than do any promotion for the single. The single "Rule the World", included on the deluxe version of Beautiful World, was recorded for the soundtrack of the film Stardust (2007). It reached number two in the UK and went on to become the group's second best selling single, shifting over 1.2 million units in the UK. Beautiful World was the fourth biggest-selling album of 2007. It was announced at the start of 2007 that Take That signed a record deal with American label Interscope, and would also release their album in Canada. Starting on 11 October 2007, Take That began their Beautiful World Tour 2007 in Belfast. The tour included 49 shows throughout Europe and the UK and ended in Manchester on 23 December 2007. The band received four nominations at the 2008 BRIT Awards. Nominated for Best British Group, Best British Single ("Shine"), Best British Album (Beautiful World) and Best Live Act, they took home the Best Live Act and the Best British Single awards. According to a 2007 MSN UK internet poll, Take That were voted as the "comeback kings" of the year. 2008–2009: The Circus "Greatest Day", the first single from the album The Circus, made its radio premiere on 13 October 2008 and it was released on 24 November. It debuted at number 1 on the UK Singles Chart on 30 November 2008. An album launch party for The Circus was held in Paris on 2 December. On its first day of release The Circus sold 133,000 copies, and after four days on sale it sold 306,000 copies (going platinum) making The Circus the fastest selling album of the year. The album reached number 1 on the UK Albums Chart on 7 December 2008 with total first-week sales of 432,490, the third highest opening sales week in UK history. On 28 October 2008, on the Radio 1 Chris Moyles show, it was announced that Take That would be touring again in June/July 2009, covering the UK and Ireland. Tickets for the Take That Present: The Circus Live tour went on sale on 31 October. The promoters, SJM, have said that the band's tour is "the fastest selling in UK history". On 22 May 2008, Barlow and Donald attended the 2008 Ivor Novello Awards where Take That won the award for Most Performed Work with their single "Shine". Take That won the Sony Ericsson Tour of the Year award at the Vodafone music awards on 18 September 2008. They were unable to attend as they were in LA finishing off The Circus. They did send a video link message, which was shown at the awards. On 22 November 2008, Take That appeared on week 7 of the talent show The X Factor where the finalists performed some of their greatest hits and Owen and Barlow made a guest appearance to personally coach the contestants. The band also performed on Children in Need 2008, singing their new single, "Greatest Day", before donating £250,000 to the charity from their Marks and Spencer fee. The band were also voted the Greatest Boy Band of All Time, reflecting their ongoing marketability and success in the pop arena, even after two decades. At the 2009 Brit Awards they were nominated for Best British Group and they performed "Greatest Day" at the ceremony. "Up All Night", the second single from The Circus, was released on 2 March 2009, and peaked at number 14 on the UK Singles Chart, despite heavy airplay. In Germany and Australia, "The Garden" was released as the second single instead. On 7 May 2009, Take That's official website confirmed that the third single from The Circus would be "Said It All" which was released on 15 June 2009, peaking at number 9 on the UK Singles chart. The video premiered on GMTV on 8 May 2009. It features all four band members dressed up as vintage circus clowns, which tied in with their forthcoming Take That Present: The Circus Live tour. Take That started their Circus Live tour at the Stadium of Light on 5 June 2009 in Sunderland and ended at the Wembley Stadium in London on 5 July 2009, which over 80,000 people attended. This tour quickly became the fastest-selling of all time, breaking all records by selling all of their 650,000 tickets in less than four and a half hours. In November 2009 Take That released the official DVD of their Circus tour, which became the fastest-selling music DVD of all time in the UK on its first day of release and stayed in the top 10 of the videos chart for over a year. This overtook the previous record sales holder, which was Take That's Beautiful World Live tour and stayed at the number 1 spot for 8 weeks. The following week Take That released their first live album, The Greatest Day – Take That Present: The Circus Live, which sold 98,000 copies on its first day of release and was certified Platinum in July 2013. "Hold up a Light" was released as the fifth and final single from The Circus to radio stations and as a digital download to promote the release of the live album. The live album also featured a stripped down session recorded live at the famous Abbey Road Studios in London. It featured the members singing the setlist from the preceding tour, albeit in a studio setting. 2010–2011: Williams' return and Progress On 7 June 2010, the news broke of a single called "Shame", which had been written by Barlow and Williams and would feature the vocals of both artists. This was the first time the pair had worked together since 1995 and would appear on the second greatest hits collection of Williams. "Heart and I", another track from the same album, was also co-written by Williams and Barlow. The single "Shame" peaked at number 2 on the UK Singles Chart while also achieving success throughout Europe, charting in over 19 countries. After working with the band on new material in Los Angeles, on 15 July 2010 Robbie Williams announced he was returning to Take That. After months of working together, assembling new songs for a new album and even debating a band-name change to "The English", a joint statement between Williams and the group read, "The rumours are true ... Take That: the original lineup, have written and recorded a new album for release later this year." The statement went on to say, "Following months of speculation Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Jason Orange, Mark Owen, and Robbie Williams confirmed they have been recording a new studio album as a five-piece, which they will release in November." The lead single from Take That's album Progress was announced as "The Flood" and was released 7 November as a digital download, and on 8 November as a physical copy, with the album released a week later on 15 November. The single peaked at number 2 in the UK Singles Charts and to date has sold over 500,000 copies in the UK alone. The single also achieved success across Europe, charting inside the top 10 in ten countries while also charting in another nine countries whilst also being nominated for an Ivor Novello Award for best work. On 26 October the band announced that they would be embarking on a huge UK stadium tour entitled Progress Live, starting in Sunderland on 27 May, and finishing with a record-breaking 8 nights at London's Wembley Stadium in July 2011. It was also announced that Williams would perform hit singles from his solo career during the tour. The band then played at some of the biggest venues across Europe for the second leg of the tour. The phenomenal demand for tickets across the country led to the web sites of all the major UK ticket suppliers either crashing or considerably slowing for hours on end. The demand and sheer volume of fans also created problems for the UK telephone network. Take That's Progress Live also broke all records for ticket sales selling over 1.1 million tickets in one day, smashing the previous box office record set by Take That's Circus tour in 2008. On the first day of release Progress became the fastest selling album of the century, with 235,000 copies sold in just one day. The album reached number 1 in the UK, selling around 520,000 copies in its first week, becoming the second fastest-selling album in history. After the release of Progress it was announced that Take That have become Amazon UK's top-selling music artist of all time. The album retained the number one spot for six consecutive weeks in the UK since its release, selling 2.8 million copies in the UK alone and becoming the best selling album of 2010 Progress also achieved success across Europe where it debuted at number one in Ireland, Greece, Germany and Denmark. and the European Top 100 Albums chart. It also debuted inside the top 10 of the charts in Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. "Kidz" was announced as the second single from Progress, it was released 21 February 2011 and charted well across Europe. The band performed the song live at the 2011 Brit Awards hosted at The O2 Arena, where they won a Brit for Best British Group and were nominated for Best British Album. Their performance of "Kidz", praised by critics, involved a highly choreographed routine featuring dancers dressed in police-styled riot gear bearing the Take That symbol on the uniform and shields. On 19 May 2011, Take That announced a new EP entitled Progressed, which contained eight tracks written by the band since they had reunited as a five-piece. It was packaged alongside the album Progress and returned the band to number 1 in the UK Album Chart the week after it was released on 13 June 2011. Take That announced that the Progress Live tour would be released worldwide as their second live album to date and would also be released on home media formats across the UK and Europe on 21 November 2011. The DVD debuted at number 1 on the UK Music Video top 40 in its first week on release and sold over 200,000 copies in two weeks of release in the UK alone. Take That's efforts were recognised further when they were awarded Virgin Media's Best Live Act of 2012. On 4 October, it was reported that Take That were to take a break after the completion of the Progress tour, with Barlow continuing his role as a judge on The X Factor and Williams recording new solo material. Take That were presented with an Ivor Novello Award for their Outstanding Contribution to British Music in May 2012. In August 2012, Take That performed at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics, despite Barlow announcing that his daughter had been stillborn the previous week. The performance earned him praise for appearing live so soon after the tragedy. Williams was due to perform with the band but dropped out due to his wife giving birth at around the same time and thus the group performed as a four-piece. In November 2012, Take That reunited as a five-piece for the last time to perform "Never Forget" at the Music Industry Trust Awards. In 2013, Donald became a judge on the German version of the television dancing show Got to Dance. 2014–2015: Line-up change and III In May 2013, Owen announced that Take That was to begin recording their seventh studio album in 2014, and on 14 January 2014, Donald and Barlow both tweeted that Take That had entered the studio to begin recording the album, although it was not initially clear if Williams was present at these recording sessions. On 28 April 2014, Williams announced on Twitter he was to become a father for a second time, and consequently suggested he would be unable to join Take That on their album and tour. Although welcome to return to the band at any time, Williams chose not to return for group's seventh and eighth studio albums and their accompanying tours, focusing instead on his solo commitments. He continued to write music with his colleagues and has performed with the group on several occasions since 2011's Progress tour and plans on returning at some point in the future. On 24 September 2014, it was announced that Jason Orange had left the band. He said: 'At a band meeting last week I confirmed to Mark, Gary and Howard that I do not wish to commit to recording and promoting a new album. 'At the end of The Progress Tour I began to question whether it might be the right time for me to not continue on with Take That,' he continued. 'There have been no fallings out, only a decision on my part that I no longer wish to do this,' he added. Barlow, Donald, and Owen issued a joint statement about Orange's decision which said: "This is a sad day for us. Jason leaving is a huge loss both professionally and even more so personally ... Jason's energy and belief in what this band could achieve has made it what it is today, and we'll forever be grateful for his enthusiasm, dedication and inspiration over the years." A day after the announcement, Robbie Williams took to Twitter to show support of Orange's decision. "Mr Orange. Until we ride again. Much love, Bro.", Williams tweeted. On 10 October 2014, Take That unveiled their first song as a three-piece and lead single from their upcoming album. Titled "These Days", it was released on 23 November 2014 and went to No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart, knocking Band Aid 30 off the top spot and becoming their 12th number one single. The album itself, called III, was released on 28 November 2014 and became the band's seventh No. 1 album. It was then followed by a sell-out arena tour entitled Take That Live. On 14 October 2015, the band announced their new single "Hey Boy", released on 16 October, which is the first single from the 2015 re-release of III. The 2015 edition of the album was released on 20 November. In December 2015, British media buzzed about the group embarking on a stint in Las Vegas, starting 2017. Reports indicated the group impressed U.S. promoters and would headline their own residency show. Many venues circulated, including The AXIS at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino, The Foundry at SLS Las Vegas and the Linq Theater at The LINQ Hotel & Casino. Local newspaper, the Las Vegas Sun writes that everything is still unconfirmed, despite Barlow confirming the rumour on Twitter. 2016–2017: Wonderland On 2 February 2016, in an interview with The Sun, Barlow revealed that Take That would release their eighth studio album later in the year. On 4 May 2016, English drum and bass duo Sigma announced their newest single would feature Take That. "Cry" received its first radio play on 20 May 2016 and was released on that date. On 21 October 2016, the band posted a teaser on their social media pages and website depicting the logo of the band flickering with the hashtag "#WONDERLAND". The following day, it was announced that their new album, titled Wonderland, was scheduled to be released on 24 March 2017. It was then followed by a UK and Ireland arena tour entitled Wonderland Live, that commenced on 5 May 2017 at the Genting Arena in Birmingham. On 17 February 2017, the lead single of Wonderland was released. Titled "Giants", it debuted at 13 in the UK charts, which became the band's 24th UK top 20 single. On 8 April 2017, ITV aired a specially commissioned hour-length television special titled An Evening with Take That, where the band performed some songs from the album, along with some old classics including "Never Forget", "Back for Good" and "Rule the World". The band also took part in a Q&A session with the audience members. On 27 April, it was announced on Twitter that "New Day" would be released as the next single from the album Wonderland. The band were seen recording the music video in a field in Luton the days leading up the opening night of the Wonderland Live tour. Due to the Manchester Arena bombing just days before they were due to perform at the venue, their Manchester and Liverpool dates were rescheduled or relocated. The band returned a month later to perform at the One Love Manchester benefit concert. On 16 September 2017, Barlow, Owen and Donald were set to perform a special one-off show in Jersey after a fan bid more than £1.2 million to win a performance from the band. This then turned in to a ticketed charity event where the money from tickets sold would go towards benefiting Children in Need. The auction was held on BBC Radio 2. On 11 November 2017, Take That began their foreign tour in Perth, Australia, the first time they have performed in the country in over twenty years. They also played in New Zealand, United Arab Emirates and Israel for the first time. Unlike the other tours, a DVD for Wonderland Live was not released. Instead, it was broadcast on Sky 1 on 23 December and in cinemas. 2018–2020: The 30th Anniversary, and Odyssey On 16 July 2018, while performing at first ever Hits Radio Live at the Manchester Arena, Barlow, Donald and Owen confirmed that they would be touring in 2019. The tour was a Greatest Hits tour and celebrated the 30th anniversary of the band. There was also a Greatest Hits album, Odyssey, which was released on 23 November 2018. The Greatest Hits album features existing songs from their back catalogue that have been re-imagined and 3 brand new songs. It also includes collaborations with Boyz II Men, Lulu, Sigma and Barry Gibb. Odyssey reached number one in the UK album chart and was certified as a platinum selling record. The following year, Odyssey Live, the recording of their tour, reached number 5, becoming the band's 13th top 5 album, with the DVD becoming the biggest live music sale of 2019. In May 2020, Barlow, Donald, and Owen reunited with Williams for a virtual performance from their respective homes, hosted by price comparison website comparethemarket.com, to raise money for the music charity Nordoff Robbins and Crew Nation. In other media In April 2006, EMI licensed the band's songs to be used in the musical Never Forget, a musical based on songs of the band from the 1990s. Take That posted and then later removed a statement on their website distancing themselves from it. Take That wrote and recorded the theme song "Rule the World" for the film Stardust directed by Matthew Vaughn, which was released in cinemas across the globe in October 2007. In 2007, their song "Back for Good" was used as part of the soundtrack for popular Korean drama The 1st Shop of Coffee Prince. Take That presented their own TV show Take That Come to Town, a variety show in which they performed some of their biggest hits. The show also featured comedy sketches with one of Peter Kay's alter egos Geraldine McQueen. It aired on 7 December 2008 on ITV1. Sony launched their first Take That video game, SingStar Take That in 2009 for the PlayStation 3. In November 2010, ITV aired Take That: Look Back, Don't Stare, a black-and-white documentary which focused on the band working together for the first time in 15 years. Through a series of interviews, the band look back at their achievements while also looking forward to what the future holds for them. On 18 November 2010, Williams and Barlow appeared together live on television for the first time on the Popstars program in Germany singing their hit "Shame". In 2011, Take That's song "Love Love" was used in the credits of the 2011 film X-Men: First Class and later, "When We Were Young" was chosen as the main theme for The Three Musketeers movie. In 2015, the song "Get Ready for It" from their album III, was chosen as the theme song for the film Kingsman: The Secret Service. In 2017, Take That launched The Band, a musical written by Tim Firth featuring the five winners of Let It Shine and some of Take That's biggest hits. Take That, including Robbie Williams, were billed as executive producers. The group's music is regularly featured in the Channel 4 show Derry Girls, notably in the third episode of the second series, when the lead characters sneak off to attend the 1993 Take That concert in Belfast; the episode features the music video for "Pray" and ends on footage of the band performing "Everything Changes". Artistry Early in their career, Take That were known for party anthems such as "Do What U Like" and more mature ballads such as "A Million Love Songs" and "Back for Good". Since reuniting in 2006, they have become more experimental: their post-2006 albums Beautiful World and The Circus have featured "stadium-filling pop-rock" while Progress largely leaned towards electropop. Having been dubbed the "comeback kings" by the media for their highly successful reunion, the group has won widespread praise for their seamless transformation from teen idols to "man band" without overly relying on nostalgia, instead showcasing a more mature image and sound and reinventing themselves while maintaining their artistic integrity. Jude Rogers of The Guardian commented on Take That's post-reunion success, in light of a string of reunions by the group's disbanded counterparts from the 1990s: "Only Take That are penetrating pop's wider consciousness by becoming a man-band rather than a boy-band, singing mature, proper pop songs that cross the generations." Take That have garnered critical acclaim and popularity as consummate live performers and for their musical output. Their domestic concert tours have been described as "some of the most flamboyant, imaginative and extravagant pop tours around". Aside from covers, all of their material is composed by the members themselves; Barlow was initially the principal songwriter who received sole credit but the other members have since taken a more active role in the composition and production process, including playing instruments for the backing track. Band members Current members Gary Barlow (1990–1996, 2005–present) Howard Donald (1990–1996, 2005–present) Mark Owen (1990–1996, 2005–present) Former members Robbie Williams (1990–1995, 2010–2012) Jason Orange (1990–1996, 2005–2014) Timeline Awards and nominations |- | 2016 | Take That | Silver Clef Award for Best Live Act | |- | style="text-align:center;"|2015 | "These Days" | UK Music Video Awards for Best Art Direction | |- | rowspan="6" style="text-align:center;"|2012 | "Pray" |The Guardian Music Award for Best Number 1 Single | |- | Take That |Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music | |- | "Back for Good" |The Official Charts Company UK Recognition award for United Kingdom's Favourite Number One Single | |- | "The Flood" |Ivor Novello Award for PRS Most Performed Work | |- | Take That |Virgin Media Music Awards for Best Live Act | |- | "Kidz" |Virgin Media Music Awards for Best Music Video | |- | rowspan="10" style="text-align:center;"|2011 |- | Progress Live |Audio Pro International Awards for Best Live Sound Event | |- | Progress Live |Audio Pro International Awards Grand Prix Award | |- | Take That |Phonographic Performance Limited Award for most played UK artist | |- | "Kidz" |Spex German Entertainment for Best Music Video | |- | The Circus Live Tour | Greatest Event ever at Wembley Stadium | |- | Take That |ECHO Award for Best International Group | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Group | |- | Progress | BRIT Award for MasterCard Album of the Year | |- | Take That |Virgin Media for Best Group | |- | rowspan="6" style="text-align:center;"|2010 |- | "Up All Night" | UK Music Video Awards for Best Art Direction | |- | "The Flood" |iTunes Award for Best Single | |- | Progress | iTunes Award for Best Album | |- | Take That |Q Award Hall of Fame | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best Live Performance of the past 30 Years | |- | rowspan="5" style="text-align:center;"|2009 | Take That |GQ Men of the Year Awards for Best Band | |- | Take That |Q Award for Best Live Act | |- | "Greatest Day" |Q Award for Best Single | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Group | |- | Take That | Silver Clef Award | |- | rowspan="7" style="text-align:center;"|2008 | "Shine" |Ivor Novello Award for PRS Most Performed Work | |- | "Rule the World" |Virgin for Best Single | |- | Take That |Sony Ericsson Tour of the Year Award for Take That Arena Tour | |- | "Shine" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Live Act | |- | Beautiful World |BRIT Award for Best British Album | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Group | |- | style="text-align:center;"|2007 | "Patience" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | style="text-align:center;"|2006 | Take That |Q Idol Award | |- | rowspan="3" style="text-align:center;"|1996 | "Back for Good" |Billboard International Hit of the Year | |- | "Never Forget" |Ivor Novello Award for Most Performed Song | |- | "Back for Good" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | rowspan="3" style="text-align:center;"|1995 | "Back for Good" |Ivor Novello Award for the Song of the Year | |- | Take That |MTV Europe Music Awards for Best Live Act | |- | Take That | Silver Clef Award | |- | rowspan="6" style="text-align:center;"|1994 | "Babe" |MTV Video Music Award for International Viewer's Choice Award for MTV Europe | |- | Everything Changes |Mercury Prize for Best Album | |- | "Pray" |Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song | |- | "Pray" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | "Pray" |BRIT Award for Best British Video | |- | Take That |MTV Europe Music Awards for Best Group | |- | rowspan="4" style="text-align:center;"|1993 | "Could It Be Magic" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | "A Million Love Songs" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | "It Only Takes a Minute" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | Take That | Silver Clef Award for Best Newcomer | |} Discography Take That & Party (1992) Everything Changes (1993) Nobody Else (1995) Beautiful World (2006) The Circus (2008) Progress (2010) III (2014) Wonderland (2017) Tours Party Tour (1992–93) Everything Changes Tour (1993–94) Pops Tour (1994–95) Nobody Else Tour (1995) The Ultimate Tour (2006) Beautiful World Tour 2007 (2007) Take That Present: The Circus Live (2009) Progress Live (2011) Take That Live (2015) Wonderland Live (2017) Greatest Hits Live (2019) See also List of best-selling boy bands References External links Chinese Fansite 1990 establishments in England 1996 disestablishments in England 2005 establishments in England Brit Award winners Dance-pop groups Echo (music award) winners English boy bands English dance music groups Interscope Records artists Ivor Novello Award winners MTV Europe Music Award winners Musical groups disestablished in 1996 Musical groups established in 1990 Musical groups from Cheshire Musical groups from Manchester Musical groups reestablished in 2005 Polydor Records artists Teen pop groups Universal Music Group artists Vocal quartets Vocal quintets Vocal trios
true
[ "Singles of the 90s is a compilation album by Swedish pop music group, Ace of Base.\n\nBackground\nSingles of the 90s was released on November 15, 1999 in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The band had begun work on their fourth studio album (Da Capo), when they were approached by their label to put out a greatest hits release. Jonas Berggren, the band's main composer, initially refused the offer, claiming the idea for a singles package was premature. In the end, the band relented and offered three songs titled \"Hallo Hallo\", \"C'est La Vie,\" and \"Love in December\", which was co-written by all four band members.\n\nAn American counterpart, Greatest Hits, was released the following year on April 18, 2000, and included only \"C'est La Vie\" of the three new tracks. This release included a track error at the beginning of \"The Sign\" and sold poorly. Singles of the 90s was released in the US via iTunes in 2007 despite the Greatest Hits release.\n\nTrack listing\n\nCharts\n\nCertifications\n\nReferences\n\nAce of Base compilation albums\n1999 greatest hits albums", "A greatest hits album or best-of album is a type of compilation album that collects popular and commercially successful songs by a particular artist or band. While greatest hits albums are typically supported by the artist, they can also be created by record companies without express approval from the original artist as a means to generate sales. They are typically regarded as a good starting point for new fans of an artist, but are sometimes criticized by longtime fans as not inclusive enough or necessary at all.\n\nIt is also common for greatest hits albums to include remixes or alternate takes of popular songs as bonus tracks to increase appeal for longtime fans (who might otherwise already own the songs included). At times, a greatest hits compilation marks the first album appearance of a successful single that was never attached to a previous studio album.\n\nHistory \nThe first greatest hits album was Johnny Mathis's Johnny's Greatest Hits, released in 1958. The album collected eight of Mathis's charting singles, as well as three non-charting B-sides and an altogether new track. The album spent three weeks at the number one spot on Billboard's Best Selling Pop LP's chart. The greatest hits album format then gained popularity in the 1960s and 1970s among American and British rock and pop artists. Some artists were popular enough to release multiple greatest hits albums during and after their career.\n\nBy the 1990s, greatest hits albums were common for popular artists, with some artists even releasing the greatest hits album as a music video collection concurrently with the album. It also became a commercially viable option to boost popularity for artists with dwindling careers. Some bands refuse to release a greatest hits album, such as rock groups AC/DC, Tool, and Metallica. Garth Brooks had initially refused releasing one, but he eventually agreed to it in 1994 for a limited release (the resulting record, The Hits, sold over ten million copies).\n\nIn 2000, Sony Music Entertainment launched their The Essential series, which collects singles and other career-defining tracks of artists licensed to Sony. The Essential Bob Dylan was the first in the series, and the company has since released dozens of albums in the series with other artists under their label. In addition to artist-specific collections, the series has also released genre-specific and themed albums, such as The Essential Christmas (collecting pop and rock covers of Christmas songs) or The Essential Australian Rock (collecting a specific regional output). In 2005, Universal Music Group launched a similar line, Gold, which collects artists' greatest hits onto two discs.\n\nIn the late 2000s and 2010s, digital downloads and music streaming services increased in popularity, which allow users to listen to their favorite tracks without the need of a greatest hits package. In 2016, Pitchfork noted that \"in the digital era, once a catalog enters a streaming service or an MP3 store, there's no need for a reissue and, therefore, there's no reason for a label to mine the vaults, searching for old music to make new again. Users can assemble their own personalized greatest hits playlists or just scan through an act's most accessed songs\", which has led to greatest hits collections becoming redundant.\n\nDespite the popularity of streaming in 2010s and early 2020s, some artists continued to issue physical greatest hits albums, including the White Stripes, Spoon, and the Weeknd. Spoon lead singer Britt Daniel said he chose to compile 2019's Everything Hits at Once: The Best of Spoon out of an affinity for compilations such as Standing on a Beach by the Cure and Substance 1987 by New Order, which had introduced him to those artists in his youth, and to provide an official introduction to Spoon's catalog for new listeners. Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand echoed those sentiments when describing the decision to release the band's 2022 Hits to the Head compilation, stating that \"I have friends who believe you’re somehow not a 'real' fan if you own a best of rather than a discography. I disagree. I think of my parents' record collection as a kid. I loved their compilation LPs. I am so grateful that they had Changes or Rolled Gold. Those LPs were my entrance point. My introduction.\"\n\nNotable examples\n\nEagles' Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) is the best selling album ever in the United States, according to Billboard, which has sold over 38 million copies. Elton John's Greatest Hits is the best-selling greatest hits album by a solo artist according to the same chart.\n\nOne example of a greatest hits compilation released against the artists' intentions is British rock group the Rolling Stones' compilation Hot Rocks 1964–1971 (1971). The music magazine Rolling Stone remarked that the album served as a \"beautifully packaged... purely mercenary item put together by the Stones' former record company to cash in on the Christmas season and wring some more bucks out in the name of the Mod Princes they once owned.\" After their manager tricked the band into signing over the copyrights to their 1963–1970 song catalog, the band did succeed in changing management and record labels. However, they could neither prevent the release of Hot Rocks nor its successor, which was titled More Hot Rocks (Big Hits & Fazed Cookies). A testament to the selling power of greatest hits albums, Hot Rocks remains the best selling album of the Rolling Stones' career. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards continue to collect significant songwriting royalties from the Hot Rocks sales, but not the ownership royalties.\n\nIn the UK, Queen's Greatest Hits is the biggest selling album of all time. In second place is ABBA Gold, another greatest hits compilation which has gone on to become the longest-charting album in the UK. Queen's Greatest Hits II is also one of the UK's Top Ten biggest sellers.\n\nIn other media \nThe concept of greatest hits compilations has been adapted to other media as well. In television, some shows have released compilations of their critically successful and highest-rated episodes to drive new viewers to watch a program, such as Family Guys Freakin' Sweet Collection and South Park: The Hits. Several video game companies have re-released popular games for continued sales, sometimes with discounted prices: Sony's PlayStation has released games under their Greatest Hits series; Nintendo has re-released games under the Nintendo Selects label (formerly called \"Player's Choice\"); Microsoft has re-released games under the Platinum Hits label. Some video game franchises have released greatest hits collections of their own content, such as Super Mario All-Stars, Sonic Mega Collection, and Guitar Hero Smash Hits.\n\nSee also\n Hit record\n Grandes Éxitos (disambiguation) – the Spanish language equivalent of the concept\n\nReferences \n\nAlbum types" ]
[ "Take That", "1995-1996: Robbie Williams's first departure, break-up and Greatest Hits", "Why did Williams leave?", "Robbie Williams's drug abuse had escalated to a near drug overdose", "What was the result of this?", "I don't know.", "When did they break up?", "On 13 February 1996, Take That formally announced that they were disbanding.", "When did they release their greatest hits?", "This was followed by the Greatest Hits compilation in 1996," ]
C_93f5c84a4b2e459c97d351f6a21ea1d5_0
How did this album do?
5
How did the Greatest Hits album do?
Take That
Robbie Williams's drug abuse had escalated to a near drug overdose the night before the group was scheduled to perform at the MTV Europe Music Awards in 1994. In June 1995, Williams was photographed by the press partying with Oasis at the Glastonbury Festival. During this month the band offered him an ultimatum; he was to adhere to the band's responsibilities or leave before their scheduled world tour. Williams chose the latter. Orange pressured Williams to quit because of Williams's behavior. Williams claimed he was bored with Barlow's leadership and jealous of Barlow. Despite the loss of Williams, Take That continued to promote Nobody Else as a four-piece, scoring a further hit single with Donald's "Never Forget". They subsequently went to America and completed the Nobody Else Tour in October 1995. Following the tour, the band began to plan for their next album; however, when they spent Christmas together, they mutually agreed it was time to part ways. On 13 February 1996, Take That formally announced that they were disbanding. This was followed by the Greatest Hits compilation in 1996, which contained a new recording, a cover of the Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love". The single went on to become what was to be the band's final UK number one until their 2006 comeback a decade later. Take That gave what was thought to be their final performance in April 1996 at Amsterdam. Following the band's announcement, millions of their fans were distraught around the world and in the UK alone, teenage girls threatened suicide and were seen lining streets in tears, to the point that telephone hotlines were set up by the government to deal with counselling them. After the band broke up, highly respected music figures such as Elton John noted that Take That were different from other boy bands before and after them, in that they wrote their own material through Gary Barlow, the only boy band member who won an Ivor Novello award during his time in a boy band (although George Michael won it while in Wham!). Take That had also left a legacy of being immaculate performers with a very high work ethic, causing them to be voted in as the greatest boy band of all time. CANNOTANSWER
The single went on to become what was to be the band's final UK number one until their 2006 comeback a decade later.
Take That are an English pop group formed in Manchester in 1990. The group currently consists of Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen. The original line-up also featured Jason Orange and Robbie Williams. Barlow is the group's lead singer and primary songwriter, with Owen and Williams initially providing backing vocals and Donald and Orange serving primarily as dancers. The group have had 28 top 40 singles and 17 top 5 singles on the UK Singles Chart, 12 of which have reached number one, including "Back for Good", "Never Forget", "Patience" and "Greatest Day". They have also had eight number one albums on the UK Albums Chart. Internationally, the band have had 56 number one singles and 39 number one albums. They have received eight Brit Awards—winning for Best British Group and Best British Live Act. In 2012 they received an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. According to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), Take That has been certified for 14 million albums and 11.4 million singles in the UK. Williams left the band in 1995 while the four remaining members completed their world tour and released a final single before splitting up in 1996. After filming a 2005 Take That: For the Record about the group and releasing a new greatest hits album, a four-piece Take That without Williams officially announced a 2006 reunion tour around the UK, entitled The Ultimate Tour. On 9 May 2006, it was announced that the group were set to record new material together once again; their fourth studio album, Beautiful World, was released in 2006 and was followed up with The Circus, in 2008. The group achieved new success as a four-piece, scoring a string of chart hits across the UK and Europe while selling over 45 million records worldwide. Williams rejoined Take That in 2010 for the band's sixth studio album, Progress. Released on 15 November of that year, it was the first album of new material to feature Take That's original line-up since their 1995 album, Nobody Else. It became the fastest-selling album of the 21st century and the second fastest-selling album in British history. In 2014, the band recorded a seventh studio album, this time as a trio without Williams and Orange. The album, titled III, was released in November 2014 and became the band's seventh number one. It was preceded by the single "These Days", which became the band's 12th number one single in the UK. In 2011, Take That set the new record for the fastest-selling tour of all time in the UK with Progress Live, beating the previous record set by their Circus Live Tour in 2009. At the 2011 Brit Awards they won Best British Group. In 2012, Forbes named them the fifth highest-earning music stars in the world. The group performed at the London 2012 Olympic Games closing ceremony, playing "Rule the World" while the Olympic Flame was extinguished. In the same year, the Official Charts Company revealed the biggest-selling singles artists in British music chart history with Take That currently placed at 15th overall, making them the most successful boy band in UK chart history. Four of their albums are listed in the best-selling albums of the millennium, with three of them among the 60 best-selling albums in UK chart history. History 1989–1990: Formation In 1989, Manchester-based Nigel Martin-Smith sought to create a British male vocal singing group modelled on New Kids on the Block. Martin-Smith's vision, however, was a teen-orientated group that would appeal to more than one demographic segment of the music industry. Martin-Smith was then introduced to young singer-songwriter Gary Barlow, who had been performing in clubs since the age of 15. Impressed with Barlow's catalogue of self-written material, Martin-Smith decided to build his new-look boy band around Barlow's musical abilities. A campaign to audition young men with abilities in dancing and singing followed and took place in Manchester and other surrounding cities in 1990. At 22, Howard Donald was one of the oldest to audition, but he was chosen after he got time off work as a vehicle painter to continue the process. Prior to auditioning, Jason Orange had appeared as a breakdancer on the popular television programme The Hit Man and Her. Martin-Smith also selected 18-year-old bank employee Mark Owen and finally 16-year-old Robbie Williams to round out the group, which initially went by the name Kick It. 1990–1992: Take That & Party Take That's first TV appearance was on The Hit Man and Her in 1990, where they performed Barlow's self-written, unreleased song, "My Kind of Girl". They later appeared a second time to perform "Waiting Around", which would become the B-side for the first single, "Do What U Like". "Promises" and "Once You've Tasted Love" were also released as singles but were minor hits in the UK. Take That initially worked the same territory as their American counterparts, singing new jack R&B, urban soul, and mainstream pop. However, they worked their way toward Hi-NRG dance music, while also pursuing an adult contemporary ballad direction. As they aimed to break into the mainstream music industry, they worked a number of small clubs, schools, and events across the country building up a fanbase as they travelled to gigs constantly for months. Take That's breakthrough single was a cover of the 1975 Tavares hit "It Only Takes a Minute", which peaked at number seven on the UK Singles Chart in June 1992. This success was followed by "I Found Heaven", then by the first Barlow ballad "A Million Love Songs", which also reached number seven in October. Their cover of the Barry Manilow hit "Could It Be Magic" gave them their first big success, peaking at number three in the UK in the first chart of 1993. Their first album, Take That & Party, was released in 1992, and included all the hit singles to date. 1993–1995: Everything Changes, Nobody Else and superstardom 1993 saw the release of Everything Changes, based on Barlow's original material. It peaked at number one in the UK and spawned six singles, with four being consecutive UK number one singles – their first number one "Pray", "Relight My Fire", "Babe" and the title track "Everything Changes". The lead single "Why Can't I Wake Up with You" had narrowly missed the top spot in the UK peaking at number two and the sixth and final single "Love Ain't Here Anymore" taken from the album reached number three on the UK charts. Everything Changes saw the band gain international success with the album being nominated for the 1994 Mercury Prize, but it failed to crack the U.S. market, where an exclusive remix of "Love Ain't Here Anymore" (U.S. version) gained little success. By 1994, Take That had become radio and television stars across Europe and Asia, but it was not until 1995 that they did their first World Tour. It was during the years 1993–95 that the band fronted scores of magazine covers ranging from Smash Hits to GQ, becoming mass merchandised on all sorts of paraphernalia ranging from picture books, to posters, stickers, their own dolls, jewellery, caps, T-shirts, toothbrushes and even had their own annuals released. The band had also developed a large female teenage fanbase at the time. During this time, they performed at numerous music awards shows and chart shows such as the BRIT Awards and Top of the Pops, also winning the Best Live Act award in 1995 at the MTV Europe Music Awards, having been renowned for their breakdance routines, high energy and creative tour productions. In 1995, Take That released their third studio album Nobody Else, again based on Barlow's own material which reached number 1 in the UK and across Europe, capturing new audiences along the way, with Take That also able to make inroads in the adult audience in Britain through Barlow's melodic, sensitive ballads. For nearly five years, Take That's popularity was unsurpassed in Britain. The release of the first single from the album, "Sure", achieved yet another number one in the UK charts. It was not until their second release from that album, however, that they would experience what would become their biggest hit single, "Back for Good", which reached number one in many countries including the UK, Germany, Australia, and Norway. It was also their only US hit, where it reached number seven. The song was initially unveiled for the first time via live performance while at the 1995 BRIT Awards, and based on the reception of that performance, the record pre-sold more records than expected and forced the record label to bring the release date forward by an unprecedented six weeks. The album was also noted for its cover, which was a parody of the famed cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover sleeve. 1995–1996: Break-up and Greatest Hits Robbie Williams's drug abuse had escalated to a near drug overdose the night before the group was scheduled to perform at the MTV Europe Music Awards in 1994. In June 1995, Williams was photographed by the press partying with Oasis at the Glastonbury Festival. The following month, the band offered him an ultimatum; he was to adhere to the band's responsibilities or leave before their scheduled world tour. Williams chose the latter. Williams claimed he was bored with Barlow's leadership and jealous of Barlow. Despite the loss of Williams, Take That continued to promote Nobody Else as a four-piece, scoring a further hit single with "Never Forget" with Donald on lead vocal. They subsequently went to America and completed the Nobody Else Tour in October 1995. Following the tour, the band began to plan for their next album; however, when they spent Christmas together, they mutually agreed it was time to part ways. On 13 February 1996, Take That formally announced that they were disbanding. This was followed by the Greatest Hits compilation in 1996, which contained a new recording, a cover of the Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love". The single went on to become what was to be the band's final UK number one until their 2006 comeback a decade later. Take That gave what was thought to be their final performance in April 1996 at Amsterdam. Following the band's announcement, millions of their fans were distraught around the world and in the UK alone, teenage girls threatened suicide and were seen lining streets in tears, to the point that telephone hotlines were set up by the government to deal with counselling them. After the band broke up, highly respected music figures such as Elton John noted that Take That were different from other boy bands before and after them, in that they wrote their own material through Gary Barlow. Barlow is one of only a small number of people who have won an Ivor Novello award during their time in a boy band, with George Michael whilst in Wham! and Tony Mortimer whilst in East 17 being two others who have achieved this feat. Take That had also left a legacy of being immaculate performers with a very high work ethic, causing them to be voted in as the greatest boy band of all time. 2005–2006: Reunion as a quartet and Never Forget – The Ultimate Collection On 14 November 2005, Never Forget – The Ultimate Collection, a new compilation of their hit singles including a new previously unreleased song, also achieved great success and peaked at number 2 on UK charts, selling over 2.1 million copies in the UK alone. The new song "Today I've Lost You" (recorded in September 2005) was originally written by Barlow as the follow up to "Back for Good" but was never recorded. On 16 November 2005, the group got back together for the ITV documentary Take That: For the Record, in which they aired their views over their fame, success, the split and what the post-Williams line-up had done since. On 25 November 2005, there was an official press conference by the band announcing that the post-Robbie Williams line-up was going to tour in 2006. The tour, entitled The Ultimate Tour, ran from April to June 2006. The tour featured a guest appearance by British soul singer Beverley Knight, who replaced Lulu's vocals on the song "Relight My Fire"; although Lulu did appear during the stadium shows on "Relight My Fire" and "Never Forget". The American female ensemble Pussycat Dolls supported the group at their Dublin concert, and the Sugababes supported the group on the final five dates of the stadium leg. In a seven-year study analysing over one billion online searches via Google conducted by AccuraCast, a leading digital search agency, their comeback was ranked at number one in the UK. 2006–2007: Beautiful World On 9 May 2006, Take That returned to the recorded music scene after more than ten years of absence, signing with Polydor Records. The band's comeback album, Beautiful World, entered the UK Albums Chart at no. 1 and, as of June 2009, had sold over 2.8 million copies in the UK. It is the 35th best selling album in UK music history. On Beautiful World, all four members of the band had the opportunity to sing lead vocals and contribute in the songwriting. Unlike the band's earlier works, where the majority of their material was written by Barlow who received sole credit, all four band members are credited as co-writers, along with John Shanks. The comeback single, "Patience", was released on 20 November 2006, with a special event launching it on 5 November. On 26 November "Patience" hit number 1 in the UK in its second week of chart entry, making it the group's ninth No. 1, and staying there for 4 weeks. Take That also accompanied eventual winner Leona Lewis on a live version of "A Million Love Songs" during the final of The X Factor on 16 December 2006. The week after Beautiful World was released, it was announced that Take That had become the first artists ever to top the UK official single and album charts along with the download single, download album and DVD charts in the same week, as well as topping the radio charts. The video for the number 1 hit single "Shine", the follow-up to "Patience", premiered on 25 January 2007 on Channel 4, ahead of its release on 26 February 2007. The band's success continued on 14 February 2007 when Take That performed live at the BRIT Awards ceremony at Earl's Court. Their single "Patience" won the Best British Single category. The third single chosen from Beautiful World was "I'd Wait For Life", released on 18 June 2007 in the UK. The single reached 17 in the UK Singles Chart. This may have been due to lack of promotion, as the band decided to take a pre-tour break rather than do any promotion for the single. The single "Rule the World", included on the deluxe version of Beautiful World, was recorded for the soundtrack of the film Stardust (2007). It reached number two in the UK and went on to become the group's second best selling single, shifting over 1.2 million units in the UK. Beautiful World was the fourth biggest-selling album of 2007. It was announced at the start of 2007 that Take That signed a record deal with American label Interscope, and would also release their album in Canada. Starting on 11 October 2007, Take That began their Beautiful World Tour 2007 in Belfast. The tour included 49 shows throughout Europe and the UK and ended in Manchester on 23 December 2007. The band received four nominations at the 2008 BRIT Awards. Nominated for Best British Group, Best British Single ("Shine"), Best British Album (Beautiful World) and Best Live Act, they took home the Best Live Act and the Best British Single awards. According to a 2007 MSN UK internet poll, Take That were voted as the "comeback kings" of the year. 2008–2009: The Circus "Greatest Day", the first single from the album The Circus, made its radio premiere on 13 October 2008 and it was released on 24 November. It debuted at number 1 on the UK Singles Chart on 30 November 2008. An album launch party for The Circus was held in Paris on 2 December. On its first day of release The Circus sold 133,000 copies, and after four days on sale it sold 306,000 copies (going platinum) making The Circus the fastest selling album of the year. The album reached number 1 on the UK Albums Chart on 7 December 2008 with total first-week sales of 432,490, the third highest opening sales week in UK history. On 28 October 2008, on the Radio 1 Chris Moyles show, it was announced that Take That would be touring again in June/July 2009, covering the UK and Ireland. Tickets for the Take That Present: The Circus Live tour went on sale on 31 October. The promoters, SJM, have said that the band's tour is "the fastest selling in UK history". On 22 May 2008, Barlow and Donald attended the 2008 Ivor Novello Awards where Take That won the award for Most Performed Work with their single "Shine". Take That won the Sony Ericsson Tour of the Year award at the Vodafone music awards on 18 September 2008. They were unable to attend as they were in LA finishing off The Circus. They did send a video link message, which was shown at the awards. On 22 November 2008, Take That appeared on week 7 of the talent show The X Factor where the finalists performed some of their greatest hits and Owen and Barlow made a guest appearance to personally coach the contestants. The band also performed on Children in Need 2008, singing their new single, "Greatest Day", before donating £250,000 to the charity from their Marks and Spencer fee. The band were also voted the Greatest Boy Band of All Time, reflecting their ongoing marketability and success in the pop arena, even after two decades. At the 2009 Brit Awards they were nominated for Best British Group and they performed "Greatest Day" at the ceremony. "Up All Night", the second single from The Circus, was released on 2 March 2009, and peaked at number 14 on the UK Singles Chart, despite heavy airplay. In Germany and Australia, "The Garden" was released as the second single instead. On 7 May 2009, Take That's official website confirmed that the third single from The Circus would be "Said It All" which was released on 15 June 2009, peaking at number 9 on the UK Singles chart. The video premiered on GMTV on 8 May 2009. It features all four band members dressed up as vintage circus clowns, which tied in with their forthcoming Take That Present: The Circus Live tour. Take That started their Circus Live tour at the Stadium of Light on 5 June 2009 in Sunderland and ended at the Wembley Stadium in London on 5 July 2009, which over 80,000 people attended. This tour quickly became the fastest-selling of all time, breaking all records by selling all of their 650,000 tickets in less than four and a half hours. In November 2009 Take That released the official DVD of their Circus tour, which became the fastest-selling music DVD of all time in the UK on its first day of release and stayed in the top 10 of the videos chart for over a year. This overtook the previous record sales holder, which was Take That's Beautiful World Live tour and stayed at the number 1 spot for 8 weeks. The following week Take That released their first live album, The Greatest Day – Take That Present: The Circus Live, which sold 98,000 copies on its first day of release and was certified Platinum in July 2013. "Hold up a Light" was released as the fifth and final single from The Circus to radio stations and as a digital download to promote the release of the live album. The live album also featured a stripped down session recorded live at the famous Abbey Road Studios in London. It featured the members singing the setlist from the preceding tour, albeit in a studio setting. 2010–2011: Williams' return and Progress On 7 June 2010, the news broke of a single called "Shame", which had been written by Barlow and Williams and would feature the vocals of both artists. This was the first time the pair had worked together since 1995 and would appear on the second greatest hits collection of Williams. "Heart and I", another track from the same album, was also co-written by Williams and Barlow. The single "Shame" peaked at number 2 on the UK Singles Chart while also achieving success throughout Europe, charting in over 19 countries. After working with the band on new material in Los Angeles, on 15 July 2010 Robbie Williams announced he was returning to Take That. After months of working together, assembling new songs for a new album and even debating a band-name change to "The English", a joint statement between Williams and the group read, "The rumours are true ... Take That: the original lineup, have written and recorded a new album for release later this year." The statement went on to say, "Following months of speculation Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Jason Orange, Mark Owen, and Robbie Williams confirmed they have been recording a new studio album as a five-piece, which they will release in November." The lead single from Take That's album Progress was announced as "The Flood" and was released 7 November as a digital download, and on 8 November as a physical copy, with the album released a week later on 15 November. The single peaked at number 2 in the UK Singles Charts and to date has sold over 500,000 copies in the UK alone. The single also achieved success across Europe, charting inside the top 10 in ten countries while also charting in another nine countries whilst also being nominated for an Ivor Novello Award for best work. On 26 October the band announced that they would be embarking on a huge UK stadium tour entitled Progress Live, starting in Sunderland on 27 May, and finishing with a record-breaking 8 nights at London's Wembley Stadium in July 2011. It was also announced that Williams would perform hit singles from his solo career during the tour. The band then played at some of the biggest venues across Europe for the second leg of the tour. The phenomenal demand for tickets across the country led to the web sites of all the major UK ticket suppliers either crashing or considerably slowing for hours on end. The demand and sheer volume of fans also created problems for the UK telephone network. Take That's Progress Live also broke all records for ticket sales selling over 1.1 million tickets in one day, smashing the previous box office record set by Take That's Circus tour in 2008. On the first day of release Progress became the fastest selling album of the century, with 235,000 copies sold in just one day. The album reached number 1 in the UK, selling around 520,000 copies in its first week, becoming the second fastest-selling album in history. After the release of Progress it was announced that Take That have become Amazon UK's top-selling music artist of all time. The album retained the number one spot for six consecutive weeks in the UK since its release, selling 2.8 million copies in the UK alone and becoming the best selling album of 2010 Progress also achieved success across Europe where it debuted at number one in Ireland, Greece, Germany and Denmark. and the European Top 100 Albums chart. It also debuted inside the top 10 of the charts in Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. "Kidz" was announced as the second single from Progress, it was released 21 February 2011 and charted well across Europe. The band performed the song live at the 2011 Brit Awards hosted at The O2 Arena, where they won a Brit for Best British Group and were nominated for Best British Album. Their performance of "Kidz", praised by critics, involved a highly choreographed routine featuring dancers dressed in police-styled riot gear bearing the Take That symbol on the uniform and shields. On 19 May 2011, Take That announced a new EP entitled Progressed, which contained eight tracks written by the band since they had reunited as a five-piece. It was packaged alongside the album Progress and returned the band to number 1 in the UK Album Chart the week after it was released on 13 June 2011. Take That announced that the Progress Live tour would be released worldwide as their second live album to date and would also be released on home media formats across the UK and Europe on 21 November 2011. The DVD debuted at number 1 on the UK Music Video top 40 in its first week on release and sold over 200,000 copies in two weeks of release in the UK alone. Take That's efforts were recognised further when they were awarded Virgin Media's Best Live Act of 2012. On 4 October, it was reported that Take That were to take a break after the completion of the Progress tour, with Barlow continuing his role as a judge on The X Factor and Williams recording new solo material. Take That were presented with an Ivor Novello Award for their Outstanding Contribution to British Music in May 2012. In August 2012, Take That performed at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics, despite Barlow announcing that his daughter had been stillborn the previous week. The performance earned him praise for appearing live so soon after the tragedy. Williams was due to perform with the band but dropped out due to his wife giving birth at around the same time and thus the group performed as a four-piece. In November 2012, Take That reunited as a five-piece for the last time to perform "Never Forget" at the Music Industry Trust Awards. In 2013, Donald became a judge on the German version of the television dancing show Got to Dance. 2014–2015: Line-up change and III In May 2013, Owen announced that Take That was to begin recording their seventh studio album in 2014, and on 14 January 2014, Donald and Barlow both tweeted that Take That had entered the studio to begin recording the album, although it was not initially clear if Williams was present at these recording sessions. On 28 April 2014, Williams announced on Twitter he was to become a father for a second time, and consequently suggested he would be unable to join Take That on their album and tour. Although welcome to return to the band at any time, Williams chose not to return for group's seventh and eighth studio albums and their accompanying tours, focusing instead on his solo commitments. He continued to write music with his colleagues and has performed with the group on several occasions since 2011's Progress tour and plans on returning at some point in the future. On 24 September 2014, it was announced that Jason Orange had left the band. He said: 'At a band meeting last week I confirmed to Mark, Gary and Howard that I do not wish to commit to recording and promoting a new album. 'At the end of The Progress Tour I began to question whether it might be the right time for me to not continue on with Take That,' he continued. 'There have been no fallings out, only a decision on my part that I no longer wish to do this,' he added. Barlow, Donald, and Owen issued a joint statement about Orange's decision which said: "This is a sad day for us. Jason leaving is a huge loss both professionally and even more so personally ... Jason's energy and belief in what this band could achieve has made it what it is today, and we'll forever be grateful for his enthusiasm, dedication and inspiration over the years." A day after the announcement, Robbie Williams took to Twitter to show support of Orange's decision. "Mr Orange. Until we ride again. Much love, Bro.", Williams tweeted. On 10 October 2014, Take That unveiled their first song as a three-piece and lead single from their upcoming album. Titled "These Days", it was released on 23 November 2014 and went to No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart, knocking Band Aid 30 off the top spot and becoming their 12th number one single. The album itself, called III, was released on 28 November 2014 and became the band's seventh No. 1 album. It was then followed by a sell-out arena tour entitled Take That Live. On 14 October 2015, the band announced their new single "Hey Boy", released on 16 October, which is the first single from the 2015 re-release of III. The 2015 edition of the album was released on 20 November. In December 2015, British media buzzed about the group embarking on a stint in Las Vegas, starting 2017. Reports indicated the group impressed U.S. promoters and would headline their own residency show. Many venues circulated, including The AXIS at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino, The Foundry at SLS Las Vegas and the Linq Theater at The LINQ Hotel & Casino. Local newspaper, the Las Vegas Sun writes that everything is still unconfirmed, despite Barlow confirming the rumour on Twitter. 2016–2017: Wonderland On 2 February 2016, in an interview with The Sun, Barlow revealed that Take That would release their eighth studio album later in the year. On 4 May 2016, English drum and bass duo Sigma announced their newest single would feature Take That. "Cry" received its first radio play on 20 May 2016 and was released on that date. On 21 October 2016, the band posted a teaser on their social media pages and website depicting the logo of the band flickering with the hashtag "#WONDERLAND". The following day, it was announced that their new album, titled Wonderland, was scheduled to be released on 24 March 2017. It was then followed by a UK and Ireland arena tour entitled Wonderland Live, that commenced on 5 May 2017 at the Genting Arena in Birmingham. On 17 February 2017, the lead single of Wonderland was released. Titled "Giants", it debuted at 13 in the UK charts, which became the band's 24th UK top 20 single. On 8 April 2017, ITV aired a specially commissioned hour-length television special titled An Evening with Take That, where the band performed some songs from the album, along with some old classics including "Never Forget", "Back for Good" and "Rule the World". The band also took part in a Q&A session with the audience members. On 27 April, it was announced on Twitter that "New Day" would be released as the next single from the album Wonderland. The band were seen recording the music video in a field in Luton the days leading up the opening night of the Wonderland Live tour. Due to the Manchester Arena bombing just days before they were due to perform at the venue, their Manchester and Liverpool dates were rescheduled or relocated. The band returned a month later to perform at the One Love Manchester benefit concert. On 16 September 2017, Barlow, Owen and Donald were set to perform a special one-off show in Jersey after a fan bid more than £1.2 million to win a performance from the band. This then turned in to a ticketed charity event where the money from tickets sold would go towards benefiting Children in Need. The auction was held on BBC Radio 2. On 11 November 2017, Take That began their foreign tour in Perth, Australia, the first time they have performed in the country in over twenty years. They also played in New Zealand, United Arab Emirates and Israel for the first time. Unlike the other tours, a DVD for Wonderland Live was not released. Instead, it was broadcast on Sky 1 on 23 December and in cinemas. 2018–2020: The 30th Anniversary, and Odyssey On 16 July 2018, while performing at first ever Hits Radio Live at the Manchester Arena, Barlow, Donald and Owen confirmed that they would be touring in 2019. The tour was a Greatest Hits tour and celebrated the 30th anniversary of the band. There was also a Greatest Hits album, Odyssey, which was released on 23 November 2018. The Greatest Hits album features existing songs from their back catalogue that have been re-imagined and 3 brand new songs. It also includes collaborations with Boyz II Men, Lulu, Sigma and Barry Gibb. Odyssey reached number one in the UK album chart and was certified as a platinum selling record. The following year, Odyssey Live, the recording of their tour, reached number 5, becoming the band's 13th top 5 album, with the DVD becoming the biggest live music sale of 2019. In May 2020, Barlow, Donald, and Owen reunited with Williams for a virtual performance from their respective homes, hosted by price comparison website comparethemarket.com, to raise money for the music charity Nordoff Robbins and Crew Nation. In other media In April 2006, EMI licensed the band's songs to be used in the musical Never Forget, a musical based on songs of the band from the 1990s. Take That posted and then later removed a statement on their website distancing themselves from it. Take That wrote and recorded the theme song "Rule the World" for the film Stardust directed by Matthew Vaughn, which was released in cinemas across the globe in October 2007. In 2007, their song "Back for Good" was used as part of the soundtrack for popular Korean drama The 1st Shop of Coffee Prince. Take That presented their own TV show Take That Come to Town, a variety show in which they performed some of their biggest hits. The show also featured comedy sketches with one of Peter Kay's alter egos Geraldine McQueen. It aired on 7 December 2008 on ITV1. Sony launched their first Take That video game, SingStar Take That in 2009 for the PlayStation 3. In November 2010, ITV aired Take That: Look Back, Don't Stare, a black-and-white documentary which focused on the band working together for the first time in 15 years. Through a series of interviews, the band look back at their achievements while also looking forward to what the future holds for them. On 18 November 2010, Williams and Barlow appeared together live on television for the first time on the Popstars program in Germany singing their hit "Shame". In 2011, Take That's song "Love Love" was used in the credits of the 2011 film X-Men: First Class and later, "When We Were Young" was chosen as the main theme for The Three Musketeers movie. In 2015, the song "Get Ready for It" from their album III, was chosen as the theme song for the film Kingsman: The Secret Service. In 2017, Take That launched The Band, a musical written by Tim Firth featuring the five winners of Let It Shine and some of Take That's biggest hits. Take That, including Robbie Williams, were billed as executive producers. The group's music is regularly featured in the Channel 4 show Derry Girls, notably in the third episode of the second series, when the lead characters sneak off to attend the 1993 Take That concert in Belfast; the episode features the music video for "Pray" and ends on footage of the band performing "Everything Changes". Artistry Early in their career, Take That were known for party anthems such as "Do What U Like" and more mature ballads such as "A Million Love Songs" and "Back for Good". Since reuniting in 2006, they have become more experimental: their post-2006 albums Beautiful World and The Circus have featured "stadium-filling pop-rock" while Progress largely leaned towards electropop. Having been dubbed the "comeback kings" by the media for their highly successful reunion, the group has won widespread praise for their seamless transformation from teen idols to "man band" without overly relying on nostalgia, instead showcasing a more mature image and sound and reinventing themselves while maintaining their artistic integrity. Jude Rogers of The Guardian commented on Take That's post-reunion success, in light of a string of reunions by the group's disbanded counterparts from the 1990s: "Only Take That are penetrating pop's wider consciousness by becoming a man-band rather than a boy-band, singing mature, proper pop songs that cross the generations." Take That have garnered critical acclaim and popularity as consummate live performers and for their musical output. Their domestic concert tours have been described as "some of the most flamboyant, imaginative and extravagant pop tours around". Aside from covers, all of their material is composed by the members themselves; Barlow was initially the principal songwriter who received sole credit but the other members have since taken a more active role in the composition and production process, including playing instruments for the backing track. Band members Current members Gary Barlow (1990–1996, 2005–present) Howard Donald (1990–1996, 2005–present) Mark Owen (1990–1996, 2005–present) Former members Robbie Williams (1990–1995, 2010–2012) Jason Orange (1990–1996, 2005–2014) Timeline Awards and nominations |- | 2016 | Take That | Silver Clef Award for Best Live Act | |- | style="text-align:center;"|2015 | "These Days" | UK Music Video Awards for Best Art Direction | |- | rowspan="6" style="text-align:center;"|2012 | "Pray" |The Guardian Music Award for Best Number 1 Single | |- | Take That |Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music | |- | "Back for Good" |The Official Charts Company UK Recognition award for United Kingdom's Favourite Number One Single | |- | "The Flood" |Ivor Novello Award for PRS Most Performed Work | |- | Take That |Virgin Media Music Awards for Best Live Act | |- | "Kidz" |Virgin Media Music Awards for Best Music Video | |- | rowspan="10" style="text-align:center;"|2011 |- | Progress Live |Audio Pro International Awards for Best Live Sound Event | |- | Progress Live |Audio Pro International Awards Grand Prix Award | |- | Take That |Phonographic Performance Limited Award for most played UK artist | |- | "Kidz" |Spex German Entertainment for Best Music Video | |- | The Circus Live Tour | Greatest Event ever at Wembley Stadium | |- | Take That |ECHO Award for Best International Group | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Group | |- | Progress | BRIT Award for MasterCard Album of the Year | |- | Take That |Virgin Media for Best Group | |- | rowspan="6" style="text-align:center;"|2010 |- | "Up All Night" | UK Music Video Awards for Best Art Direction | |- | "The Flood" |iTunes Award for Best Single | |- | Progress | iTunes Award for Best Album | |- | Take That |Q Award Hall of Fame | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best Live Performance of the past 30 Years | |- | rowspan="5" style="text-align:center;"|2009 | Take That |GQ Men of the Year Awards for Best Band | |- | Take That |Q Award for Best Live Act | |- | "Greatest Day" |Q Award for Best Single | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Group | |- | Take That | Silver Clef Award | |- | rowspan="7" style="text-align:center;"|2008 | "Shine" |Ivor Novello Award for PRS Most Performed Work | |- | "Rule the World" |Virgin for Best Single | |- | Take That |Sony Ericsson Tour of the Year Award for Take That Arena Tour | |- | "Shine" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Live Act | |- | Beautiful World |BRIT Award for Best British Album | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Group | |- | style="text-align:center;"|2007 | "Patience" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | style="text-align:center;"|2006 | Take That |Q Idol Award | |- | rowspan="3" style="text-align:center;"|1996 | "Back for Good" |Billboard International Hit of the Year | |- | "Never Forget" |Ivor Novello Award for Most Performed Song | |- | "Back for Good" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | rowspan="3" style="text-align:center;"|1995 | "Back for Good" |Ivor Novello Award for the Song of the Year | |- | Take That |MTV Europe Music Awards for Best Live Act | |- | Take That | Silver Clef Award | |- | rowspan="6" style="text-align:center;"|1994 | "Babe" |MTV Video Music Award for International Viewer's Choice Award for MTV Europe | |- | Everything Changes |Mercury Prize for Best Album | |- | "Pray" |Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song | |- | "Pray" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | "Pray" |BRIT Award for Best British Video | |- | Take That |MTV Europe Music Awards for Best Group | |- | rowspan="4" style="text-align:center;"|1993 | "Could It Be Magic" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | "A Million Love Songs" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | "It Only Takes a Minute" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | Take That | Silver Clef Award for Best Newcomer | |} Discography Take That & Party (1992) Everything Changes (1993) Nobody Else (1995) Beautiful World (2006) The Circus (2008) Progress (2010) III (2014) Wonderland (2017) Tours Party Tour (1992–93) Everything Changes Tour (1993–94) Pops Tour (1994–95) Nobody Else Tour (1995) The Ultimate Tour (2006) Beautiful World Tour 2007 (2007) Take That Present: The Circus Live (2009) Progress Live (2011) Take That Live (2015) Wonderland Live (2017) Greatest Hits Live (2019) See also List of best-selling boy bands References External links Chinese Fansite 1990 establishments in England 1996 disestablishments in England 2005 establishments in England Brit Award winners Dance-pop groups Echo (music award) winners English boy bands English dance music groups Interscope Records artists Ivor Novello Award winners MTV Europe Music Award winners Musical groups disestablished in 1996 Musical groups established in 1990 Musical groups from Cheshire Musical groups from Manchester Musical groups reestablished in 2005 Polydor Records artists Teen pop groups Universal Music Group artists Vocal quartets Vocal quintets Vocal trios
true
[ "\"This Is How We Do It\" is a 1995 song by Montell Jordan.\n\nThis Is How We Do It may also refer to:\n\n This Is How We Do It (album), by Montell Jordan\n \"This Is How We Do It\" (Grey's Anatomy), a 2011 episode\n\nSee also\n \"This Is How We Do\", a 2014 song by Katy Perry", "\"How Do I Get Close\" is a song released by the British rock group, the Kinks. Released on the band's critically panned LP, UK Jive, the song was written by the band's main songwriter, Ray Davies.\n\nRelease and reception\n\"How Do I Get Close\" was first released on the Kinks' album UK Jive. UK Jive failed to make an impression on fans and critics alike, as the album failed to chart in the UK and only reached No. 122 in America. However, despite the failure of the album and the lead UK single, \"Down All the Days (Till 1992)\", \"How Do I Get Close\" was released as the second British single from the album, backed with \"Down All the Days (Till 1992)\". The single failed to chart. The single was also released in America (backed with \"War is Over\"), where, although it did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100, it hit No. 21 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, the highest on that chart since \"Working At The Factory\" in 1986. \"How Do I Get Close\" also appeared on the compilation album Lost & Found (1986-1989).\n\nStephen Thomas Erlewine cited \"How Do I Get Close\" as a highlight from both UK Jive and Lost & Found (1986-1989).\n\nReferences\n\nThe Kinks songs\n1990 singles\nSongs written by Ray Davies\nSong recordings produced by Ray Davies\n1989 songs\nMCA Records singles" ]
[ "Take That", "1995-1996: Robbie Williams's first departure, break-up and Greatest Hits", "Why did Williams leave?", "Robbie Williams's drug abuse had escalated to a near drug overdose", "What was the result of this?", "I don't know.", "When did they break up?", "On 13 February 1996, Take That formally announced that they were disbanding.", "When did they release their greatest hits?", "This was followed by the Greatest Hits compilation in 1996,", "How did this album do?", "The single went on to become what was to be the band's final UK number one until their 2006 comeback a decade later." ]
C_93f5c84a4b2e459c97d351f6a21ea1d5_0
What else is significant during this year?
6
Other than the single went number one in the UK, what else is significant during the year for the band?
Take That
Robbie Williams's drug abuse had escalated to a near drug overdose the night before the group was scheduled to perform at the MTV Europe Music Awards in 1994. In June 1995, Williams was photographed by the press partying with Oasis at the Glastonbury Festival. During this month the band offered him an ultimatum; he was to adhere to the band's responsibilities or leave before their scheduled world tour. Williams chose the latter. Orange pressured Williams to quit because of Williams's behavior. Williams claimed he was bored with Barlow's leadership and jealous of Barlow. Despite the loss of Williams, Take That continued to promote Nobody Else as a four-piece, scoring a further hit single with Donald's "Never Forget". They subsequently went to America and completed the Nobody Else Tour in October 1995. Following the tour, the band began to plan for their next album; however, when they spent Christmas together, they mutually agreed it was time to part ways. On 13 February 1996, Take That formally announced that they were disbanding. This was followed by the Greatest Hits compilation in 1996, which contained a new recording, a cover of the Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love". The single went on to become what was to be the band's final UK number one until their 2006 comeback a decade later. Take That gave what was thought to be their final performance in April 1996 at Amsterdam. Following the band's announcement, millions of their fans were distraught around the world and in the UK alone, teenage girls threatened suicide and were seen lining streets in tears, to the point that telephone hotlines were set up by the government to deal with counselling them. After the band broke up, highly respected music figures such as Elton John noted that Take That were different from other boy bands before and after them, in that they wrote their own material through Gary Barlow, the only boy band member who won an Ivor Novello award during his time in a boy band (although George Michael won it while in Wham!). Take That had also left a legacy of being immaculate performers with a very high work ethic, causing them to be voted in as the greatest boy band of all time. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
Take That are an English pop group formed in Manchester in 1990. The group currently consists of Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen. The original line-up also featured Jason Orange and Robbie Williams. Barlow is the group's lead singer and primary songwriter, with Owen and Williams initially providing backing vocals and Donald and Orange serving primarily as dancers. The group have had 28 top 40 singles and 17 top 5 singles on the UK Singles Chart, 12 of which have reached number one, including "Back for Good", "Never Forget", "Patience" and "Greatest Day". They have also had eight number one albums on the UK Albums Chart. Internationally, the band have had 56 number one singles and 39 number one albums. They have received eight Brit Awards—winning for Best British Group and Best British Live Act. In 2012 they received an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. According to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), Take That has been certified for 14 million albums and 11.4 million singles in the UK. Williams left the band in 1995 while the four remaining members completed their world tour and released a final single before splitting up in 1996. After filming a 2005 Take That: For the Record about the group and releasing a new greatest hits album, a four-piece Take That without Williams officially announced a 2006 reunion tour around the UK, entitled The Ultimate Tour. On 9 May 2006, it was announced that the group were set to record new material together once again; their fourth studio album, Beautiful World, was released in 2006 and was followed up with The Circus, in 2008. The group achieved new success as a four-piece, scoring a string of chart hits across the UK and Europe while selling over 45 million records worldwide. Williams rejoined Take That in 2010 for the band's sixth studio album, Progress. Released on 15 November of that year, it was the first album of new material to feature Take That's original line-up since their 1995 album, Nobody Else. It became the fastest-selling album of the 21st century and the second fastest-selling album in British history. In 2014, the band recorded a seventh studio album, this time as a trio without Williams and Orange. The album, titled III, was released in November 2014 and became the band's seventh number one. It was preceded by the single "These Days", which became the band's 12th number one single in the UK. In 2011, Take That set the new record for the fastest-selling tour of all time in the UK with Progress Live, beating the previous record set by their Circus Live Tour in 2009. At the 2011 Brit Awards they won Best British Group. In 2012, Forbes named them the fifth highest-earning music stars in the world. The group performed at the London 2012 Olympic Games closing ceremony, playing "Rule the World" while the Olympic Flame was extinguished. In the same year, the Official Charts Company revealed the biggest-selling singles artists in British music chart history with Take That currently placed at 15th overall, making them the most successful boy band in UK chart history. Four of their albums are listed in the best-selling albums of the millennium, with three of them among the 60 best-selling albums in UK chart history. History 1989–1990: Formation In 1989, Manchester-based Nigel Martin-Smith sought to create a British male vocal singing group modelled on New Kids on the Block. Martin-Smith's vision, however, was a teen-orientated group that would appeal to more than one demographic segment of the music industry. Martin-Smith was then introduced to young singer-songwriter Gary Barlow, who had been performing in clubs since the age of 15. Impressed with Barlow's catalogue of self-written material, Martin-Smith decided to build his new-look boy band around Barlow's musical abilities. A campaign to audition young men with abilities in dancing and singing followed and took place in Manchester and other surrounding cities in 1990. At 22, Howard Donald was one of the oldest to audition, but he was chosen after he got time off work as a vehicle painter to continue the process. Prior to auditioning, Jason Orange had appeared as a breakdancer on the popular television programme The Hit Man and Her. Martin-Smith also selected 18-year-old bank employee Mark Owen and finally 16-year-old Robbie Williams to round out the group, which initially went by the name Kick It. 1990–1992: Take That & Party Take That's first TV appearance was on The Hit Man and Her in 1990, where they performed Barlow's self-written, unreleased song, "My Kind of Girl". They later appeared a second time to perform "Waiting Around", which would become the B-side for the first single, "Do What U Like". "Promises" and "Once You've Tasted Love" were also released as singles but were minor hits in the UK. Take That initially worked the same territory as their American counterparts, singing new jack R&B, urban soul, and mainstream pop. However, they worked their way toward Hi-NRG dance music, while also pursuing an adult contemporary ballad direction. As they aimed to break into the mainstream music industry, they worked a number of small clubs, schools, and events across the country building up a fanbase as they travelled to gigs constantly for months. Take That's breakthrough single was a cover of the 1975 Tavares hit "It Only Takes a Minute", which peaked at number seven on the UK Singles Chart in June 1992. This success was followed by "I Found Heaven", then by the first Barlow ballad "A Million Love Songs", which also reached number seven in October. Their cover of the Barry Manilow hit "Could It Be Magic" gave them their first big success, peaking at number three in the UK in the first chart of 1993. Their first album, Take That & Party, was released in 1992, and included all the hit singles to date. 1993–1995: Everything Changes, Nobody Else and superstardom 1993 saw the release of Everything Changes, based on Barlow's original material. It peaked at number one in the UK and spawned six singles, with four being consecutive UK number one singles – their first number one "Pray", "Relight My Fire", "Babe" and the title track "Everything Changes". The lead single "Why Can't I Wake Up with You" had narrowly missed the top spot in the UK peaking at number two and the sixth and final single "Love Ain't Here Anymore" taken from the album reached number three on the UK charts. Everything Changes saw the band gain international success with the album being nominated for the 1994 Mercury Prize, but it failed to crack the U.S. market, where an exclusive remix of "Love Ain't Here Anymore" (U.S. version) gained little success. By 1994, Take That had become radio and television stars across Europe and Asia, but it was not until 1995 that they did their first World Tour. It was during the years 1993–95 that the band fronted scores of magazine covers ranging from Smash Hits to GQ, becoming mass merchandised on all sorts of paraphernalia ranging from picture books, to posters, stickers, their own dolls, jewellery, caps, T-shirts, toothbrushes and even had their own annuals released. The band had also developed a large female teenage fanbase at the time. During this time, they performed at numerous music awards shows and chart shows such as the BRIT Awards and Top of the Pops, also winning the Best Live Act award in 1995 at the MTV Europe Music Awards, having been renowned for their breakdance routines, high energy and creative tour productions. In 1995, Take That released their third studio album Nobody Else, again based on Barlow's own material which reached number 1 in the UK and across Europe, capturing new audiences along the way, with Take That also able to make inroads in the adult audience in Britain through Barlow's melodic, sensitive ballads. For nearly five years, Take That's popularity was unsurpassed in Britain. The release of the first single from the album, "Sure", achieved yet another number one in the UK charts. It was not until their second release from that album, however, that they would experience what would become their biggest hit single, "Back for Good", which reached number one in many countries including the UK, Germany, Australia, and Norway. It was also their only US hit, where it reached number seven. The song was initially unveiled for the first time via live performance while at the 1995 BRIT Awards, and based on the reception of that performance, the record pre-sold more records than expected and forced the record label to bring the release date forward by an unprecedented six weeks. The album was also noted for its cover, which was a parody of the famed cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover sleeve. 1995–1996: Break-up and Greatest Hits Robbie Williams's drug abuse had escalated to a near drug overdose the night before the group was scheduled to perform at the MTV Europe Music Awards in 1994. In June 1995, Williams was photographed by the press partying with Oasis at the Glastonbury Festival. The following month, the band offered him an ultimatum; he was to adhere to the band's responsibilities or leave before their scheduled world tour. Williams chose the latter. Williams claimed he was bored with Barlow's leadership and jealous of Barlow. Despite the loss of Williams, Take That continued to promote Nobody Else as a four-piece, scoring a further hit single with "Never Forget" with Donald on lead vocal. They subsequently went to America and completed the Nobody Else Tour in October 1995. Following the tour, the band began to plan for their next album; however, when they spent Christmas together, they mutually agreed it was time to part ways. On 13 February 1996, Take That formally announced that they were disbanding. This was followed by the Greatest Hits compilation in 1996, which contained a new recording, a cover of the Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love". The single went on to become what was to be the band's final UK number one until their 2006 comeback a decade later. Take That gave what was thought to be their final performance in April 1996 at Amsterdam. Following the band's announcement, millions of their fans were distraught around the world and in the UK alone, teenage girls threatened suicide and were seen lining streets in tears, to the point that telephone hotlines were set up by the government to deal with counselling them. After the band broke up, highly respected music figures such as Elton John noted that Take That were different from other boy bands before and after them, in that they wrote their own material through Gary Barlow. Barlow is one of only a small number of people who have won an Ivor Novello award during their time in a boy band, with George Michael whilst in Wham! and Tony Mortimer whilst in East 17 being two others who have achieved this feat. Take That had also left a legacy of being immaculate performers with a very high work ethic, causing them to be voted in as the greatest boy band of all time. 2005–2006: Reunion as a quartet and Never Forget – The Ultimate Collection On 14 November 2005, Never Forget – The Ultimate Collection, a new compilation of their hit singles including a new previously unreleased song, also achieved great success and peaked at number 2 on UK charts, selling over 2.1 million copies in the UK alone. The new song "Today I've Lost You" (recorded in September 2005) was originally written by Barlow as the follow up to "Back for Good" but was never recorded. On 16 November 2005, the group got back together for the ITV documentary Take That: For the Record, in which they aired their views over their fame, success, the split and what the post-Williams line-up had done since. On 25 November 2005, there was an official press conference by the band announcing that the post-Robbie Williams line-up was going to tour in 2006. The tour, entitled The Ultimate Tour, ran from April to June 2006. The tour featured a guest appearance by British soul singer Beverley Knight, who replaced Lulu's vocals on the song "Relight My Fire"; although Lulu did appear during the stadium shows on "Relight My Fire" and "Never Forget". The American female ensemble Pussycat Dolls supported the group at their Dublin concert, and the Sugababes supported the group on the final five dates of the stadium leg. In a seven-year study analysing over one billion online searches via Google conducted by AccuraCast, a leading digital search agency, their comeback was ranked at number one in the UK. 2006–2007: Beautiful World On 9 May 2006, Take That returned to the recorded music scene after more than ten years of absence, signing with Polydor Records. The band's comeback album, Beautiful World, entered the UK Albums Chart at no. 1 and, as of June 2009, had sold over 2.8 million copies in the UK. It is the 35th best selling album in UK music history. On Beautiful World, all four members of the band had the opportunity to sing lead vocals and contribute in the songwriting. Unlike the band's earlier works, where the majority of their material was written by Barlow who received sole credit, all four band members are credited as co-writers, along with John Shanks. The comeback single, "Patience", was released on 20 November 2006, with a special event launching it on 5 November. On 26 November "Patience" hit number 1 in the UK in its second week of chart entry, making it the group's ninth No. 1, and staying there for 4 weeks. Take That also accompanied eventual winner Leona Lewis on a live version of "A Million Love Songs" during the final of The X Factor on 16 December 2006. The week after Beautiful World was released, it was announced that Take That had become the first artists ever to top the UK official single and album charts along with the download single, download album and DVD charts in the same week, as well as topping the radio charts. The video for the number 1 hit single "Shine", the follow-up to "Patience", premiered on 25 January 2007 on Channel 4, ahead of its release on 26 February 2007. The band's success continued on 14 February 2007 when Take That performed live at the BRIT Awards ceremony at Earl's Court. Their single "Patience" won the Best British Single category. The third single chosen from Beautiful World was "I'd Wait For Life", released on 18 June 2007 in the UK. The single reached 17 in the UK Singles Chart. This may have been due to lack of promotion, as the band decided to take a pre-tour break rather than do any promotion for the single. The single "Rule the World", included on the deluxe version of Beautiful World, was recorded for the soundtrack of the film Stardust (2007). It reached number two in the UK and went on to become the group's second best selling single, shifting over 1.2 million units in the UK. Beautiful World was the fourth biggest-selling album of 2007. It was announced at the start of 2007 that Take That signed a record deal with American label Interscope, and would also release their album in Canada. Starting on 11 October 2007, Take That began their Beautiful World Tour 2007 in Belfast. The tour included 49 shows throughout Europe and the UK and ended in Manchester on 23 December 2007. The band received four nominations at the 2008 BRIT Awards. Nominated for Best British Group, Best British Single ("Shine"), Best British Album (Beautiful World) and Best Live Act, they took home the Best Live Act and the Best British Single awards. According to a 2007 MSN UK internet poll, Take That were voted as the "comeback kings" of the year. 2008–2009: The Circus "Greatest Day", the first single from the album The Circus, made its radio premiere on 13 October 2008 and it was released on 24 November. It debuted at number 1 on the UK Singles Chart on 30 November 2008. An album launch party for The Circus was held in Paris on 2 December. On its first day of release The Circus sold 133,000 copies, and after four days on sale it sold 306,000 copies (going platinum) making The Circus the fastest selling album of the year. The album reached number 1 on the UK Albums Chart on 7 December 2008 with total first-week sales of 432,490, the third highest opening sales week in UK history. On 28 October 2008, on the Radio 1 Chris Moyles show, it was announced that Take That would be touring again in June/July 2009, covering the UK and Ireland. Tickets for the Take That Present: The Circus Live tour went on sale on 31 October. The promoters, SJM, have said that the band's tour is "the fastest selling in UK history". On 22 May 2008, Barlow and Donald attended the 2008 Ivor Novello Awards where Take That won the award for Most Performed Work with their single "Shine". Take That won the Sony Ericsson Tour of the Year award at the Vodafone music awards on 18 September 2008. They were unable to attend as they were in LA finishing off The Circus. They did send a video link message, which was shown at the awards. On 22 November 2008, Take That appeared on week 7 of the talent show The X Factor where the finalists performed some of their greatest hits and Owen and Barlow made a guest appearance to personally coach the contestants. The band also performed on Children in Need 2008, singing their new single, "Greatest Day", before donating £250,000 to the charity from their Marks and Spencer fee. The band were also voted the Greatest Boy Band of All Time, reflecting their ongoing marketability and success in the pop arena, even after two decades. At the 2009 Brit Awards they were nominated for Best British Group and they performed "Greatest Day" at the ceremony. "Up All Night", the second single from The Circus, was released on 2 March 2009, and peaked at number 14 on the UK Singles Chart, despite heavy airplay. In Germany and Australia, "The Garden" was released as the second single instead. On 7 May 2009, Take That's official website confirmed that the third single from The Circus would be "Said It All" which was released on 15 June 2009, peaking at number 9 on the UK Singles chart. The video premiered on GMTV on 8 May 2009. It features all four band members dressed up as vintage circus clowns, which tied in with their forthcoming Take That Present: The Circus Live tour. Take That started their Circus Live tour at the Stadium of Light on 5 June 2009 in Sunderland and ended at the Wembley Stadium in London on 5 July 2009, which over 80,000 people attended. This tour quickly became the fastest-selling of all time, breaking all records by selling all of their 650,000 tickets in less than four and a half hours. In November 2009 Take That released the official DVD of their Circus tour, which became the fastest-selling music DVD of all time in the UK on its first day of release and stayed in the top 10 of the videos chart for over a year. This overtook the previous record sales holder, which was Take That's Beautiful World Live tour and stayed at the number 1 spot for 8 weeks. The following week Take That released their first live album, The Greatest Day – Take That Present: The Circus Live, which sold 98,000 copies on its first day of release and was certified Platinum in July 2013. "Hold up a Light" was released as the fifth and final single from The Circus to radio stations and as a digital download to promote the release of the live album. The live album also featured a stripped down session recorded live at the famous Abbey Road Studios in London. It featured the members singing the setlist from the preceding tour, albeit in a studio setting. 2010–2011: Williams' return and Progress On 7 June 2010, the news broke of a single called "Shame", which had been written by Barlow and Williams and would feature the vocals of both artists. This was the first time the pair had worked together since 1995 and would appear on the second greatest hits collection of Williams. "Heart and I", another track from the same album, was also co-written by Williams and Barlow. The single "Shame" peaked at number 2 on the UK Singles Chart while also achieving success throughout Europe, charting in over 19 countries. After working with the band on new material in Los Angeles, on 15 July 2010 Robbie Williams announced he was returning to Take That. After months of working together, assembling new songs for a new album and even debating a band-name change to "The English", a joint statement between Williams and the group read, "The rumours are true ... Take That: the original lineup, have written and recorded a new album for release later this year." The statement went on to say, "Following months of speculation Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Jason Orange, Mark Owen, and Robbie Williams confirmed they have been recording a new studio album as a five-piece, which they will release in November." The lead single from Take That's album Progress was announced as "The Flood" and was released 7 November as a digital download, and on 8 November as a physical copy, with the album released a week later on 15 November. The single peaked at number 2 in the UK Singles Charts and to date has sold over 500,000 copies in the UK alone. The single also achieved success across Europe, charting inside the top 10 in ten countries while also charting in another nine countries whilst also being nominated for an Ivor Novello Award for best work. On 26 October the band announced that they would be embarking on a huge UK stadium tour entitled Progress Live, starting in Sunderland on 27 May, and finishing with a record-breaking 8 nights at London's Wembley Stadium in July 2011. It was also announced that Williams would perform hit singles from his solo career during the tour. The band then played at some of the biggest venues across Europe for the second leg of the tour. The phenomenal demand for tickets across the country led to the web sites of all the major UK ticket suppliers either crashing or considerably slowing for hours on end. The demand and sheer volume of fans also created problems for the UK telephone network. Take That's Progress Live also broke all records for ticket sales selling over 1.1 million tickets in one day, smashing the previous box office record set by Take That's Circus tour in 2008. On the first day of release Progress became the fastest selling album of the century, with 235,000 copies sold in just one day. The album reached number 1 in the UK, selling around 520,000 copies in its first week, becoming the second fastest-selling album in history. After the release of Progress it was announced that Take That have become Amazon UK's top-selling music artist of all time. The album retained the number one spot for six consecutive weeks in the UK since its release, selling 2.8 million copies in the UK alone and becoming the best selling album of 2010 Progress also achieved success across Europe where it debuted at number one in Ireland, Greece, Germany and Denmark. and the European Top 100 Albums chart. It also debuted inside the top 10 of the charts in Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. "Kidz" was announced as the second single from Progress, it was released 21 February 2011 and charted well across Europe. The band performed the song live at the 2011 Brit Awards hosted at The O2 Arena, where they won a Brit for Best British Group and were nominated for Best British Album. Their performance of "Kidz", praised by critics, involved a highly choreographed routine featuring dancers dressed in police-styled riot gear bearing the Take That symbol on the uniform and shields. On 19 May 2011, Take That announced a new EP entitled Progressed, which contained eight tracks written by the band since they had reunited as a five-piece. It was packaged alongside the album Progress and returned the band to number 1 in the UK Album Chart the week after it was released on 13 June 2011. Take That announced that the Progress Live tour would be released worldwide as their second live album to date and would also be released on home media formats across the UK and Europe on 21 November 2011. The DVD debuted at number 1 on the UK Music Video top 40 in its first week on release and sold over 200,000 copies in two weeks of release in the UK alone. Take That's efforts were recognised further when they were awarded Virgin Media's Best Live Act of 2012. On 4 October, it was reported that Take That were to take a break after the completion of the Progress tour, with Barlow continuing his role as a judge on The X Factor and Williams recording new solo material. Take That were presented with an Ivor Novello Award for their Outstanding Contribution to British Music in May 2012. In August 2012, Take That performed at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics, despite Barlow announcing that his daughter had been stillborn the previous week. The performance earned him praise for appearing live so soon after the tragedy. Williams was due to perform with the band but dropped out due to his wife giving birth at around the same time and thus the group performed as a four-piece. In November 2012, Take That reunited as a five-piece for the last time to perform "Never Forget" at the Music Industry Trust Awards. In 2013, Donald became a judge on the German version of the television dancing show Got to Dance. 2014–2015: Line-up change and III In May 2013, Owen announced that Take That was to begin recording their seventh studio album in 2014, and on 14 January 2014, Donald and Barlow both tweeted that Take That had entered the studio to begin recording the album, although it was not initially clear if Williams was present at these recording sessions. On 28 April 2014, Williams announced on Twitter he was to become a father for a second time, and consequently suggested he would be unable to join Take That on their album and tour. Although welcome to return to the band at any time, Williams chose not to return for group's seventh and eighth studio albums and their accompanying tours, focusing instead on his solo commitments. He continued to write music with his colleagues and has performed with the group on several occasions since 2011's Progress tour and plans on returning at some point in the future. On 24 September 2014, it was announced that Jason Orange had left the band. He said: 'At a band meeting last week I confirmed to Mark, Gary and Howard that I do not wish to commit to recording and promoting a new album. 'At the end of The Progress Tour I began to question whether it might be the right time for me to not continue on with Take That,' he continued. 'There have been no fallings out, only a decision on my part that I no longer wish to do this,' he added. Barlow, Donald, and Owen issued a joint statement about Orange's decision which said: "This is a sad day for us. Jason leaving is a huge loss both professionally and even more so personally ... Jason's energy and belief in what this band could achieve has made it what it is today, and we'll forever be grateful for his enthusiasm, dedication and inspiration over the years." A day after the announcement, Robbie Williams took to Twitter to show support of Orange's decision. "Mr Orange. Until we ride again. Much love, Bro.", Williams tweeted. On 10 October 2014, Take That unveiled their first song as a three-piece and lead single from their upcoming album. Titled "These Days", it was released on 23 November 2014 and went to No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart, knocking Band Aid 30 off the top spot and becoming their 12th number one single. The album itself, called III, was released on 28 November 2014 and became the band's seventh No. 1 album. It was then followed by a sell-out arena tour entitled Take That Live. On 14 October 2015, the band announced their new single "Hey Boy", released on 16 October, which is the first single from the 2015 re-release of III. The 2015 edition of the album was released on 20 November. In December 2015, British media buzzed about the group embarking on a stint in Las Vegas, starting 2017. Reports indicated the group impressed U.S. promoters and would headline their own residency show. Many venues circulated, including The AXIS at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino, The Foundry at SLS Las Vegas and the Linq Theater at The LINQ Hotel & Casino. Local newspaper, the Las Vegas Sun writes that everything is still unconfirmed, despite Barlow confirming the rumour on Twitter. 2016–2017: Wonderland On 2 February 2016, in an interview with The Sun, Barlow revealed that Take That would release their eighth studio album later in the year. On 4 May 2016, English drum and bass duo Sigma announced their newest single would feature Take That. "Cry" received its first radio play on 20 May 2016 and was released on that date. On 21 October 2016, the band posted a teaser on their social media pages and website depicting the logo of the band flickering with the hashtag "#WONDERLAND". The following day, it was announced that their new album, titled Wonderland, was scheduled to be released on 24 March 2017. It was then followed by a UK and Ireland arena tour entitled Wonderland Live, that commenced on 5 May 2017 at the Genting Arena in Birmingham. On 17 February 2017, the lead single of Wonderland was released. Titled "Giants", it debuted at 13 in the UK charts, which became the band's 24th UK top 20 single. On 8 April 2017, ITV aired a specially commissioned hour-length television special titled An Evening with Take That, where the band performed some songs from the album, along with some old classics including "Never Forget", "Back for Good" and "Rule the World". The band also took part in a Q&A session with the audience members. On 27 April, it was announced on Twitter that "New Day" would be released as the next single from the album Wonderland. The band were seen recording the music video in a field in Luton the days leading up the opening night of the Wonderland Live tour. Due to the Manchester Arena bombing just days before they were due to perform at the venue, their Manchester and Liverpool dates were rescheduled or relocated. The band returned a month later to perform at the One Love Manchester benefit concert. On 16 September 2017, Barlow, Owen and Donald were set to perform a special one-off show in Jersey after a fan bid more than £1.2 million to win a performance from the band. This then turned in to a ticketed charity event where the money from tickets sold would go towards benefiting Children in Need. The auction was held on BBC Radio 2. On 11 November 2017, Take That began their foreign tour in Perth, Australia, the first time they have performed in the country in over twenty years. They also played in New Zealand, United Arab Emirates and Israel for the first time. Unlike the other tours, a DVD for Wonderland Live was not released. Instead, it was broadcast on Sky 1 on 23 December and in cinemas. 2018–2020: The 30th Anniversary, and Odyssey On 16 July 2018, while performing at first ever Hits Radio Live at the Manchester Arena, Barlow, Donald and Owen confirmed that they would be touring in 2019. The tour was a Greatest Hits tour and celebrated the 30th anniversary of the band. There was also a Greatest Hits album, Odyssey, which was released on 23 November 2018. The Greatest Hits album features existing songs from their back catalogue that have been re-imagined and 3 brand new songs. It also includes collaborations with Boyz II Men, Lulu, Sigma and Barry Gibb. Odyssey reached number one in the UK album chart and was certified as a platinum selling record. The following year, Odyssey Live, the recording of their tour, reached number 5, becoming the band's 13th top 5 album, with the DVD becoming the biggest live music sale of 2019. In May 2020, Barlow, Donald, and Owen reunited with Williams for a virtual performance from their respective homes, hosted by price comparison website comparethemarket.com, to raise money for the music charity Nordoff Robbins and Crew Nation. In other media In April 2006, EMI licensed the band's songs to be used in the musical Never Forget, a musical based on songs of the band from the 1990s. Take That posted and then later removed a statement on their website distancing themselves from it. Take That wrote and recorded the theme song "Rule the World" for the film Stardust directed by Matthew Vaughn, which was released in cinemas across the globe in October 2007. In 2007, their song "Back for Good" was used as part of the soundtrack for popular Korean drama The 1st Shop of Coffee Prince. Take That presented their own TV show Take That Come to Town, a variety show in which they performed some of their biggest hits. The show also featured comedy sketches with one of Peter Kay's alter egos Geraldine McQueen. It aired on 7 December 2008 on ITV1. Sony launched their first Take That video game, SingStar Take That in 2009 for the PlayStation 3. In November 2010, ITV aired Take That: Look Back, Don't Stare, a black-and-white documentary which focused on the band working together for the first time in 15 years. Through a series of interviews, the band look back at their achievements while also looking forward to what the future holds for them. On 18 November 2010, Williams and Barlow appeared together live on television for the first time on the Popstars program in Germany singing their hit "Shame". In 2011, Take That's song "Love Love" was used in the credits of the 2011 film X-Men: First Class and later, "When We Were Young" was chosen as the main theme for The Three Musketeers movie. In 2015, the song "Get Ready for It" from their album III, was chosen as the theme song for the film Kingsman: The Secret Service. In 2017, Take That launched The Band, a musical written by Tim Firth featuring the five winners of Let It Shine and some of Take That's biggest hits. Take That, including Robbie Williams, were billed as executive producers. The group's music is regularly featured in the Channel 4 show Derry Girls, notably in the third episode of the second series, when the lead characters sneak off to attend the 1993 Take That concert in Belfast; the episode features the music video for "Pray" and ends on footage of the band performing "Everything Changes". Artistry Early in their career, Take That were known for party anthems such as "Do What U Like" and more mature ballads such as "A Million Love Songs" and "Back for Good". Since reuniting in 2006, they have become more experimental: their post-2006 albums Beautiful World and The Circus have featured "stadium-filling pop-rock" while Progress largely leaned towards electropop. Having been dubbed the "comeback kings" by the media for their highly successful reunion, the group has won widespread praise for their seamless transformation from teen idols to "man band" without overly relying on nostalgia, instead showcasing a more mature image and sound and reinventing themselves while maintaining their artistic integrity. Jude Rogers of The Guardian commented on Take That's post-reunion success, in light of a string of reunions by the group's disbanded counterparts from the 1990s: "Only Take That are penetrating pop's wider consciousness by becoming a man-band rather than a boy-band, singing mature, proper pop songs that cross the generations." Take That have garnered critical acclaim and popularity as consummate live performers and for their musical output. Their domestic concert tours have been described as "some of the most flamboyant, imaginative and extravagant pop tours around". Aside from covers, all of their material is composed by the members themselves; Barlow was initially the principal songwriter who received sole credit but the other members have since taken a more active role in the composition and production process, including playing instruments for the backing track. Band members Current members Gary Barlow (1990–1996, 2005–present) Howard Donald (1990–1996, 2005–present) Mark Owen (1990–1996, 2005–present) Former members Robbie Williams (1990–1995, 2010–2012) Jason Orange (1990–1996, 2005–2014) Timeline Awards and nominations |- | 2016 | Take That | Silver Clef Award for Best Live Act | |- | style="text-align:center;"|2015 | "These Days" | UK Music Video Awards for Best Art Direction | |- | rowspan="6" style="text-align:center;"|2012 | "Pray" |The Guardian Music Award for Best Number 1 Single | |- | Take That |Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music | |- | "Back for Good" |The Official Charts Company UK Recognition award for United Kingdom's Favourite Number One Single | |- | "The Flood" |Ivor Novello Award for PRS Most Performed Work | |- | Take That |Virgin Media Music Awards for Best Live Act | |- | "Kidz" |Virgin Media Music Awards for Best Music Video | |- | rowspan="10" style="text-align:center;"|2011 |- | Progress Live |Audio Pro International Awards for Best Live Sound Event | |- | Progress Live |Audio Pro International Awards Grand Prix Award | |- | Take That |Phonographic Performance Limited Award for most played UK artist | |- | "Kidz" |Spex German Entertainment for Best Music Video | |- | The Circus Live Tour | Greatest Event ever at Wembley Stadium | |- | Take That |ECHO Award for Best International Group | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Group | |- | Progress | BRIT Award for MasterCard Album of the Year | |- | Take That |Virgin Media for Best Group | |- | rowspan="6" style="text-align:center;"|2010 |- | "Up All Night" | UK Music Video Awards for Best Art Direction | |- | "The Flood" |iTunes Award for Best Single | |- | Progress | iTunes Award for Best Album | |- | Take That |Q Award Hall of Fame | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best Live Performance of the past 30 Years | |- | rowspan="5" style="text-align:center;"|2009 | Take That |GQ Men of the Year Awards for Best Band | |- | Take That |Q Award for Best Live Act | |- | "Greatest Day" |Q Award for Best Single | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Group | |- | Take That | Silver Clef Award | |- | rowspan="7" style="text-align:center;"|2008 | "Shine" |Ivor Novello Award for PRS Most Performed Work | |- | "Rule the World" |Virgin for Best Single | |- | Take That |Sony Ericsson Tour of the Year Award for Take That Arena Tour | |- | "Shine" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Live Act | |- | Beautiful World |BRIT Award for Best British Album | |- | Take That |BRIT Award for Best British Group | |- | style="text-align:center;"|2007 | "Patience" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | style="text-align:center;"|2006 | Take That |Q Idol Award | |- | rowspan="3" style="text-align:center;"|1996 | "Back for Good" |Billboard International Hit of the Year | |- | "Never Forget" |Ivor Novello Award for Most Performed Song | |- | "Back for Good" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | rowspan="3" style="text-align:center;"|1995 | "Back for Good" |Ivor Novello Award for the Song of the Year | |- | Take That |MTV Europe Music Awards for Best Live Act | |- | Take That | Silver Clef Award | |- | rowspan="6" style="text-align:center;"|1994 | "Babe" |MTV Video Music Award for International Viewer's Choice Award for MTV Europe | |- | Everything Changes |Mercury Prize for Best Album | |- | "Pray" |Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song | |- | "Pray" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | "Pray" |BRIT Award for Best British Video | |- | Take That |MTV Europe Music Awards for Best Group | |- | rowspan="4" style="text-align:center;"|1993 | "Could It Be Magic" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | "A Million Love Songs" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | "It Only Takes a Minute" |BRIT Award for Best British Single | |- | Take That | Silver Clef Award for Best Newcomer | |} Discography Take That & Party (1992) Everything Changes (1993) Nobody Else (1995) Beautiful World (2006) The Circus (2008) Progress (2010) III (2014) Wonderland (2017) Tours Party Tour (1992–93) Everything Changes Tour (1993–94) Pops Tour (1994–95) Nobody Else Tour (1995) The Ultimate Tour (2006) Beautiful World Tour 2007 (2007) Take That Present: The Circus Live (2009) Progress Live (2011) Take That Live (2015) Wonderland Live (2017) Greatest Hits Live (2019) See also List of best-selling boy bands References External links Chinese Fansite 1990 establishments in England 1996 disestablishments in England 2005 establishments in England Brit Award winners Dance-pop groups Echo (music award) winners English boy bands English dance music groups Interscope Records artists Ivor Novello Award winners MTV Europe Music Award winners Musical groups disestablished in 1996 Musical groups established in 1990 Musical groups from Cheshire Musical groups from Manchester Musical groups reestablished in 2005 Polydor Records artists Teen pop groups Universal Music Group artists Vocal quartets Vocal quintets Vocal trios
false
[ "\"What Else Is There?\" is the third single from the Norwegian duo Röyksopp's second album The Understanding. It features the vocals of Karin Dreijer from the Swedish electronica duo The Knife. The album was released in the UK with the help of Astralwerks.\n\nThe single was used in an O2 television advertisement in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia during 2008. It was also used in the 2006 film Cashback and the 2007 film, Meet Bill. Trentemøller's remix of \"What Else is There?\" was featured in an episode of the HBO show Entourage.\n\nThe song was covered by extreme metal band Enslaved as a bonus track for their album E.\n\nThe song was listed as the 375th best song of the 2000s by Pitchfork Media.\n\nOfficial versions\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Album Version) – 5:17\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Radio Edit) – 3:38\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Jacques Lu Cont Radio Mix) – 3:46\n\"What Else Is There?\" (The Emperor Machine Vocal Version) – 8:03\n\"What Else Is There?\" (The Emperor Machine Dub Version) – 7:51\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Mix) – 8:25\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Edit) – 4:50\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Remix) (Radio Edit) – 3:06\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Trentemøller Remix) – 7:42\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Vitalic Remix) – 5:14\n\nResponse\nThe single was officially released on 5 December 2005 in the UK. The single had a limited release on 21 November 2005 to promote the upcoming album. On the UK Singles Chart, it peaked at number 32, while on the UK Dance Chart, it reached number one.\n\nMusic video\nThe music video was directed by Martin de Thurah. It features Norwegian model Marianne Schröder who is shown lip-syncing Dreijer's voice. Schröder is depicted as a floating woman traveling across stormy landscapes and within empty houses. Dreijer makes a cameo appearance as a woman wearing an Elizabethan ruff while dining alone at a festive table.\n\nMovie spots\n\nThe song is also featured in the movie Meet Bill as characters played by Jessica Alba and Aaron Eckhart smoke marijuana while listening to it. It is also part of the end credits music of the film Cashback.\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n2005 singles\nRöyksopp songs\nAstralwerks singles\nSongs written by Svein Berge\nSongs written by Torbjørn Brundtland\n2004 songs\nSongs written by Roger Greenaway\nSongs written by Olof Dreijer\nSongs written by Karin Dreijer", "In computer science, the Tak function is a recursive function, named after Ikuo Takeuchi (竹内郁雄). It is defined as follows:\n\ndef tak( x, y, z)\n if y < x\n tak( \n tak(x-1, y, z),\n tak(y-1, z, x),\n tak(z-1, x, y)\n )\n else\n z\n end\nend\n\nThis function is often used as a benchmark for languages with optimization for recursion.\n\ntak() vs. tarai()\nThe original definition by Takeuchi was as follows:\n\ndef tarai( x, y, z)\n if y < x\n tarai( \n tarai(x-1, y, z),\n tarai(y-1, z, x),\n tarai(z-1, x, y)\n )\n else\n y # not z!\n end\nend\n\ntarai is short for たらい回し tarai mawashi, \"to pass around\" in Japanese.\n\nJohn McCarthy named this function tak() after Takeuchi.\n\nHowever, in certain later references, the y somehow got turned into the z.\nThis is a small, but significant difference because the original version benefits significantly by lazy evaluation.\nThough written in exactly the same manner as others, the Haskell code below runs much faster.\n\ntarai :: Int -> Int -> Int -> Int\ntarai x y z\n | x <= y = y\n | otherwise = tarai(tarai (x-1) y z)\n (tarai (y-1) z x)\n (tarai (z-1) x y)\n\nOne can easily accelerate this function via memoization yet lazy evaluation still wins.\n\nThe best known way to optimize tarai is to use mutually recursive helper function as follows.\n\ndef laziest_tarai(x, y, zx, zy, zz)\n unless y < x\n y\n else\n laziest_tarai(tarai(x-1, y, z),\n tarai(y-1, z, x),\n tarai(zx, zy, zz)-1, x, y)\n end\nend\n\ndef tarai(x, y, z)\n unless y < x\n y\n else\n laziest_tarai(tarai(x-1, y, z),\n tarai(y-1, z, x),\n z-1, x, y)\n end\nend\n\nHere is an efficient implementation of tarai() in C:\nint tarai(int x, int y, int z)\n{\n while (x > y) {\n int oldx = x, oldy = y;\n x = tarai(x - 1, y, z);\n y = tarai(y - 1, z, oldx);\n if (x <= y) break;\n z = tarai(z - 1, oldx, oldy);\n }\n return y;\n}\nNote the additional check for (x <= y) before z (the third argument) is evaluated, avoiding unnecessary recursive evaluation.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nTAK Function\n\nFunctions and mappings\nSpecial functions" ]
[ "Beck", "Guero and The Information (2004-07)" ]
C_d29b28d4389744279614a64dbf2969cd_0
Is Guero the name of an album?
1
Is Guero the name of an album?
Beck
Guero, Beck's eighth studio album, was recorded over the span of nine months during which several significant events occurred in his life: his girlfriend, Marissa Ribisi, became pregnant; they were married; their son, Cosimo, was born; and they moved out of Silver Lake. The collaboration with the Dust Brothers, his second, was notable for their use of high-tech measures to achieve a lo-fi sound. For example, after recording a "sonically perfect" version of a song at one of the nicest recording studios in Hollywood, the Dust Brothers processed it in an Echoplex to create a gritty, reverb-heavy sound: "We did this high-tech recording and ran it through a transistor radio. It sounded too good, that was the problem." Initially due to be released in October 2004, Guero faced delays and did not come out till March 2005, though unmastered copies of the tracks surfaced online in January. Guero debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 162,000 copies, an all-time sales high. Lead single "E-Pro" peaked at number one at Modern Rock radio, making it his first chart-topper since "Loser". Beck, inspired by the Nintendocore remix scene and feeling a connection with its lo-fi, home-recording method, collaborated with artists 8-Bit and Paza on Hell Yes, an EP issued in February 2005. In December 2005, Geffen also issued Guerolito, a fully reworked version of Guero featuring remixes by the Beastie Boys' Ad-Rock, the Dust Brothers' John King and Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada. Guerolito combines remixes previously heard as B-sides and new versions of album tracks to make a track-by-track reconfiguration of the album. Also released in 2005 was A Brief Overview, a 12-track promotional-only "History of Beck" compilation CD sampler that featured a combination of older and newer Beck tracks. The Information, Beck's ninth studio album, began production around the same time as Guero, in 2003. Working with producer Nigel Godrich, Beck built a studio in his garden, where they wrote many of the tracks. "The idea was to get people in a room together recording live, hitting bad notes and screaming," said Beck, adding that the album is best described as "introspective hip hop". Beck described the recording process as "painful", noting that he edited down songs constantly and he perhaps recorded the album three times. For the release, Beck was allowed for the first time to fulfill a long-running wish for an unconventional rollout: he made low-budget videos to accompany each song, packaged the CD with sheets of stickers so buyers could customize the cover, and leaked tracks and videos on his website months ahead of the album's release. Digital download releases automatically downloaded the song's additional video for each single sale, and physical copies came bundled with an additional DVD featuring fifteen videos. CANNOTANSWER
Guero, Beck's eighth studio album,
Beck David Hansen (born Bek David Campbell; July 8, 1970) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He rose to fame in the early 1990s with his experimental and lo-fi style, and became known for creating musical collages of wide-ranging genres. He has musically encompassed folk, funk, soul, hip hop, electronic, alternative rock, country, and psychedelia. He has released 14 studio albums (three of which were released on indie labels), as well as several non-album singles and a book of sheet music. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Beck grew towards hip-hop and folk in his teens and began to perform locally at coffeehouses and clubs. He moved to New York City in 1989 and became involved in the city's anti-folk movement. Returning to Los Angeles in the early 1990s, he cut his breakthrough single "Loser", which became a worldwide hit in 1994, and released his first major album, Mellow Gold, the same year. Odelay, released in 1996, topped critic polls and won several awards. He released the country-influenced, twangy Mutations in 1998, and the funk-infused Midnite Vultures in 1999. The soft-acoustic Sea Change in 2002 showcased a more serious Beck, and 2005's Guero returned to Odelays sample-based production. The Information in 2006 was inspired by electro-funk, hip hop, and psychedelia; 2008's Modern Guilt was inspired by '60s pop music; and 2014's folk-infused Morning Phase won Album of the Year at the 57th Grammy Awards. His 2017 album, Colors, won awards for Best Alternative Album and Best Engineered Album at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards. His fourteenth studio album, Hyperspace, was released on November 22, 2019. With a pop art collage of musical styles, oblique and ironic lyrics, and postmodern arrangements incorporating samples, drum machines, live instrumentation and sound effects, Beck has been hailed by critics and the public throughout his musical career as being among the most idiosyncratically creative musicians of 1990s and 2000s alternative rock. Two of Beck's most popular and acclaimed recordings are Odelay and Sea Change, both of which were ranked on Rolling Stone list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The four-time platinum artist has collaborated with several artists and has made several contributions to soundtracks. Early life Beck was born Bek David Campbell in Los Angeles, California, on July 8, 1970, the son of American visual artist Bibbe Hansen and Canadian arranger, composer, and conductor David Campbell. Hansen grew up amid Andy Warhol's The Factory art scene of the 1960s in New York City and was a Warhol superstar. She moved to California at age 17 and met Campbell there. Beck's maternal grandmother was Jewish, while his maternal grandfather, artist Al Hansen, was of Norwegian descent and was a pioneer in the avant-garde Fluxus movement. Beck has said that he was "raised celebrating Jewish holidays" and that he considers himself Jewish. Beck was born in a rooming house near downtown Los Angeles. As a child, he lived in a declining neighborhood near Hollywood Boulevard. He later recalled, "By the time we left there, they were ripping out miles of houses en masse and building low-rent, giant apartment blocks." The lower-class family struggled financially, moving to Hoover and Ninth Street, a neighborhood populated primarily by Koreans and Salvadorian refugees. He was sent for a time to live with his paternal grandparents in Kansas, later remarking that he thought "they were kind of concerned" about his "weird" home life. Since his paternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister, Beck grew up influenced by church music and hymns. He also spent time in Europe with his maternal grandfather. After his parents separated when he was 10, Beck stayed with his mother and brother Channing in Los Angeles, where he was influenced by the city's diverse musical offerings—everything from hip hop to Latin music and his mother's art scene—all of which would later reappear in his work. Beck obtained his first guitar at 16 and became a street musician, often playing Lead Belly covers at Lafayette Park. During his teens, Beck discovered the music of Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore, and X, but remained uninterested in most music outside the folk genre until many years into his career. The first contemporary music that made a direct connection with Beck was hip hop, which he first heard on Grandmaster Flash records in the early 1980s. Growing up in a predominantly Latin district, he found himself the only white child at his school, and quickly learned how to breakdance. When he was 17, Beck grew fascinated after hearing a Mississippi John Hurt record at a friend's house, and spent hours in his room trying to emulate Hurt's finger-picking techniques. Shortly thereafter, Beck explored blues and folk music further, discovering Woody Guthrie and Blind Willie Johnson. Feeling like "a total outcast", Beck dropped out of school after junior high. He later said that although he felt school was important, he felt unsafe there. When he applied to the new performing arts high school downtown, he was rejected. His brother took him to post-Beat jazz places in Echo Park and Silver Lake. He hung out at the Los Angeles City College, perusing records, books and old sheet music in its library. He used a fake ID to sit in on classes there, and he also befriended a literature instructor and his poet wife. He worked at a string of menial jobs, including loading trucks and operating a leaf blower. Career Early performances and first releases (1988–1993) Beck began as a folk musician, switching between country blues, Delta blues, and more traditional rural folk music in his teenage years. He began performing on city buses, often covering Mississippi John Hurt alongside original, sometimes improvisational compositions. "I'd get on the bus and start playing Mississippi John Hurt with totally improvised lyrics. Some drunk would start yelling at me, calling me Axl Rose. So I'd start singing about Axl Rose and the levee and bus passes and strychnine, mixing the whole thing up," he later recalled. He was also in a band called Youthless that hosted Dadaist-inspired freeform events at city coffee shops. "We had Radio Shack mics and this homemade speaker and we'd draft people in the audience to recite comic books or do a beatbox thing, or we'd tie the whole audience up in masking tape," Beck recalled. In 1989, Beck caught a bus to New York City with little more than $8.00 and a guitar. He spent the summer attempting to find a job and a place to live with little success. Beck eventually began to frequent Manhattan's Lower East Side and stumbled upon the tail end of the East Village's anti-folk scene's first wave. Beck became involved in a loose posse of acoustic musicians—including Cindy Lee Berryhill, Kirk Kelly, Paleface, and Lach, headed by Roger Manning—whose raggedness and eccentricity placed them well outside the acoustic mainstream. "The whole mission was to destroy all the clichés and make up some new ones," said Beck of his New York years. "Everybody knew each other. You could go up onstage and say anything, and you wouldn't feel weird or feel any pressure." Inspired by that freedom and by the local spoken-word performers, Beck began to write free-associative, surrealistic songs about pizza, MTV, and working at McDonald's, turning mundane thoughts into songs. Beck was roommates with Paleface, sleeping on his couch and attending open mic nights together. Daunted by the prospect of another homeless New York winter, Beck returned to his home of Los Angeles in early 1991. "I was tired of being cold, tired of getting beat up," he later remarked. "It was hard to be in New York with no money, no place [...] I kinda used up all the friends I had. Everyone on the scene got sick of me." Back in Los Angeles, Beck began to work at a video store in the Silver Lake neighborhood, "doing things like alphabetizing the pornography section". He began performing in arthouse clubs and coffeehouses such as Al's Bar and Raji's. In order to keep indifferent audiences engaged in his music, Beck would play in a spontaneous, joking manner. "I'd be banging away on a Son House tune and the whole audience would be talking. So maybe out of desperation or boredom, or the audience's boredom, I'd make up these ridiculous songs just to see if people were listening," he later remarked. Virtually an unknown to the public and an enigma to those who met him, Beck would hop onstage between acts in local clubs and play "strange folk songs", accompanied by "what could best be described as performance art" while sometimes wearing a Star Wars stormtrooper mask. Beck met someone who offered to help record demos in his living room, and he began to pass cassette tapes around. Eventually, Beck gained key boosters in Margaret Mittleman, the West Coast's director of talent acquisitions for BMG Music Publishing, and the partners behind independent record label Bong Load Custom Records: Tom Rothrock, Rob Schnapf and Brad Lambert. Schnapf saw Beck perform at Jabberjaw and felt he would suit their small venture. Beck expressed a loose interest in hip hop, and Rothrock introduced him to Carl Stephenson, a record producer for Rap-A-Lot Records. In 1992, Beck visited Stephenson's home to collaborate. The result—the slide-sampling hip hop track "Loser"—was a one-off experiment that Beck set aside, going back to his folk songs, making his home tapes such as Golden Feelings, and releasing several independent singles. Mellow Gold, and independent albums (1993–1994) By 1993, Beck was living in a rat-infested shed near a Los Angeles alleyway with little money. Bong Load issued "Loser" as a single in March 1993 on 12" vinyl with only 500 copies pressed. Beck felt that "Loser" was mediocre, and only agreed to its release at Rothrock's insistence. "Loser" unexpectedly received radio airplay, starting in Los Angeles, where college radio station KXLU was the first to play it, and later on Santa Monica College radio station KCRW, where radio host Chris Douridas played the song on Morning Becomes Eclectic, the station's flagship music program. "I called the record label that day and asked to have Beck play live on the air," Douridas said. "He came in that Friday, rapped to a tape of "Loser" and did his song 'MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack.'" That night, Beck performed at the Los Angeles club Cafe Troy to a packed audience and talent scouts from major labels. The song then spread to Seattle through KNDD The End, and KROQ-FM began playing the song on an almost hourly basis. As Bong Load struggled to press more copies of "Loser", Beck was beset with offers to sign with major labels. During the bidding war in November, Beck spent several days in Olympia, Washington, recording material with Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening, which would later see release the following year on Johnson's K Records as One Foot in the Grave. A fierce bidding war ensued, with Geffen Records A&R director Mark Kates signing Beck in December 1993 amid intense competition from Warner Bros. and Capitol. Beck's non-exclusive contract with Geffen allowed him an unusual amount of creative freedom, with Beck remaining free to release material through such small, independent labels as Flipside, which issued the sprawling, 25-track collection of pre-"Loser" recordings titled Stereopathetic Soulmanure on February 22 the following year. By the time Beck released his first album for Geffen, the low-budget, genre-blending Mellow Gold on March 1, "Loser" was already in the top 40 and its video in MTV's Buzz Bin. "Loser" quickly ascended the charts in the U.S., reaching a peak of number ten on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and topping the Modern Rock Tracks chart. The song also charted in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and throughout Europe. Beck's newfound position of attention led to his characterization as the "King of Slackers", as the media dubbed him the center of the new so-called "slacker" movement. Critics, feeling it the essential follow-up to Radiohead's "Creep", found vacantness in the lyrics of "Loser" strongly associated with Generation X, although Beck himself strongly contested his position as the face of the "slacker" generation: "Slacker my ass. I mean, I never had any slack. I was working a $4-an-hour job trying to stay alive. That slacker stuff is for people who have the time to be depressed about everything." Backlash and Odelay (1994–1997) Feeling as though he was "constantly trying to prove myself", Beck suffered a backlash, with skeptics denouncing him as a self-indulgent fake and the latest marketing opportunity. In the summer of 1994, Beck was struggling and many of his fellow musicians thought he had lost his way. Combined with the song's wildly popular music video and the world tour, Beck reacted believing the attention could not last, resulting in a status as a "one-hit wonder". At other concerts, crowds were treated to twenty minutes of reggae or Miles Davis or jazz-punk iterations of "Loser". At one-day festivals in California, he surrounded himself with an artnoise combo. The drummer set fire to his cymbals; the lead guitarist "played" his guitar with the strings faced towards his body; and Beck changed the words to "Loser" so that nobody could sing along. "I can't tell you how many times I was looking at faces that were looking back at me with complete bewilderment—or just pointing and shaking their heads and laughing—while performing during that period," he later recalled. Despite this, Beck gained the respect of his peers, such as Tom Petty and Johnny Cash, and created an entire wave of bands determined to recapture the Mellow Gold sound. Feeling his previous releases were just collections of demos recorded over the course of several years, Beck desired to enter the studio and record an album in a continuous linear fashion, which became Odelay. Beck blends country, blues, rap, jazz and rock on Odelay, the result of a year and half of feverish "cutting, pasting, layering, dubbing, and, of course, sampling". Each day, the musicians started from scratch, often working on songs for 16 hours straight. Odelays conception lies in an unfinished studio album Beck first embarked on following the success of "Loser", chronicling the difficult time he experienced: "There was a cycle of everyone dying around me," he recalled later. He was constantly recording, and eventually put together an album of somber, orchestrated folk tunes; one that, perhaps, "could have been a commercial blockbuster along with similarly themed work by Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana". Instead, Beck plucked one song from it—the Odelay album closer "Ramshackle"—and shelved the rest ("Brother" and "Feather In Your Cap" were, however, later released as B-sides). Beck was introduced to the Dust Brothers, producers of the Beastie Boys' album Paul's Boutique, whose cut-and-paste, sample-heavy production suited Beck's vision of a more fun, accessible album. After a record executive explained that Odelay would be a "huge mistake", he spent many months thinking "that I'd blown it forever". Odelay was released on June 18, 1996, to commercial success and critical acclaim. The record produced several hit singles, including "Where It's At", "Devils Haircut", and "The New Pollution", and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1997, winning a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album as well as a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for "Where It's At". During one busy week in January 1997, he landed his Grammy nominations, appeared on Saturday Night Live and Howard Stern, and did a last-minute trot on The Rosie O'Donnell Show. The combined buzz gave Odelay a second wind, leading to an expanded fan base and additional exposure Beck enjoyed but, like several executives at Geffen, was bewildered by the success of Odelay. He would often get recognized in public, which made him feel strange. "It's just weird. It doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel natural to me. I don't think I was made for that. I was never good at that," he later told Pitchfork. Odelay sold two million copies and put "one-hit wonder" criticisms to rest. During this time, he contributed the song "Deadweight" to the soundtrack of the film A Life Less Ordinary (1997). Mutations and Midnite Vultures (1998–2001) Having not been in a proper studio since "Deadweight", Beck felt anxious to "go in and just do some stuff real quick", and compiled several songs he had had for years. Beck and his bandmates hammered out fourteen songs in fourteen days, although just twelve made it onto the album, 1998's Mutations. Beck decided on Nigel Godrich, producer for Radiohead's OK Computer the previous year, to be behind the boards for the project. Godrich was leaving the United States for England in a short time, which led to the album's quick production schedule—"No looking back, no doctoring anything". The whole point of the record was to capture the performance of the musicians live, an uncharacteristic far-cry from the cut-and-paste aesthetic of Odelay. Though the album was originally slated for release by Bong Load Records, Geffen intervened and issued the record against Beck's wishes. The artist then sought to void his contracts with both record labels, and in turn the labels sued him for breach of contract. The litigation went on for years and it remains unclear to this day if it has ever been completely resolved. Beck was later awarded Best Alternative Music Performance for Mutations at the 42nd Grammy Awards. Midnite Vultures, Beck's next studio effort, was originally recorded as a double album, and more than 25 nearly completed songs were left behind. In the studio, Beck and producers studied contemporary hip hop and R&B, specifically R. Kelly, in order to embrace and incorporate those influences in the way Al Green and Stax records had done in previous decades. In July 1998, a core group began to assemble at Beck's Pasadena home: bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen, keyboardist Roger Joseph Manning Jr., and producer-engineers Mickey Petralia and Tony Hoffer. Dozens of session players passed through, including Beck's father, David Campbell, who played viola and arranged some of the strings. The musicians held communal meals and mountain-bike rides on dusty trails nearby, but remained focused on Beck's instructions: to make an up-tempo album that would be fun to play on tour night after night. "I had so many things going on", said Beck of the recording process. "I had a couple of rooms of computers hooked up, I was doing B sides for Japan, I was programming beats in one room and someone would be cooking dinner in the other room." In November 1999, Geffen released the much-anticipated Midnite Vultures, which attracted confusion: "fans and critics misguidedly worried whether it was serious or a goof," and as a result, The New York Times wrote that the album "never won the audience it deserved". The record was supported by an extensive world tour. For Beck, it was a return to the high-energy performances that had been his trademark as far back as Lollapalooza. The live stage set included a red bed that descended from the ceiling for the song "Debra", and the touring band was complemented by a brass section. Midnite Vultures was nominated for Best Album at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards. Sea Change (2002–2003) In 2000, Beck and his fiancée, stylist Leigh Limon, ended their nine-year relationship. Beck lapsed into a period of melancholy and introspection, during which he wrote the bleak, acoustic-based tracks later found on Sea Change. Beck sat on the songs, not wanting to talk about his personal life; he later said that he wanted to focus on music and "not really strew my baggage across the public lobby". Eventually, however, he decided the songs spoke to a common experience (a relationship breakup), and that it would not seem self-indulgent to record them. In 2001, Beck drifted back to the songs and called producer Nigel Godrich. Retailers initially predicted that the album would not receive much radio support, but they also believed that Beck's maverick reputation and critical acclaim, in addition to the possibility of multiple Grammy nominations, might offset Sea Changes noncommercial sound. Sea Change, issued by Geffen in September 2002, was regardless a commercial hit and critical darling, with Rolling Stone revering it as "the best album Beck has ever made, [...] an impeccable album of truth and light from the end of love. This is his Blood on the Tracks." The album was later listed by the magazine as one of the best records of the decade and of all-time, and it also placed second on the year's Pazz & Jop Critics Poll. Sea Change yielded a low-key, theater-based acoustic tour, as well as a larger tour with The Flaming Lips as Beck's opening and backing band. Beck was playful and energetic, sometimes throwing in covers of The Rolling Stones, Big Star, The Zombies and The Velvet Underground. Following the release of Sea Change, Beck felt newer compositions were sketches for something more evolved in the same direction, and wrote nearly 35 more songs in the coming months, keeping demos of them on tapes in a suitcase. During his solo tour, the tapes were left backstage during a stop in Washington, D.C., and Beck was never able to recover them. It was disheartening to the musician, who felt the two years of songwriting represented something more technically complex. As a result, Beck took a break and wrote no original compositions in 2003. Feeling as though it might take him a while to "get back to that [songwriting] territory", he entered the studio with Dust Brothers to complete a project that dated back to Odelay. Nearly half of the songs had existed since the 1990s. Guero and The Information (2004–2007) Guero, Beck's eighth studio album, was recorded over the span of nine months during which several significant events occurred in his life: his girlfriend, Marissa Ribisi, became pregnant; they were married; their son, Cosimo, was born; and they moved out of Silver Lake. The collaboration with the Dust Brothers, his second, was notable for their use of high-tech measures to achieve a lo-fi sound. For example, after recording a "sonically perfect" version of a song at one of the nicest recording studios in Hollywood, the Dust Brothers processed it in an Echoplex to create a gritty, reverb-heavy sound: "We did this high-tech recording and ran it through a transistor radio. It sounded too good, that was the problem." Initially due to be released in October 2004, Guero faced delays and did not come out till March 2005, though unmastered copies of the tracks surfaced online in January. Guero debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 162,000 copies, an all-time sales high. Lead single "E-Pro" peaked at number one at Modern Rock radio, making it his first chart-topper since "Loser". Beck, inspired by the Nintendocore remix scene and feeling a connection with its lo-fi, home-recording method, collaborated with artists 8-Bit and Paza on Hell Yes, an EP issued in February 2005. In December 2005, Geffen also issued Guerolito, a fully reworked version of Guero featuring remixes by the Beastie Boys' Ad-Rock, the Dust Brothers' John King and Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada. Guerolito combines remixes previously heard as B-sides and new versions of album tracks to make a track-by-track reconfiguration of the album. Also released in 2005 was A Brief Overview, a 12-track promotional-only "History of Beck" compilation CD sampler that featured a combination of older and newer Beck tracks. The Information, Beck's ninth studio album, began production around the same time as Guero, in 2003. Working with producer Nigel Godrich, Beck built a studio in his garden, where they wrote many of the tracks. "The idea was to get people in a room together recording live, hitting bad notes and screaming," said Beck, adding that the album is best described as "introspective hip hop". Beck described the recording process as "painful", noting that he edited down songs constantly and he perhaps recorded the album three times. For the release, Beck was allowed for the first time to fulfill a long-running wish for an unconventional rollout: he made low-budget videos to accompany each song, packaged the CD with sheets of stickers so buyers could customize the cover, and leaked tracks and videos on his website months ahead of the album's release. Digital download releases automatically downloaded the song's additional video for each single sale, and physical copies came bundled with an additional DVD featuring fifteen videos. Modern Guilt (2008) In 2007, Beck released the single "Timebomb", which was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance. For his next studio effort, his tenth, Beck tapped Danger Mouse to produce, and the two first met in December 2007 to record. The duo knocked out two tracks in two days, but the notion that the album would be finished in a timely fashion soon evaporated. Beck had known Danger Mouse casually before, as many of his former musicians ended up working with Danger Mouse's side project, Gnarls Barkley. Still, the musicians were surprised at how well they got along. Following the grueling recording schedule, Beck was exhausted, calling it "the most intense work I've ever done on anything", relating that he "did at least 10 weeks with no days off, until four or five in the morning every night." Beck's original vision was a short 10-track burst with two-minute songs, but the songs gradually grew as he fit 'two years of songwriting into two and a half months." Modern Guilt (2008) was "full of off-kilter rhythms and left-field breakdowns, with an overall 1960s vibe." Record Club, Song Reader, production work and non-album singles (2009–2013) Modern Guilt was the final release in Beck's contract with Geffen Records. Beck, then 38, had held the contract since his early 20s. Released from his label contract and going independent, Beck began working more heavily on his own seven-year-old label, which went through a variety of names. His focus on smaller, more quixotic projects, Beck moonlighted as a producer, working with artists such as Charlotte Gainsbourg, Thurston Moore and Stephen Malkmus. Beck worked for five or six days a week at the small studio on his property in Malibu, and founded Record Club, a project whereby an entire classic album—by The Velvet Underground, Leonard Cohen, INXS, Yanni—would be covered by another singer in the span of a single day. Beck provided four songs for the film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), each attributed to the title character's fictional band, Sex Bob-Omb. Beck also collaborated with Philip Glass, Jack White, Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow, Jamie Lidell, Seu Jorge, Childish Gambino, and The Lonely Island. Song Reader, a project Beck released in December 2012, is 20 songs presented only as sheet music, in the hopes that enterprising musicians will record their own versions. The idea of Song Reader came about nearly fifteen years prior, shortly after the release of Odelay. When sent a book of transcribed sheet music for that album, Beck decided to play through it and grew interested in the world before recorded sound. He aimed to keep the arrangements as open as possible, to re-create the simplicity of the standards, and became preoccupied with creating only pieces that could fit within the Great American Songbook. In 2013 Beck began playing special Song Reader concerts with a variety of guests and announced he was working on a record of Song Reader material with other musicians as well as possibly a compilation of fan versions. In the summer of 2013, Beck was reported to be working on two new studio albums: one a more self-contained acoustic disc in the vein of One Foot in the Grave and another described as a "proper follow-up" to Modern Guilt. Beck expected to release both albums independently, and released two standalone singles over the course of the summer: the electro ballad "Defriended" and the chorus-heavy "I Won't Be Long". A third single, "Gimme", appeared on September 17. Morning Phase, Colors, and Hyperspace (2014–present) In October 2013, Beck signed to Capitol Records. On January 20, 2014, Beck released the track "Blue Moon", which was to be the lead single for his twelfth studio album, Morning Phase. On February 4, second single "Waking Light" was released, just prior to the official release of Morning Phase on February 21, 2014. For the recording of the album, Beck reunited with many of the same musicians with whom he had worked on the critically acclaimed 2002 album Sea Change, and likely because of this, it has been noted that the two albums have a similar genre. On February 8, 2015, at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards, Morning Phase won three Grammys: Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical; Best Rock Album; and Album of the Year. Upon receiving the Album of the Year award, the album beat out Pharrell Williams's G I R L, Beyoncé's self-titled album, Sam Smith's In the Lonely Hour, and Ed Sheeran's x. In the time after Morning Phases release and general critical success, Beck mentioned that he had been working on another album at around the same time, but that the new album would be more of a pop record. Shortly after Morning Phases Grammy wins, on June 15, 2015, Beck released the first single titled "Dreams" off this upcoming thirteenth studio album. "I was really trying to make something that would be good to play live," he said shortly after its release. However, no further word was heard from Beck pertaining to the release of the album. On June 2, 2016, almost a year after the initial release of "Dreams", Beck released a new single titled "Wow", along with a lyric video of the song and an announcement that his still untitled album would be released on October 21, 2016. In September 2016, the album was delayed with no new release date announced and, on September 24, Beck said he did not know "when it's coming out. It's probably in a few months." Once again, however, no further singles were released and no new release date was scheduled for the album. On September 8, 2017, Beck released the single "Dear Life", which was quickly followed up with the official release of "Up All Night" on September 18. Colors was released on October 13, 2017. It was recorded at co-executive producer Greg Kurstin's Los Angeles studio, with Beck and Kurstin playing nearly every instrument themselves. The experimental pop-fused record received generally positive reviews from critics. On July 18, 2018, Beck performed the title track Colors, and the first single "Wow" on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. On April 15, 2019, Beck released a single co-produced with Pharrell Williams titled "Saw Lightning" from his fourteenth studio album, titled Hyperspace. The song "Dark Places" was released on November 6, with the album being released on November 22. Collaborations and contributions In 1999, Beck contributed to a tribute album for Bruce Haack and Esther Nelson and their label Dimension 5 Records. The album, Dimension Mix, released in 2005, was a benefit for Cure Autism Now that was produced by Ross Harris, an early collaborator who designed the artwork for Mellow Gold. On June 20, 2009, Beck announced that he was starting an experiment called Record Club, in which he and other musicians would record cover versions of entire albums in one day. The first album covered by Beck's Record Club was The Velvet Underground & Nico. Starting on June 18, the club began posting covers of songs from the album on Thursday evenings, each with its own video. On September 4, 2009, Beck announced the second Record Club album, Songs of Leonard Cohen. Contributors included MGMT, Devendra Banhart, Andrew Stockdale of Wolfmother and Binki Shapiro of Little Joy. In the third Record Club venture, Wilco, Feist, Jamie Lidell and James Gadson joined Beck to cover Skip Spence's Oar. The first song, "Little Hands", was posted on Beck's website on November 12, 2009. The Record Club has since covered albums by INXS and Yanni. On June 19, 2009, Beck announced Planned Obsolescence, a weekly DJ set put together by Beck or guest DJs. Soon after, on July 7, Beck announced that his website would be featuring "extended informal conversations with musicians, artists, filmmakers, and other various persons" in a section called Irrelevant Topics. Then, on July 12, he added a section called Videotheque, which he said would contain "promotional videos from each album, as well as live clips, TV show appearances and other rarities". Also in 2009, Beck collaborated with Charlotte Gainsbourg on her album IRM, which was released in January 2010. Beck wrote the music, co-wrote the lyrics, and produced and mixed the album. The lead single, "Heaven Can Wait", is a duet by Beck and Gainsbourg. In late February 2010, it was announced that electronic artist Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow had collaborated with Beck on two songs, "Fresh Hex" and "Grape Aerosmith", on his upcoming album Maniac Meat. Tobacco revealed that in making the album, Beck sent the vocal parts to him, and that they had never actually met. In March 2010, Beck revealed that he had produced songs for the new Jamie Lidell album, Compass. In the summer of 2010, Beck contributed songs to both The Twilight Saga: Eclipse soundtrack, with "Let's Get Lost" (a duet with Bat for Lashes), and True Blood (HBO Original Series Soundtrack, Vol. 2), with "Bad Blood". He also contributed songs to the soundtrack of Edgar Wright's film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which was released in August 2010. In 2011, he collaborated with Seu Jorge on a track titled "Tropicália (Mario C. 2011 Remix)" for the Red Hot Organization's most recent charitable album Red Hot+Rio 2, a follow-up to the 1996 album Red Hot + Rio. Proceeds from the sales will be donated to raise awareness and money to fight AIDS/HIV and related health and social issues. He also contributed on the song "Attracted to Us" on Turtleneck & Chain, the second album from The Lonely Island. Also in 2011, Beck produced a solo album by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth called Demolished Thoughts. An album he produced for Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Mirror Traffic, was released in August 2011. In October 2011, it was widely reported that Beck and producer Hector Castillo were collaborating with American composer Philip Glass to produce a remix album of the composer's works in honor of his 75th birthday. The album, Rework Philip Glass Remixed, was released on October 23, 2012, to critical acclaim, and featured Beck as both a curator and a performer. In particular, Pitchfork described Beck's 22-minute contribution to the album, "NYC: 73–78", as "a fantasia ... the most startling and original piece of music with Beck's name on it in a while, and the first new work to bear his own spirit in even longer." Reflecting on Beck's contribution to the album, Glass remarked that he was "impressed by the novelty and freshness of a lot of the ideas". Beyond his work as a performer, Beck acted as the album's curator, bringing together a diverse collection of artists—including Amon Tobin, Tyondai Braxton, Nosaj Thing, and Memory Tapes—whose work had also been influenced by Glass. In December 2012, an interactive iPhone app titled "Rework_" was released to complement the album. Beck has contributed three new songs—"Cities", "Touch the People" and "Spiral Staircase"—to the video game Sound Shapes for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. Beck collaborated on two songs for Childish Gambino's "Royalty" mixtape in 2012. In 2014, Beck collaborated with Sia for the song "Moonquake Lake", which is featured in the soundtrack for the 2014 Annie film. In 2015, Beck collaborated with former Fun. frontman Nate Ruess on the single "What This World Is Coming To", which was one of the Grammy-winning artist's many works featured on his debut solo album Grand Romantic released in June 2015. He also collaborated with electronic dance music duo The Chemical Brothers on their most recent album Born in the Echoes, providing lead vocals and also credited in writing for the track "Wide Open", released in July. In 2016, Beck collaborated with French electronic music band M83, providing vocals for the song "Time Wind" from their album Junk. He was also featured on "Tiny Cities" by Flume. He also collaborated with Lady Gaga on the song "Dancin' in Circles", from her 2016 album Joanne. In 2017, Beck appeared in the multiple award-winning film The American Epic Sessions, directed by Bernard MacMahon. He recorded "14 Rivers, 14 Floods" backed by a full gospel choir, live onto the first electrical sound recording system from the 1920s. In 2019, Beck worked with Jenny Lewis on the song "Do Si Do" from her album On the Line. He also collaborated with Cage the Elephant on the song "Night Running" from their album Social Cues. In 2020, Beck collaborated with virtual band Gorillaz to create the song "The Valley of the Pagans" which appears on Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez. In 2021, Beck collaborated with Paul McCartney to make his hit single "Find My Way" on the album McCartney III Imagined. As for festival stages the artist was inter alia part of the Newport Folk Festival in July. Musical style Beck's musical style has been considered alternative and indie. He has played many of the instruments in his music himself. Beck has also done some remixes for fellow artists, notably David Bowie and Björk. He has been known to synthesize several musical elements together in his music, including folk, psychedelia, electronic, country, Latin music, hip hop, funk, soul, blues, noise music, jazz, and many types of rock. He has also taken music from Los Angeles as a reference point in his songs. Pitchfork Media applauded Midnite Vultures, saying, "Beck wonderfully blends Prince, Talking Heads, Paul's Boutique, 'Shake Your Bon-Bon', and Mathlete on Midnite Vultures, his most consistent and playful album yet." The review commented that his mix of "goofy piety and ambiguous intent" helped the album. A Beck song called "Harry Partch", a tribute to the composer of the same name and his "corporeal" music, employs Partch's 43-tone scale. Art career During 1998, Beck's art collaborations with his grandfather Al Hansen were featured in an exhibition titled "Beck & Al Hansen: Playing With Matches", which showcased solo and collaborative collage, assemblage, drawing and poetry works. The show toured from the Santa Monica Museum of Art to galleries in New York City and Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Canada. A catalog of the show was published by Plug in Editions/Smart Art Press. Personal life Beck's nine-year relationship with designer Leigh Limon and their subsequent breakup is said to have inspired his 2002 album, Sea Change. He wrote most of the songs for the album in one week after the breakup. In April 2004, shortly before the birth of their son Cosimo Henri, Beck married actress Marissa Ribisi, the twin sister of actor Giovanni Ribisi. Their daughter, Tuesday, was born in 2007. Beck filed for divorce from Ribisi on February 15, 2019. Their divorce was finalized on September 3, 2021. Beck has described himself as both Jewish and a Scientologist. Through his parents, he has been involved in Scientology for most of his life; his ex-wife, Marissa, is also a second-generation Scientologist. He publicly acknowledged his affiliation for the first time in a New York Times Magazine interview on March 6, 2005. Further confirmation came in an interview with the Sunday Tribune in June 2005, where he stated, "Yeah, I'm a Scientologist. My father has been a Scientologist for about 35 years, so I grew up in and around it." Despite this, Beck disavowed previous reports of his being a Scientologist in a November 2019 interview with the Sydney Morning Herald and said, "I think there's a misconception that I'm a Scientologist. I'm not a Scientologist. I don't have any connection or affiliation with it." He added that "I was raised celebrating Jewish holidays, and I consider myself Jewish." As mentioned above, Beck's mother is former Andy Warhol The Factory collaborator, artist/writer/performer Bibbe Hansen. His siblings are fiber artist Channing Hansen (born in 1972 in Los Angeles, California) and poet Rain Whittaker. Beck suffered a spinal injury while filming the music video for 2005's "E-Pro". The incident was severe enough to curtail his touring schedule for a few years, but he has since recovered. Appearances in media The 1986 punk rock musical film Population: 1, starring Tomata du Plenty of The Screamers, features a young Beck in a small nonspeaking role. Beck also appears in Southlander (2001), an American independent film by Steve Hanft and Ross Harris. Beck has performed on Saturday Night Live seven times. During his 2006 performance in the Hugh Laurie episode, Beck was accompanied by the puppets that had been used onstage during his world tour. He has made two cameo appearances as himself on Saturday Night Live: one in a sketch about medicinal marijuana, and one in a VH1 Behind the Music parody that featured "Fat Albert & the Junkyard Gang". Beck performed a guest voice as himself on Matt Groening's animated show Futurama, in the episode "Bendin' in the Wind". He performed in episode 10 of the fourth season of The Larry Sanders Show, in which the producer character Artie (Rip Torn) referred to him as a "hillbilly from outer space". He also made a very brief voice appearance in the 1998 cartoon feature film The Rugrats Movie, and guest-starred as himself in a 1997 episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast titled "Edelweiss". On January 22, 2010, Beck appeared on the last episode of The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien as a backup guitarist for a Will Ferrell-led rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" alongside ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons, Ben Harper, and O'Brien himself on guitar. On March 1, 2014, Beck was the musical guest on a Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Jim Parsons. Beck also appeared, as himself, in the 2017 film The Circle, giving a musical performance of the song "Dreams". Discography Studio albums Golden Feelings (1993) Stereopathetic Soulmanure (1994) Mellow Gold (1994) One Foot in the Grave (1994) Odelay (1996) Mutations (1998) Midnite Vultures (1999) Sea Change (2002) Guero (2005) The Information (2006) Modern Guilt (2008) Morning Phase (2014) Colors (2017) Hyperspace (2019) Awards and nominations See also List of awards and nominations received by Beck List of people from Los Angeles List of singer-songwriters References External links Diskobox, comprehensive discography Whiskeyclone.net, large, informative Beck site Stewoo.net, the largest Beck fan forum Beck at Rolling Stone 1970 births Living people 20th-century American singers 21st-century American singers Alternative rock guitarists American alternative country singers American alternative rock musicians American country rock singers American country singer-songwriters American folk guitarists American folk singers American former Scientologists American indie rock musicians American male guitarists American male singer-songwriters American multi-instrumentalists American music video directors American people of Canadian descent American people of Jewish descent American people of Norwegian descent American people of Swedish descent American rock guitarists American rock singers American street performers Art pop musicians Brit Award winners Capitol Records artists DGC Records artists Grammy Award winners Guitarists from Los Angeles Jewish American musicians Jewish American songwriters Jewish anti-folk musicians Jewish singers K Records artists Mission District, San Francisco Singers from Los Angeles Sony Music Publishing artists XL Recordings artists Singer-songwriters from California
true
[ "Güero may refer to:\n\nPeople\n El Güero Gil (d. 1999), nickname for Alfredo Gil, Mexican guitarist/vocalist, co-founder of trio Los Panchos and inventor of the Requinto guitar\n El Güero Jaibo (d. 1993), aka Juan Francisco Murillo Díaz, a member of the Tijuana Cartel\n El Güero Loco, one of the many aliases of Ivan Martin, a member of the Chicano Hip-hop group, Delinquent Habits.\n El Güero Palma, nickname for Héctor Luis Palma Salazar, a Mexican drug trafficker\n\nArts, entertainment, and media\n Guero (book) (\"Later\"), a 1643 Basque-language book by Pedro Agerre\nGuero Davila, a character in Queen of the South\n\nFilms\nEl Güero Estrada (1997), Mexican film directed by Gilberto De Anda and scored by Gustavo Ramírez Reyes\nGüeros (2014), Mexican film directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios\n\nMusic\nGuero (1970), a piano study by German composer Helmut Lachenmann\nGuero (2005), an album by Beck\nGuerolito (2005), a remix album by Beck, featuring all of the songs from Guero except for the hidden track, \"Send a Message to Her\"\nMatando Gueros (1993), an album by the Mexican metal-band Brujeria", "Guero is the ninth album by American musician Beck, released on March 29, 2005, by Interscope Records. It was produced with John King and Mike Simpson of the Dust Brothers, who had worked with Beck on his 1996 album Odelay, as well as Tony Hoffer.\n\nThe album was promoted with the singles \"E-Pro\", \"Girl\", and \"Hell Yes\", and debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200. To date, it is Beck's highest-charting album and had sold over 868,000 copies in the United States as of July 2008. It received positive reviews from critics.\n\nBackground\nGüero (pron. IPA ['wero]) means \"blond\" in Mexican Spanish, but can also refer to a light-skinned person. MTV described the term as being \"Mexican slang for a blond-haired, fair-skinned Caucasian\".\n\nBeck was raised in a prominently Chicano area of Los Angeles. In an interview with ABC's Nightline, Beck said the term \"guero\" was \"something that I'd hear growing up. Something I'd hear on the street, walking to school or something, I'd get called a 'Guero'. ... It's just a word that stuck in my head and I wanted to do something with that at some point. ... I ended up, in the end, just kind of doing this almost journalistic kind of look at that whole time.\"\n\nThe title of track 2, \"Qué Onda Guero\" (or \"¿Qué onda, güero?\"), is Mexican slang for \"what up, whitey?\"\n\nRecording\nThe album was recorded over a period of nine months, following a year and a half of touring in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Several other events contributed to the writing of the songs, including the suicide of Beck's friend Elliott Smith and Beck's impending child with wife Marissa Ribisi. The song \"Broken Drum\" is dedicated to Smith. More than 15 songs were considered for the final running order of the album.\n\n\"Hell Yes\" features spoken contributions from Christina Ricci, who happened to be in the studio at the time of recording. Beck and the Dust Brothers had spent weeks auditioning sushi waitresses around Los Angeles but chose Ricci after she \"tried it and just absolutely nailed it\". She is credited as \"Kurisuti-na\" in the album's liner notes.\n\nJack White of the White Stripes plays bass on \"Go It Alone\". Money Mark, solo artist and keyboardist for the Beastie Boys, plays the organ on \"Earthquake Weather\". Petra Haden, formerly of That Dog and the Rentals, provides an intricate backing vocal track for \"Rental Car\".\n\nRelease\nGuero was initially intended to be released on October 26, 2004, but was pushed back, due to delays with the artwork, mixing and music videos. An unmixed and un-mastered version of the album was leaked in January 2005, under the title Ubiquitous. The track listing differed slightly from the officially announced track listing of Guero. On February 1, Beck released the Hell Yes EP on iTunes, which included remixes of the title track and \"Que Onda Guero\" by 8-bit and \"E-Pro\" and \"Girl\" by Paza. On March 10, five songs from the forthcoming album were featured in an episode of The O.C.\n\nGuero was released on March 29. The album was released simultaneously in three formats: a standard 13-track CD, PlayStation Portable UMD and a deluxe CD/DVD edition. The latter featured seven bonus tracks, a surround sound mix and interactive video art for each song.\n\nLater in 2005, Beck released an album of Guero remixes called Guerolito, featuring remixes by Boards of Canada, Octet, the Beastie Boys' Ad-Rock and the Dust Brothers' John King.\n\n\"Black Tambourine\" was featured in the David Lynch film Inland Empire, the trailer for the film (500) Days of Summer, and episode 22 of season 4 of The Good Wife, as well as the 2006 video game Lumines II, and the video game Driver: San Francisco. \"Farewell Ride\" was featured in FX trailers promoting the final season of The Shield.\n\nReception\n\nCommercial\nGuero debuted on the Billboard 200 at No. 2, marking Beck's best chart performance to date, and sold 162,000 copies in its first week. It was certified gold by the RIAA on June 7, 2005.\n\nCritical\nGuero received generally positive reviews from critics, holding a Metascore of 78 on Metacritic. Several critics compared the album—either positively or negatively—to Beck's 1996 album Odelay, while others observed that such comparisons were inevitable but ultimately misguided.\n\nRob Sheffield of Rolling Stone called the album \"the first record since Odelay where Beck mixes up the medicine the way he did in his Nineties prime\". Contrasting the album with the \"wiseass charisma\" of his early albums, Sheffield noted that Beck now sounded \"like an extremely bummed-out dude who made it to the future and discovered he hates it there.\" David Browne of Entertainment Weekly called Guero \"alive and frisky\" when compared to its predecessor, Sea Change (2002), and called it Beck's \"most inviting, least off-putting work in years\", praising its \"slightly broader emotional range\". Browne stated that the album felt \"simultaneously familiar and new\" and was \"the first record on which the many moods and sides of Beck coexist\". Andy Gill of The Independent observed that \"Beck darts around the musical map like an animated flea,\" and praised the album's \"judicious blends of beats, riffs, songs and raps spiralling off in a variety of directions\". Gill highlighted the song \"Missing\" and its \"reflections on the essential patchwork incompleteness of life\", comparing it to Beck's work on the whole, \"which typically makes unorthodox wholes from diverse fragments.\"\n\nConversely, Rob Mitchum of Pitchfork gave the album a mixed review and compared the album extensively to Odelay, stating, \"one wonders whether Mr. Hansen's heart is in the proceedings, as many of the songs appear to be little more than weak echoes of their similar predecessors\". Mitchum concluded that \"the final result feels rote and calculated.\"\n\nThe album was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.\n\nTrack listing\n\nSample credits\n\nPersonnel\n\nMusicians\nBeck – vocals (tracks 1–13), guitar (1–3, 5–6, 9–10, 13), bass guitar (1, 3, 5, 7–9, 12–13), additional sounds (2), slide guitar (3, 11, 13), intro programming (3), percussion (4, 11-13), tambourines (5), acoustic guitar (6, 8, 12), electric guitar (6, 12), harmonica (7, 9), vocoder (7), piano (8, 11), celesta (8), drums (8), beats (8, 11), keyboards (10), handclaps (10, 12–13), kalimba (11), 12-string guitar (12, 13), stomp (13) \nThe Dust Brothers – beats (1-7, 10, 12), handclaps (10)\nPaolo Díaz – \"dude\" (2)\nCharlie Capen – additional sounds (2)\nSean Davis – bass guitar (4)\nRoger Joseph Manning Jr. – Clavinet (6, 12)\nMoney Mark – organ (6)\nJustin Meldal-Johnsen – bass (6, 12), guitar sounds (12)\nJoey Waronker – drums (6)\nSmokey Hormel – electric guitar (6)\nChristina Ricci (as Kurisuti-na) – girl (7)\nJack White – bass guitar (10)\nPetra Haden – vocals (12)\n\nTechnical\nBeck – co-producer (1–13), engineer (1–13), mixing (1–13), string arranger (4, 13), art direction, design\nThe Dust Brothers – co-producers (1–7, 9–10, 12–13), engineers (1–7, 9–10, 12–13), mixing (1–7, 9–10, 12–13)\nDanny Kalb – engineer (1–7, 9–10, 12–13)\nMark Branch – assistant engineer (1–7, 9–10, 12–13)\nMike Laza – assistant engineer (1–7, 9–10, 12–13)\nBrad Breeck – sound designer (1–7, 9–10, 12–13)\nNigel Godrich – mixing (3)\nDan Grech-Marguerat – mixing engineer (3)\nTony Hoffer – co-producer, engineer, mixing (8, 11)\nJason Mott – assistant engineer (8, 11)\nBob Ludwig – mastering\nDavid Campbell – string arrangement (4, 13)\nKevin Reagan – art direction, design\nMarcel Dzama – artwork\nMelanie Pullen – photo\nAdam Levite – additional art, front cover layout\nElliot Scheiner – surround mix (deluxe edition)\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nCertifications\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n (standard edition)\nD-Fuse\n\nBeck albums\n2005 albums\nAlbums arranged by David Campbell (composer)\nAlbums produced by Tony Hoffer\nInterscope Records albums\nAlbums produced by Beck\nAlbums produced by the Dust Brothers\nAlbums with cover art by Marcel Dzama" ]
[ "Beck", "Guero and The Information (2004-07)", "Is Guero the name of an album?", "Guero, Beck's eighth studio album," ]
C_d29b28d4389744279614a64dbf2969cd_0
Was it a success?
2
Was Beck's Guero album a success?
Beck
Guero, Beck's eighth studio album, was recorded over the span of nine months during which several significant events occurred in his life: his girlfriend, Marissa Ribisi, became pregnant; they were married; their son, Cosimo, was born; and they moved out of Silver Lake. The collaboration with the Dust Brothers, his second, was notable for their use of high-tech measures to achieve a lo-fi sound. For example, after recording a "sonically perfect" version of a song at one of the nicest recording studios in Hollywood, the Dust Brothers processed it in an Echoplex to create a gritty, reverb-heavy sound: "We did this high-tech recording and ran it through a transistor radio. It sounded too good, that was the problem." Initially due to be released in October 2004, Guero faced delays and did not come out till March 2005, though unmastered copies of the tracks surfaced online in January. Guero debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 162,000 copies, an all-time sales high. Lead single "E-Pro" peaked at number one at Modern Rock radio, making it his first chart-topper since "Loser". Beck, inspired by the Nintendocore remix scene and feeling a connection with its lo-fi, home-recording method, collaborated with artists 8-Bit and Paza on Hell Yes, an EP issued in February 2005. In December 2005, Geffen also issued Guerolito, a fully reworked version of Guero featuring remixes by the Beastie Boys' Ad-Rock, the Dust Brothers' John King and Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada. Guerolito combines remixes previously heard as B-sides and new versions of album tracks to make a track-by-track reconfiguration of the album. Also released in 2005 was A Brief Overview, a 12-track promotional-only "History of Beck" compilation CD sampler that featured a combination of older and newer Beck tracks. The Information, Beck's ninth studio album, began production around the same time as Guero, in 2003. Working with producer Nigel Godrich, Beck built a studio in his garden, where they wrote many of the tracks. "The idea was to get people in a room together recording live, hitting bad notes and screaming," said Beck, adding that the album is best described as "introspective hip hop". Beck described the recording process as "painful", noting that he edited down songs constantly and he perhaps recorded the album three times. For the release, Beck was allowed for the first time to fulfill a long-running wish for an unconventional rollout: he made low-budget videos to accompany each song, packaged the CD with sheets of stickers so buyers could customize the cover, and leaked tracks and videos on his website months ahead of the album's release. Digital download releases automatically downloaded the song's additional video for each single sale, and physical copies came bundled with an additional DVD featuring fifteen videos. CANNOTANSWER
Guero debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 162,000 copies, an all-time sales high.
Beck David Hansen (born Bek David Campbell; July 8, 1970) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He rose to fame in the early 1990s with his experimental and lo-fi style, and became known for creating musical collages of wide-ranging genres. He has musically encompassed folk, funk, soul, hip hop, electronic, alternative rock, country, and psychedelia. He has released 14 studio albums (three of which were released on indie labels), as well as several non-album singles and a book of sheet music. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Beck grew towards hip-hop and folk in his teens and began to perform locally at coffeehouses and clubs. He moved to New York City in 1989 and became involved in the city's anti-folk movement. Returning to Los Angeles in the early 1990s, he cut his breakthrough single "Loser", which became a worldwide hit in 1994, and released his first major album, Mellow Gold, the same year. Odelay, released in 1996, topped critic polls and won several awards. He released the country-influenced, twangy Mutations in 1998, and the funk-infused Midnite Vultures in 1999. The soft-acoustic Sea Change in 2002 showcased a more serious Beck, and 2005's Guero returned to Odelays sample-based production. The Information in 2006 was inspired by electro-funk, hip hop, and psychedelia; 2008's Modern Guilt was inspired by '60s pop music; and 2014's folk-infused Morning Phase won Album of the Year at the 57th Grammy Awards. His 2017 album, Colors, won awards for Best Alternative Album and Best Engineered Album at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards. His fourteenth studio album, Hyperspace, was released on November 22, 2019. With a pop art collage of musical styles, oblique and ironic lyrics, and postmodern arrangements incorporating samples, drum machines, live instrumentation and sound effects, Beck has been hailed by critics and the public throughout his musical career as being among the most idiosyncratically creative musicians of 1990s and 2000s alternative rock. Two of Beck's most popular and acclaimed recordings are Odelay and Sea Change, both of which were ranked on Rolling Stone list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The four-time platinum artist has collaborated with several artists and has made several contributions to soundtracks. Early life Beck was born Bek David Campbell in Los Angeles, California, on July 8, 1970, the son of American visual artist Bibbe Hansen and Canadian arranger, composer, and conductor David Campbell. Hansen grew up amid Andy Warhol's The Factory art scene of the 1960s in New York City and was a Warhol superstar. She moved to California at age 17 and met Campbell there. Beck's maternal grandmother was Jewish, while his maternal grandfather, artist Al Hansen, was of Norwegian descent and was a pioneer in the avant-garde Fluxus movement. Beck has said that he was "raised celebrating Jewish holidays" and that he considers himself Jewish. Beck was born in a rooming house near downtown Los Angeles. As a child, he lived in a declining neighborhood near Hollywood Boulevard. He later recalled, "By the time we left there, they were ripping out miles of houses en masse and building low-rent, giant apartment blocks." The lower-class family struggled financially, moving to Hoover and Ninth Street, a neighborhood populated primarily by Koreans and Salvadorian refugees. He was sent for a time to live with his paternal grandparents in Kansas, later remarking that he thought "they were kind of concerned" about his "weird" home life. Since his paternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister, Beck grew up influenced by church music and hymns. He also spent time in Europe with his maternal grandfather. After his parents separated when he was 10, Beck stayed with his mother and brother Channing in Los Angeles, where he was influenced by the city's diverse musical offerings—everything from hip hop to Latin music and his mother's art scene—all of which would later reappear in his work. Beck obtained his first guitar at 16 and became a street musician, often playing Lead Belly covers at Lafayette Park. During his teens, Beck discovered the music of Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore, and X, but remained uninterested in most music outside the folk genre until many years into his career. The first contemporary music that made a direct connection with Beck was hip hop, which he first heard on Grandmaster Flash records in the early 1980s. Growing up in a predominantly Latin district, he found himself the only white child at his school, and quickly learned how to breakdance. When he was 17, Beck grew fascinated after hearing a Mississippi John Hurt record at a friend's house, and spent hours in his room trying to emulate Hurt's finger-picking techniques. Shortly thereafter, Beck explored blues and folk music further, discovering Woody Guthrie and Blind Willie Johnson. Feeling like "a total outcast", Beck dropped out of school after junior high. He later said that although he felt school was important, he felt unsafe there. When he applied to the new performing arts high school downtown, he was rejected. His brother took him to post-Beat jazz places in Echo Park and Silver Lake. He hung out at the Los Angeles City College, perusing records, books and old sheet music in its library. He used a fake ID to sit in on classes there, and he also befriended a literature instructor and his poet wife. He worked at a string of menial jobs, including loading trucks and operating a leaf blower. Career Early performances and first releases (1988–1993) Beck began as a folk musician, switching between country blues, Delta blues, and more traditional rural folk music in his teenage years. He began performing on city buses, often covering Mississippi John Hurt alongside original, sometimes improvisational compositions. "I'd get on the bus and start playing Mississippi John Hurt with totally improvised lyrics. Some drunk would start yelling at me, calling me Axl Rose. So I'd start singing about Axl Rose and the levee and bus passes and strychnine, mixing the whole thing up," he later recalled. He was also in a band called Youthless that hosted Dadaist-inspired freeform events at city coffee shops. "We had Radio Shack mics and this homemade speaker and we'd draft people in the audience to recite comic books or do a beatbox thing, or we'd tie the whole audience up in masking tape," Beck recalled. In 1989, Beck caught a bus to New York City with little more than $8.00 and a guitar. He spent the summer attempting to find a job and a place to live with little success. Beck eventually began to frequent Manhattan's Lower East Side and stumbled upon the tail end of the East Village's anti-folk scene's first wave. Beck became involved in a loose posse of acoustic musicians—including Cindy Lee Berryhill, Kirk Kelly, Paleface, and Lach, headed by Roger Manning—whose raggedness and eccentricity placed them well outside the acoustic mainstream. "The whole mission was to destroy all the clichés and make up some new ones," said Beck of his New York years. "Everybody knew each other. You could go up onstage and say anything, and you wouldn't feel weird or feel any pressure." Inspired by that freedom and by the local spoken-word performers, Beck began to write free-associative, surrealistic songs about pizza, MTV, and working at McDonald's, turning mundane thoughts into songs. Beck was roommates with Paleface, sleeping on his couch and attending open mic nights together. Daunted by the prospect of another homeless New York winter, Beck returned to his home of Los Angeles in early 1991. "I was tired of being cold, tired of getting beat up," he later remarked. "It was hard to be in New York with no money, no place [...] I kinda used up all the friends I had. Everyone on the scene got sick of me." Back in Los Angeles, Beck began to work at a video store in the Silver Lake neighborhood, "doing things like alphabetizing the pornography section". He began performing in arthouse clubs and coffeehouses such as Al's Bar and Raji's. In order to keep indifferent audiences engaged in his music, Beck would play in a spontaneous, joking manner. "I'd be banging away on a Son House tune and the whole audience would be talking. So maybe out of desperation or boredom, or the audience's boredom, I'd make up these ridiculous songs just to see if people were listening," he later remarked. Virtually an unknown to the public and an enigma to those who met him, Beck would hop onstage between acts in local clubs and play "strange folk songs", accompanied by "what could best be described as performance art" while sometimes wearing a Star Wars stormtrooper mask. Beck met someone who offered to help record demos in his living room, and he began to pass cassette tapes around. Eventually, Beck gained key boosters in Margaret Mittleman, the West Coast's director of talent acquisitions for BMG Music Publishing, and the partners behind independent record label Bong Load Custom Records: Tom Rothrock, Rob Schnapf and Brad Lambert. Schnapf saw Beck perform at Jabberjaw and felt he would suit their small venture. Beck expressed a loose interest in hip hop, and Rothrock introduced him to Carl Stephenson, a record producer for Rap-A-Lot Records. In 1992, Beck visited Stephenson's home to collaborate. The result—the slide-sampling hip hop track "Loser"—was a one-off experiment that Beck set aside, going back to his folk songs, making his home tapes such as Golden Feelings, and releasing several independent singles. Mellow Gold, and independent albums (1993–1994) By 1993, Beck was living in a rat-infested shed near a Los Angeles alleyway with little money. Bong Load issued "Loser" as a single in March 1993 on 12" vinyl with only 500 copies pressed. Beck felt that "Loser" was mediocre, and only agreed to its release at Rothrock's insistence. "Loser" unexpectedly received radio airplay, starting in Los Angeles, where college radio station KXLU was the first to play it, and later on Santa Monica College radio station KCRW, where radio host Chris Douridas played the song on Morning Becomes Eclectic, the station's flagship music program. "I called the record label that day and asked to have Beck play live on the air," Douridas said. "He came in that Friday, rapped to a tape of "Loser" and did his song 'MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack.'" That night, Beck performed at the Los Angeles club Cafe Troy to a packed audience and talent scouts from major labels. The song then spread to Seattle through KNDD The End, and KROQ-FM began playing the song on an almost hourly basis. As Bong Load struggled to press more copies of "Loser", Beck was beset with offers to sign with major labels. During the bidding war in November, Beck spent several days in Olympia, Washington, recording material with Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening, which would later see release the following year on Johnson's K Records as One Foot in the Grave. A fierce bidding war ensued, with Geffen Records A&R director Mark Kates signing Beck in December 1993 amid intense competition from Warner Bros. and Capitol. Beck's non-exclusive contract with Geffen allowed him an unusual amount of creative freedom, with Beck remaining free to release material through such small, independent labels as Flipside, which issued the sprawling, 25-track collection of pre-"Loser" recordings titled Stereopathetic Soulmanure on February 22 the following year. By the time Beck released his first album for Geffen, the low-budget, genre-blending Mellow Gold on March 1, "Loser" was already in the top 40 and its video in MTV's Buzz Bin. "Loser" quickly ascended the charts in the U.S., reaching a peak of number ten on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and topping the Modern Rock Tracks chart. The song also charted in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and throughout Europe. Beck's newfound position of attention led to his characterization as the "King of Slackers", as the media dubbed him the center of the new so-called "slacker" movement. Critics, feeling it the essential follow-up to Radiohead's "Creep", found vacantness in the lyrics of "Loser" strongly associated with Generation X, although Beck himself strongly contested his position as the face of the "slacker" generation: "Slacker my ass. I mean, I never had any slack. I was working a $4-an-hour job trying to stay alive. That slacker stuff is for people who have the time to be depressed about everything." Backlash and Odelay (1994–1997) Feeling as though he was "constantly trying to prove myself", Beck suffered a backlash, with skeptics denouncing him as a self-indulgent fake and the latest marketing opportunity. In the summer of 1994, Beck was struggling and many of his fellow musicians thought he had lost his way. Combined with the song's wildly popular music video and the world tour, Beck reacted believing the attention could not last, resulting in a status as a "one-hit wonder". At other concerts, crowds were treated to twenty minutes of reggae or Miles Davis or jazz-punk iterations of "Loser". At one-day festivals in California, he surrounded himself with an artnoise combo. The drummer set fire to his cymbals; the lead guitarist "played" his guitar with the strings faced towards his body; and Beck changed the words to "Loser" so that nobody could sing along. "I can't tell you how many times I was looking at faces that were looking back at me with complete bewilderment—or just pointing and shaking their heads and laughing—while performing during that period," he later recalled. Despite this, Beck gained the respect of his peers, such as Tom Petty and Johnny Cash, and created an entire wave of bands determined to recapture the Mellow Gold sound. Feeling his previous releases were just collections of demos recorded over the course of several years, Beck desired to enter the studio and record an album in a continuous linear fashion, which became Odelay. Beck blends country, blues, rap, jazz and rock on Odelay, the result of a year and half of feverish "cutting, pasting, layering, dubbing, and, of course, sampling". Each day, the musicians started from scratch, often working on songs for 16 hours straight. Odelays conception lies in an unfinished studio album Beck first embarked on following the success of "Loser", chronicling the difficult time he experienced: "There was a cycle of everyone dying around me," he recalled later. He was constantly recording, and eventually put together an album of somber, orchestrated folk tunes; one that, perhaps, "could have been a commercial blockbuster along with similarly themed work by Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana". Instead, Beck plucked one song from it—the Odelay album closer "Ramshackle"—and shelved the rest ("Brother" and "Feather In Your Cap" were, however, later released as B-sides). Beck was introduced to the Dust Brothers, producers of the Beastie Boys' album Paul's Boutique, whose cut-and-paste, sample-heavy production suited Beck's vision of a more fun, accessible album. After a record executive explained that Odelay would be a "huge mistake", he spent many months thinking "that I'd blown it forever". Odelay was released on June 18, 1996, to commercial success and critical acclaim. The record produced several hit singles, including "Where It's At", "Devils Haircut", and "The New Pollution", and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1997, winning a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album as well as a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for "Where It's At". During one busy week in January 1997, he landed his Grammy nominations, appeared on Saturday Night Live and Howard Stern, and did a last-minute trot on The Rosie O'Donnell Show. The combined buzz gave Odelay a second wind, leading to an expanded fan base and additional exposure Beck enjoyed but, like several executives at Geffen, was bewildered by the success of Odelay. He would often get recognized in public, which made him feel strange. "It's just weird. It doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel natural to me. I don't think I was made for that. I was never good at that," he later told Pitchfork. Odelay sold two million copies and put "one-hit wonder" criticisms to rest. During this time, he contributed the song "Deadweight" to the soundtrack of the film A Life Less Ordinary (1997). Mutations and Midnite Vultures (1998–2001) Having not been in a proper studio since "Deadweight", Beck felt anxious to "go in and just do some stuff real quick", and compiled several songs he had had for years. Beck and his bandmates hammered out fourteen songs in fourteen days, although just twelve made it onto the album, 1998's Mutations. Beck decided on Nigel Godrich, producer for Radiohead's OK Computer the previous year, to be behind the boards for the project. Godrich was leaving the United States for England in a short time, which led to the album's quick production schedule—"No looking back, no doctoring anything". The whole point of the record was to capture the performance of the musicians live, an uncharacteristic far-cry from the cut-and-paste aesthetic of Odelay. Though the album was originally slated for release by Bong Load Records, Geffen intervened and issued the record against Beck's wishes. The artist then sought to void his contracts with both record labels, and in turn the labels sued him for breach of contract. The litigation went on for years and it remains unclear to this day if it has ever been completely resolved. Beck was later awarded Best Alternative Music Performance for Mutations at the 42nd Grammy Awards. Midnite Vultures, Beck's next studio effort, was originally recorded as a double album, and more than 25 nearly completed songs were left behind. In the studio, Beck and producers studied contemporary hip hop and R&B, specifically R. Kelly, in order to embrace and incorporate those influences in the way Al Green and Stax records had done in previous decades. In July 1998, a core group began to assemble at Beck's Pasadena home: bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen, keyboardist Roger Joseph Manning Jr., and producer-engineers Mickey Petralia and Tony Hoffer. Dozens of session players passed through, including Beck's father, David Campbell, who played viola and arranged some of the strings. The musicians held communal meals and mountain-bike rides on dusty trails nearby, but remained focused on Beck's instructions: to make an up-tempo album that would be fun to play on tour night after night. "I had so many things going on", said Beck of the recording process. "I had a couple of rooms of computers hooked up, I was doing B sides for Japan, I was programming beats in one room and someone would be cooking dinner in the other room." In November 1999, Geffen released the much-anticipated Midnite Vultures, which attracted confusion: "fans and critics misguidedly worried whether it was serious or a goof," and as a result, The New York Times wrote that the album "never won the audience it deserved". The record was supported by an extensive world tour. For Beck, it was a return to the high-energy performances that had been his trademark as far back as Lollapalooza. The live stage set included a red bed that descended from the ceiling for the song "Debra", and the touring band was complemented by a brass section. Midnite Vultures was nominated for Best Album at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards. Sea Change (2002–2003) In 2000, Beck and his fiancée, stylist Leigh Limon, ended their nine-year relationship. Beck lapsed into a period of melancholy and introspection, during which he wrote the bleak, acoustic-based tracks later found on Sea Change. Beck sat on the songs, not wanting to talk about his personal life; he later said that he wanted to focus on music and "not really strew my baggage across the public lobby". Eventually, however, he decided the songs spoke to a common experience (a relationship breakup), and that it would not seem self-indulgent to record them. In 2001, Beck drifted back to the songs and called producer Nigel Godrich. Retailers initially predicted that the album would not receive much radio support, but they also believed that Beck's maverick reputation and critical acclaim, in addition to the possibility of multiple Grammy nominations, might offset Sea Changes noncommercial sound. Sea Change, issued by Geffen in September 2002, was regardless a commercial hit and critical darling, with Rolling Stone revering it as "the best album Beck has ever made, [...] an impeccable album of truth and light from the end of love. This is his Blood on the Tracks." The album was later listed by the magazine as one of the best records of the decade and of all-time, and it also placed second on the year's Pazz & Jop Critics Poll. Sea Change yielded a low-key, theater-based acoustic tour, as well as a larger tour with The Flaming Lips as Beck's opening and backing band. Beck was playful and energetic, sometimes throwing in covers of The Rolling Stones, Big Star, The Zombies and The Velvet Underground. Following the release of Sea Change, Beck felt newer compositions were sketches for something more evolved in the same direction, and wrote nearly 35 more songs in the coming months, keeping demos of them on tapes in a suitcase. During his solo tour, the tapes were left backstage during a stop in Washington, D.C., and Beck was never able to recover them. It was disheartening to the musician, who felt the two years of songwriting represented something more technically complex. As a result, Beck took a break and wrote no original compositions in 2003. Feeling as though it might take him a while to "get back to that [songwriting] territory", he entered the studio with Dust Brothers to complete a project that dated back to Odelay. Nearly half of the songs had existed since the 1990s. Guero and The Information (2004–2007) Guero, Beck's eighth studio album, was recorded over the span of nine months during which several significant events occurred in his life: his girlfriend, Marissa Ribisi, became pregnant; they were married; their son, Cosimo, was born; and they moved out of Silver Lake. The collaboration with the Dust Brothers, his second, was notable for their use of high-tech measures to achieve a lo-fi sound. For example, after recording a "sonically perfect" version of a song at one of the nicest recording studios in Hollywood, the Dust Brothers processed it in an Echoplex to create a gritty, reverb-heavy sound: "We did this high-tech recording and ran it through a transistor radio. It sounded too good, that was the problem." Initially due to be released in October 2004, Guero faced delays and did not come out till March 2005, though unmastered copies of the tracks surfaced online in January. Guero debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 162,000 copies, an all-time sales high. Lead single "E-Pro" peaked at number one at Modern Rock radio, making it his first chart-topper since "Loser". Beck, inspired by the Nintendocore remix scene and feeling a connection with its lo-fi, home-recording method, collaborated with artists 8-Bit and Paza on Hell Yes, an EP issued in February 2005. In December 2005, Geffen also issued Guerolito, a fully reworked version of Guero featuring remixes by the Beastie Boys' Ad-Rock, the Dust Brothers' John King and Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada. Guerolito combines remixes previously heard as B-sides and new versions of album tracks to make a track-by-track reconfiguration of the album. Also released in 2005 was A Brief Overview, a 12-track promotional-only "History of Beck" compilation CD sampler that featured a combination of older and newer Beck tracks. The Information, Beck's ninth studio album, began production around the same time as Guero, in 2003. Working with producer Nigel Godrich, Beck built a studio in his garden, where they wrote many of the tracks. "The idea was to get people in a room together recording live, hitting bad notes and screaming," said Beck, adding that the album is best described as "introspective hip hop". Beck described the recording process as "painful", noting that he edited down songs constantly and he perhaps recorded the album three times. For the release, Beck was allowed for the first time to fulfill a long-running wish for an unconventional rollout: he made low-budget videos to accompany each song, packaged the CD with sheets of stickers so buyers could customize the cover, and leaked tracks and videos on his website months ahead of the album's release. Digital download releases automatically downloaded the song's additional video for each single sale, and physical copies came bundled with an additional DVD featuring fifteen videos. Modern Guilt (2008) In 2007, Beck released the single "Timebomb", which was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance. For his next studio effort, his tenth, Beck tapped Danger Mouse to produce, and the two first met in December 2007 to record. The duo knocked out two tracks in two days, but the notion that the album would be finished in a timely fashion soon evaporated. Beck had known Danger Mouse casually before, as many of his former musicians ended up working with Danger Mouse's side project, Gnarls Barkley. Still, the musicians were surprised at how well they got along. Following the grueling recording schedule, Beck was exhausted, calling it "the most intense work I've ever done on anything", relating that he "did at least 10 weeks with no days off, until four or five in the morning every night." Beck's original vision was a short 10-track burst with two-minute songs, but the songs gradually grew as he fit 'two years of songwriting into two and a half months." Modern Guilt (2008) was "full of off-kilter rhythms and left-field breakdowns, with an overall 1960s vibe." Record Club, Song Reader, production work and non-album singles (2009–2013) Modern Guilt was the final release in Beck's contract with Geffen Records. Beck, then 38, had held the contract since his early 20s. Released from his label contract and going independent, Beck began working more heavily on his own seven-year-old label, which went through a variety of names. His focus on smaller, more quixotic projects, Beck moonlighted as a producer, working with artists such as Charlotte Gainsbourg, Thurston Moore and Stephen Malkmus. Beck worked for five or six days a week at the small studio on his property in Malibu, and founded Record Club, a project whereby an entire classic album—by The Velvet Underground, Leonard Cohen, INXS, Yanni—would be covered by another singer in the span of a single day. Beck provided four songs for the film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), each attributed to the title character's fictional band, Sex Bob-Omb. Beck also collaborated with Philip Glass, Jack White, Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow, Jamie Lidell, Seu Jorge, Childish Gambino, and The Lonely Island. Song Reader, a project Beck released in December 2012, is 20 songs presented only as sheet music, in the hopes that enterprising musicians will record their own versions. The idea of Song Reader came about nearly fifteen years prior, shortly after the release of Odelay. When sent a book of transcribed sheet music for that album, Beck decided to play through it and grew interested in the world before recorded sound. He aimed to keep the arrangements as open as possible, to re-create the simplicity of the standards, and became preoccupied with creating only pieces that could fit within the Great American Songbook. In 2013 Beck began playing special Song Reader concerts with a variety of guests and announced he was working on a record of Song Reader material with other musicians as well as possibly a compilation of fan versions. In the summer of 2013, Beck was reported to be working on two new studio albums: one a more self-contained acoustic disc in the vein of One Foot in the Grave and another described as a "proper follow-up" to Modern Guilt. Beck expected to release both albums independently, and released two standalone singles over the course of the summer: the electro ballad "Defriended" and the chorus-heavy "I Won't Be Long". A third single, "Gimme", appeared on September 17. Morning Phase, Colors, and Hyperspace (2014–present) In October 2013, Beck signed to Capitol Records. On January 20, 2014, Beck released the track "Blue Moon", which was to be the lead single for his twelfth studio album, Morning Phase. On February 4, second single "Waking Light" was released, just prior to the official release of Morning Phase on February 21, 2014. For the recording of the album, Beck reunited with many of the same musicians with whom he had worked on the critically acclaimed 2002 album Sea Change, and likely because of this, it has been noted that the two albums have a similar genre. On February 8, 2015, at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards, Morning Phase won three Grammys: Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical; Best Rock Album; and Album of the Year. Upon receiving the Album of the Year award, the album beat out Pharrell Williams's G I R L, Beyoncé's self-titled album, Sam Smith's In the Lonely Hour, and Ed Sheeran's x. In the time after Morning Phases release and general critical success, Beck mentioned that he had been working on another album at around the same time, but that the new album would be more of a pop record. Shortly after Morning Phases Grammy wins, on June 15, 2015, Beck released the first single titled "Dreams" off this upcoming thirteenth studio album. "I was really trying to make something that would be good to play live," he said shortly after its release. However, no further word was heard from Beck pertaining to the release of the album. On June 2, 2016, almost a year after the initial release of "Dreams", Beck released a new single titled "Wow", along with a lyric video of the song and an announcement that his still untitled album would be released on October 21, 2016. In September 2016, the album was delayed with no new release date announced and, on September 24, Beck said he did not know "when it's coming out. It's probably in a few months." Once again, however, no further singles were released and no new release date was scheduled for the album. On September 8, 2017, Beck released the single "Dear Life", which was quickly followed up with the official release of "Up All Night" on September 18. Colors was released on October 13, 2017. It was recorded at co-executive producer Greg Kurstin's Los Angeles studio, with Beck and Kurstin playing nearly every instrument themselves. The experimental pop-fused record received generally positive reviews from critics. On July 18, 2018, Beck performed the title track Colors, and the first single "Wow" on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. On April 15, 2019, Beck released a single co-produced with Pharrell Williams titled "Saw Lightning" from his fourteenth studio album, titled Hyperspace. The song "Dark Places" was released on November 6, with the album being released on November 22. Collaborations and contributions In 1999, Beck contributed to a tribute album for Bruce Haack and Esther Nelson and their label Dimension 5 Records. The album, Dimension Mix, released in 2005, was a benefit for Cure Autism Now that was produced by Ross Harris, an early collaborator who designed the artwork for Mellow Gold. On June 20, 2009, Beck announced that he was starting an experiment called Record Club, in which he and other musicians would record cover versions of entire albums in one day. The first album covered by Beck's Record Club was The Velvet Underground & Nico. Starting on June 18, the club began posting covers of songs from the album on Thursday evenings, each with its own video. On September 4, 2009, Beck announced the second Record Club album, Songs of Leonard Cohen. Contributors included MGMT, Devendra Banhart, Andrew Stockdale of Wolfmother and Binki Shapiro of Little Joy. In the third Record Club venture, Wilco, Feist, Jamie Lidell and James Gadson joined Beck to cover Skip Spence's Oar. The first song, "Little Hands", was posted on Beck's website on November 12, 2009. The Record Club has since covered albums by INXS and Yanni. On June 19, 2009, Beck announced Planned Obsolescence, a weekly DJ set put together by Beck or guest DJs. Soon after, on July 7, Beck announced that his website would be featuring "extended informal conversations with musicians, artists, filmmakers, and other various persons" in a section called Irrelevant Topics. Then, on July 12, he added a section called Videotheque, which he said would contain "promotional videos from each album, as well as live clips, TV show appearances and other rarities". Also in 2009, Beck collaborated with Charlotte Gainsbourg on her album IRM, which was released in January 2010. Beck wrote the music, co-wrote the lyrics, and produced and mixed the album. The lead single, "Heaven Can Wait", is a duet by Beck and Gainsbourg. In late February 2010, it was announced that electronic artist Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow had collaborated with Beck on two songs, "Fresh Hex" and "Grape Aerosmith", on his upcoming album Maniac Meat. Tobacco revealed that in making the album, Beck sent the vocal parts to him, and that they had never actually met. In March 2010, Beck revealed that he had produced songs for the new Jamie Lidell album, Compass. In the summer of 2010, Beck contributed songs to both The Twilight Saga: Eclipse soundtrack, with "Let's Get Lost" (a duet with Bat for Lashes), and True Blood (HBO Original Series Soundtrack, Vol. 2), with "Bad Blood". He also contributed songs to the soundtrack of Edgar Wright's film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which was released in August 2010. In 2011, he collaborated with Seu Jorge on a track titled "Tropicália (Mario C. 2011 Remix)" for the Red Hot Organization's most recent charitable album Red Hot+Rio 2, a follow-up to the 1996 album Red Hot + Rio. Proceeds from the sales will be donated to raise awareness and money to fight AIDS/HIV and related health and social issues. He also contributed on the song "Attracted to Us" on Turtleneck & Chain, the second album from The Lonely Island. Also in 2011, Beck produced a solo album by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth called Demolished Thoughts. An album he produced for Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Mirror Traffic, was released in August 2011. In October 2011, it was widely reported that Beck and producer Hector Castillo were collaborating with American composer Philip Glass to produce a remix album of the composer's works in honor of his 75th birthday. The album, Rework Philip Glass Remixed, was released on October 23, 2012, to critical acclaim, and featured Beck as both a curator and a performer. In particular, Pitchfork described Beck's 22-minute contribution to the album, "NYC: 73–78", as "a fantasia ... the most startling and original piece of music with Beck's name on it in a while, and the first new work to bear his own spirit in even longer." Reflecting on Beck's contribution to the album, Glass remarked that he was "impressed by the novelty and freshness of a lot of the ideas". Beyond his work as a performer, Beck acted as the album's curator, bringing together a diverse collection of artists—including Amon Tobin, Tyondai Braxton, Nosaj Thing, and Memory Tapes—whose work had also been influenced by Glass. In December 2012, an interactive iPhone app titled "Rework_" was released to complement the album. Beck has contributed three new songs—"Cities", "Touch the People" and "Spiral Staircase"—to the video game Sound Shapes for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. Beck collaborated on two songs for Childish Gambino's "Royalty" mixtape in 2012. In 2014, Beck collaborated with Sia for the song "Moonquake Lake", which is featured in the soundtrack for the 2014 Annie film. In 2015, Beck collaborated with former Fun. frontman Nate Ruess on the single "What This World Is Coming To", which was one of the Grammy-winning artist's many works featured on his debut solo album Grand Romantic released in June 2015. He also collaborated with electronic dance music duo The Chemical Brothers on their most recent album Born in the Echoes, providing lead vocals and also credited in writing for the track "Wide Open", released in July. In 2016, Beck collaborated with French electronic music band M83, providing vocals for the song "Time Wind" from their album Junk. He was also featured on "Tiny Cities" by Flume. He also collaborated with Lady Gaga on the song "Dancin' in Circles", from her 2016 album Joanne. In 2017, Beck appeared in the multiple award-winning film The American Epic Sessions, directed by Bernard MacMahon. He recorded "14 Rivers, 14 Floods" backed by a full gospel choir, live onto the first electrical sound recording system from the 1920s. In 2019, Beck worked with Jenny Lewis on the song "Do Si Do" from her album On the Line. He also collaborated with Cage the Elephant on the song "Night Running" from their album Social Cues. In 2020, Beck collaborated with virtual band Gorillaz to create the song "The Valley of the Pagans" which appears on Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez. In 2021, Beck collaborated with Paul McCartney to make his hit single "Find My Way" on the album McCartney III Imagined. As for festival stages the artist was inter alia part of the Newport Folk Festival in July. Musical style Beck's musical style has been considered alternative and indie. He has played many of the instruments in his music himself. Beck has also done some remixes for fellow artists, notably David Bowie and Björk. He has been known to synthesize several musical elements together in his music, including folk, psychedelia, electronic, country, Latin music, hip hop, funk, soul, blues, noise music, jazz, and many types of rock. He has also taken music from Los Angeles as a reference point in his songs. Pitchfork Media applauded Midnite Vultures, saying, "Beck wonderfully blends Prince, Talking Heads, Paul's Boutique, 'Shake Your Bon-Bon', and Mathlete on Midnite Vultures, his most consistent and playful album yet." The review commented that his mix of "goofy piety and ambiguous intent" helped the album. A Beck song called "Harry Partch", a tribute to the composer of the same name and his "corporeal" music, employs Partch's 43-tone scale. Art career During 1998, Beck's art collaborations with his grandfather Al Hansen were featured in an exhibition titled "Beck & Al Hansen: Playing With Matches", which showcased solo and collaborative collage, assemblage, drawing and poetry works. The show toured from the Santa Monica Museum of Art to galleries in New York City and Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Canada. A catalog of the show was published by Plug in Editions/Smart Art Press. Personal life Beck's nine-year relationship with designer Leigh Limon and their subsequent breakup is said to have inspired his 2002 album, Sea Change. He wrote most of the songs for the album in one week after the breakup. In April 2004, shortly before the birth of their son Cosimo Henri, Beck married actress Marissa Ribisi, the twin sister of actor Giovanni Ribisi. Their daughter, Tuesday, was born in 2007. Beck filed for divorce from Ribisi on February 15, 2019. Their divorce was finalized on September 3, 2021. Beck has described himself as both Jewish and a Scientologist. Through his parents, he has been involved in Scientology for most of his life; his ex-wife, Marissa, is also a second-generation Scientologist. He publicly acknowledged his affiliation for the first time in a New York Times Magazine interview on March 6, 2005. Further confirmation came in an interview with the Sunday Tribune in June 2005, where he stated, "Yeah, I'm a Scientologist. My father has been a Scientologist for about 35 years, so I grew up in and around it." Despite this, Beck disavowed previous reports of his being a Scientologist in a November 2019 interview with the Sydney Morning Herald and said, "I think there's a misconception that I'm a Scientologist. I'm not a Scientologist. I don't have any connection or affiliation with it." He added that "I was raised celebrating Jewish holidays, and I consider myself Jewish." As mentioned above, Beck's mother is former Andy Warhol The Factory collaborator, artist/writer/performer Bibbe Hansen. His siblings are fiber artist Channing Hansen (born in 1972 in Los Angeles, California) and poet Rain Whittaker. Beck suffered a spinal injury while filming the music video for 2005's "E-Pro". The incident was severe enough to curtail his touring schedule for a few years, but he has since recovered. Appearances in media The 1986 punk rock musical film Population: 1, starring Tomata du Plenty of The Screamers, features a young Beck in a small nonspeaking role. Beck also appears in Southlander (2001), an American independent film by Steve Hanft and Ross Harris. Beck has performed on Saturday Night Live seven times. During his 2006 performance in the Hugh Laurie episode, Beck was accompanied by the puppets that had been used onstage during his world tour. He has made two cameo appearances as himself on Saturday Night Live: one in a sketch about medicinal marijuana, and one in a VH1 Behind the Music parody that featured "Fat Albert & the Junkyard Gang". Beck performed a guest voice as himself on Matt Groening's animated show Futurama, in the episode "Bendin' in the Wind". He performed in episode 10 of the fourth season of The Larry Sanders Show, in which the producer character Artie (Rip Torn) referred to him as a "hillbilly from outer space". He also made a very brief voice appearance in the 1998 cartoon feature film The Rugrats Movie, and guest-starred as himself in a 1997 episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast titled "Edelweiss". On January 22, 2010, Beck appeared on the last episode of The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien as a backup guitarist for a Will Ferrell-led rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" alongside ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons, Ben Harper, and O'Brien himself on guitar. On March 1, 2014, Beck was the musical guest on a Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Jim Parsons. Beck also appeared, as himself, in the 2017 film The Circle, giving a musical performance of the song "Dreams". Discography Studio albums Golden Feelings (1993) Stereopathetic Soulmanure (1994) Mellow Gold (1994) One Foot in the Grave (1994) Odelay (1996) Mutations (1998) Midnite Vultures (1999) Sea Change (2002) Guero (2005) The Information (2006) Modern Guilt (2008) Morning Phase (2014) Colors (2017) Hyperspace (2019) Awards and nominations See also List of awards and nominations received by Beck List of people from Los Angeles List of singer-songwriters References External links Diskobox, comprehensive discography Whiskeyclone.net, large, informative Beck site Stewoo.net, the largest Beck fan forum Beck at Rolling Stone 1970 births Living people 20th-century American singers 21st-century American singers Alternative rock guitarists American alternative country singers American alternative rock musicians American country rock singers American country singer-songwriters American folk guitarists American folk singers American former Scientologists American indie rock musicians American male guitarists American male singer-songwriters American multi-instrumentalists American music video directors American people of Canadian descent American people of Jewish descent American people of Norwegian descent American people of Swedish descent American rock guitarists American rock singers American street performers Art pop musicians Brit Award winners Capitol Records artists DGC Records artists Grammy Award winners Guitarists from Los Angeles Jewish American musicians Jewish American songwriters Jewish anti-folk musicians Jewish singers K Records artists Mission District, San Francisco Singers from Los Angeles Sony Music Publishing artists XL Recordings artists Singer-songwriters from California
true
[ "Sixteen ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Success, whilst another was planned:\n\n was a 34-gun ship, previously the French ship Jules. She was captured in 1650, renamed HMS Old Success in 1660 and sold in 1662.\n HMS Success was a 24-gun ship launched in 1655 as . She was renamed HMS Success in 1660 and was wrecked in 1680.\n was a 6-gun fireship purchased in 1672 that foundered in 1673.\n was a store hulk purchased in 1692 and sunk as a breakwater in 1707.\n was a 10-gun sloop purchased in 1709 that the French captured in 1710 off Lisbon.\n was a 24-gun storeship launched in 1709, hulked in 1730, and sold in 1748. \n was a 20-gun sixth rate launched in 1712, converted to a fireship in 1739, and sold in 1743.\n was a 14-gun sloop launched in 1736; her fate is unknown.\n was a 24-gun sixth rate launched in 1740 and broken up in 1779.\n was a 14-gun ketch launched in 1754. Her fate is unknown.\n was a 32-gun fifth rate launched in 1781 that the French captured in 1801 but that the British recaptured the same year. She became a convict ship in 1814 and was broken up in 1820.\n was a 3-gun gunvessel, previously in use as a barge. She was purchased in 1797 and sold in 1802.\n was a 28 gun sixth rate launched in 1825, and captained by James Stirling in his journey to Western Australia. She was used for harbour service from 1832 and was broken up 1849.\n HMS Success was to have been a wood screw sloop. She was ordered but not laid down and was cancelled in 1863.\n was a launched in 1901 and wrecked in 1914.\n HMS Success was an launched in 1918. She was transferred to the Royal Australian Navy in 1919 and was sold in 1937.\n was an S-class destroyer launched in 1943. She was transferred to the Royal Norwegian Navy later that year and renamed . She was broken up in 1959.\n\nSee also\n , two ships of the Royal Australian Navy.\n\nCitations and references\nCitations\n\nReferences\n \n\nRoyal Navy ship names", "HMAS Success was an Admiralty destroyer of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). Built for the Royal Navy during World War I, the ship was not completed until 1919, and spent less than eight months in British service before being transferred to the RAN at the start of 1920. The destroyer's career was uneventful, with almost all of it spent in Australian waters. Success was decommissioned in 1930, and was sold for ship breaking in 1937.\n\nDesign and construction\n\nSuccess was built to the Admiralty design of the S-class destroyer, which was designed and built as part of the British emergency war programme. The destroyer had a displacement of 1,075 tons, a length of overall and between perpendiculars, and a beam of . The propulsion machinery consisted of three Yarrow boilers feeding Brown-Curtis turbines, which supplied to the ship's two propeller shafts. Success had a maximum speed of , and a range of at . The ship's company was made up of 6 officers and 93 sailors.\n\nThe destroyer's primary armament consisted of three QF 4-inch Mark IV guns. These were supplemented by a 2-pounder pom-pom, two 9.5-inch howitzer bomb throwers, five .303 inch machine guns (a mix of Lewis and Maxim guns), two twin 21-inch torpedo tube sets, two depth charge throwers, and two depth charge chutes.\n\nSuccess was laid down by William Doxford and Sons Limited at their Sunderland shipyard in 1917. The destroyer was launched on 29 June 1918, and completed on 15 April 1919. The ship was briefly commissioned into the Royal Navy in April 1919, but was quickly marked for transfer to the RAN, along with four sister ships. Success was commissioned into the RAN on 27 January 1920.\n\nOperational history\n\nSuccess and three of her sister ships sailed for Australia on 20 February, visiting ports in the Mediterranean, India, Singapore, and the Netherlands East Indies before reaching Sydney on 29 April. Success operated in Australian waters until 6 October 1921, when she was placed in reserve. The destroyer was reactivated on 1 December 1925. In late May 1926, Success visited Port Moresby.\n\nDecommissioning and fate\nSuccess paid off on 21 May 1930. She was sold to Penguins Limited for ship breaking in 1937.\n\nCitations\n\nReferences\n\nS-class destroyers (1917) of the Royal Australian Navy\nShips built on the River Wear\n1918 ships" ]
[ "Beck", "Guero and The Information (2004-07)", "Is Guero the name of an album?", "Guero, Beck's eighth studio album,", "Was it a success?", "Guero debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 162,000 copies, an all-time sales high." ]
C_d29b28d4389744279614a64dbf2969cd_0
Did he tour during the time of this album?
3
Did Beck tour during the time of his Guero album?
Beck
Guero, Beck's eighth studio album, was recorded over the span of nine months during which several significant events occurred in his life: his girlfriend, Marissa Ribisi, became pregnant; they were married; their son, Cosimo, was born; and they moved out of Silver Lake. The collaboration with the Dust Brothers, his second, was notable for their use of high-tech measures to achieve a lo-fi sound. For example, after recording a "sonically perfect" version of a song at one of the nicest recording studios in Hollywood, the Dust Brothers processed it in an Echoplex to create a gritty, reverb-heavy sound: "We did this high-tech recording and ran it through a transistor radio. It sounded too good, that was the problem." Initially due to be released in October 2004, Guero faced delays and did not come out till March 2005, though unmastered copies of the tracks surfaced online in January. Guero debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 162,000 copies, an all-time sales high. Lead single "E-Pro" peaked at number one at Modern Rock radio, making it his first chart-topper since "Loser". Beck, inspired by the Nintendocore remix scene and feeling a connection with its lo-fi, home-recording method, collaborated with artists 8-Bit and Paza on Hell Yes, an EP issued in February 2005. In December 2005, Geffen also issued Guerolito, a fully reworked version of Guero featuring remixes by the Beastie Boys' Ad-Rock, the Dust Brothers' John King and Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada. Guerolito combines remixes previously heard as B-sides and new versions of album tracks to make a track-by-track reconfiguration of the album. Also released in 2005 was A Brief Overview, a 12-track promotional-only "History of Beck" compilation CD sampler that featured a combination of older and newer Beck tracks. The Information, Beck's ninth studio album, began production around the same time as Guero, in 2003. Working with producer Nigel Godrich, Beck built a studio in his garden, where they wrote many of the tracks. "The idea was to get people in a room together recording live, hitting bad notes and screaming," said Beck, adding that the album is best described as "introspective hip hop". Beck described the recording process as "painful", noting that he edited down songs constantly and he perhaps recorded the album three times. For the release, Beck was allowed for the first time to fulfill a long-running wish for an unconventional rollout: he made low-budget videos to accompany each song, packaged the CD with sheets of stickers so buyers could customize the cover, and leaked tracks and videos on his website months ahead of the album's release. Digital download releases automatically downloaded the song's additional video for each single sale, and physical copies came bundled with an additional DVD featuring fifteen videos. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
Beck David Hansen (born Bek David Campbell; July 8, 1970) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He rose to fame in the early 1990s with his experimental and lo-fi style, and became known for creating musical collages of wide-ranging genres. He has musically encompassed folk, funk, soul, hip hop, electronic, alternative rock, country, and psychedelia. He has released 14 studio albums (three of which were released on indie labels), as well as several non-album singles and a book of sheet music. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Beck grew towards hip-hop and folk in his teens and began to perform locally at coffeehouses and clubs. He moved to New York City in 1989 and became involved in the city's anti-folk movement. Returning to Los Angeles in the early 1990s, he cut his breakthrough single "Loser", which became a worldwide hit in 1994, and released his first major album, Mellow Gold, the same year. Odelay, released in 1996, topped critic polls and won several awards. He released the country-influenced, twangy Mutations in 1998, and the funk-infused Midnite Vultures in 1999. The soft-acoustic Sea Change in 2002 showcased a more serious Beck, and 2005's Guero returned to Odelays sample-based production. The Information in 2006 was inspired by electro-funk, hip hop, and psychedelia; 2008's Modern Guilt was inspired by '60s pop music; and 2014's folk-infused Morning Phase won Album of the Year at the 57th Grammy Awards. His 2017 album, Colors, won awards for Best Alternative Album and Best Engineered Album at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards. His fourteenth studio album, Hyperspace, was released on November 22, 2019. With a pop art collage of musical styles, oblique and ironic lyrics, and postmodern arrangements incorporating samples, drum machines, live instrumentation and sound effects, Beck has been hailed by critics and the public throughout his musical career as being among the most idiosyncratically creative musicians of 1990s and 2000s alternative rock. Two of Beck's most popular and acclaimed recordings are Odelay and Sea Change, both of which were ranked on Rolling Stone list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The four-time platinum artist has collaborated with several artists and has made several contributions to soundtracks. Early life Beck was born Bek David Campbell in Los Angeles, California, on July 8, 1970, the son of American visual artist Bibbe Hansen and Canadian arranger, composer, and conductor David Campbell. Hansen grew up amid Andy Warhol's The Factory art scene of the 1960s in New York City and was a Warhol superstar. She moved to California at age 17 and met Campbell there. Beck's maternal grandmother was Jewish, while his maternal grandfather, artist Al Hansen, was of Norwegian descent and was a pioneer in the avant-garde Fluxus movement. Beck has said that he was "raised celebrating Jewish holidays" and that he considers himself Jewish. Beck was born in a rooming house near downtown Los Angeles. As a child, he lived in a declining neighborhood near Hollywood Boulevard. He later recalled, "By the time we left there, they were ripping out miles of houses en masse and building low-rent, giant apartment blocks." The lower-class family struggled financially, moving to Hoover and Ninth Street, a neighborhood populated primarily by Koreans and Salvadorian refugees. He was sent for a time to live with his paternal grandparents in Kansas, later remarking that he thought "they were kind of concerned" about his "weird" home life. Since his paternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister, Beck grew up influenced by church music and hymns. He also spent time in Europe with his maternal grandfather. After his parents separated when he was 10, Beck stayed with his mother and brother Channing in Los Angeles, where he was influenced by the city's diverse musical offerings—everything from hip hop to Latin music and his mother's art scene—all of which would later reappear in his work. Beck obtained his first guitar at 16 and became a street musician, often playing Lead Belly covers at Lafayette Park. During his teens, Beck discovered the music of Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore, and X, but remained uninterested in most music outside the folk genre until many years into his career. The first contemporary music that made a direct connection with Beck was hip hop, which he first heard on Grandmaster Flash records in the early 1980s. Growing up in a predominantly Latin district, he found himself the only white child at his school, and quickly learned how to breakdance. When he was 17, Beck grew fascinated after hearing a Mississippi John Hurt record at a friend's house, and spent hours in his room trying to emulate Hurt's finger-picking techniques. Shortly thereafter, Beck explored blues and folk music further, discovering Woody Guthrie and Blind Willie Johnson. Feeling like "a total outcast", Beck dropped out of school after junior high. He later said that although he felt school was important, he felt unsafe there. When he applied to the new performing arts high school downtown, he was rejected. His brother took him to post-Beat jazz places in Echo Park and Silver Lake. He hung out at the Los Angeles City College, perusing records, books and old sheet music in its library. He used a fake ID to sit in on classes there, and he also befriended a literature instructor and his poet wife. He worked at a string of menial jobs, including loading trucks and operating a leaf blower. Career Early performances and first releases (1988–1993) Beck began as a folk musician, switching between country blues, Delta blues, and more traditional rural folk music in his teenage years. He began performing on city buses, often covering Mississippi John Hurt alongside original, sometimes improvisational compositions. "I'd get on the bus and start playing Mississippi John Hurt with totally improvised lyrics. Some drunk would start yelling at me, calling me Axl Rose. So I'd start singing about Axl Rose and the levee and bus passes and strychnine, mixing the whole thing up," he later recalled. He was also in a band called Youthless that hosted Dadaist-inspired freeform events at city coffee shops. "We had Radio Shack mics and this homemade speaker and we'd draft people in the audience to recite comic books or do a beatbox thing, or we'd tie the whole audience up in masking tape," Beck recalled. In 1989, Beck caught a bus to New York City with little more than $8.00 and a guitar. He spent the summer attempting to find a job and a place to live with little success. Beck eventually began to frequent Manhattan's Lower East Side and stumbled upon the tail end of the East Village's anti-folk scene's first wave. Beck became involved in a loose posse of acoustic musicians—including Cindy Lee Berryhill, Kirk Kelly, Paleface, and Lach, headed by Roger Manning—whose raggedness and eccentricity placed them well outside the acoustic mainstream. "The whole mission was to destroy all the clichés and make up some new ones," said Beck of his New York years. "Everybody knew each other. You could go up onstage and say anything, and you wouldn't feel weird or feel any pressure." Inspired by that freedom and by the local spoken-word performers, Beck began to write free-associative, surrealistic songs about pizza, MTV, and working at McDonald's, turning mundane thoughts into songs. Beck was roommates with Paleface, sleeping on his couch and attending open mic nights together. Daunted by the prospect of another homeless New York winter, Beck returned to his home of Los Angeles in early 1991. "I was tired of being cold, tired of getting beat up," he later remarked. "It was hard to be in New York with no money, no place [...] I kinda used up all the friends I had. Everyone on the scene got sick of me." Back in Los Angeles, Beck began to work at a video store in the Silver Lake neighborhood, "doing things like alphabetizing the pornography section". He began performing in arthouse clubs and coffeehouses such as Al's Bar and Raji's. In order to keep indifferent audiences engaged in his music, Beck would play in a spontaneous, joking manner. "I'd be banging away on a Son House tune and the whole audience would be talking. So maybe out of desperation or boredom, or the audience's boredom, I'd make up these ridiculous songs just to see if people were listening," he later remarked. Virtually an unknown to the public and an enigma to those who met him, Beck would hop onstage between acts in local clubs and play "strange folk songs", accompanied by "what could best be described as performance art" while sometimes wearing a Star Wars stormtrooper mask. Beck met someone who offered to help record demos in his living room, and he began to pass cassette tapes around. Eventually, Beck gained key boosters in Margaret Mittleman, the West Coast's director of talent acquisitions for BMG Music Publishing, and the partners behind independent record label Bong Load Custom Records: Tom Rothrock, Rob Schnapf and Brad Lambert. Schnapf saw Beck perform at Jabberjaw and felt he would suit their small venture. Beck expressed a loose interest in hip hop, and Rothrock introduced him to Carl Stephenson, a record producer for Rap-A-Lot Records. In 1992, Beck visited Stephenson's home to collaborate. The result—the slide-sampling hip hop track "Loser"—was a one-off experiment that Beck set aside, going back to his folk songs, making his home tapes such as Golden Feelings, and releasing several independent singles. Mellow Gold, and independent albums (1993–1994) By 1993, Beck was living in a rat-infested shed near a Los Angeles alleyway with little money. Bong Load issued "Loser" as a single in March 1993 on 12" vinyl with only 500 copies pressed. Beck felt that "Loser" was mediocre, and only agreed to its release at Rothrock's insistence. "Loser" unexpectedly received radio airplay, starting in Los Angeles, where college radio station KXLU was the first to play it, and later on Santa Monica College radio station KCRW, where radio host Chris Douridas played the song on Morning Becomes Eclectic, the station's flagship music program. "I called the record label that day and asked to have Beck play live on the air," Douridas said. "He came in that Friday, rapped to a tape of "Loser" and did his song 'MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack.'" That night, Beck performed at the Los Angeles club Cafe Troy to a packed audience and talent scouts from major labels. The song then spread to Seattle through KNDD The End, and KROQ-FM began playing the song on an almost hourly basis. As Bong Load struggled to press more copies of "Loser", Beck was beset with offers to sign with major labels. During the bidding war in November, Beck spent several days in Olympia, Washington, recording material with Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening, which would later see release the following year on Johnson's K Records as One Foot in the Grave. A fierce bidding war ensued, with Geffen Records A&R director Mark Kates signing Beck in December 1993 amid intense competition from Warner Bros. and Capitol. Beck's non-exclusive contract with Geffen allowed him an unusual amount of creative freedom, with Beck remaining free to release material through such small, independent labels as Flipside, which issued the sprawling, 25-track collection of pre-"Loser" recordings titled Stereopathetic Soulmanure on February 22 the following year. By the time Beck released his first album for Geffen, the low-budget, genre-blending Mellow Gold on March 1, "Loser" was already in the top 40 and its video in MTV's Buzz Bin. "Loser" quickly ascended the charts in the U.S., reaching a peak of number ten on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and topping the Modern Rock Tracks chart. The song also charted in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and throughout Europe. Beck's newfound position of attention led to his characterization as the "King of Slackers", as the media dubbed him the center of the new so-called "slacker" movement. Critics, feeling it the essential follow-up to Radiohead's "Creep", found vacantness in the lyrics of "Loser" strongly associated with Generation X, although Beck himself strongly contested his position as the face of the "slacker" generation: "Slacker my ass. I mean, I never had any slack. I was working a $4-an-hour job trying to stay alive. That slacker stuff is for people who have the time to be depressed about everything." Backlash and Odelay (1994–1997) Feeling as though he was "constantly trying to prove myself", Beck suffered a backlash, with skeptics denouncing him as a self-indulgent fake and the latest marketing opportunity. In the summer of 1994, Beck was struggling and many of his fellow musicians thought he had lost his way. Combined with the song's wildly popular music video and the world tour, Beck reacted believing the attention could not last, resulting in a status as a "one-hit wonder". At other concerts, crowds were treated to twenty minutes of reggae or Miles Davis or jazz-punk iterations of "Loser". At one-day festivals in California, he surrounded himself with an artnoise combo. The drummer set fire to his cymbals; the lead guitarist "played" his guitar with the strings faced towards his body; and Beck changed the words to "Loser" so that nobody could sing along. "I can't tell you how many times I was looking at faces that were looking back at me with complete bewilderment—or just pointing and shaking their heads and laughing—while performing during that period," he later recalled. Despite this, Beck gained the respect of his peers, such as Tom Petty and Johnny Cash, and created an entire wave of bands determined to recapture the Mellow Gold sound. Feeling his previous releases were just collections of demos recorded over the course of several years, Beck desired to enter the studio and record an album in a continuous linear fashion, which became Odelay. Beck blends country, blues, rap, jazz and rock on Odelay, the result of a year and half of feverish "cutting, pasting, layering, dubbing, and, of course, sampling". Each day, the musicians started from scratch, often working on songs for 16 hours straight. Odelays conception lies in an unfinished studio album Beck first embarked on following the success of "Loser", chronicling the difficult time he experienced: "There was a cycle of everyone dying around me," he recalled later. He was constantly recording, and eventually put together an album of somber, orchestrated folk tunes; one that, perhaps, "could have been a commercial blockbuster along with similarly themed work by Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana". Instead, Beck plucked one song from it—the Odelay album closer "Ramshackle"—and shelved the rest ("Brother" and "Feather In Your Cap" were, however, later released as B-sides). Beck was introduced to the Dust Brothers, producers of the Beastie Boys' album Paul's Boutique, whose cut-and-paste, sample-heavy production suited Beck's vision of a more fun, accessible album. After a record executive explained that Odelay would be a "huge mistake", he spent many months thinking "that I'd blown it forever". Odelay was released on June 18, 1996, to commercial success and critical acclaim. The record produced several hit singles, including "Where It's At", "Devils Haircut", and "The New Pollution", and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1997, winning a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album as well as a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for "Where It's At". During one busy week in January 1997, he landed his Grammy nominations, appeared on Saturday Night Live and Howard Stern, and did a last-minute trot on The Rosie O'Donnell Show. The combined buzz gave Odelay a second wind, leading to an expanded fan base and additional exposure Beck enjoyed but, like several executives at Geffen, was bewildered by the success of Odelay. He would often get recognized in public, which made him feel strange. "It's just weird. It doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel natural to me. I don't think I was made for that. I was never good at that," he later told Pitchfork. Odelay sold two million copies and put "one-hit wonder" criticisms to rest. During this time, he contributed the song "Deadweight" to the soundtrack of the film A Life Less Ordinary (1997). Mutations and Midnite Vultures (1998–2001) Having not been in a proper studio since "Deadweight", Beck felt anxious to "go in and just do some stuff real quick", and compiled several songs he had had for years. Beck and his bandmates hammered out fourteen songs in fourteen days, although just twelve made it onto the album, 1998's Mutations. Beck decided on Nigel Godrich, producer for Radiohead's OK Computer the previous year, to be behind the boards for the project. Godrich was leaving the United States for England in a short time, which led to the album's quick production schedule—"No looking back, no doctoring anything". The whole point of the record was to capture the performance of the musicians live, an uncharacteristic far-cry from the cut-and-paste aesthetic of Odelay. Though the album was originally slated for release by Bong Load Records, Geffen intervened and issued the record against Beck's wishes. The artist then sought to void his contracts with both record labels, and in turn the labels sued him for breach of contract. The litigation went on for years and it remains unclear to this day if it has ever been completely resolved. Beck was later awarded Best Alternative Music Performance for Mutations at the 42nd Grammy Awards. Midnite Vultures, Beck's next studio effort, was originally recorded as a double album, and more than 25 nearly completed songs were left behind. In the studio, Beck and producers studied contemporary hip hop and R&B, specifically R. Kelly, in order to embrace and incorporate those influences in the way Al Green and Stax records had done in previous decades. In July 1998, a core group began to assemble at Beck's Pasadena home: bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen, keyboardist Roger Joseph Manning Jr., and producer-engineers Mickey Petralia and Tony Hoffer. Dozens of session players passed through, including Beck's father, David Campbell, who played viola and arranged some of the strings. The musicians held communal meals and mountain-bike rides on dusty trails nearby, but remained focused on Beck's instructions: to make an up-tempo album that would be fun to play on tour night after night. "I had so many things going on", said Beck of the recording process. "I had a couple of rooms of computers hooked up, I was doing B sides for Japan, I was programming beats in one room and someone would be cooking dinner in the other room." In November 1999, Geffen released the much-anticipated Midnite Vultures, which attracted confusion: "fans and critics misguidedly worried whether it was serious or a goof," and as a result, The New York Times wrote that the album "never won the audience it deserved". The record was supported by an extensive world tour. For Beck, it was a return to the high-energy performances that had been his trademark as far back as Lollapalooza. The live stage set included a red bed that descended from the ceiling for the song "Debra", and the touring band was complemented by a brass section. Midnite Vultures was nominated for Best Album at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards. Sea Change (2002–2003) In 2000, Beck and his fiancée, stylist Leigh Limon, ended their nine-year relationship. Beck lapsed into a period of melancholy and introspection, during which he wrote the bleak, acoustic-based tracks later found on Sea Change. Beck sat on the songs, not wanting to talk about his personal life; he later said that he wanted to focus on music and "not really strew my baggage across the public lobby". Eventually, however, he decided the songs spoke to a common experience (a relationship breakup), and that it would not seem self-indulgent to record them. In 2001, Beck drifted back to the songs and called producer Nigel Godrich. Retailers initially predicted that the album would not receive much radio support, but they also believed that Beck's maverick reputation and critical acclaim, in addition to the possibility of multiple Grammy nominations, might offset Sea Changes noncommercial sound. Sea Change, issued by Geffen in September 2002, was regardless a commercial hit and critical darling, with Rolling Stone revering it as "the best album Beck has ever made, [...] an impeccable album of truth and light from the end of love. This is his Blood on the Tracks." The album was later listed by the magazine as one of the best records of the decade and of all-time, and it also placed second on the year's Pazz & Jop Critics Poll. Sea Change yielded a low-key, theater-based acoustic tour, as well as a larger tour with The Flaming Lips as Beck's opening and backing band. Beck was playful and energetic, sometimes throwing in covers of The Rolling Stones, Big Star, The Zombies and The Velvet Underground. Following the release of Sea Change, Beck felt newer compositions were sketches for something more evolved in the same direction, and wrote nearly 35 more songs in the coming months, keeping demos of them on tapes in a suitcase. During his solo tour, the tapes were left backstage during a stop in Washington, D.C., and Beck was never able to recover them. It was disheartening to the musician, who felt the two years of songwriting represented something more technically complex. As a result, Beck took a break and wrote no original compositions in 2003. Feeling as though it might take him a while to "get back to that [songwriting] territory", he entered the studio with Dust Brothers to complete a project that dated back to Odelay. Nearly half of the songs had existed since the 1990s. Guero and The Information (2004–2007) Guero, Beck's eighth studio album, was recorded over the span of nine months during which several significant events occurred in his life: his girlfriend, Marissa Ribisi, became pregnant; they were married; their son, Cosimo, was born; and they moved out of Silver Lake. The collaboration with the Dust Brothers, his second, was notable for their use of high-tech measures to achieve a lo-fi sound. For example, after recording a "sonically perfect" version of a song at one of the nicest recording studios in Hollywood, the Dust Brothers processed it in an Echoplex to create a gritty, reverb-heavy sound: "We did this high-tech recording and ran it through a transistor radio. It sounded too good, that was the problem." Initially due to be released in October 2004, Guero faced delays and did not come out till March 2005, though unmastered copies of the tracks surfaced online in January. Guero debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 162,000 copies, an all-time sales high. Lead single "E-Pro" peaked at number one at Modern Rock radio, making it his first chart-topper since "Loser". Beck, inspired by the Nintendocore remix scene and feeling a connection with its lo-fi, home-recording method, collaborated with artists 8-Bit and Paza on Hell Yes, an EP issued in February 2005. In December 2005, Geffen also issued Guerolito, a fully reworked version of Guero featuring remixes by the Beastie Boys' Ad-Rock, the Dust Brothers' John King and Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada. Guerolito combines remixes previously heard as B-sides and new versions of album tracks to make a track-by-track reconfiguration of the album. Also released in 2005 was A Brief Overview, a 12-track promotional-only "History of Beck" compilation CD sampler that featured a combination of older and newer Beck tracks. The Information, Beck's ninth studio album, began production around the same time as Guero, in 2003. Working with producer Nigel Godrich, Beck built a studio in his garden, where they wrote many of the tracks. "The idea was to get people in a room together recording live, hitting bad notes and screaming," said Beck, adding that the album is best described as "introspective hip hop". Beck described the recording process as "painful", noting that he edited down songs constantly and he perhaps recorded the album three times. For the release, Beck was allowed for the first time to fulfill a long-running wish for an unconventional rollout: he made low-budget videos to accompany each song, packaged the CD with sheets of stickers so buyers could customize the cover, and leaked tracks and videos on his website months ahead of the album's release. Digital download releases automatically downloaded the song's additional video for each single sale, and physical copies came bundled with an additional DVD featuring fifteen videos. Modern Guilt (2008) In 2007, Beck released the single "Timebomb", which was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance. For his next studio effort, his tenth, Beck tapped Danger Mouse to produce, and the two first met in December 2007 to record. The duo knocked out two tracks in two days, but the notion that the album would be finished in a timely fashion soon evaporated. Beck had known Danger Mouse casually before, as many of his former musicians ended up working with Danger Mouse's side project, Gnarls Barkley. Still, the musicians were surprised at how well they got along. Following the grueling recording schedule, Beck was exhausted, calling it "the most intense work I've ever done on anything", relating that he "did at least 10 weeks with no days off, until four or five in the morning every night." Beck's original vision was a short 10-track burst with two-minute songs, but the songs gradually grew as he fit 'two years of songwriting into two and a half months." Modern Guilt (2008) was "full of off-kilter rhythms and left-field breakdowns, with an overall 1960s vibe." Record Club, Song Reader, production work and non-album singles (2009–2013) Modern Guilt was the final release in Beck's contract with Geffen Records. Beck, then 38, had held the contract since his early 20s. Released from his label contract and going independent, Beck began working more heavily on his own seven-year-old label, which went through a variety of names. His focus on smaller, more quixotic projects, Beck moonlighted as a producer, working with artists such as Charlotte Gainsbourg, Thurston Moore and Stephen Malkmus. Beck worked for five or six days a week at the small studio on his property in Malibu, and founded Record Club, a project whereby an entire classic album—by The Velvet Underground, Leonard Cohen, INXS, Yanni—would be covered by another singer in the span of a single day. Beck provided four songs for the film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), each attributed to the title character's fictional band, Sex Bob-Omb. Beck also collaborated with Philip Glass, Jack White, Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow, Jamie Lidell, Seu Jorge, Childish Gambino, and The Lonely Island. Song Reader, a project Beck released in December 2012, is 20 songs presented only as sheet music, in the hopes that enterprising musicians will record their own versions. The idea of Song Reader came about nearly fifteen years prior, shortly after the release of Odelay. When sent a book of transcribed sheet music for that album, Beck decided to play through it and grew interested in the world before recorded sound. He aimed to keep the arrangements as open as possible, to re-create the simplicity of the standards, and became preoccupied with creating only pieces that could fit within the Great American Songbook. In 2013 Beck began playing special Song Reader concerts with a variety of guests and announced he was working on a record of Song Reader material with other musicians as well as possibly a compilation of fan versions. In the summer of 2013, Beck was reported to be working on two new studio albums: one a more self-contained acoustic disc in the vein of One Foot in the Grave and another described as a "proper follow-up" to Modern Guilt. Beck expected to release both albums independently, and released two standalone singles over the course of the summer: the electro ballad "Defriended" and the chorus-heavy "I Won't Be Long". A third single, "Gimme", appeared on September 17. Morning Phase, Colors, and Hyperspace (2014–present) In October 2013, Beck signed to Capitol Records. On January 20, 2014, Beck released the track "Blue Moon", which was to be the lead single for his twelfth studio album, Morning Phase. On February 4, second single "Waking Light" was released, just prior to the official release of Morning Phase on February 21, 2014. For the recording of the album, Beck reunited with many of the same musicians with whom he had worked on the critically acclaimed 2002 album Sea Change, and likely because of this, it has been noted that the two albums have a similar genre. On February 8, 2015, at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards, Morning Phase won three Grammys: Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical; Best Rock Album; and Album of the Year. Upon receiving the Album of the Year award, the album beat out Pharrell Williams's G I R L, Beyoncé's self-titled album, Sam Smith's In the Lonely Hour, and Ed Sheeran's x. In the time after Morning Phases release and general critical success, Beck mentioned that he had been working on another album at around the same time, but that the new album would be more of a pop record. Shortly after Morning Phases Grammy wins, on June 15, 2015, Beck released the first single titled "Dreams" off this upcoming thirteenth studio album. "I was really trying to make something that would be good to play live," he said shortly after its release. However, no further word was heard from Beck pertaining to the release of the album. On June 2, 2016, almost a year after the initial release of "Dreams", Beck released a new single titled "Wow", along with a lyric video of the song and an announcement that his still untitled album would be released on October 21, 2016. In September 2016, the album was delayed with no new release date announced and, on September 24, Beck said he did not know "when it's coming out. It's probably in a few months." Once again, however, no further singles were released and no new release date was scheduled for the album. On September 8, 2017, Beck released the single "Dear Life", which was quickly followed up with the official release of "Up All Night" on September 18. Colors was released on October 13, 2017. It was recorded at co-executive producer Greg Kurstin's Los Angeles studio, with Beck and Kurstin playing nearly every instrument themselves. The experimental pop-fused record received generally positive reviews from critics. On July 18, 2018, Beck performed the title track Colors, and the first single "Wow" on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. On April 15, 2019, Beck released a single co-produced with Pharrell Williams titled "Saw Lightning" from his fourteenth studio album, titled Hyperspace. The song "Dark Places" was released on November 6, with the album being released on November 22. Collaborations and contributions In 1999, Beck contributed to a tribute album for Bruce Haack and Esther Nelson and their label Dimension 5 Records. The album, Dimension Mix, released in 2005, was a benefit for Cure Autism Now that was produced by Ross Harris, an early collaborator who designed the artwork for Mellow Gold. On June 20, 2009, Beck announced that he was starting an experiment called Record Club, in which he and other musicians would record cover versions of entire albums in one day. The first album covered by Beck's Record Club was The Velvet Underground & Nico. Starting on June 18, the club began posting covers of songs from the album on Thursday evenings, each with its own video. On September 4, 2009, Beck announced the second Record Club album, Songs of Leonard Cohen. Contributors included MGMT, Devendra Banhart, Andrew Stockdale of Wolfmother and Binki Shapiro of Little Joy. In the third Record Club venture, Wilco, Feist, Jamie Lidell and James Gadson joined Beck to cover Skip Spence's Oar. The first song, "Little Hands", was posted on Beck's website on November 12, 2009. The Record Club has since covered albums by INXS and Yanni. On June 19, 2009, Beck announced Planned Obsolescence, a weekly DJ set put together by Beck or guest DJs. Soon after, on July 7, Beck announced that his website would be featuring "extended informal conversations with musicians, artists, filmmakers, and other various persons" in a section called Irrelevant Topics. Then, on July 12, he added a section called Videotheque, which he said would contain "promotional videos from each album, as well as live clips, TV show appearances and other rarities". Also in 2009, Beck collaborated with Charlotte Gainsbourg on her album IRM, which was released in January 2010. Beck wrote the music, co-wrote the lyrics, and produced and mixed the album. The lead single, "Heaven Can Wait", is a duet by Beck and Gainsbourg. In late February 2010, it was announced that electronic artist Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow had collaborated with Beck on two songs, "Fresh Hex" and "Grape Aerosmith", on his upcoming album Maniac Meat. Tobacco revealed that in making the album, Beck sent the vocal parts to him, and that they had never actually met. In March 2010, Beck revealed that he had produced songs for the new Jamie Lidell album, Compass. In the summer of 2010, Beck contributed songs to both The Twilight Saga: Eclipse soundtrack, with "Let's Get Lost" (a duet with Bat for Lashes), and True Blood (HBO Original Series Soundtrack, Vol. 2), with "Bad Blood". He also contributed songs to the soundtrack of Edgar Wright's film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which was released in August 2010. In 2011, he collaborated with Seu Jorge on a track titled "Tropicália (Mario C. 2011 Remix)" for the Red Hot Organization's most recent charitable album Red Hot+Rio 2, a follow-up to the 1996 album Red Hot + Rio. Proceeds from the sales will be donated to raise awareness and money to fight AIDS/HIV and related health and social issues. He also contributed on the song "Attracted to Us" on Turtleneck & Chain, the second album from The Lonely Island. Also in 2011, Beck produced a solo album by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth called Demolished Thoughts. An album he produced for Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Mirror Traffic, was released in August 2011. In October 2011, it was widely reported that Beck and producer Hector Castillo were collaborating with American composer Philip Glass to produce a remix album of the composer's works in honor of his 75th birthday. The album, Rework Philip Glass Remixed, was released on October 23, 2012, to critical acclaim, and featured Beck as both a curator and a performer. In particular, Pitchfork described Beck's 22-minute contribution to the album, "NYC: 73–78", as "a fantasia ... the most startling and original piece of music with Beck's name on it in a while, and the first new work to bear his own spirit in even longer." Reflecting on Beck's contribution to the album, Glass remarked that he was "impressed by the novelty and freshness of a lot of the ideas". Beyond his work as a performer, Beck acted as the album's curator, bringing together a diverse collection of artists—including Amon Tobin, Tyondai Braxton, Nosaj Thing, and Memory Tapes—whose work had also been influenced by Glass. In December 2012, an interactive iPhone app titled "Rework_" was released to complement the album. Beck has contributed three new songs—"Cities", "Touch the People" and "Spiral Staircase"—to the video game Sound Shapes for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. Beck collaborated on two songs for Childish Gambino's "Royalty" mixtape in 2012. In 2014, Beck collaborated with Sia for the song "Moonquake Lake", which is featured in the soundtrack for the 2014 Annie film. In 2015, Beck collaborated with former Fun. frontman Nate Ruess on the single "What This World Is Coming To", which was one of the Grammy-winning artist's many works featured on his debut solo album Grand Romantic released in June 2015. He also collaborated with electronic dance music duo The Chemical Brothers on their most recent album Born in the Echoes, providing lead vocals and also credited in writing for the track "Wide Open", released in July. In 2016, Beck collaborated with French electronic music band M83, providing vocals for the song "Time Wind" from their album Junk. He was also featured on "Tiny Cities" by Flume. He also collaborated with Lady Gaga on the song "Dancin' in Circles", from her 2016 album Joanne. In 2017, Beck appeared in the multiple award-winning film The American Epic Sessions, directed by Bernard MacMahon. He recorded "14 Rivers, 14 Floods" backed by a full gospel choir, live onto the first electrical sound recording system from the 1920s. In 2019, Beck worked with Jenny Lewis on the song "Do Si Do" from her album On the Line. He also collaborated with Cage the Elephant on the song "Night Running" from their album Social Cues. In 2020, Beck collaborated with virtual band Gorillaz to create the song "The Valley of the Pagans" which appears on Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez. In 2021, Beck collaborated with Paul McCartney to make his hit single "Find My Way" on the album McCartney III Imagined. As for festival stages the artist was inter alia part of the Newport Folk Festival in July. Musical style Beck's musical style has been considered alternative and indie. He has played many of the instruments in his music himself. Beck has also done some remixes for fellow artists, notably David Bowie and Björk. He has been known to synthesize several musical elements together in his music, including folk, psychedelia, electronic, country, Latin music, hip hop, funk, soul, blues, noise music, jazz, and many types of rock. He has also taken music from Los Angeles as a reference point in his songs. Pitchfork Media applauded Midnite Vultures, saying, "Beck wonderfully blends Prince, Talking Heads, Paul's Boutique, 'Shake Your Bon-Bon', and Mathlete on Midnite Vultures, his most consistent and playful album yet." The review commented that his mix of "goofy piety and ambiguous intent" helped the album. A Beck song called "Harry Partch", a tribute to the composer of the same name and his "corporeal" music, employs Partch's 43-tone scale. Art career During 1998, Beck's art collaborations with his grandfather Al Hansen were featured in an exhibition titled "Beck & Al Hansen: Playing With Matches", which showcased solo and collaborative collage, assemblage, drawing and poetry works. The show toured from the Santa Monica Museum of Art to galleries in New York City and Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Canada. A catalog of the show was published by Plug in Editions/Smart Art Press. Personal life Beck's nine-year relationship with designer Leigh Limon and their subsequent breakup is said to have inspired his 2002 album, Sea Change. He wrote most of the songs for the album in one week after the breakup. In April 2004, shortly before the birth of their son Cosimo Henri, Beck married actress Marissa Ribisi, the twin sister of actor Giovanni Ribisi. Their daughter, Tuesday, was born in 2007. Beck filed for divorce from Ribisi on February 15, 2019. Their divorce was finalized on September 3, 2021. Beck has described himself as both Jewish and a Scientologist. Through his parents, he has been involved in Scientology for most of his life; his ex-wife, Marissa, is also a second-generation Scientologist. He publicly acknowledged his affiliation for the first time in a New York Times Magazine interview on March 6, 2005. Further confirmation came in an interview with the Sunday Tribune in June 2005, where he stated, "Yeah, I'm a Scientologist. My father has been a Scientologist for about 35 years, so I grew up in and around it." Despite this, Beck disavowed previous reports of his being a Scientologist in a November 2019 interview with the Sydney Morning Herald and said, "I think there's a misconception that I'm a Scientologist. I'm not a Scientologist. I don't have any connection or affiliation with it." He added that "I was raised celebrating Jewish holidays, and I consider myself Jewish." As mentioned above, Beck's mother is former Andy Warhol The Factory collaborator, artist/writer/performer Bibbe Hansen. His siblings are fiber artist Channing Hansen (born in 1972 in Los Angeles, California) and poet Rain Whittaker. Beck suffered a spinal injury while filming the music video for 2005's "E-Pro". The incident was severe enough to curtail his touring schedule for a few years, but he has since recovered. Appearances in media The 1986 punk rock musical film Population: 1, starring Tomata du Plenty of The Screamers, features a young Beck in a small nonspeaking role. Beck also appears in Southlander (2001), an American independent film by Steve Hanft and Ross Harris. Beck has performed on Saturday Night Live seven times. During his 2006 performance in the Hugh Laurie episode, Beck was accompanied by the puppets that had been used onstage during his world tour. He has made two cameo appearances as himself on Saturday Night Live: one in a sketch about medicinal marijuana, and one in a VH1 Behind the Music parody that featured "Fat Albert & the Junkyard Gang". Beck performed a guest voice as himself on Matt Groening's animated show Futurama, in the episode "Bendin' in the Wind". He performed in episode 10 of the fourth season of The Larry Sanders Show, in which the producer character Artie (Rip Torn) referred to him as a "hillbilly from outer space". He also made a very brief voice appearance in the 1998 cartoon feature film The Rugrats Movie, and guest-starred as himself in a 1997 episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast titled "Edelweiss". On January 22, 2010, Beck appeared on the last episode of The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien as a backup guitarist for a Will Ferrell-led rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" alongside ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons, Ben Harper, and O'Brien himself on guitar. On March 1, 2014, Beck was the musical guest on a Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Jim Parsons. Beck also appeared, as himself, in the 2017 film The Circle, giving a musical performance of the song "Dreams". Discography Studio albums Golden Feelings (1993) Stereopathetic Soulmanure (1994) Mellow Gold (1994) One Foot in the Grave (1994) Odelay (1996) Mutations (1998) Midnite Vultures (1999) Sea Change (2002) Guero (2005) The Information (2006) Modern Guilt (2008) Morning Phase (2014) Colors (2017) Hyperspace (2019) Awards and nominations See also List of awards and nominations received by Beck List of people from Los Angeles List of singer-songwriters References External links Diskobox, comprehensive discography Whiskeyclone.net, large, informative Beck site Stewoo.net, the largest Beck fan forum Beck at Rolling Stone 1970 births Living people 20th-century American singers 21st-century American singers Alternative rock guitarists American alternative country singers American alternative rock musicians American country rock singers American country singer-songwriters American folk guitarists American folk singers American former Scientologists American indie rock musicians American male guitarists American male singer-songwriters American multi-instrumentalists American music video directors American people of Canadian descent American people of Jewish descent American people of Norwegian descent American people of Swedish descent American rock guitarists American rock singers American street performers Art pop musicians Brit Award winners Capitol Records artists DGC Records artists Grammy Award winners Guitarists from Los Angeles Jewish American musicians Jewish American songwriters Jewish anti-folk musicians Jewish singers K Records artists Mission District, San Francisco Singers from Los Angeles Sony Music Publishing artists XL Recordings artists Singer-songwriters from California
false
[ "The Ultimate Live Experience was a European concert tour that was mostly in the United Kingdom that was through the month of March 1995. This tour was to promote the soon-to-be The Gold Experience that was released in September later than year. Much of the setlist was from Gold Experience and there was also Come and Exodus material. However, he did say that he wouldn't not perform his Prince stuff from 1978 to early 1993. However, he did perform \"I Love U in Me\" and \"7\" with some covers.\n\nAn extension of the tour known as the Gold Tour was launched in 1996. The concerts featured mainly songs from the album, but also started adding prior Prince fan favorites.\n\nHistory\nThe Ultimate Live Experience was performed during a chaotic period in Prince's life and career. He had much new music written but then record company Warner Brothers refused to release it at the speed that Prince wished, leading to public feuding. Meanwhile, Prince had already released the album Come with no promotion and was trying to get The Gold Experience released as well. During this time, he made many configurations of the album and this tour presents songs that he likely planned for the album (though not all would make the cut), as well as very rarely played cuts from the Prince period, with the exception of \"7\".\n\nWhile the previous year's Ultimate Live Experience tour presented Gold Experience prior to its release, the long overdue album had finally hit shelves in late 1995 and this tour was now a \"proper\" promotion. However, by this time, Prince had been playing some of the material for nearly two years and many of the songs were shortened to brief medleys. Conversely, Prince had formerly said he would not play \"Prince\" material anymore, but that idea was apparently tossed to the wind with this tour. Several fan-favorites such as \"The Cross\", \"Do Me, Baby\", and \"Sexy MF\" were regulars, along with the Gold material. Also, Prince started performing a cover of Joan Osborne's \"One of Us\", which he would include on his next album, Emancipation.\n\nSetlists\nSetlist of March 3, 1995, at the Wembley Arena, London, England \n\n \"Endorphinmachine\"\n \"The Jam\" (Includes \"The Exodus Has Begun\" lyric interpolation)\n \"Shhh\"\n \"Days of Wild\" (Includes snippets of \"Hair\")\n \"Now\" (Includes snippets of \"Babies Makin' Babies\")\n \"Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine\"\n \"Johnny\"\n \"The Most Beautiful Girl in the World\"\n \"P. Control\"\n \"Letitgo\"\n \"Pink Cashmere\"\n \"(Lemme See Your Body) Get Loose!\" (Unreleased remix of \"Loose!\")\n \"I Love U in Me\"\n \"Proud Mary\" (Includes \"I Can't Turn You Loose\" interpolation)\n Oriental prelude\n \"7\"\n \"Dolphin\"\n\nEncore \n\n \"Get Wild\"\n \"Race\"\n \"Super Hero\"\n Medley\n \"Billy Jack Bitch\"\n \"Eye Hate U\"\n \"319\"\n \"Gold\"\n\nTour dates\n\nReferences\n\nPrince (musician) concert tours\n1995 concert tours\n1996 concert tours", "The Subliminal Verses World Tour was a worldwide concert tour in 2004 and 2005 headlined by Slipknot in support of their third studio album Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses).\n\nPreparation\nBefore organizing the tour, Slipknot vocalist Corey Taylor commented that he was \"probably the most vocal of the guys who really didn’t feel good coming back to Slipknot\", and during the tour, he said that he was \"basically eating my words, eating a lot of crow this time around. [... But] it's really good. [...] It's good to be humbled and know you’re in a band that's fantastic.\"\n\nDuring the tour, the band's third studio album Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses) was approaching the platinum mark, and two of its tracks were nominated for the year's Grammy Awards (\"Duality\" for Best Hard Rock Performance and \"Vermilion\" for Best Heavy Metal Performance).\n\nPerformers\nAs is typical of the band, Slipknot members are masked and costumed when performing on stage. They received support at various stages of the tour from Fear Factory, Chimaira, Hatebreed and Shadows Fall. Slipknot also played as support to Metallica and Slayer.\n\nThe band Lamb of God also performed on the tour. When the tour arrived in Los Angeles on April 9, 2005 to perform at The Forum, Lamb of God was banned from opening for Slipknot because the church that owned the venue did not appreciate the band's old name of Burn the Priest.\n\nSet list\n\nTour dates\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Slipknot\n\nSlipknot (band) concert tours\n2004 concert tours\n2005 concert tours" ]
[ "Beck", "Guero and The Information (2004-07)", "Is Guero the name of an album?", "Guero, Beck's eighth studio album,", "Was it a success?", "Guero debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 162,000 copies, an all-time sales high.", "Did he tour during the time of this album?", "I don't know." ]
C_d29b28d4389744279614a64dbf2969cd_0
When was The Information released?
4
When was Beck's The Information released?
Beck
Guero, Beck's eighth studio album, was recorded over the span of nine months during which several significant events occurred in his life: his girlfriend, Marissa Ribisi, became pregnant; they were married; their son, Cosimo, was born; and they moved out of Silver Lake. The collaboration with the Dust Brothers, his second, was notable for their use of high-tech measures to achieve a lo-fi sound. For example, after recording a "sonically perfect" version of a song at one of the nicest recording studios in Hollywood, the Dust Brothers processed it in an Echoplex to create a gritty, reverb-heavy sound: "We did this high-tech recording and ran it through a transistor radio. It sounded too good, that was the problem." Initially due to be released in October 2004, Guero faced delays and did not come out till March 2005, though unmastered copies of the tracks surfaced online in January. Guero debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 162,000 copies, an all-time sales high. Lead single "E-Pro" peaked at number one at Modern Rock radio, making it his first chart-topper since "Loser". Beck, inspired by the Nintendocore remix scene and feeling a connection with its lo-fi, home-recording method, collaborated with artists 8-Bit and Paza on Hell Yes, an EP issued in February 2005. In December 2005, Geffen also issued Guerolito, a fully reworked version of Guero featuring remixes by the Beastie Boys' Ad-Rock, the Dust Brothers' John King and Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada. Guerolito combines remixes previously heard as B-sides and new versions of album tracks to make a track-by-track reconfiguration of the album. Also released in 2005 was A Brief Overview, a 12-track promotional-only "History of Beck" compilation CD sampler that featured a combination of older and newer Beck tracks. The Information, Beck's ninth studio album, began production around the same time as Guero, in 2003. Working with producer Nigel Godrich, Beck built a studio in his garden, where they wrote many of the tracks. "The idea was to get people in a room together recording live, hitting bad notes and screaming," said Beck, adding that the album is best described as "introspective hip hop". Beck described the recording process as "painful", noting that he edited down songs constantly and he perhaps recorded the album three times. For the release, Beck was allowed for the first time to fulfill a long-running wish for an unconventional rollout: he made low-budget videos to accompany each song, packaged the CD with sheets of stickers so buyers could customize the cover, and leaked tracks and videos on his website months ahead of the album's release. Digital download releases automatically downloaded the song's additional video for each single sale, and physical copies came bundled with an additional DVD featuring fifteen videos. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
Beck David Hansen (born Bek David Campbell; July 8, 1970) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He rose to fame in the early 1990s with his experimental and lo-fi style, and became known for creating musical collages of wide-ranging genres. He has musically encompassed folk, funk, soul, hip hop, electronic, alternative rock, country, and psychedelia. He has released 14 studio albums (three of which were released on indie labels), as well as several non-album singles and a book of sheet music. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Beck grew towards hip-hop and folk in his teens and began to perform locally at coffeehouses and clubs. He moved to New York City in 1989 and became involved in the city's anti-folk movement. Returning to Los Angeles in the early 1990s, he cut his breakthrough single "Loser", which became a worldwide hit in 1994, and released his first major album, Mellow Gold, the same year. Odelay, released in 1996, topped critic polls and won several awards. He released the country-influenced, twangy Mutations in 1998, and the funk-infused Midnite Vultures in 1999. The soft-acoustic Sea Change in 2002 showcased a more serious Beck, and 2005's Guero returned to Odelays sample-based production. The Information in 2006 was inspired by electro-funk, hip hop, and psychedelia; 2008's Modern Guilt was inspired by '60s pop music; and 2014's folk-infused Morning Phase won Album of the Year at the 57th Grammy Awards. His 2017 album, Colors, won awards for Best Alternative Album and Best Engineered Album at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards. His fourteenth studio album, Hyperspace, was released on November 22, 2019. With a pop art collage of musical styles, oblique and ironic lyrics, and postmodern arrangements incorporating samples, drum machines, live instrumentation and sound effects, Beck has been hailed by critics and the public throughout his musical career as being among the most idiosyncratically creative musicians of 1990s and 2000s alternative rock. Two of Beck's most popular and acclaimed recordings are Odelay and Sea Change, both of which were ranked on Rolling Stone list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The four-time platinum artist has collaborated with several artists and has made several contributions to soundtracks. Early life Beck was born Bek David Campbell in Los Angeles, California, on July 8, 1970, the son of American visual artist Bibbe Hansen and Canadian arranger, composer, and conductor David Campbell. Hansen grew up amid Andy Warhol's The Factory art scene of the 1960s in New York City and was a Warhol superstar. She moved to California at age 17 and met Campbell there. Beck's maternal grandmother was Jewish, while his maternal grandfather, artist Al Hansen, was of Norwegian descent and was a pioneer in the avant-garde Fluxus movement. Beck has said that he was "raised celebrating Jewish holidays" and that he considers himself Jewish. Beck was born in a rooming house near downtown Los Angeles. As a child, he lived in a declining neighborhood near Hollywood Boulevard. He later recalled, "By the time we left there, they were ripping out miles of houses en masse and building low-rent, giant apartment blocks." The lower-class family struggled financially, moving to Hoover and Ninth Street, a neighborhood populated primarily by Koreans and Salvadorian refugees. He was sent for a time to live with his paternal grandparents in Kansas, later remarking that he thought "they were kind of concerned" about his "weird" home life. Since his paternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister, Beck grew up influenced by church music and hymns. He also spent time in Europe with his maternal grandfather. After his parents separated when he was 10, Beck stayed with his mother and brother Channing in Los Angeles, where he was influenced by the city's diverse musical offerings—everything from hip hop to Latin music and his mother's art scene—all of which would later reappear in his work. Beck obtained his first guitar at 16 and became a street musician, often playing Lead Belly covers at Lafayette Park. During his teens, Beck discovered the music of Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore, and X, but remained uninterested in most music outside the folk genre until many years into his career. The first contemporary music that made a direct connection with Beck was hip hop, which he first heard on Grandmaster Flash records in the early 1980s. Growing up in a predominantly Latin district, he found himself the only white child at his school, and quickly learned how to breakdance. When he was 17, Beck grew fascinated after hearing a Mississippi John Hurt record at a friend's house, and spent hours in his room trying to emulate Hurt's finger-picking techniques. Shortly thereafter, Beck explored blues and folk music further, discovering Woody Guthrie and Blind Willie Johnson. Feeling like "a total outcast", Beck dropped out of school after junior high. He later said that although he felt school was important, he felt unsafe there. When he applied to the new performing arts high school downtown, he was rejected. His brother took him to post-Beat jazz places in Echo Park and Silver Lake. He hung out at the Los Angeles City College, perusing records, books and old sheet music in its library. He used a fake ID to sit in on classes there, and he also befriended a literature instructor and his poet wife. He worked at a string of menial jobs, including loading trucks and operating a leaf blower. Career Early performances and first releases (1988–1993) Beck began as a folk musician, switching between country blues, Delta blues, and more traditional rural folk music in his teenage years. He began performing on city buses, often covering Mississippi John Hurt alongside original, sometimes improvisational compositions. "I'd get on the bus and start playing Mississippi John Hurt with totally improvised lyrics. Some drunk would start yelling at me, calling me Axl Rose. So I'd start singing about Axl Rose and the levee and bus passes and strychnine, mixing the whole thing up," he later recalled. He was also in a band called Youthless that hosted Dadaist-inspired freeform events at city coffee shops. "We had Radio Shack mics and this homemade speaker and we'd draft people in the audience to recite comic books or do a beatbox thing, or we'd tie the whole audience up in masking tape," Beck recalled. In 1989, Beck caught a bus to New York City with little more than $8.00 and a guitar. He spent the summer attempting to find a job and a place to live with little success. Beck eventually began to frequent Manhattan's Lower East Side and stumbled upon the tail end of the East Village's anti-folk scene's first wave. Beck became involved in a loose posse of acoustic musicians—including Cindy Lee Berryhill, Kirk Kelly, Paleface, and Lach, headed by Roger Manning—whose raggedness and eccentricity placed them well outside the acoustic mainstream. "The whole mission was to destroy all the clichés and make up some new ones," said Beck of his New York years. "Everybody knew each other. You could go up onstage and say anything, and you wouldn't feel weird or feel any pressure." Inspired by that freedom and by the local spoken-word performers, Beck began to write free-associative, surrealistic songs about pizza, MTV, and working at McDonald's, turning mundane thoughts into songs. Beck was roommates with Paleface, sleeping on his couch and attending open mic nights together. Daunted by the prospect of another homeless New York winter, Beck returned to his home of Los Angeles in early 1991. "I was tired of being cold, tired of getting beat up," he later remarked. "It was hard to be in New York with no money, no place [...] I kinda used up all the friends I had. Everyone on the scene got sick of me." Back in Los Angeles, Beck began to work at a video store in the Silver Lake neighborhood, "doing things like alphabetizing the pornography section". He began performing in arthouse clubs and coffeehouses such as Al's Bar and Raji's. In order to keep indifferent audiences engaged in his music, Beck would play in a spontaneous, joking manner. "I'd be banging away on a Son House tune and the whole audience would be talking. So maybe out of desperation or boredom, or the audience's boredom, I'd make up these ridiculous songs just to see if people were listening," he later remarked. Virtually an unknown to the public and an enigma to those who met him, Beck would hop onstage between acts in local clubs and play "strange folk songs", accompanied by "what could best be described as performance art" while sometimes wearing a Star Wars stormtrooper mask. Beck met someone who offered to help record demos in his living room, and he began to pass cassette tapes around. Eventually, Beck gained key boosters in Margaret Mittleman, the West Coast's director of talent acquisitions for BMG Music Publishing, and the partners behind independent record label Bong Load Custom Records: Tom Rothrock, Rob Schnapf and Brad Lambert. Schnapf saw Beck perform at Jabberjaw and felt he would suit their small venture. Beck expressed a loose interest in hip hop, and Rothrock introduced him to Carl Stephenson, a record producer for Rap-A-Lot Records. In 1992, Beck visited Stephenson's home to collaborate. The result—the slide-sampling hip hop track "Loser"—was a one-off experiment that Beck set aside, going back to his folk songs, making his home tapes such as Golden Feelings, and releasing several independent singles. Mellow Gold, and independent albums (1993–1994) By 1993, Beck was living in a rat-infested shed near a Los Angeles alleyway with little money. Bong Load issued "Loser" as a single in March 1993 on 12" vinyl with only 500 copies pressed. Beck felt that "Loser" was mediocre, and only agreed to its release at Rothrock's insistence. "Loser" unexpectedly received radio airplay, starting in Los Angeles, where college radio station KXLU was the first to play it, and later on Santa Monica College radio station KCRW, where radio host Chris Douridas played the song on Morning Becomes Eclectic, the station's flagship music program. "I called the record label that day and asked to have Beck play live on the air," Douridas said. "He came in that Friday, rapped to a tape of "Loser" and did his song 'MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack.'" That night, Beck performed at the Los Angeles club Cafe Troy to a packed audience and talent scouts from major labels. The song then spread to Seattle through KNDD The End, and KROQ-FM began playing the song on an almost hourly basis. As Bong Load struggled to press more copies of "Loser", Beck was beset with offers to sign with major labels. During the bidding war in November, Beck spent several days in Olympia, Washington, recording material with Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening, which would later see release the following year on Johnson's K Records as One Foot in the Grave. A fierce bidding war ensued, with Geffen Records A&R director Mark Kates signing Beck in December 1993 amid intense competition from Warner Bros. and Capitol. Beck's non-exclusive contract with Geffen allowed him an unusual amount of creative freedom, with Beck remaining free to release material through such small, independent labels as Flipside, which issued the sprawling, 25-track collection of pre-"Loser" recordings titled Stereopathetic Soulmanure on February 22 the following year. By the time Beck released his first album for Geffen, the low-budget, genre-blending Mellow Gold on March 1, "Loser" was already in the top 40 and its video in MTV's Buzz Bin. "Loser" quickly ascended the charts in the U.S., reaching a peak of number ten on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and topping the Modern Rock Tracks chart. The song also charted in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and throughout Europe. Beck's newfound position of attention led to his characterization as the "King of Slackers", as the media dubbed him the center of the new so-called "slacker" movement. Critics, feeling it the essential follow-up to Radiohead's "Creep", found vacantness in the lyrics of "Loser" strongly associated with Generation X, although Beck himself strongly contested his position as the face of the "slacker" generation: "Slacker my ass. I mean, I never had any slack. I was working a $4-an-hour job trying to stay alive. That slacker stuff is for people who have the time to be depressed about everything." Backlash and Odelay (1994–1997) Feeling as though he was "constantly trying to prove myself", Beck suffered a backlash, with skeptics denouncing him as a self-indulgent fake and the latest marketing opportunity. In the summer of 1994, Beck was struggling and many of his fellow musicians thought he had lost his way. Combined with the song's wildly popular music video and the world tour, Beck reacted believing the attention could not last, resulting in a status as a "one-hit wonder". At other concerts, crowds were treated to twenty minutes of reggae or Miles Davis or jazz-punk iterations of "Loser". At one-day festivals in California, he surrounded himself with an artnoise combo. The drummer set fire to his cymbals; the lead guitarist "played" his guitar with the strings faced towards his body; and Beck changed the words to "Loser" so that nobody could sing along. "I can't tell you how many times I was looking at faces that were looking back at me with complete bewilderment—or just pointing and shaking their heads and laughing—while performing during that period," he later recalled. Despite this, Beck gained the respect of his peers, such as Tom Petty and Johnny Cash, and created an entire wave of bands determined to recapture the Mellow Gold sound. Feeling his previous releases were just collections of demos recorded over the course of several years, Beck desired to enter the studio and record an album in a continuous linear fashion, which became Odelay. Beck blends country, blues, rap, jazz and rock on Odelay, the result of a year and half of feverish "cutting, pasting, layering, dubbing, and, of course, sampling". Each day, the musicians started from scratch, often working on songs for 16 hours straight. Odelays conception lies in an unfinished studio album Beck first embarked on following the success of "Loser", chronicling the difficult time he experienced: "There was a cycle of everyone dying around me," he recalled later. He was constantly recording, and eventually put together an album of somber, orchestrated folk tunes; one that, perhaps, "could have been a commercial blockbuster along with similarly themed work by Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana". Instead, Beck plucked one song from it—the Odelay album closer "Ramshackle"—and shelved the rest ("Brother" and "Feather In Your Cap" were, however, later released as B-sides). Beck was introduced to the Dust Brothers, producers of the Beastie Boys' album Paul's Boutique, whose cut-and-paste, sample-heavy production suited Beck's vision of a more fun, accessible album. After a record executive explained that Odelay would be a "huge mistake", he spent many months thinking "that I'd blown it forever". Odelay was released on June 18, 1996, to commercial success and critical acclaim. The record produced several hit singles, including "Where It's At", "Devils Haircut", and "The New Pollution", and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1997, winning a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album as well as a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for "Where It's At". During one busy week in January 1997, he landed his Grammy nominations, appeared on Saturday Night Live and Howard Stern, and did a last-minute trot on The Rosie O'Donnell Show. The combined buzz gave Odelay a second wind, leading to an expanded fan base and additional exposure Beck enjoyed but, like several executives at Geffen, was bewildered by the success of Odelay. He would often get recognized in public, which made him feel strange. "It's just weird. It doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel natural to me. I don't think I was made for that. I was never good at that," he later told Pitchfork. Odelay sold two million copies and put "one-hit wonder" criticisms to rest. During this time, he contributed the song "Deadweight" to the soundtrack of the film A Life Less Ordinary (1997). Mutations and Midnite Vultures (1998–2001) Having not been in a proper studio since "Deadweight", Beck felt anxious to "go in and just do some stuff real quick", and compiled several songs he had had for years. Beck and his bandmates hammered out fourteen songs in fourteen days, although just twelve made it onto the album, 1998's Mutations. Beck decided on Nigel Godrich, producer for Radiohead's OK Computer the previous year, to be behind the boards for the project. Godrich was leaving the United States for England in a short time, which led to the album's quick production schedule—"No looking back, no doctoring anything". The whole point of the record was to capture the performance of the musicians live, an uncharacteristic far-cry from the cut-and-paste aesthetic of Odelay. Though the album was originally slated for release by Bong Load Records, Geffen intervened and issued the record against Beck's wishes. The artist then sought to void his contracts with both record labels, and in turn the labels sued him for breach of contract. The litigation went on for years and it remains unclear to this day if it has ever been completely resolved. Beck was later awarded Best Alternative Music Performance for Mutations at the 42nd Grammy Awards. Midnite Vultures, Beck's next studio effort, was originally recorded as a double album, and more than 25 nearly completed songs were left behind. In the studio, Beck and producers studied contemporary hip hop and R&B, specifically R. Kelly, in order to embrace and incorporate those influences in the way Al Green and Stax records had done in previous decades. In July 1998, a core group began to assemble at Beck's Pasadena home: bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen, keyboardist Roger Joseph Manning Jr., and producer-engineers Mickey Petralia and Tony Hoffer. Dozens of session players passed through, including Beck's father, David Campbell, who played viola and arranged some of the strings. The musicians held communal meals and mountain-bike rides on dusty trails nearby, but remained focused on Beck's instructions: to make an up-tempo album that would be fun to play on tour night after night. "I had so many things going on", said Beck of the recording process. "I had a couple of rooms of computers hooked up, I was doing B sides for Japan, I was programming beats in one room and someone would be cooking dinner in the other room." In November 1999, Geffen released the much-anticipated Midnite Vultures, which attracted confusion: "fans and critics misguidedly worried whether it was serious or a goof," and as a result, The New York Times wrote that the album "never won the audience it deserved". The record was supported by an extensive world tour. For Beck, it was a return to the high-energy performances that had been his trademark as far back as Lollapalooza. The live stage set included a red bed that descended from the ceiling for the song "Debra", and the touring band was complemented by a brass section. Midnite Vultures was nominated for Best Album at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards. Sea Change (2002–2003) In 2000, Beck and his fiancée, stylist Leigh Limon, ended their nine-year relationship. Beck lapsed into a period of melancholy and introspection, during which he wrote the bleak, acoustic-based tracks later found on Sea Change. Beck sat on the songs, not wanting to talk about his personal life; he later said that he wanted to focus on music and "not really strew my baggage across the public lobby". Eventually, however, he decided the songs spoke to a common experience (a relationship breakup), and that it would not seem self-indulgent to record them. In 2001, Beck drifted back to the songs and called producer Nigel Godrich. Retailers initially predicted that the album would not receive much radio support, but they also believed that Beck's maverick reputation and critical acclaim, in addition to the possibility of multiple Grammy nominations, might offset Sea Changes noncommercial sound. Sea Change, issued by Geffen in September 2002, was regardless a commercial hit and critical darling, with Rolling Stone revering it as "the best album Beck has ever made, [...] an impeccable album of truth and light from the end of love. This is his Blood on the Tracks." The album was later listed by the magazine as one of the best records of the decade and of all-time, and it also placed second on the year's Pazz & Jop Critics Poll. Sea Change yielded a low-key, theater-based acoustic tour, as well as a larger tour with The Flaming Lips as Beck's opening and backing band. Beck was playful and energetic, sometimes throwing in covers of The Rolling Stones, Big Star, The Zombies and The Velvet Underground. Following the release of Sea Change, Beck felt newer compositions were sketches for something more evolved in the same direction, and wrote nearly 35 more songs in the coming months, keeping demos of them on tapes in a suitcase. During his solo tour, the tapes were left backstage during a stop in Washington, D.C., and Beck was never able to recover them. It was disheartening to the musician, who felt the two years of songwriting represented something more technically complex. As a result, Beck took a break and wrote no original compositions in 2003. Feeling as though it might take him a while to "get back to that [songwriting] territory", he entered the studio with Dust Brothers to complete a project that dated back to Odelay. Nearly half of the songs had existed since the 1990s. Guero and The Information (2004–2007) Guero, Beck's eighth studio album, was recorded over the span of nine months during which several significant events occurred in his life: his girlfriend, Marissa Ribisi, became pregnant; they were married; their son, Cosimo, was born; and they moved out of Silver Lake. The collaboration with the Dust Brothers, his second, was notable for their use of high-tech measures to achieve a lo-fi sound. For example, after recording a "sonically perfect" version of a song at one of the nicest recording studios in Hollywood, the Dust Brothers processed it in an Echoplex to create a gritty, reverb-heavy sound: "We did this high-tech recording and ran it through a transistor radio. It sounded too good, that was the problem." Initially due to be released in October 2004, Guero faced delays and did not come out till March 2005, though unmastered copies of the tracks surfaced online in January. Guero debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 162,000 copies, an all-time sales high. Lead single "E-Pro" peaked at number one at Modern Rock radio, making it his first chart-topper since "Loser". Beck, inspired by the Nintendocore remix scene and feeling a connection with its lo-fi, home-recording method, collaborated with artists 8-Bit and Paza on Hell Yes, an EP issued in February 2005. In December 2005, Geffen also issued Guerolito, a fully reworked version of Guero featuring remixes by the Beastie Boys' Ad-Rock, the Dust Brothers' John King and Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada. Guerolito combines remixes previously heard as B-sides and new versions of album tracks to make a track-by-track reconfiguration of the album. Also released in 2005 was A Brief Overview, a 12-track promotional-only "History of Beck" compilation CD sampler that featured a combination of older and newer Beck tracks. The Information, Beck's ninth studio album, began production around the same time as Guero, in 2003. Working with producer Nigel Godrich, Beck built a studio in his garden, where they wrote many of the tracks. "The idea was to get people in a room together recording live, hitting bad notes and screaming," said Beck, adding that the album is best described as "introspective hip hop". Beck described the recording process as "painful", noting that he edited down songs constantly and he perhaps recorded the album three times. For the release, Beck was allowed for the first time to fulfill a long-running wish for an unconventional rollout: he made low-budget videos to accompany each song, packaged the CD with sheets of stickers so buyers could customize the cover, and leaked tracks and videos on his website months ahead of the album's release. Digital download releases automatically downloaded the song's additional video for each single sale, and physical copies came bundled with an additional DVD featuring fifteen videos. Modern Guilt (2008) In 2007, Beck released the single "Timebomb", which was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance. For his next studio effort, his tenth, Beck tapped Danger Mouse to produce, and the two first met in December 2007 to record. The duo knocked out two tracks in two days, but the notion that the album would be finished in a timely fashion soon evaporated. Beck had known Danger Mouse casually before, as many of his former musicians ended up working with Danger Mouse's side project, Gnarls Barkley. Still, the musicians were surprised at how well they got along. Following the grueling recording schedule, Beck was exhausted, calling it "the most intense work I've ever done on anything", relating that he "did at least 10 weeks with no days off, until four or five in the morning every night." Beck's original vision was a short 10-track burst with two-minute songs, but the songs gradually grew as he fit 'two years of songwriting into two and a half months." Modern Guilt (2008) was "full of off-kilter rhythms and left-field breakdowns, with an overall 1960s vibe." Record Club, Song Reader, production work and non-album singles (2009–2013) Modern Guilt was the final release in Beck's contract with Geffen Records. Beck, then 38, had held the contract since his early 20s. Released from his label contract and going independent, Beck began working more heavily on his own seven-year-old label, which went through a variety of names. His focus on smaller, more quixotic projects, Beck moonlighted as a producer, working with artists such as Charlotte Gainsbourg, Thurston Moore and Stephen Malkmus. Beck worked for five or six days a week at the small studio on his property in Malibu, and founded Record Club, a project whereby an entire classic album—by The Velvet Underground, Leonard Cohen, INXS, Yanni—would be covered by another singer in the span of a single day. Beck provided four songs for the film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), each attributed to the title character's fictional band, Sex Bob-Omb. Beck also collaborated with Philip Glass, Jack White, Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow, Jamie Lidell, Seu Jorge, Childish Gambino, and The Lonely Island. Song Reader, a project Beck released in December 2012, is 20 songs presented only as sheet music, in the hopes that enterprising musicians will record their own versions. The idea of Song Reader came about nearly fifteen years prior, shortly after the release of Odelay. When sent a book of transcribed sheet music for that album, Beck decided to play through it and grew interested in the world before recorded sound. He aimed to keep the arrangements as open as possible, to re-create the simplicity of the standards, and became preoccupied with creating only pieces that could fit within the Great American Songbook. In 2013 Beck began playing special Song Reader concerts with a variety of guests and announced he was working on a record of Song Reader material with other musicians as well as possibly a compilation of fan versions. In the summer of 2013, Beck was reported to be working on two new studio albums: one a more self-contained acoustic disc in the vein of One Foot in the Grave and another described as a "proper follow-up" to Modern Guilt. Beck expected to release both albums independently, and released two standalone singles over the course of the summer: the electro ballad "Defriended" and the chorus-heavy "I Won't Be Long". A third single, "Gimme", appeared on September 17. Morning Phase, Colors, and Hyperspace (2014–present) In October 2013, Beck signed to Capitol Records. On January 20, 2014, Beck released the track "Blue Moon", which was to be the lead single for his twelfth studio album, Morning Phase. On February 4, second single "Waking Light" was released, just prior to the official release of Morning Phase on February 21, 2014. For the recording of the album, Beck reunited with many of the same musicians with whom he had worked on the critically acclaimed 2002 album Sea Change, and likely because of this, it has been noted that the two albums have a similar genre. On February 8, 2015, at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards, Morning Phase won three Grammys: Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical; Best Rock Album; and Album of the Year. Upon receiving the Album of the Year award, the album beat out Pharrell Williams's G I R L, Beyoncé's self-titled album, Sam Smith's In the Lonely Hour, and Ed Sheeran's x. In the time after Morning Phases release and general critical success, Beck mentioned that he had been working on another album at around the same time, but that the new album would be more of a pop record. Shortly after Morning Phases Grammy wins, on June 15, 2015, Beck released the first single titled "Dreams" off this upcoming thirteenth studio album. "I was really trying to make something that would be good to play live," he said shortly after its release. However, no further word was heard from Beck pertaining to the release of the album. On June 2, 2016, almost a year after the initial release of "Dreams", Beck released a new single titled "Wow", along with a lyric video of the song and an announcement that his still untitled album would be released on October 21, 2016. In September 2016, the album was delayed with no new release date announced and, on September 24, Beck said he did not know "when it's coming out. It's probably in a few months." Once again, however, no further singles were released and no new release date was scheduled for the album. On September 8, 2017, Beck released the single "Dear Life", which was quickly followed up with the official release of "Up All Night" on September 18. Colors was released on October 13, 2017. It was recorded at co-executive producer Greg Kurstin's Los Angeles studio, with Beck and Kurstin playing nearly every instrument themselves. The experimental pop-fused record received generally positive reviews from critics. On July 18, 2018, Beck performed the title track Colors, and the first single "Wow" on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. On April 15, 2019, Beck released a single co-produced with Pharrell Williams titled "Saw Lightning" from his fourteenth studio album, titled Hyperspace. The song "Dark Places" was released on November 6, with the album being released on November 22. Collaborations and contributions In 1999, Beck contributed to a tribute album for Bruce Haack and Esther Nelson and their label Dimension 5 Records. The album, Dimension Mix, released in 2005, was a benefit for Cure Autism Now that was produced by Ross Harris, an early collaborator who designed the artwork for Mellow Gold. On June 20, 2009, Beck announced that he was starting an experiment called Record Club, in which he and other musicians would record cover versions of entire albums in one day. The first album covered by Beck's Record Club was The Velvet Underground & Nico. Starting on June 18, the club began posting covers of songs from the album on Thursday evenings, each with its own video. On September 4, 2009, Beck announced the second Record Club album, Songs of Leonard Cohen. Contributors included MGMT, Devendra Banhart, Andrew Stockdale of Wolfmother and Binki Shapiro of Little Joy. In the third Record Club venture, Wilco, Feist, Jamie Lidell and James Gadson joined Beck to cover Skip Spence's Oar. The first song, "Little Hands", was posted on Beck's website on November 12, 2009. The Record Club has since covered albums by INXS and Yanni. On June 19, 2009, Beck announced Planned Obsolescence, a weekly DJ set put together by Beck or guest DJs. Soon after, on July 7, Beck announced that his website would be featuring "extended informal conversations with musicians, artists, filmmakers, and other various persons" in a section called Irrelevant Topics. Then, on July 12, he added a section called Videotheque, which he said would contain "promotional videos from each album, as well as live clips, TV show appearances and other rarities". Also in 2009, Beck collaborated with Charlotte Gainsbourg on her album IRM, which was released in January 2010. Beck wrote the music, co-wrote the lyrics, and produced and mixed the album. The lead single, "Heaven Can Wait", is a duet by Beck and Gainsbourg. In late February 2010, it was announced that electronic artist Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow had collaborated with Beck on two songs, "Fresh Hex" and "Grape Aerosmith", on his upcoming album Maniac Meat. Tobacco revealed that in making the album, Beck sent the vocal parts to him, and that they had never actually met. In March 2010, Beck revealed that he had produced songs for the new Jamie Lidell album, Compass. In the summer of 2010, Beck contributed songs to both The Twilight Saga: Eclipse soundtrack, with "Let's Get Lost" (a duet with Bat for Lashes), and True Blood (HBO Original Series Soundtrack, Vol. 2), with "Bad Blood". He also contributed songs to the soundtrack of Edgar Wright's film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which was released in August 2010. In 2011, he collaborated with Seu Jorge on a track titled "Tropicália (Mario C. 2011 Remix)" for the Red Hot Organization's most recent charitable album Red Hot+Rio 2, a follow-up to the 1996 album Red Hot + Rio. Proceeds from the sales will be donated to raise awareness and money to fight AIDS/HIV and related health and social issues. He also contributed on the song "Attracted to Us" on Turtleneck & Chain, the second album from The Lonely Island. Also in 2011, Beck produced a solo album by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth called Demolished Thoughts. An album he produced for Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Mirror Traffic, was released in August 2011. In October 2011, it was widely reported that Beck and producer Hector Castillo were collaborating with American composer Philip Glass to produce a remix album of the composer's works in honor of his 75th birthday. The album, Rework Philip Glass Remixed, was released on October 23, 2012, to critical acclaim, and featured Beck as both a curator and a performer. In particular, Pitchfork described Beck's 22-minute contribution to the album, "NYC: 73–78", as "a fantasia ... the most startling and original piece of music with Beck's name on it in a while, and the first new work to bear his own spirit in even longer." Reflecting on Beck's contribution to the album, Glass remarked that he was "impressed by the novelty and freshness of a lot of the ideas". Beyond his work as a performer, Beck acted as the album's curator, bringing together a diverse collection of artists—including Amon Tobin, Tyondai Braxton, Nosaj Thing, and Memory Tapes—whose work had also been influenced by Glass. In December 2012, an interactive iPhone app titled "Rework_" was released to complement the album. Beck has contributed three new songs—"Cities", "Touch the People" and "Spiral Staircase"—to the video game Sound Shapes for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. Beck collaborated on two songs for Childish Gambino's "Royalty" mixtape in 2012. In 2014, Beck collaborated with Sia for the song "Moonquake Lake", which is featured in the soundtrack for the 2014 Annie film. In 2015, Beck collaborated with former Fun. frontman Nate Ruess on the single "What This World Is Coming To", which was one of the Grammy-winning artist's many works featured on his debut solo album Grand Romantic released in June 2015. He also collaborated with electronic dance music duo The Chemical Brothers on their most recent album Born in the Echoes, providing lead vocals and also credited in writing for the track "Wide Open", released in July. In 2016, Beck collaborated with French electronic music band M83, providing vocals for the song "Time Wind" from their album Junk. He was also featured on "Tiny Cities" by Flume. He also collaborated with Lady Gaga on the song "Dancin' in Circles", from her 2016 album Joanne. In 2017, Beck appeared in the multiple award-winning film The American Epic Sessions, directed by Bernard MacMahon. He recorded "14 Rivers, 14 Floods" backed by a full gospel choir, live onto the first electrical sound recording system from the 1920s. In 2019, Beck worked with Jenny Lewis on the song "Do Si Do" from her album On the Line. He also collaborated with Cage the Elephant on the song "Night Running" from their album Social Cues. In 2020, Beck collaborated with virtual band Gorillaz to create the song "The Valley of the Pagans" which appears on Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez. In 2021, Beck collaborated with Paul McCartney to make his hit single "Find My Way" on the album McCartney III Imagined. As for festival stages the artist was inter alia part of the Newport Folk Festival in July. Musical style Beck's musical style has been considered alternative and indie. He has played many of the instruments in his music himself. Beck has also done some remixes for fellow artists, notably David Bowie and Björk. He has been known to synthesize several musical elements together in his music, including folk, psychedelia, electronic, country, Latin music, hip hop, funk, soul, blues, noise music, jazz, and many types of rock. He has also taken music from Los Angeles as a reference point in his songs. Pitchfork Media applauded Midnite Vultures, saying, "Beck wonderfully blends Prince, Talking Heads, Paul's Boutique, 'Shake Your Bon-Bon', and Mathlete on Midnite Vultures, his most consistent and playful album yet." The review commented that his mix of "goofy piety and ambiguous intent" helped the album. A Beck song called "Harry Partch", a tribute to the composer of the same name and his "corporeal" music, employs Partch's 43-tone scale. Art career During 1998, Beck's art collaborations with his grandfather Al Hansen were featured in an exhibition titled "Beck & Al Hansen: Playing With Matches", which showcased solo and collaborative collage, assemblage, drawing and poetry works. The show toured from the Santa Monica Museum of Art to galleries in New York City and Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Canada. A catalog of the show was published by Plug in Editions/Smart Art Press. Personal life Beck's nine-year relationship with designer Leigh Limon and their subsequent breakup is said to have inspired his 2002 album, Sea Change. He wrote most of the songs for the album in one week after the breakup. In April 2004, shortly before the birth of their son Cosimo Henri, Beck married actress Marissa Ribisi, the twin sister of actor Giovanni Ribisi. Their daughter, Tuesday, was born in 2007. Beck filed for divorce from Ribisi on February 15, 2019. Their divorce was finalized on September 3, 2021. Beck has described himself as both Jewish and a Scientologist. Through his parents, he has been involved in Scientology for most of his life; his ex-wife, Marissa, is also a second-generation Scientologist. He publicly acknowledged his affiliation for the first time in a New York Times Magazine interview on March 6, 2005. Further confirmation came in an interview with the Sunday Tribune in June 2005, where he stated, "Yeah, I'm a Scientologist. My father has been a Scientologist for about 35 years, so I grew up in and around it." Despite this, Beck disavowed previous reports of his being a Scientologist in a November 2019 interview with the Sydney Morning Herald and said, "I think there's a misconception that I'm a Scientologist. I'm not a Scientologist. I don't have any connection or affiliation with it." He added that "I was raised celebrating Jewish holidays, and I consider myself Jewish." As mentioned above, Beck's mother is former Andy Warhol The Factory collaborator, artist/writer/performer Bibbe Hansen. His siblings are fiber artist Channing Hansen (born in 1972 in Los Angeles, California) and poet Rain Whittaker. Beck suffered a spinal injury while filming the music video for 2005's "E-Pro". The incident was severe enough to curtail his touring schedule for a few years, but he has since recovered. Appearances in media The 1986 punk rock musical film Population: 1, starring Tomata du Plenty of The Screamers, features a young Beck in a small nonspeaking role. Beck also appears in Southlander (2001), an American independent film by Steve Hanft and Ross Harris. Beck has performed on Saturday Night Live seven times. During his 2006 performance in the Hugh Laurie episode, Beck was accompanied by the puppets that had been used onstage during his world tour. He has made two cameo appearances as himself on Saturday Night Live: one in a sketch about medicinal marijuana, and one in a VH1 Behind the Music parody that featured "Fat Albert & the Junkyard Gang". Beck performed a guest voice as himself on Matt Groening's animated show Futurama, in the episode "Bendin' in the Wind". He performed in episode 10 of the fourth season of The Larry Sanders Show, in which the producer character Artie (Rip Torn) referred to him as a "hillbilly from outer space". He also made a very brief voice appearance in the 1998 cartoon feature film The Rugrats Movie, and guest-starred as himself in a 1997 episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast titled "Edelweiss". On January 22, 2010, Beck appeared on the last episode of The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien as a backup guitarist for a Will Ferrell-led rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" alongside ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons, Ben Harper, and O'Brien himself on guitar. On March 1, 2014, Beck was the musical guest on a Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Jim Parsons. Beck also appeared, as himself, in the 2017 film The Circle, giving a musical performance of the song "Dreams". Discography Studio albums Golden Feelings (1993) Stereopathetic Soulmanure (1994) Mellow Gold (1994) One Foot in the Grave (1994) Odelay (1996) Mutations (1998) Midnite Vultures (1999) Sea Change (2002) Guero (2005) The Information (2006) Modern Guilt (2008) Morning Phase (2014) Colors (2017) Hyperspace (2019) Awards and nominations See also List of awards and nominations received by Beck List of people from Los Angeles List of singer-songwriters References External links Diskobox, comprehensive discography Whiskeyclone.net, large, informative Beck site Stewoo.net, the largest Beck fan forum Beck at Rolling Stone 1970 births Living people 20th-century American singers 21st-century American singers Alternative rock guitarists American alternative country singers American alternative rock musicians American country rock singers American country singer-songwriters American folk guitarists American folk singers American former Scientologists American indie rock musicians American male guitarists American male singer-songwriters American multi-instrumentalists American music video directors American people of Canadian descent American people of Jewish descent American people of Norwegian descent American people of Swedish descent American rock guitarists American rock singers American street performers Art pop musicians Brit Award winners Capitol Records artists DGC Records artists Grammy Award winners Guitarists from Los Angeles Jewish American musicians Jewish American songwriters Jewish anti-folk musicians Jewish singers K Records artists Mission District, San Francisco Singers from Los Angeles Sony Music Publishing artists XL Recordings artists Singer-songwriters from California
false
[ "Absolute OpenBSD: Unix for the Practical Paranoid is a comprehensive guide to the OpenBSD operating system by Michael W. Lucas, author of Absolute FreeBSD and Cisco Routers for the Desperate. The book assumes basic knowledge of the design, commands, and user permissions of Unix-like operating systems. The book contains troubleshooting tips, background information on the system and its commands, and examples to assist with learning.\n\n1st edition \n\nThe first edition was released in June 2003. Some of the information in the book became outdated when OpenBSD 3.4 was released only a few months later.\n\n2nd edition \n\nThe second edition was released in April 2013. Peter N. M. Hansteen, author of The Book of PF, was the technical reviewer.\n\nExternal links\n\nReferences \n\nOpenBSD\n2003 non-fiction books\nNo Starch Press books\nBooks about free software\nBooks on operating systems", "The Career Guide to Industries was a publication of the United States Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics that included information about the nature of the industry, working conditions, training and education, earnings, and job outlook for workers in dozens of different industries. The Career Guide was released biennially with its companion publication the Occupational Outlook Handbook.\n\nIt is no longer an independent product and similar information is to be found in other publications, in particular: information about current and projected occupational employment within industries and information about current and projected industry employment for occupations.\n\nThe 2006-07 edition was released in December 2005 and included employment projections for the period 2004–2014. The 2010-11 edition printed by Claitors Publishing Division was released in August 2010.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nEconomics publications\nUnited States Department of Labor publications" ]
[ "Beck", "Guero and The Information (2004-07)", "Is Guero the name of an album?", "Guero, Beck's eighth studio album,", "Was it a success?", "Guero debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 162,000 copies, an all-time sales high.", "Did he tour during the time of this album?", "I don't know.", "When was The Information released?", "I don't know." ]
C_d29b28d4389744279614a64dbf2969cd_0
Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?
5
Are there any other interesting aspects about this article aside from the success of Beck's Guero album?
Beck
Guero, Beck's eighth studio album, was recorded over the span of nine months during which several significant events occurred in his life: his girlfriend, Marissa Ribisi, became pregnant; they were married; their son, Cosimo, was born; and they moved out of Silver Lake. The collaboration with the Dust Brothers, his second, was notable for their use of high-tech measures to achieve a lo-fi sound. For example, after recording a "sonically perfect" version of a song at one of the nicest recording studios in Hollywood, the Dust Brothers processed it in an Echoplex to create a gritty, reverb-heavy sound: "We did this high-tech recording and ran it through a transistor radio. It sounded too good, that was the problem." Initially due to be released in October 2004, Guero faced delays and did not come out till March 2005, though unmastered copies of the tracks surfaced online in January. Guero debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 162,000 copies, an all-time sales high. Lead single "E-Pro" peaked at number one at Modern Rock radio, making it his first chart-topper since "Loser". Beck, inspired by the Nintendocore remix scene and feeling a connection with its lo-fi, home-recording method, collaborated with artists 8-Bit and Paza on Hell Yes, an EP issued in February 2005. In December 2005, Geffen also issued Guerolito, a fully reworked version of Guero featuring remixes by the Beastie Boys' Ad-Rock, the Dust Brothers' John King and Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada. Guerolito combines remixes previously heard as B-sides and new versions of album tracks to make a track-by-track reconfiguration of the album. Also released in 2005 was A Brief Overview, a 12-track promotional-only "History of Beck" compilation CD sampler that featured a combination of older and newer Beck tracks. The Information, Beck's ninth studio album, began production around the same time as Guero, in 2003. Working with producer Nigel Godrich, Beck built a studio in his garden, where they wrote many of the tracks. "The idea was to get people in a room together recording live, hitting bad notes and screaming," said Beck, adding that the album is best described as "introspective hip hop". Beck described the recording process as "painful", noting that he edited down songs constantly and he perhaps recorded the album three times. For the release, Beck was allowed for the first time to fulfill a long-running wish for an unconventional rollout: he made low-budget videos to accompany each song, packaged the CD with sheets of stickers so buyers could customize the cover, and leaked tracks and videos on his website months ahead of the album's release. Digital download releases automatically downloaded the song's additional video for each single sale, and physical copies came bundled with an additional DVD featuring fifteen videos. CANNOTANSWER
Lead single "E-Pro" peaked at number one at Modern Rock radio, making it his first chart-topper since "Loser".
Beck David Hansen (born Bek David Campbell; July 8, 1970) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He rose to fame in the early 1990s with his experimental and lo-fi style, and became known for creating musical collages of wide-ranging genres. He has musically encompassed folk, funk, soul, hip hop, electronic, alternative rock, country, and psychedelia. He has released 14 studio albums (three of which were released on indie labels), as well as several non-album singles and a book of sheet music. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Beck grew towards hip-hop and folk in his teens and began to perform locally at coffeehouses and clubs. He moved to New York City in 1989 and became involved in the city's anti-folk movement. Returning to Los Angeles in the early 1990s, he cut his breakthrough single "Loser", which became a worldwide hit in 1994, and released his first major album, Mellow Gold, the same year. Odelay, released in 1996, topped critic polls and won several awards. He released the country-influenced, twangy Mutations in 1998, and the funk-infused Midnite Vultures in 1999. The soft-acoustic Sea Change in 2002 showcased a more serious Beck, and 2005's Guero returned to Odelays sample-based production. The Information in 2006 was inspired by electro-funk, hip hop, and psychedelia; 2008's Modern Guilt was inspired by '60s pop music; and 2014's folk-infused Morning Phase won Album of the Year at the 57th Grammy Awards. His 2017 album, Colors, won awards for Best Alternative Album and Best Engineered Album at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards. His fourteenth studio album, Hyperspace, was released on November 22, 2019. With a pop art collage of musical styles, oblique and ironic lyrics, and postmodern arrangements incorporating samples, drum machines, live instrumentation and sound effects, Beck has been hailed by critics and the public throughout his musical career as being among the most idiosyncratically creative musicians of 1990s and 2000s alternative rock. Two of Beck's most popular and acclaimed recordings are Odelay and Sea Change, both of which were ranked on Rolling Stone list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The four-time platinum artist has collaborated with several artists and has made several contributions to soundtracks. Early life Beck was born Bek David Campbell in Los Angeles, California, on July 8, 1970, the son of American visual artist Bibbe Hansen and Canadian arranger, composer, and conductor David Campbell. Hansen grew up amid Andy Warhol's The Factory art scene of the 1960s in New York City and was a Warhol superstar. She moved to California at age 17 and met Campbell there. Beck's maternal grandmother was Jewish, while his maternal grandfather, artist Al Hansen, was of Norwegian descent and was a pioneer in the avant-garde Fluxus movement. Beck has said that he was "raised celebrating Jewish holidays" and that he considers himself Jewish. Beck was born in a rooming house near downtown Los Angeles. As a child, he lived in a declining neighborhood near Hollywood Boulevard. He later recalled, "By the time we left there, they were ripping out miles of houses en masse and building low-rent, giant apartment blocks." The lower-class family struggled financially, moving to Hoover and Ninth Street, a neighborhood populated primarily by Koreans and Salvadorian refugees. He was sent for a time to live with his paternal grandparents in Kansas, later remarking that he thought "they were kind of concerned" about his "weird" home life. Since his paternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister, Beck grew up influenced by church music and hymns. He also spent time in Europe with his maternal grandfather. After his parents separated when he was 10, Beck stayed with his mother and brother Channing in Los Angeles, where he was influenced by the city's diverse musical offerings—everything from hip hop to Latin music and his mother's art scene—all of which would later reappear in his work. Beck obtained his first guitar at 16 and became a street musician, often playing Lead Belly covers at Lafayette Park. During his teens, Beck discovered the music of Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore, and X, but remained uninterested in most music outside the folk genre until many years into his career. The first contemporary music that made a direct connection with Beck was hip hop, which he first heard on Grandmaster Flash records in the early 1980s. Growing up in a predominantly Latin district, he found himself the only white child at his school, and quickly learned how to breakdance. When he was 17, Beck grew fascinated after hearing a Mississippi John Hurt record at a friend's house, and spent hours in his room trying to emulate Hurt's finger-picking techniques. Shortly thereafter, Beck explored blues and folk music further, discovering Woody Guthrie and Blind Willie Johnson. Feeling like "a total outcast", Beck dropped out of school after junior high. He later said that although he felt school was important, he felt unsafe there. When he applied to the new performing arts high school downtown, he was rejected. His brother took him to post-Beat jazz places in Echo Park and Silver Lake. He hung out at the Los Angeles City College, perusing records, books and old sheet music in its library. He used a fake ID to sit in on classes there, and he also befriended a literature instructor and his poet wife. He worked at a string of menial jobs, including loading trucks and operating a leaf blower. Career Early performances and first releases (1988–1993) Beck began as a folk musician, switching between country blues, Delta blues, and more traditional rural folk music in his teenage years. He began performing on city buses, often covering Mississippi John Hurt alongside original, sometimes improvisational compositions. "I'd get on the bus and start playing Mississippi John Hurt with totally improvised lyrics. Some drunk would start yelling at me, calling me Axl Rose. So I'd start singing about Axl Rose and the levee and bus passes and strychnine, mixing the whole thing up," he later recalled. He was also in a band called Youthless that hosted Dadaist-inspired freeform events at city coffee shops. "We had Radio Shack mics and this homemade speaker and we'd draft people in the audience to recite comic books or do a beatbox thing, or we'd tie the whole audience up in masking tape," Beck recalled. In 1989, Beck caught a bus to New York City with little more than $8.00 and a guitar. He spent the summer attempting to find a job and a place to live with little success. Beck eventually began to frequent Manhattan's Lower East Side and stumbled upon the tail end of the East Village's anti-folk scene's first wave. Beck became involved in a loose posse of acoustic musicians—including Cindy Lee Berryhill, Kirk Kelly, Paleface, and Lach, headed by Roger Manning—whose raggedness and eccentricity placed them well outside the acoustic mainstream. "The whole mission was to destroy all the clichés and make up some new ones," said Beck of his New York years. "Everybody knew each other. You could go up onstage and say anything, and you wouldn't feel weird or feel any pressure." Inspired by that freedom and by the local spoken-word performers, Beck began to write free-associative, surrealistic songs about pizza, MTV, and working at McDonald's, turning mundane thoughts into songs. Beck was roommates with Paleface, sleeping on his couch and attending open mic nights together. Daunted by the prospect of another homeless New York winter, Beck returned to his home of Los Angeles in early 1991. "I was tired of being cold, tired of getting beat up," he later remarked. "It was hard to be in New York with no money, no place [...] I kinda used up all the friends I had. Everyone on the scene got sick of me." Back in Los Angeles, Beck began to work at a video store in the Silver Lake neighborhood, "doing things like alphabetizing the pornography section". He began performing in arthouse clubs and coffeehouses such as Al's Bar and Raji's. In order to keep indifferent audiences engaged in his music, Beck would play in a spontaneous, joking manner. "I'd be banging away on a Son House tune and the whole audience would be talking. So maybe out of desperation or boredom, or the audience's boredom, I'd make up these ridiculous songs just to see if people were listening," he later remarked. Virtually an unknown to the public and an enigma to those who met him, Beck would hop onstage between acts in local clubs and play "strange folk songs", accompanied by "what could best be described as performance art" while sometimes wearing a Star Wars stormtrooper mask. Beck met someone who offered to help record demos in his living room, and he began to pass cassette tapes around. Eventually, Beck gained key boosters in Margaret Mittleman, the West Coast's director of talent acquisitions for BMG Music Publishing, and the partners behind independent record label Bong Load Custom Records: Tom Rothrock, Rob Schnapf and Brad Lambert. Schnapf saw Beck perform at Jabberjaw and felt he would suit their small venture. Beck expressed a loose interest in hip hop, and Rothrock introduced him to Carl Stephenson, a record producer for Rap-A-Lot Records. In 1992, Beck visited Stephenson's home to collaborate. The result—the slide-sampling hip hop track "Loser"—was a one-off experiment that Beck set aside, going back to his folk songs, making his home tapes such as Golden Feelings, and releasing several independent singles. Mellow Gold, and independent albums (1993–1994) By 1993, Beck was living in a rat-infested shed near a Los Angeles alleyway with little money. Bong Load issued "Loser" as a single in March 1993 on 12" vinyl with only 500 copies pressed. Beck felt that "Loser" was mediocre, and only agreed to its release at Rothrock's insistence. "Loser" unexpectedly received radio airplay, starting in Los Angeles, where college radio station KXLU was the first to play it, and later on Santa Monica College radio station KCRW, where radio host Chris Douridas played the song on Morning Becomes Eclectic, the station's flagship music program. "I called the record label that day and asked to have Beck play live on the air," Douridas said. "He came in that Friday, rapped to a tape of "Loser" and did his song 'MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack.'" That night, Beck performed at the Los Angeles club Cafe Troy to a packed audience and talent scouts from major labels. The song then spread to Seattle through KNDD The End, and KROQ-FM began playing the song on an almost hourly basis. As Bong Load struggled to press more copies of "Loser", Beck was beset with offers to sign with major labels. During the bidding war in November, Beck spent several days in Olympia, Washington, recording material with Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening, which would later see release the following year on Johnson's K Records as One Foot in the Grave. A fierce bidding war ensued, with Geffen Records A&R director Mark Kates signing Beck in December 1993 amid intense competition from Warner Bros. and Capitol. Beck's non-exclusive contract with Geffen allowed him an unusual amount of creative freedom, with Beck remaining free to release material through such small, independent labels as Flipside, which issued the sprawling, 25-track collection of pre-"Loser" recordings titled Stereopathetic Soulmanure on February 22 the following year. By the time Beck released his first album for Geffen, the low-budget, genre-blending Mellow Gold on March 1, "Loser" was already in the top 40 and its video in MTV's Buzz Bin. "Loser" quickly ascended the charts in the U.S., reaching a peak of number ten on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and topping the Modern Rock Tracks chart. The song also charted in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and throughout Europe. Beck's newfound position of attention led to his characterization as the "King of Slackers", as the media dubbed him the center of the new so-called "slacker" movement. Critics, feeling it the essential follow-up to Radiohead's "Creep", found vacantness in the lyrics of "Loser" strongly associated with Generation X, although Beck himself strongly contested his position as the face of the "slacker" generation: "Slacker my ass. I mean, I never had any slack. I was working a $4-an-hour job trying to stay alive. That slacker stuff is for people who have the time to be depressed about everything." Backlash and Odelay (1994–1997) Feeling as though he was "constantly trying to prove myself", Beck suffered a backlash, with skeptics denouncing him as a self-indulgent fake and the latest marketing opportunity. In the summer of 1994, Beck was struggling and many of his fellow musicians thought he had lost his way. Combined with the song's wildly popular music video and the world tour, Beck reacted believing the attention could not last, resulting in a status as a "one-hit wonder". At other concerts, crowds were treated to twenty minutes of reggae or Miles Davis or jazz-punk iterations of "Loser". At one-day festivals in California, he surrounded himself with an artnoise combo. The drummer set fire to his cymbals; the lead guitarist "played" his guitar with the strings faced towards his body; and Beck changed the words to "Loser" so that nobody could sing along. "I can't tell you how many times I was looking at faces that were looking back at me with complete bewilderment—or just pointing and shaking their heads and laughing—while performing during that period," he later recalled. Despite this, Beck gained the respect of his peers, such as Tom Petty and Johnny Cash, and created an entire wave of bands determined to recapture the Mellow Gold sound. Feeling his previous releases were just collections of demos recorded over the course of several years, Beck desired to enter the studio and record an album in a continuous linear fashion, which became Odelay. Beck blends country, blues, rap, jazz and rock on Odelay, the result of a year and half of feverish "cutting, pasting, layering, dubbing, and, of course, sampling". Each day, the musicians started from scratch, often working on songs for 16 hours straight. Odelays conception lies in an unfinished studio album Beck first embarked on following the success of "Loser", chronicling the difficult time he experienced: "There was a cycle of everyone dying around me," he recalled later. He was constantly recording, and eventually put together an album of somber, orchestrated folk tunes; one that, perhaps, "could have been a commercial blockbuster along with similarly themed work by Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana". Instead, Beck plucked one song from it—the Odelay album closer "Ramshackle"—and shelved the rest ("Brother" and "Feather In Your Cap" were, however, later released as B-sides). Beck was introduced to the Dust Brothers, producers of the Beastie Boys' album Paul's Boutique, whose cut-and-paste, sample-heavy production suited Beck's vision of a more fun, accessible album. After a record executive explained that Odelay would be a "huge mistake", he spent many months thinking "that I'd blown it forever". Odelay was released on June 18, 1996, to commercial success and critical acclaim. The record produced several hit singles, including "Where It's At", "Devils Haircut", and "The New Pollution", and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1997, winning a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album as well as a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for "Where It's At". During one busy week in January 1997, he landed his Grammy nominations, appeared on Saturday Night Live and Howard Stern, and did a last-minute trot on The Rosie O'Donnell Show. The combined buzz gave Odelay a second wind, leading to an expanded fan base and additional exposure Beck enjoyed but, like several executives at Geffen, was bewildered by the success of Odelay. He would often get recognized in public, which made him feel strange. "It's just weird. It doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel natural to me. I don't think I was made for that. I was never good at that," he later told Pitchfork. Odelay sold two million copies and put "one-hit wonder" criticisms to rest. During this time, he contributed the song "Deadweight" to the soundtrack of the film A Life Less Ordinary (1997). Mutations and Midnite Vultures (1998–2001) Having not been in a proper studio since "Deadweight", Beck felt anxious to "go in and just do some stuff real quick", and compiled several songs he had had for years. Beck and his bandmates hammered out fourteen songs in fourteen days, although just twelve made it onto the album, 1998's Mutations. Beck decided on Nigel Godrich, producer for Radiohead's OK Computer the previous year, to be behind the boards for the project. Godrich was leaving the United States for England in a short time, which led to the album's quick production schedule—"No looking back, no doctoring anything". The whole point of the record was to capture the performance of the musicians live, an uncharacteristic far-cry from the cut-and-paste aesthetic of Odelay. Though the album was originally slated for release by Bong Load Records, Geffen intervened and issued the record against Beck's wishes. The artist then sought to void his contracts with both record labels, and in turn the labels sued him for breach of contract. The litigation went on for years and it remains unclear to this day if it has ever been completely resolved. Beck was later awarded Best Alternative Music Performance for Mutations at the 42nd Grammy Awards. Midnite Vultures, Beck's next studio effort, was originally recorded as a double album, and more than 25 nearly completed songs were left behind. In the studio, Beck and producers studied contemporary hip hop and R&B, specifically R. Kelly, in order to embrace and incorporate those influences in the way Al Green and Stax records had done in previous decades. In July 1998, a core group began to assemble at Beck's Pasadena home: bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen, keyboardist Roger Joseph Manning Jr., and producer-engineers Mickey Petralia and Tony Hoffer. Dozens of session players passed through, including Beck's father, David Campbell, who played viola and arranged some of the strings. The musicians held communal meals and mountain-bike rides on dusty trails nearby, but remained focused on Beck's instructions: to make an up-tempo album that would be fun to play on tour night after night. "I had so many things going on", said Beck of the recording process. "I had a couple of rooms of computers hooked up, I was doing B sides for Japan, I was programming beats in one room and someone would be cooking dinner in the other room." In November 1999, Geffen released the much-anticipated Midnite Vultures, which attracted confusion: "fans and critics misguidedly worried whether it was serious or a goof," and as a result, The New York Times wrote that the album "never won the audience it deserved". The record was supported by an extensive world tour. For Beck, it was a return to the high-energy performances that had been his trademark as far back as Lollapalooza. The live stage set included a red bed that descended from the ceiling for the song "Debra", and the touring band was complemented by a brass section. Midnite Vultures was nominated for Best Album at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards. Sea Change (2002–2003) In 2000, Beck and his fiancée, stylist Leigh Limon, ended their nine-year relationship. Beck lapsed into a period of melancholy and introspection, during which he wrote the bleak, acoustic-based tracks later found on Sea Change. Beck sat on the songs, not wanting to talk about his personal life; he later said that he wanted to focus on music and "not really strew my baggage across the public lobby". Eventually, however, he decided the songs spoke to a common experience (a relationship breakup), and that it would not seem self-indulgent to record them. In 2001, Beck drifted back to the songs and called producer Nigel Godrich. Retailers initially predicted that the album would not receive much radio support, but they also believed that Beck's maverick reputation and critical acclaim, in addition to the possibility of multiple Grammy nominations, might offset Sea Changes noncommercial sound. Sea Change, issued by Geffen in September 2002, was regardless a commercial hit and critical darling, with Rolling Stone revering it as "the best album Beck has ever made, [...] an impeccable album of truth and light from the end of love. This is his Blood on the Tracks." The album was later listed by the magazine as one of the best records of the decade and of all-time, and it also placed second on the year's Pazz & Jop Critics Poll. Sea Change yielded a low-key, theater-based acoustic tour, as well as a larger tour with The Flaming Lips as Beck's opening and backing band. Beck was playful and energetic, sometimes throwing in covers of The Rolling Stones, Big Star, The Zombies and The Velvet Underground. Following the release of Sea Change, Beck felt newer compositions were sketches for something more evolved in the same direction, and wrote nearly 35 more songs in the coming months, keeping demos of them on tapes in a suitcase. During his solo tour, the tapes were left backstage during a stop in Washington, D.C., and Beck was never able to recover them. It was disheartening to the musician, who felt the two years of songwriting represented something more technically complex. As a result, Beck took a break and wrote no original compositions in 2003. Feeling as though it might take him a while to "get back to that [songwriting] territory", he entered the studio with Dust Brothers to complete a project that dated back to Odelay. Nearly half of the songs had existed since the 1990s. Guero and The Information (2004–2007) Guero, Beck's eighth studio album, was recorded over the span of nine months during which several significant events occurred in his life: his girlfriend, Marissa Ribisi, became pregnant; they were married; their son, Cosimo, was born; and they moved out of Silver Lake. The collaboration with the Dust Brothers, his second, was notable for their use of high-tech measures to achieve a lo-fi sound. For example, after recording a "sonically perfect" version of a song at one of the nicest recording studios in Hollywood, the Dust Brothers processed it in an Echoplex to create a gritty, reverb-heavy sound: "We did this high-tech recording and ran it through a transistor radio. It sounded too good, that was the problem." Initially due to be released in October 2004, Guero faced delays and did not come out till March 2005, though unmastered copies of the tracks surfaced online in January. Guero debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 162,000 copies, an all-time sales high. Lead single "E-Pro" peaked at number one at Modern Rock radio, making it his first chart-topper since "Loser". Beck, inspired by the Nintendocore remix scene and feeling a connection with its lo-fi, home-recording method, collaborated with artists 8-Bit and Paza on Hell Yes, an EP issued in February 2005. In December 2005, Geffen also issued Guerolito, a fully reworked version of Guero featuring remixes by the Beastie Boys' Ad-Rock, the Dust Brothers' John King and Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada. Guerolito combines remixes previously heard as B-sides and new versions of album tracks to make a track-by-track reconfiguration of the album. Also released in 2005 was A Brief Overview, a 12-track promotional-only "History of Beck" compilation CD sampler that featured a combination of older and newer Beck tracks. The Information, Beck's ninth studio album, began production around the same time as Guero, in 2003. Working with producer Nigel Godrich, Beck built a studio in his garden, where they wrote many of the tracks. "The idea was to get people in a room together recording live, hitting bad notes and screaming," said Beck, adding that the album is best described as "introspective hip hop". Beck described the recording process as "painful", noting that he edited down songs constantly and he perhaps recorded the album three times. For the release, Beck was allowed for the first time to fulfill a long-running wish for an unconventional rollout: he made low-budget videos to accompany each song, packaged the CD with sheets of stickers so buyers could customize the cover, and leaked tracks and videos on his website months ahead of the album's release. Digital download releases automatically downloaded the song's additional video for each single sale, and physical copies came bundled with an additional DVD featuring fifteen videos. Modern Guilt (2008) In 2007, Beck released the single "Timebomb", which was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance. For his next studio effort, his tenth, Beck tapped Danger Mouse to produce, and the two first met in December 2007 to record. The duo knocked out two tracks in two days, but the notion that the album would be finished in a timely fashion soon evaporated. Beck had known Danger Mouse casually before, as many of his former musicians ended up working with Danger Mouse's side project, Gnarls Barkley. Still, the musicians were surprised at how well they got along. Following the grueling recording schedule, Beck was exhausted, calling it "the most intense work I've ever done on anything", relating that he "did at least 10 weeks with no days off, until four or five in the morning every night." Beck's original vision was a short 10-track burst with two-minute songs, but the songs gradually grew as he fit 'two years of songwriting into two and a half months." Modern Guilt (2008) was "full of off-kilter rhythms and left-field breakdowns, with an overall 1960s vibe." Record Club, Song Reader, production work and non-album singles (2009–2013) Modern Guilt was the final release in Beck's contract with Geffen Records. Beck, then 38, had held the contract since his early 20s. Released from his label contract and going independent, Beck began working more heavily on his own seven-year-old label, which went through a variety of names. His focus on smaller, more quixotic projects, Beck moonlighted as a producer, working with artists such as Charlotte Gainsbourg, Thurston Moore and Stephen Malkmus. Beck worked for five or six days a week at the small studio on his property in Malibu, and founded Record Club, a project whereby an entire classic album—by The Velvet Underground, Leonard Cohen, INXS, Yanni—would be covered by another singer in the span of a single day. Beck provided four songs for the film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), each attributed to the title character's fictional band, Sex Bob-Omb. Beck also collaborated with Philip Glass, Jack White, Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow, Jamie Lidell, Seu Jorge, Childish Gambino, and The Lonely Island. Song Reader, a project Beck released in December 2012, is 20 songs presented only as sheet music, in the hopes that enterprising musicians will record their own versions. The idea of Song Reader came about nearly fifteen years prior, shortly after the release of Odelay. When sent a book of transcribed sheet music for that album, Beck decided to play through it and grew interested in the world before recorded sound. He aimed to keep the arrangements as open as possible, to re-create the simplicity of the standards, and became preoccupied with creating only pieces that could fit within the Great American Songbook. In 2013 Beck began playing special Song Reader concerts with a variety of guests and announced he was working on a record of Song Reader material with other musicians as well as possibly a compilation of fan versions. In the summer of 2013, Beck was reported to be working on two new studio albums: one a more self-contained acoustic disc in the vein of One Foot in the Grave and another described as a "proper follow-up" to Modern Guilt. Beck expected to release both albums independently, and released two standalone singles over the course of the summer: the electro ballad "Defriended" and the chorus-heavy "I Won't Be Long". A third single, "Gimme", appeared on September 17. Morning Phase, Colors, and Hyperspace (2014–present) In October 2013, Beck signed to Capitol Records. On January 20, 2014, Beck released the track "Blue Moon", which was to be the lead single for his twelfth studio album, Morning Phase. On February 4, second single "Waking Light" was released, just prior to the official release of Morning Phase on February 21, 2014. For the recording of the album, Beck reunited with many of the same musicians with whom he had worked on the critically acclaimed 2002 album Sea Change, and likely because of this, it has been noted that the two albums have a similar genre. On February 8, 2015, at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards, Morning Phase won three Grammys: Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical; Best Rock Album; and Album of the Year. Upon receiving the Album of the Year award, the album beat out Pharrell Williams's G I R L, Beyoncé's self-titled album, Sam Smith's In the Lonely Hour, and Ed Sheeran's x. In the time after Morning Phases release and general critical success, Beck mentioned that he had been working on another album at around the same time, but that the new album would be more of a pop record. Shortly after Morning Phases Grammy wins, on June 15, 2015, Beck released the first single titled "Dreams" off this upcoming thirteenth studio album. "I was really trying to make something that would be good to play live," he said shortly after its release. However, no further word was heard from Beck pertaining to the release of the album. On June 2, 2016, almost a year after the initial release of "Dreams", Beck released a new single titled "Wow", along with a lyric video of the song and an announcement that his still untitled album would be released on October 21, 2016. In September 2016, the album was delayed with no new release date announced and, on September 24, Beck said he did not know "when it's coming out. It's probably in a few months." Once again, however, no further singles were released and no new release date was scheduled for the album. On September 8, 2017, Beck released the single "Dear Life", which was quickly followed up with the official release of "Up All Night" on September 18. Colors was released on October 13, 2017. It was recorded at co-executive producer Greg Kurstin's Los Angeles studio, with Beck and Kurstin playing nearly every instrument themselves. The experimental pop-fused record received generally positive reviews from critics. On July 18, 2018, Beck performed the title track Colors, and the first single "Wow" on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. On April 15, 2019, Beck released a single co-produced with Pharrell Williams titled "Saw Lightning" from his fourteenth studio album, titled Hyperspace. The song "Dark Places" was released on November 6, with the album being released on November 22. Collaborations and contributions In 1999, Beck contributed to a tribute album for Bruce Haack and Esther Nelson and their label Dimension 5 Records. The album, Dimension Mix, released in 2005, was a benefit for Cure Autism Now that was produced by Ross Harris, an early collaborator who designed the artwork for Mellow Gold. On June 20, 2009, Beck announced that he was starting an experiment called Record Club, in which he and other musicians would record cover versions of entire albums in one day. The first album covered by Beck's Record Club was The Velvet Underground & Nico. Starting on June 18, the club began posting covers of songs from the album on Thursday evenings, each with its own video. On September 4, 2009, Beck announced the second Record Club album, Songs of Leonard Cohen. Contributors included MGMT, Devendra Banhart, Andrew Stockdale of Wolfmother and Binki Shapiro of Little Joy. In the third Record Club venture, Wilco, Feist, Jamie Lidell and James Gadson joined Beck to cover Skip Spence's Oar. The first song, "Little Hands", was posted on Beck's website on November 12, 2009. The Record Club has since covered albums by INXS and Yanni. On June 19, 2009, Beck announced Planned Obsolescence, a weekly DJ set put together by Beck or guest DJs. Soon after, on July 7, Beck announced that his website would be featuring "extended informal conversations with musicians, artists, filmmakers, and other various persons" in a section called Irrelevant Topics. Then, on July 12, he added a section called Videotheque, which he said would contain "promotional videos from each album, as well as live clips, TV show appearances and other rarities". Also in 2009, Beck collaborated with Charlotte Gainsbourg on her album IRM, which was released in January 2010. Beck wrote the music, co-wrote the lyrics, and produced and mixed the album. The lead single, "Heaven Can Wait", is a duet by Beck and Gainsbourg. In late February 2010, it was announced that electronic artist Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow had collaborated with Beck on two songs, "Fresh Hex" and "Grape Aerosmith", on his upcoming album Maniac Meat. Tobacco revealed that in making the album, Beck sent the vocal parts to him, and that they had never actually met. In March 2010, Beck revealed that he had produced songs for the new Jamie Lidell album, Compass. In the summer of 2010, Beck contributed songs to both The Twilight Saga: Eclipse soundtrack, with "Let's Get Lost" (a duet with Bat for Lashes), and True Blood (HBO Original Series Soundtrack, Vol. 2), with "Bad Blood". He also contributed songs to the soundtrack of Edgar Wright's film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which was released in August 2010. In 2011, he collaborated with Seu Jorge on a track titled "Tropicália (Mario C. 2011 Remix)" for the Red Hot Organization's most recent charitable album Red Hot+Rio 2, a follow-up to the 1996 album Red Hot + Rio. Proceeds from the sales will be donated to raise awareness and money to fight AIDS/HIV and related health and social issues. He also contributed on the song "Attracted to Us" on Turtleneck & Chain, the second album from The Lonely Island. Also in 2011, Beck produced a solo album by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth called Demolished Thoughts. An album he produced for Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Mirror Traffic, was released in August 2011. In October 2011, it was widely reported that Beck and producer Hector Castillo were collaborating with American composer Philip Glass to produce a remix album of the composer's works in honor of his 75th birthday. The album, Rework Philip Glass Remixed, was released on October 23, 2012, to critical acclaim, and featured Beck as both a curator and a performer. In particular, Pitchfork described Beck's 22-minute contribution to the album, "NYC: 73–78", as "a fantasia ... the most startling and original piece of music with Beck's name on it in a while, and the first new work to bear his own spirit in even longer." Reflecting on Beck's contribution to the album, Glass remarked that he was "impressed by the novelty and freshness of a lot of the ideas". Beyond his work as a performer, Beck acted as the album's curator, bringing together a diverse collection of artists—including Amon Tobin, Tyondai Braxton, Nosaj Thing, and Memory Tapes—whose work had also been influenced by Glass. In December 2012, an interactive iPhone app titled "Rework_" was released to complement the album. Beck has contributed three new songs—"Cities", "Touch the People" and "Spiral Staircase"—to the video game Sound Shapes for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. Beck collaborated on two songs for Childish Gambino's "Royalty" mixtape in 2012. In 2014, Beck collaborated with Sia for the song "Moonquake Lake", which is featured in the soundtrack for the 2014 Annie film. In 2015, Beck collaborated with former Fun. frontman Nate Ruess on the single "What This World Is Coming To", which was one of the Grammy-winning artist's many works featured on his debut solo album Grand Romantic released in June 2015. He also collaborated with electronic dance music duo The Chemical Brothers on their most recent album Born in the Echoes, providing lead vocals and also credited in writing for the track "Wide Open", released in July. In 2016, Beck collaborated with French electronic music band M83, providing vocals for the song "Time Wind" from their album Junk. He was also featured on "Tiny Cities" by Flume. He also collaborated with Lady Gaga on the song "Dancin' in Circles", from her 2016 album Joanne. In 2017, Beck appeared in the multiple award-winning film The American Epic Sessions, directed by Bernard MacMahon. He recorded "14 Rivers, 14 Floods" backed by a full gospel choir, live onto the first electrical sound recording system from the 1920s. In 2019, Beck worked with Jenny Lewis on the song "Do Si Do" from her album On the Line. He also collaborated with Cage the Elephant on the song "Night Running" from their album Social Cues. In 2020, Beck collaborated with virtual band Gorillaz to create the song "The Valley of the Pagans" which appears on Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez. In 2021, Beck collaborated with Paul McCartney to make his hit single "Find My Way" on the album McCartney III Imagined. As for festival stages the artist was inter alia part of the Newport Folk Festival in July. Musical style Beck's musical style has been considered alternative and indie. He has played many of the instruments in his music himself. Beck has also done some remixes for fellow artists, notably David Bowie and Björk. He has been known to synthesize several musical elements together in his music, including folk, psychedelia, electronic, country, Latin music, hip hop, funk, soul, blues, noise music, jazz, and many types of rock. He has also taken music from Los Angeles as a reference point in his songs. Pitchfork Media applauded Midnite Vultures, saying, "Beck wonderfully blends Prince, Talking Heads, Paul's Boutique, 'Shake Your Bon-Bon', and Mathlete on Midnite Vultures, his most consistent and playful album yet." The review commented that his mix of "goofy piety and ambiguous intent" helped the album. A Beck song called "Harry Partch", a tribute to the composer of the same name and his "corporeal" music, employs Partch's 43-tone scale. Art career During 1998, Beck's art collaborations with his grandfather Al Hansen were featured in an exhibition titled "Beck & Al Hansen: Playing With Matches", which showcased solo and collaborative collage, assemblage, drawing and poetry works. The show toured from the Santa Monica Museum of Art to galleries in New York City and Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Canada. A catalog of the show was published by Plug in Editions/Smart Art Press. Personal life Beck's nine-year relationship with designer Leigh Limon and their subsequent breakup is said to have inspired his 2002 album, Sea Change. He wrote most of the songs for the album in one week after the breakup. In April 2004, shortly before the birth of their son Cosimo Henri, Beck married actress Marissa Ribisi, the twin sister of actor Giovanni Ribisi. Their daughter, Tuesday, was born in 2007. Beck filed for divorce from Ribisi on February 15, 2019. Their divorce was finalized on September 3, 2021. Beck has described himself as both Jewish and a Scientologist. Through his parents, he has been involved in Scientology for most of his life; his ex-wife, Marissa, is also a second-generation Scientologist. He publicly acknowledged his affiliation for the first time in a New York Times Magazine interview on March 6, 2005. Further confirmation came in an interview with the Sunday Tribune in June 2005, where he stated, "Yeah, I'm a Scientologist. My father has been a Scientologist for about 35 years, so I grew up in and around it." Despite this, Beck disavowed previous reports of his being a Scientologist in a November 2019 interview with the Sydney Morning Herald and said, "I think there's a misconception that I'm a Scientologist. I'm not a Scientologist. I don't have any connection or affiliation with it." He added that "I was raised celebrating Jewish holidays, and I consider myself Jewish." As mentioned above, Beck's mother is former Andy Warhol The Factory collaborator, artist/writer/performer Bibbe Hansen. His siblings are fiber artist Channing Hansen (born in 1972 in Los Angeles, California) and poet Rain Whittaker. Beck suffered a spinal injury while filming the music video for 2005's "E-Pro". The incident was severe enough to curtail his touring schedule for a few years, but he has since recovered. Appearances in media The 1986 punk rock musical film Population: 1, starring Tomata du Plenty of The Screamers, features a young Beck in a small nonspeaking role. Beck also appears in Southlander (2001), an American independent film by Steve Hanft and Ross Harris. Beck has performed on Saturday Night Live seven times. During his 2006 performance in the Hugh Laurie episode, Beck was accompanied by the puppets that had been used onstage during his world tour. He has made two cameo appearances as himself on Saturday Night Live: one in a sketch about medicinal marijuana, and one in a VH1 Behind the Music parody that featured "Fat Albert & the Junkyard Gang". Beck performed a guest voice as himself on Matt Groening's animated show Futurama, in the episode "Bendin' in the Wind". He performed in episode 10 of the fourth season of The Larry Sanders Show, in which the producer character Artie (Rip Torn) referred to him as a "hillbilly from outer space". He also made a very brief voice appearance in the 1998 cartoon feature film The Rugrats Movie, and guest-starred as himself in a 1997 episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast titled "Edelweiss". On January 22, 2010, Beck appeared on the last episode of The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien as a backup guitarist for a Will Ferrell-led rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" alongside ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons, Ben Harper, and O'Brien himself on guitar. On March 1, 2014, Beck was the musical guest on a Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Jim Parsons. Beck also appeared, as himself, in the 2017 film The Circle, giving a musical performance of the song "Dreams". Discography Studio albums Golden Feelings (1993) Stereopathetic Soulmanure (1994) Mellow Gold (1994) One Foot in the Grave (1994) Odelay (1996) Mutations (1998) Midnite Vultures (1999) Sea Change (2002) Guero (2005) The Information (2006) Modern Guilt (2008) Morning Phase (2014) Colors (2017) Hyperspace (2019) Awards and nominations See also List of awards and nominations received by Beck List of people from Los Angeles List of singer-songwriters References External links Diskobox, comprehensive discography Whiskeyclone.net, large, informative Beck site Stewoo.net, the largest Beck fan forum Beck at Rolling Stone 1970 births Living people 20th-century American singers 21st-century American singers Alternative rock guitarists American alternative country singers American alternative rock musicians American country rock singers American country singer-songwriters American folk guitarists American folk singers American former Scientologists American indie rock musicians American male guitarists American male singer-songwriters American multi-instrumentalists American music video directors American people of Canadian descent American people of Jewish descent American people of Norwegian descent American people of Swedish descent American rock guitarists American rock singers American street performers Art pop musicians Brit Award winners Capitol Records artists DGC Records artists Grammy Award winners Guitarists from Los Angeles Jewish American musicians Jewish American songwriters Jewish anti-folk musicians Jewish singers K Records artists Mission District, San Francisco Singers from Los Angeles Sony Music Publishing artists XL Recordings artists Singer-songwriters from California
true
[ "Přírodní park Třebíčsko (before Oblast klidu Třebíčsko) is a natural park near Třebíč in the Czech Republic. There are many interesting plants. The park was founded in 1983.\n\nKobylinec and Ptáčovský kopeček\n\nKobylinec is a natural monument situated ca 0,5 km from the village of Trnava.\nThe area of this monument is 0,44 ha. Pulsatilla grandis can be found here and in the Ptáčovský kopeček park near Ptáčov near Třebíč. Both monuments are very popular for tourists.\n\nPonds\n\nIn the natural park there are some interesting ponds such as Velký Bor, Malý Bor, Buršík near Přeckov and a brook Březinka. Dams on the brook are examples of European beaver activity.\n\nSyenitové skály near Pocoucov\n\nSyenitové skály (rocks of syenit) near Pocoucov is one of famed locations. There are interesting granite boulders. The area of the reservation is 0,77 ha.\n\nExternal links\nParts of this article or all article was translated from Czech. The original article is :cs:Přírodní park Třebíčsko.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNature near the village Trnava which is there\n\nTřebíč\nParks in the Czech Republic\nTourist attractions in the Vysočina Region", "Damn Interesting is an independent website founded by Alan Bellows in 2005. The website presents true stories from science, history, and psychology, primarily as long-form articles, often illustrated with original artwork. Works are written by various authors, and published at irregular intervals. The website openly rejects advertising, relying on reader and listener donations to cover operating costs.\n\nAs of October 2012, each article is also published as a podcast under the same name. In November 2019, a second podcast was launched under the title Damn Interesting Week, featuring unscripted commentary on an assortment of news articles featured on the website's \"Curated Links\" section that week. In mid-2020, a third podcast called Damn Interesting Curio Cabinet began highlighting the website's periodic short-form articles in the same radioplay format as the original podcast.\n\nIn July 2009, Damn Interesting published the print book Alien Hand Syndrome through Workman Publishing. It contains some favorites from the site and some exclusive content.\n\nAwards and recognition \nIn August 2007, PC Magazine named Damn Interesting one of the \"Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites\".\nThe article \"The Zero-Armed Bandit\" by Alan Bellows won a 2015 Sidney Award from David Brooks in The New York Times.\nThe article \"Ghoulish Acts and Dastardly Deeds\" by Alan Bellows was cited as \"nonfiction journalism from 2017 that will stand the test of time\" by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.\nThe article \"Dupes and Duplicity\" by Jennifer Lee Noonan won a 2020 Sidney Award from David Brooks in the New York Times.\n\nAccusing The Dollop of plagiarism \n\nOn July 9, 2015, Bellows posted an open letter accusing The Dollop, a comedy podcast about history, of plagiarism due to their repeated use of verbatim text from Damn Interesting articles without permission or attribution. Dave Anthony, the writer of The Dollop, responded on reddit, admitting to using Damn Interesting content, but claiming that the use was protected by fair use, and that \"historical facts are not copyrightable.\" In an article about the controversy on Plagiarism Today, Jonathan Bailey concluded, \"Any way one looks at it, The Dollop failed its ethical obligations to all of the people, not just those writing for Damn Interesting, who put in the time, energy and expertise into writing the original content upon which their show is based.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n\n2005 podcast debuts" ]
[ "Panda Bear (musician)", "Animal Collective" ]
C_10f543ec7eb343aca5b764d21b721d2b_1
What was the Animal Collective?
1
What was the Animal Collective?
Panda Bear (musician)
As a teen, Lennox began listening to electronic music styles such as house and techno, and artists such as Aphex Twin, all of which became a major influence on his later work. He recorded and performed music--solo and with friends. Lennox started using the name "Panda Bear" because he drew pictures of pandas for the artwork of his recordings. Lennox had been friends with Deakin (Josh Dibb) since the second grade. Deakin introduced Lennox to his high school friends Avey Tare (Dave Portner) and Geologist (Brian Weitz). For years, the four of them swapped homemade recordings, shared musical ideas and performed in different group configurations. Lennox, along with Deakin moved to New York in 2000. The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name "Animal Collective". Since the 2007 releases of Panda Bear's Person Pitch and Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam, he has focused more on using samplers and other electronics in their shows. He has named Black Dice as a major influence stating "Black Dice took us on our first tour and I feel like the wisest things I've learned about being in a band I learned by watching them." He said he looks to Black Dice "as a model for a band... I feel like as a band, I can't speak for the other guys [of Animal Collective], but certainly for myself, like I modelled the way I approach to everything with the band watching the way Black Dice did it." In addition to singing, Lennox played drums and occasionally guitar in Animal Collective's live performances. He cites Stewart Copeland as the biggest influence on his drumming style. CANNOTANSWER
The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name "Animal Collective
Noah Benjamin Lennox (born July 17, 1978), also known by his moniker Panda Bear, is an American musician, singer-songwriter and co-founding member of the band Animal Collective. In addition to his work with that group, Lennox has released six solo LPs since 1999. His third, Person Pitch (2007), is noted for influencing a wide range of subsequent indie music in addition to inspiring the chillwave genre and numerous soundalike acts. Lennox was primarily raised in Baltimore, Maryland, where he sang tenor in his high school chamber choir, and studied piano and cello. The name "Panda Bear" derived from his habit of drawing pandas on his early mixtapes as a teenager. He and the other members of Animal Collective began collaborating in the late 1990s. He has lived in Lisbon, Portugal since 2004. Early life Lennox grew up in the Roland Park section of Baltimore, Maryland, and attended Waldorf School of Baltimore through 8th grade, and Kimberton Waldorf School in Chester County, Pennsylvania for high school. His family moved frequently during his early years, owing to his father's studies to be an orthopedic surgeon. As a youth, he played sports, mainly soccer and basketball. His brother, Matt Lennox (the Animal Collective song "Brother Sport" is directed at him), was a leading player on the high school basketball team and Noah was also a team member, playing as point guard. Lennox has also stated in interviews that he enjoyed drawing a lot as a teenager, especially pandas, and later started drawing pandas on his early mixtapes. He also studied piano until he was eight, then cello, and later on he sang tenor in his high school chamber choir. Though he and his family have never been very religious, Lennox briefly attended Boston University, where he majored in religion because of his interest in "the concept of God". Career Animal Collective As a teen, Lennox began listening to electronic music styles such as house and techno, and artists such as Aphex Twin, all of which became a major influence on his later work. He recorded and performed music—solo and with friends. Lennox started using the name "Panda Bear" because he drew pictures of pandas for the artwork of his recordings. Lennox had been friends with Deakin (Josh Dibb) since the second grade. Deakin introduced Lennox to his high school friends Avey Tare (Dave Portner) and Geologist (Brian Weitz). For years, the four of them swapped homemade recordings, shared musical ideas and performed in different group configurations. Lennox, along with Deakin moved to New York in 2000. The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name "Animal Collective". Since the 2007 releases of Panda Bear's Person Pitch and Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam, he has focused more on using samplers and other electronics in their shows. He has named Black Dice as a major influence stating "Black Dice took us on our first tour and I feel like the wisest things I've learned about being in a band I learned by watching them." He said he looks to Black Dice "as a model for a band... I feel like as a band, I can't speak for the other guys [of Animal Collective], but certainly for myself, like I modelled the way I approach to everything with the band watching the way Black Dice did it." In addition to singing, Lennox played drums and occasionally guitar in Animal Collective's live performances. He cites Stewart Copeland as the biggest influence on his drumming style. Solo work Lennox's early musical influences included electronic styles, and his solo work has been variously characterized as experimental pop, electronic, bedroom pop, neo-psychedelic pop, and indie music. The Line of Best Fit called him a "psychedelic pop trailblazer." Lennox's debut album Panda Bear was released in 1999 on Soccer Star Records. After focusing more on touring and recording with Animal Collective, he released the follow-up Young Prayer in 2004 and the highly acclaimed third solo album Person Pitch in 2007. Of his songwriting style, Lennox says "I get impatient writing songs, I can't spend more than a couple of hours before I get frustrated. So I got to kind of spit it out real fast. My favorite songs are the ones where I worked really really fast on, when it comes all out in like two hours or something." Panda Bear's fourth album, Tomboy, was released April 12, 2011, on his own label, Paw Tracks. He started performing material from Tomboy on December 5, 2008, at a show with No Age in Miami, Florida. During a brief European tour in January 2010, he played three shows consisting almost entirely of new material. On March 7, 2010, a tour setlist with titles for ten of the new songs was posted on Panda Bear's MySpace blog. He also played Primavera Sound Festival in 2010. The single "Tomboy" and the b-side "Slow Motion" were released in July 2010. It was announced in August that singles "You Can Count on Me" and "Alsatian Darn" would be released via Domino on September 28. The limited 500 copies of "You Can Count On Me" sold out in less than a day. The single "Last Night at the Jetty" was released December 2010. The single "Surfer's Hymn" was released March 28, 2011. His song "Comfy In Nautica" appears in ABC's 2010 global warming movie Earth 2100. Lennox was chosen by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival he planned to curate in December 2011 in Minehead, England. However, Lennox was unable to play when the event was rescheduled to March 2012. In June 2013, Panda Bear performed a set of all new material at ATP. In October 2014, the Mr Noah EP was released, featuring four new songs. The full album, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, was released in January 2015. In 2018, Lennox released the vinyl-only A Day With the Homies EP, a collection of five songs heavily influenced by house + bass music. Included on the packaging of the release were hidden URLs that pointed to samples used on the EP. In February 2019, he released the LP Buoys, featuring production work by longtime collaborator Rusty Santos. It was preceded by the single "Dolphin". Outside musical collaborations Lennox plays in the band Jane and Together with DJ Scott Mou. He has also performed on tracks with Atlas Sound (Bradford Cox of Deerhunter), Ducktails (Matt Mondanile, best known as the former lead guitarist of the American indie rock band Real Estate) and electronic musicians Zomby and Pantha du Prince. Panda Bear appeared on the track "Doin' It Right" on the 2013 Daft Punk album Random Access Memories. The album won Daft Punk the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2014, making Panda Bear a co-winner. Personal life In 2004, Lennox moved from New York City to Lisbon, Portugal. He first visited the city for a vacation following a long Animal Collective tour in 2003. Lennox says about Lisbon: "Since I got off the airplane here [for the first time] I had a good feeling about this place." He met his wife, the fashion designer Fernanda Pereira, there; after visiting each other in Lisbon and New York, Lennox decided to move to Europe because he also felt "connected to the European way of life", considering himself as a "slow moving kind of person" and Lisbon as a "slow moving kind of place". Lennox and Pereira have a daughter, Nadja, born in 2005 and a son, born in June 2010. In 2007, he and Pereira collaborated on a line of sweatshirts called 2nd Things. Musical equipment Synthesizers Minimoog Voyager Korg M3 Digital samplers Elektron Octatrack Roland SP-555 Boss SP-303 "Dr. Sample" Teenage Engineering OP-1 Drum machine/synthesizer JoMoX Xbase 999 Discography Studio albums Extended plays Singles "I'm Not/Comfy in Nautica" (September 22, 2005, UUAR) "Bros" (December 4, 2006, Fat Cat Records) "Carrots" (January 23, 2007, Paw Tracks) "Take Pills" (June 19, 2007, Paw Tracks) "Tomboy" (July 13, 2010, Paw Tracks) "You Can Count on Me" (October 19, 2010, Domino) "Last Night at the Jetty" (December 13, 2010, FatCat Records) "Surfer's Hymn" (March 28, 2011, Kompakt) "Mr Noah" (October 23, 2014, Domino) "Boys Latin" (December 15, 2014, Domino) "Crosswords" (August 20, 2015, Domino) "Dolphin" (November 8, 2018, Domino) "Token" (January 14, 2019, Domino) "Playing the Long Game" (October 9, 2019, Domino) Remixes "Boneless" (remix of Notwist song "Boneless") on "Boneless" 7" "As Young As Yesterday" (remix of Korallreven song "As Young As Yesterday") on "As Young As Yesterday" 12" (2011) "Cheap Treat (Panda Bear Version)" (remix of Eric Copeland song "Cheap Treat") on "Remixes" EP. "Melody Unfair (Panda Bear Remix)" on Essence of Eucalyptus by Avey Tare "Never Ending Game (Panda Bear Remix)" on Bigger House by Angel Du$t Appearances One untitled track on Visionaire 53 – Sound (December 1, 2007, Visionaire Publishing, LLC) "Anna" on the album East of Eden by Taken by Trees (September 7, 2009) "Walkabout" on the album Logos by Atlas Sound (October 20, 2009) "Stick to My Side" on the album Black Noise by Pantha du Prince (February 9, 2010) "Killin the Vibe" (bonus track) on the album Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics by Ducktails (January 18, 2011) "Atiba Song" composed music for a skateboarding montage directed by Atiba Jefferson and Ty Evans. The track was initially created by Atiba, then finished by Panda Bear. "The Preakness" on the cassette tape Keep + Animal Collective (March 2011, Keep) "Things Fall Apart" on the album Dedication by Zomby (July 11, 2011) "Pyjama" on the album Tracer by Teengirl Fantasy (August 21, 2012) "Doin' It Right" on the album Random Access Memories by Daft Punk (May 17, 2013) "Time (Is)", "Binz", "Beltway" and "I'm a Witness" on the album When I Get Home by Solange (March 1, 2019) "I Don't Need a Crowd" on the I Don't Need a Crowd/The One That Got Away 7" by Paul Maroon (March 15, 2019) "Studie" on the album Anicca by Teebs (September 18, 2019) "Gameday Continues" on the album HBCU Gameday by Sporting Life. (January 27, 2020) "Just a Little Piece of Me" on the album All Things Being Equal by Sonic Boom. (June 5, 2020) References External links Interview from 2008 on Onhiat.us Ola's Kool Kitchen on Radio 23 – Panda Bear Live, Primavera 2010 American male singers 1978 births 21st-century American musicians Living people Ableton Live users American expatriates in Portugal Animal Collective members Grammy Award winners Experimental pop musicians Domino Recording Company artists 21st-century American singers
true
[ "Keep + Animal Collective is the sixth EP by experimental pop band Animal Collective, released on the March 26, 2011 on cassette. Bundled with a range of shoes designed by the band, Keep + Animal Collective contains one solo song from each member of the group.\n\nThe EP was released in limited quantities and was only sold in a bundle with the Keep + Animal Collective shoes on a first-come, first-served basis.\n\n\"The Preakness\" was later included on the deluxe edition of Tomboy, and an alternate version was included on the Crosswords EP.\n\nTracklisting\n\nReferences \n\n2010 EPs\nAnimal Collective EPs", "\"FloriDada\" is a song by Animal Collective, released as the first single from their 2016 album Painting With. It was released on November 30, 2015 by Domino Records. Avey Tare explained that the song was \"sort of inspired by hating on people from Florida. I was driving in L.A. and flipping through the radio dial and came across a morning radio show where they're just talking all the time. They had a segment called, like, 'Dumb Things People Are Doing In Florida.' It kind of bothered me. ... Everybody—they kind of agree that Florida's such a weird place, know what I mean? But in a way, that's part of the charm of it.\"\n\nMusic video\nA music video was released on January 8, 2016. It was produced and directed by the Brooklyn, New York artist collective PFFR. The video had its television premiere on Adult Swim's Toonami block on January 9, 2016.\n\nReferences\n\nAnimal Collective songs\nDomino Recording Company singles\n2015 songs\nSongs about Florida\n2015 singles" ]
[ "Panda Bear (musician)", "Animal Collective", "What was the Animal Collective?", "The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name \"Animal Collective" ]
C_10f543ec7eb343aca5b764d21b721d2b_1
What year did they form?
2
What year did Animal Collective form?
Panda Bear (musician)
As a teen, Lennox began listening to electronic music styles such as house and techno, and artists such as Aphex Twin, all of which became a major influence on his later work. He recorded and performed music--solo and with friends. Lennox started using the name "Panda Bear" because he drew pictures of pandas for the artwork of his recordings. Lennox had been friends with Deakin (Josh Dibb) since the second grade. Deakin introduced Lennox to his high school friends Avey Tare (Dave Portner) and Geologist (Brian Weitz). For years, the four of them swapped homemade recordings, shared musical ideas and performed in different group configurations. Lennox, along with Deakin moved to New York in 2000. The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name "Animal Collective". Since the 2007 releases of Panda Bear's Person Pitch and Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam, he has focused more on using samplers and other electronics in their shows. He has named Black Dice as a major influence stating "Black Dice took us on our first tour and I feel like the wisest things I've learned about being in a band I learned by watching them." He said he looks to Black Dice "as a model for a band... I feel like as a band, I can't speak for the other guys [of Animal Collective], but certainly for myself, like I modelled the way I approach to everything with the band watching the way Black Dice did it." In addition to singing, Lennox played drums and occasionally guitar in Animal Collective's live performances. He cites Stewart Copeland as the biggest influence on his drumming style. CANNOTANSWER
2000.
Noah Benjamin Lennox (born July 17, 1978), also known by his moniker Panda Bear, is an American musician, singer-songwriter and co-founding member of the band Animal Collective. In addition to his work with that group, Lennox has released six solo LPs since 1999. His third, Person Pitch (2007), is noted for influencing a wide range of subsequent indie music in addition to inspiring the chillwave genre and numerous soundalike acts. Lennox was primarily raised in Baltimore, Maryland, where he sang tenor in his high school chamber choir, and studied piano and cello. The name "Panda Bear" derived from his habit of drawing pandas on his early mixtapes as a teenager. He and the other members of Animal Collective began collaborating in the late 1990s. He has lived in Lisbon, Portugal since 2004. Early life Lennox grew up in the Roland Park section of Baltimore, Maryland, and attended Waldorf School of Baltimore through 8th grade, and Kimberton Waldorf School in Chester County, Pennsylvania for high school. His family moved frequently during his early years, owing to his father's studies to be an orthopedic surgeon. As a youth, he played sports, mainly soccer and basketball. His brother, Matt Lennox (the Animal Collective song "Brother Sport" is directed at him), was a leading player on the high school basketball team and Noah was also a team member, playing as point guard. Lennox has also stated in interviews that he enjoyed drawing a lot as a teenager, especially pandas, and later started drawing pandas on his early mixtapes. He also studied piano until he was eight, then cello, and later on he sang tenor in his high school chamber choir. Though he and his family have never been very religious, Lennox briefly attended Boston University, where he majored in religion because of his interest in "the concept of God". Career Animal Collective As a teen, Lennox began listening to electronic music styles such as house and techno, and artists such as Aphex Twin, all of which became a major influence on his later work. He recorded and performed music—solo and with friends. Lennox started using the name "Panda Bear" because he drew pictures of pandas for the artwork of his recordings. Lennox had been friends with Deakin (Josh Dibb) since the second grade. Deakin introduced Lennox to his high school friends Avey Tare (Dave Portner) and Geologist (Brian Weitz). For years, the four of them swapped homemade recordings, shared musical ideas and performed in different group configurations. Lennox, along with Deakin moved to New York in 2000. The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name "Animal Collective". Since the 2007 releases of Panda Bear's Person Pitch and Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam, he has focused more on using samplers and other electronics in their shows. He has named Black Dice as a major influence stating "Black Dice took us on our first tour and I feel like the wisest things I've learned about being in a band I learned by watching them." He said he looks to Black Dice "as a model for a band... I feel like as a band, I can't speak for the other guys [of Animal Collective], but certainly for myself, like I modelled the way I approach to everything with the band watching the way Black Dice did it." In addition to singing, Lennox played drums and occasionally guitar in Animal Collective's live performances. He cites Stewart Copeland as the biggest influence on his drumming style. Solo work Lennox's early musical influences included electronic styles, and his solo work has been variously characterized as experimental pop, electronic, bedroom pop, neo-psychedelic pop, and indie music. The Line of Best Fit called him a "psychedelic pop trailblazer." Lennox's debut album Panda Bear was released in 1999 on Soccer Star Records. After focusing more on touring and recording with Animal Collective, he released the follow-up Young Prayer in 2004 and the highly acclaimed third solo album Person Pitch in 2007. Of his songwriting style, Lennox says "I get impatient writing songs, I can't spend more than a couple of hours before I get frustrated. So I got to kind of spit it out real fast. My favorite songs are the ones where I worked really really fast on, when it comes all out in like two hours or something." Panda Bear's fourth album, Tomboy, was released April 12, 2011, on his own label, Paw Tracks. He started performing material from Tomboy on December 5, 2008, at a show with No Age in Miami, Florida. During a brief European tour in January 2010, he played three shows consisting almost entirely of new material. On March 7, 2010, a tour setlist with titles for ten of the new songs was posted on Panda Bear's MySpace blog. He also played Primavera Sound Festival in 2010. The single "Tomboy" and the b-side "Slow Motion" were released in July 2010. It was announced in August that singles "You Can Count on Me" and "Alsatian Darn" would be released via Domino on September 28. The limited 500 copies of "You Can Count On Me" sold out in less than a day. The single "Last Night at the Jetty" was released December 2010. The single "Surfer's Hymn" was released March 28, 2011. His song "Comfy In Nautica" appears in ABC's 2010 global warming movie Earth 2100. Lennox was chosen by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival he planned to curate in December 2011 in Minehead, England. However, Lennox was unable to play when the event was rescheduled to March 2012. In June 2013, Panda Bear performed a set of all new material at ATP. In October 2014, the Mr Noah EP was released, featuring four new songs. The full album, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, was released in January 2015. In 2018, Lennox released the vinyl-only A Day With the Homies EP, a collection of five songs heavily influenced by house + bass music. Included on the packaging of the release were hidden URLs that pointed to samples used on the EP. In February 2019, he released the LP Buoys, featuring production work by longtime collaborator Rusty Santos. It was preceded by the single "Dolphin". Outside musical collaborations Lennox plays in the band Jane and Together with DJ Scott Mou. He has also performed on tracks with Atlas Sound (Bradford Cox of Deerhunter), Ducktails (Matt Mondanile, best known as the former lead guitarist of the American indie rock band Real Estate) and electronic musicians Zomby and Pantha du Prince. Panda Bear appeared on the track "Doin' It Right" on the 2013 Daft Punk album Random Access Memories. The album won Daft Punk the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2014, making Panda Bear a co-winner. Personal life In 2004, Lennox moved from New York City to Lisbon, Portugal. He first visited the city for a vacation following a long Animal Collective tour in 2003. Lennox says about Lisbon: "Since I got off the airplane here [for the first time] I had a good feeling about this place." He met his wife, the fashion designer Fernanda Pereira, there; after visiting each other in Lisbon and New York, Lennox decided to move to Europe because he also felt "connected to the European way of life", considering himself as a "slow moving kind of person" and Lisbon as a "slow moving kind of place". Lennox and Pereira have a daughter, Nadja, born in 2005 and a son, born in June 2010. In 2007, he and Pereira collaborated on a line of sweatshirts called 2nd Things. Musical equipment Synthesizers Minimoog Voyager Korg M3 Digital samplers Elektron Octatrack Roland SP-555 Boss SP-303 "Dr. Sample" Teenage Engineering OP-1 Drum machine/synthesizer JoMoX Xbase 999 Discography Studio albums Extended plays Singles "I'm Not/Comfy in Nautica" (September 22, 2005, UUAR) "Bros" (December 4, 2006, Fat Cat Records) "Carrots" (January 23, 2007, Paw Tracks) "Take Pills" (June 19, 2007, Paw Tracks) "Tomboy" (July 13, 2010, Paw Tracks) "You Can Count on Me" (October 19, 2010, Domino) "Last Night at the Jetty" (December 13, 2010, FatCat Records) "Surfer's Hymn" (March 28, 2011, Kompakt) "Mr Noah" (October 23, 2014, Domino) "Boys Latin" (December 15, 2014, Domino) "Crosswords" (August 20, 2015, Domino) "Dolphin" (November 8, 2018, Domino) "Token" (January 14, 2019, Domino) "Playing the Long Game" (October 9, 2019, Domino) Remixes "Boneless" (remix of Notwist song "Boneless") on "Boneless" 7" "As Young As Yesterday" (remix of Korallreven song "As Young As Yesterday") on "As Young As Yesterday" 12" (2011) "Cheap Treat (Panda Bear Version)" (remix of Eric Copeland song "Cheap Treat") on "Remixes" EP. "Melody Unfair (Panda Bear Remix)" on Essence of Eucalyptus by Avey Tare "Never Ending Game (Panda Bear Remix)" on Bigger House by Angel Du$t Appearances One untitled track on Visionaire 53 – Sound (December 1, 2007, Visionaire Publishing, LLC) "Anna" on the album East of Eden by Taken by Trees (September 7, 2009) "Walkabout" on the album Logos by Atlas Sound (October 20, 2009) "Stick to My Side" on the album Black Noise by Pantha du Prince (February 9, 2010) "Killin the Vibe" (bonus track) on the album Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics by Ducktails (January 18, 2011) "Atiba Song" composed music for a skateboarding montage directed by Atiba Jefferson and Ty Evans. The track was initially created by Atiba, then finished by Panda Bear. "The Preakness" on the cassette tape Keep + Animal Collective (March 2011, Keep) "Things Fall Apart" on the album Dedication by Zomby (July 11, 2011) "Pyjama" on the album Tracer by Teengirl Fantasy (August 21, 2012) "Doin' It Right" on the album Random Access Memories by Daft Punk (May 17, 2013) "Time (Is)", "Binz", "Beltway" and "I'm a Witness" on the album When I Get Home by Solange (March 1, 2019) "I Don't Need a Crowd" on the I Don't Need a Crowd/The One That Got Away 7" by Paul Maroon (March 15, 2019) "Studie" on the album Anicca by Teebs (September 18, 2019) "Gameday Continues" on the album HBCU Gameday by Sporting Life. (January 27, 2020) "Just a Little Piece of Me" on the album All Things Being Equal by Sonic Boom. (June 5, 2020) References External links Interview from 2008 on Onhiat.us Ola's Kool Kitchen on Radio 23 – Panda Bear Live, Primavera 2010 American male singers 1978 births 21st-century American musicians Living people Ableton Live users American expatriates in Portugal Animal Collective members Grammy Award winners Experimental pop musicians Domino Recording Company artists 21st-century American singers
true
[ "Sagawa Express Osaka Soccer Club(佐川急便大阪サッカー部) was a Japanese football club based in Higashisumiyoshi-ku, Osaka.\n\nHistory \nThey were founded in 1965 and played in the Japan Football League (JFL) from 2002 to 2007, when they merged with Sagawa Express Tokyo S.C. to form what is now Sagawa Shiga F.C. As the name implies they were run by Sagawa Express, a Japanese transportation business.\n\nPrior to joining the JFL the team played in the Kansai Soccer League, in which they won four championships. They joined the JFL in 2002, one year after their Tokyo counterparts did. They did not repeat their earlier success after the switch. In 2007 the team announced the merger with Sagawa Express Tokyo to form Sagawa Express S.C., now Sagawa Shiga F.C., based in Shiga Prefecture.\n\nHonors \n Kansai Soccer League: 4\n1997, 1998, 2000, 2001\n\nExternal links\n Hikyaku Kaido (in Japanese)\n \n\nAssociation football clubs established in 1965\nAssociation football clubs disestablished in 2007\nDefunct football clubs in Japan\n1965 establishments in Japan\n2007 disestablishments in Japan\nJapan Football League clubs", "Gloria! is the eighth studio album released by American singer-songwriter Gloria Estefan, released on June 2, 1998, by Epic Records.\n\nBackground\nGloria! is a dance and house album which was a departure from Estefan's previous works. Though dance elements had been featured in previous recordings, this was her first album to consist entirely of upbeat club music.\n\nThe album spawned four singles and one promotional single. \"Heaven's What I Feel\" was released as the first single from the album and peaked at number 27 on the Billboard Hot 100. \"Oye!\" was released as the second single from the album, however, its release as a physical single was canceled in the United States. The song peaked at number 1 on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play, Hot Latin Tracks, and the Latin Tropical/Salsa Airplay charts. \"Don't Let This Moment End\" was released as the third single from the album and peaked at number 76 on the Billboard Hot 100. In Spain, \"Cuba Libre\" was released as a fourth single and \"Don't Stop\" was released promotionally. Though they did not feature any tracks from Gloria!, the extended plays \"Bailando!\" and \"Partytime!\" were released exclusively at Target stores as a form of promotion for the album.\n\nSeveral nominations were received for the album's singles. \"Heaven's What I Feel\" received a Grammy Music Award nomination for \"Best Dance Recording\", as did \"Don't Let This Moment End\" the following year. Estefan received a Grammy nomination for \"Best Video, Long Form\" for the album's supplementary DVD Don't Stop!. Estefan received the Billboard Latin Music Award for \"Best Latin Dance Club Play Track of the Year\" for \"Oye!\" and received an Alma Award for the music video for \"Heaven's What I Feel\".\n\nTrack listing\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nCertifications and sales\n\nAccolades\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\n1998 albums\nGloria Estefan albums\nDance music albums by American artists\nAlbums produced by Emilio Estefan" ]
[ "Panda Bear (musician)", "Animal Collective", "What was the Animal Collective?", "The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name \"Animal Collective", "What year did they form?", "2000." ]
C_10f543ec7eb343aca5b764d21b721d2b_1
How long were they active?
3
How long were Animal Collective active?
Panda Bear (musician)
As a teen, Lennox began listening to electronic music styles such as house and techno, and artists such as Aphex Twin, all of which became a major influence on his later work. He recorded and performed music--solo and with friends. Lennox started using the name "Panda Bear" because he drew pictures of pandas for the artwork of his recordings. Lennox had been friends with Deakin (Josh Dibb) since the second grade. Deakin introduced Lennox to his high school friends Avey Tare (Dave Portner) and Geologist (Brian Weitz). For years, the four of them swapped homemade recordings, shared musical ideas and performed in different group configurations. Lennox, along with Deakin moved to New York in 2000. The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name "Animal Collective". Since the 2007 releases of Panda Bear's Person Pitch and Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam, he has focused more on using samplers and other electronics in their shows. He has named Black Dice as a major influence stating "Black Dice took us on our first tour and I feel like the wisest things I've learned about being in a band I learned by watching them." He said he looks to Black Dice "as a model for a band... I feel like as a band, I can't speak for the other guys [of Animal Collective], but certainly for myself, like I modelled the way I approach to everything with the band watching the way Black Dice did it." In addition to singing, Lennox played drums and occasionally guitar in Animal Collective's live performances. He cites Stewart Copeland as the biggest influence on his drumming style. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
Noah Benjamin Lennox (born July 17, 1978), also known by his moniker Panda Bear, is an American musician, singer-songwriter and co-founding member of the band Animal Collective. In addition to his work with that group, Lennox has released six solo LPs since 1999. His third, Person Pitch (2007), is noted for influencing a wide range of subsequent indie music in addition to inspiring the chillwave genre and numerous soundalike acts. Lennox was primarily raised in Baltimore, Maryland, where he sang tenor in his high school chamber choir, and studied piano and cello. The name "Panda Bear" derived from his habit of drawing pandas on his early mixtapes as a teenager. He and the other members of Animal Collective began collaborating in the late 1990s. He has lived in Lisbon, Portugal since 2004. Early life Lennox grew up in the Roland Park section of Baltimore, Maryland, and attended Waldorf School of Baltimore through 8th grade, and Kimberton Waldorf School in Chester County, Pennsylvania for high school. His family moved frequently during his early years, owing to his father's studies to be an orthopedic surgeon. As a youth, he played sports, mainly soccer and basketball. His brother, Matt Lennox (the Animal Collective song "Brother Sport" is directed at him), was a leading player on the high school basketball team and Noah was also a team member, playing as point guard. Lennox has also stated in interviews that he enjoyed drawing a lot as a teenager, especially pandas, and later started drawing pandas on his early mixtapes. He also studied piano until he was eight, then cello, and later on he sang tenor in his high school chamber choir. Though he and his family have never been very religious, Lennox briefly attended Boston University, where he majored in religion because of his interest in "the concept of God". Career Animal Collective As a teen, Lennox began listening to electronic music styles such as house and techno, and artists such as Aphex Twin, all of which became a major influence on his later work. He recorded and performed music—solo and with friends. Lennox started using the name "Panda Bear" because he drew pictures of pandas for the artwork of his recordings. Lennox had been friends with Deakin (Josh Dibb) since the second grade. Deakin introduced Lennox to his high school friends Avey Tare (Dave Portner) and Geologist (Brian Weitz). For years, the four of them swapped homemade recordings, shared musical ideas and performed in different group configurations. Lennox, along with Deakin moved to New York in 2000. The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name "Animal Collective". Since the 2007 releases of Panda Bear's Person Pitch and Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam, he has focused more on using samplers and other electronics in their shows. He has named Black Dice as a major influence stating "Black Dice took us on our first tour and I feel like the wisest things I've learned about being in a band I learned by watching them." He said he looks to Black Dice "as a model for a band... I feel like as a band, I can't speak for the other guys [of Animal Collective], but certainly for myself, like I modelled the way I approach to everything with the band watching the way Black Dice did it." In addition to singing, Lennox played drums and occasionally guitar in Animal Collective's live performances. He cites Stewart Copeland as the biggest influence on his drumming style. Solo work Lennox's early musical influences included electronic styles, and his solo work has been variously characterized as experimental pop, electronic, bedroom pop, neo-psychedelic pop, and indie music. The Line of Best Fit called him a "psychedelic pop trailblazer." Lennox's debut album Panda Bear was released in 1999 on Soccer Star Records. After focusing more on touring and recording with Animal Collective, he released the follow-up Young Prayer in 2004 and the highly acclaimed third solo album Person Pitch in 2007. Of his songwriting style, Lennox says "I get impatient writing songs, I can't spend more than a couple of hours before I get frustrated. So I got to kind of spit it out real fast. My favorite songs are the ones where I worked really really fast on, when it comes all out in like two hours or something." Panda Bear's fourth album, Tomboy, was released April 12, 2011, on his own label, Paw Tracks. He started performing material from Tomboy on December 5, 2008, at a show with No Age in Miami, Florida. During a brief European tour in January 2010, he played three shows consisting almost entirely of new material. On March 7, 2010, a tour setlist with titles for ten of the new songs was posted on Panda Bear's MySpace blog. He also played Primavera Sound Festival in 2010. The single "Tomboy" and the b-side "Slow Motion" were released in July 2010. It was announced in August that singles "You Can Count on Me" and "Alsatian Darn" would be released via Domino on September 28. The limited 500 copies of "You Can Count On Me" sold out in less than a day. The single "Last Night at the Jetty" was released December 2010. The single "Surfer's Hymn" was released March 28, 2011. His song "Comfy In Nautica" appears in ABC's 2010 global warming movie Earth 2100. Lennox was chosen by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival he planned to curate in December 2011 in Minehead, England. However, Lennox was unable to play when the event was rescheduled to March 2012. In June 2013, Panda Bear performed a set of all new material at ATP. In October 2014, the Mr Noah EP was released, featuring four new songs. The full album, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, was released in January 2015. In 2018, Lennox released the vinyl-only A Day With the Homies EP, a collection of five songs heavily influenced by house + bass music. Included on the packaging of the release were hidden URLs that pointed to samples used on the EP. In February 2019, he released the LP Buoys, featuring production work by longtime collaborator Rusty Santos. It was preceded by the single "Dolphin". Outside musical collaborations Lennox plays in the band Jane and Together with DJ Scott Mou. He has also performed on tracks with Atlas Sound (Bradford Cox of Deerhunter), Ducktails (Matt Mondanile, best known as the former lead guitarist of the American indie rock band Real Estate) and electronic musicians Zomby and Pantha du Prince. Panda Bear appeared on the track "Doin' It Right" on the 2013 Daft Punk album Random Access Memories. The album won Daft Punk the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2014, making Panda Bear a co-winner. Personal life In 2004, Lennox moved from New York City to Lisbon, Portugal. He first visited the city for a vacation following a long Animal Collective tour in 2003. Lennox says about Lisbon: "Since I got off the airplane here [for the first time] I had a good feeling about this place." He met his wife, the fashion designer Fernanda Pereira, there; after visiting each other in Lisbon and New York, Lennox decided to move to Europe because he also felt "connected to the European way of life", considering himself as a "slow moving kind of person" and Lisbon as a "slow moving kind of place". Lennox and Pereira have a daughter, Nadja, born in 2005 and a son, born in June 2010. In 2007, he and Pereira collaborated on a line of sweatshirts called 2nd Things. Musical equipment Synthesizers Minimoog Voyager Korg M3 Digital samplers Elektron Octatrack Roland SP-555 Boss SP-303 "Dr. Sample" Teenage Engineering OP-1 Drum machine/synthesizer JoMoX Xbase 999 Discography Studio albums Extended plays Singles "I'm Not/Comfy in Nautica" (September 22, 2005, UUAR) "Bros" (December 4, 2006, Fat Cat Records) "Carrots" (January 23, 2007, Paw Tracks) "Take Pills" (June 19, 2007, Paw Tracks) "Tomboy" (July 13, 2010, Paw Tracks) "You Can Count on Me" (October 19, 2010, Domino) "Last Night at the Jetty" (December 13, 2010, FatCat Records) "Surfer's Hymn" (March 28, 2011, Kompakt) "Mr Noah" (October 23, 2014, Domino) "Boys Latin" (December 15, 2014, Domino) "Crosswords" (August 20, 2015, Domino) "Dolphin" (November 8, 2018, Domino) "Token" (January 14, 2019, Domino) "Playing the Long Game" (October 9, 2019, Domino) Remixes "Boneless" (remix of Notwist song "Boneless") on "Boneless" 7" "As Young As Yesterday" (remix of Korallreven song "As Young As Yesterday") on "As Young As Yesterday" 12" (2011) "Cheap Treat (Panda Bear Version)" (remix of Eric Copeland song "Cheap Treat") on "Remixes" EP. "Melody Unfair (Panda Bear Remix)" on Essence of Eucalyptus by Avey Tare "Never Ending Game (Panda Bear Remix)" on Bigger House by Angel Du$t Appearances One untitled track on Visionaire 53 – Sound (December 1, 2007, Visionaire Publishing, LLC) "Anna" on the album East of Eden by Taken by Trees (September 7, 2009) "Walkabout" on the album Logos by Atlas Sound (October 20, 2009) "Stick to My Side" on the album Black Noise by Pantha du Prince (February 9, 2010) "Killin the Vibe" (bonus track) on the album Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics by Ducktails (January 18, 2011) "Atiba Song" composed music for a skateboarding montage directed by Atiba Jefferson and Ty Evans. The track was initially created by Atiba, then finished by Panda Bear. "The Preakness" on the cassette tape Keep + Animal Collective (March 2011, Keep) "Things Fall Apart" on the album Dedication by Zomby (July 11, 2011) "Pyjama" on the album Tracer by Teengirl Fantasy (August 21, 2012) "Doin' It Right" on the album Random Access Memories by Daft Punk (May 17, 2013) "Time (Is)", "Binz", "Beltway" and "I'm a Witness" on the album When I Get Home by Solange (March 1, 2019) "I Don't Need a Crowd" on the I Don't Need a Crowd/The One That Got Away 7" by Paul Maroon (March 15, 2019) "Studie" on the album Anicca by Teebs (September 18, 2019) "Gameday Continues" on the album HBCU Gameday by Sporting Life. (January 27, 2020) "Just a Little Piece of Me" on the album All Things Being Equal by Sonic Boom. (June 5, 2020) References External links Interview from 2008 on Onhiat.us Ola's Kool Kitchen on Radio 23 – Panda Bear Live, Primavera 2010 American male singers 1978 births 21st-century American musicians Living people Ableton Live users American expatriates in Portugal Animal Collective members Grammy Award winners Experimental pop musicians Domino Recording Company artists 21st-century American singers
false
[ "Attacco Decente were a musical group from Brighton, England, active from 1984 to 1996.\n\nThe band was notable for using unusual acoustic instruments such as hammered dulcimers, Appalachian dulcimers, and tongue drums alongside more conventional instruments such as acoustic guitar and acoustic bass guitar. Their founder member and sole constant was Geoff Smith. Their lyrics, written by Smith, reflected a strong socialist political stance, especially on the early singles and the first album. Although the band were active at the height of Thatcherism, they did not participate in the more moderate Red Wedge collective.\n\nThe band's first single, \"Trojan Horse\", featured Smith and Graham Barlow. Acoustic guitarist and backing vocalist Mark Allen joined and they released a 12\" EP, \"U.K.A. (United Kingdom of America)\", the sleeve of which featured an endorsement from Billy Bragg.\n\nThe band released their debut album, The Baby Within Us Marches On, in 1988. Barlow left after the release of the \"I Don't Care How Long It Takes\" single. Smith and Allen recorded the band's second and last album, Crystal Night, as a duo. The band's sound changed somewhat in this incarnation, with the heavily percussive sound of the trio line-up replaced by a mellower, folky feel. There was less emphasis on the tongue drums and more on the hammered dulcimer and Allen's guitar, which took on a markedly flamenco aspect. Smith's lyrics became less overtly political, and more concerned with love and personal relationships.\n\nThe band split after the Crystal Night album. Smith continued as a solo performer and composer, creating music for film and dance. Allen is now a teacher, but has also continued to work as a singer and guitarist in a number of groups.\n\nDiscography\n\nSingles and EPs\n\"Trojan Horse\"/\"Storms Clear the Air\" (Timber, 1984)\n\"U.K.A. (United Kingdom of America)\" (All or Nothing, 1986) – tracks: \"The Law Above The Law\", \"U.K.A.\", \"Dad Hits Mum\", \"Touch Yourself\", \"All Or Nothing\")\n\"The Will of One\" (All or Nothing; 7\", 12\", CD, 1988) – tracks on 7\": \"The Will of One\" (short version), \"One Mountain, One Checkpoint, One Chance\"; tracks on 12\" and CD: \"The Will of One\" (short version), \"The Will of One\" (long version), \"One Mountain, One Checkpoint, One Chance\", \"Together in a Bed of Blossom\")\n\"I Don't Care How Long It Takes\" (All or Nothing; 7\", 12\", CD, 1988) – tracks on 12\" and CD: \"I Don't Care How Long It Takes\" (7\" version), \"I Don't Care How Long It Takes\" (Hammer House Mix), \"Tears of Blood\", \"Don't Join Their Army\")\n\nAlbums\nThe Baby Within Us Marches On (All or Nothing; LP, CD, 1988)\nCrystal Night (All or Nothing; cassette, CD, 1996)\n\nMusical groups from Brighton and Hove\nEnglish folk musical groups\nHammered dulcimer players", "\"How Long, How Long Blues\" (also known as \"How Long Blues\" or \"How Long How Long\") is a blues song recorded by the American blues duo Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell in 1928. It became an early blues standard and its melody inspired many later songs.\n\nOriginal song\n\"How Long, How Long Blues\" is based on \"How Long Daddy\", recorded in 1925 by Ida Cox with Papa Charlie Jackson. On June 19, 1928, Leroy Carr, who sang and played piano, and guitarist Scrapper Blackwell recorded the song in Indianapolis, Indiana, for Vocalion Records, shortly after they began performing together. It is a moderately slow-tempo blues with an eight-bar structure. Carr is credited with the lyrics and music for the song, which uses a departed train as a metaphor for a lover who has left:\n\nCarr's and Blackwell's songs reflected a more urban and sophisticated blues, in contrast to the music of rural bluesmen of the time. Carr's blues were \"expressive and evocative\", although his vocals have also been described as emotionally detached, high-pitched and smooth, with clear diction.\n\n\"How Long, How Long Blues\" was Carr and Scrapwell's biggest hit. They subsequently recorded six more versions of the song (two of them, unissued at the time), as \"How Long, How Long Blues, Part 2\", \"Part 3\", \"How Long Has That Evening Train Been Gone\", \"The New How Long, How Long Blues\", etc. There are considerable variations in the lyrics, but most versions begin with the lyric \"How long, how long, has that evening train been gone?\"\n\nLegacy\n\"How Long, How Long Blues\" became an early blues standard and \"its lilting melody inspired hundreds of later compositions\", including the Mississippi Sheiks' \"Sitting on Top of the World\" and Robert Johnson's \"Come On in My Kitchen\". Although his later style would not suggest it, Muddy Waters recalled that it was the first song he learned to play \"off the Leroy Carr record\".\n\nIn 1988, Carr's \"How Long, How Long Blues\" was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in the category \"Classics of Blues Recordings – Singles or Album Tracks\". Blues historian Jim O'Neal commented in the induction statement, \"'How Long, How Long Blues' was a massive hit in the prewar blues era, a song that every blues singer and piano player had to know, and one that has continued to inspire dozens of cover versions.\" In 2012, the song received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award, which \"honor[s] recordings of lasting qualitative or historical significance\".\n\nSee also\nList of train songs\n\nReferences\n\nBlues songs\n1928 songs\nGrammy Hall of Fame Award recipients\nVocalion Records singles\nSongs about trains" ]
[ "Panda Bear (musician)", "Animal Collective", "What was the Animal Collective?", "The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name \"Animal Collective", "What year did they form?", "2000.", "How long were they active?", "I don't know." ]
C_10f543ec7eb343aca5b764d21b721d2b_1
How many band members are in Animal Collective?
4
How many band members are in Animal Collective?
Panda Bear (musician)
As a teen, Lennox began listening to electronic music styles such as house and techno, and artists such as Aphex Twin, all of which became a major influence on his later work. He recorded and performed music--solo and with friends. Lennox started using the name "Panda Bear" because he drew pictures of pandas for the artwork of his recordings. Lennox had been friends with Deakin (Josh Dibb) since the second grade. Deakin introduced Lennox to his high school friends Avey Tare (Dave Portner) and Geologist (Brian Weitz). For years, the four of them swapped homemade recordings, shared musical ideas and performed in different group configurations. Lennox, along with Deakin moved to New York in 2000. The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name "Animal Collective". Since the 2007 releases of Panda Bear's Person Pitch and Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam, he has focused more on using samplers and other electronics in their shows. He has named Black Dice as a major influence stating "Black Dice took us on our first tour and I feel like the wisest things I've learned about being in a band I learned by watching them." He said he looks to Black Dice "as a model for a band... I feel like as a band, I can't speak for the other guys [of Animal Collective], but certainly for myself, like I modelled the way I approach to everything with the band watching the way Black Dice did it." In addition to singing, Lennox played drums and occasionally guitar in Animal Collective's live performances. He cites Stewart Copeland as the biggest influence on his drumming style. CANNOTANSWER
four
Noah Benjamin Lennox (born July 17, 1978), also known by his moniker Panda Bear, is an American musician, singer-songwriter and co-founding member of the band Animal Collective. In addition to his work with that group, Lennox has released six solo LPs since 1999. His third, Person Pitch (2007), is noted for influencing a wide range of subsequent indie music in addition to inspiring the chillwave genre and numerous soundalike acts. Lennox was primarily raised in Baltimore, Maryland, where he sang tenor in his high school chamber choir, and studied piano and cello. The name "Panda Bear" derived from his habit of drawing pandas on his early mixtapes as a teenager. He and the other members of Animal Collective began collaborating in the late 1990s. He has lived in Lisbon, Portugal since 2004. Early life Lennox grew up in the Roland Park section of Baltimore, Maryland, and attended Waldorf School of Baltimore through 8th grade, and Kimberton Waldorf School in Chester County, Pennsylvania for high school. His family moved frequently during his early years, owing to his father's studies to be an orthopedic surgeon. As a youth, he played sports, mainly soccer and basketball. His brother, Matt Lennox (the Animal Collective song "Brother Sport" is directed at him), was a leading player on the high school basketball team and Noah was also a team member, playing as point guard. Lennox has also stated in interviews that he enjoyed drawing a lot as a teenager, especially pandas, and later started drawing pandas on his early mixtapes. He also studied piano until he was eight, then cello, and later on he sang tenor in his high school chamber choir. Though he and his family have never been very religious, Lennox briefly attended Boston University, where he majored in religion because of his interest in "the concept of God". Career Animal Collective As a teen, Lennox began listening to electronic music styles such as house and techno, and artists such as Aphex Twin, all of which became a major influence on his later work. He recorded and performed music—solo and with friends. Lennox started using the name "Panda Bear" because he drew pictures of pandas for the artwork of his recordings. Lennox had been friends with Deakin (Josh Dibb) since the second grade. Deakin introduced Lennox to his high school friends Avey Tare (Dave Portner) and Geologist (Brian Weitz). For years, the four of them swapped homemade recordings, shared musical ideas and performed in different group configurations. Lennox, along with Deakin moved to New York in 2000. The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name "Animal Collective". Since the 2007 releases of Panda Bear's Person Pitch and Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam, he has focused more on using samplers and other electronics in their shows. He has named Black Dice as a major influence stating "Black Dice took us on our first tour and I feel like the wisest things I've learned about being in a band I learned by watching them." He said he looks to Black Dice "as a model for a band... I feel like as a band, I can't speak for the other guys [of Animal Collective], but certainly for myself, like I modelled the way I approach to everything with the band watching the way Black Dice did it." In addition to singing, Lennox played drums and occasionally guitar in Animal Collective's live performances. He cites Stewart Copeland as the biggest influence on his drumming style. Solo work Lennox's early musical influences included electronic styles, and his solo work has been variously characterized as experimental pop, electronic, bedroom pop, neo-psychedelic pop, and indie music. The Line of Best Fit called him a "psychedelic pop trailblazer." Lennox's debut album Panda Bear was released in 1999 on Soccer Star Records. After focusing more on touring and recording with Animal Collective, he released the follow-up Young Prayer in 2004 and the highly acclaimed third solo album Person Pitch in 2007. Of his songwriting style, Lennox says "I get impatient writing songs, I can't spend more than a couple of hours before I get frustrated. So I got to kind of spit it out real fast. My favorite songs are the ones where I worked really really fast on, when it comes all out in like two hours or something." Panda Bear's fourth album, Tomboy, was released April 12, 2011, on his own label, Paw Tracks. He started performing material from Tomboy on December 5, 2008, at a show with No Age in Miami, Florida. During a brief European tour in January 2010, he played three shows consisting almost entirely of new material. On March 7, 2010, a tour setlist with titles for ten of the new songs was posted on Panda Bear's MySpace blog. He also played Primavera Sound Festival in 2010. The single "Tomboy" and the b-side "Slow Motion" were released in July 2010. It was announced in August that singles "You Can Count on Me" and "Alsatian Darn" would be released via Domino on September 28. The limited 500 copies of "You Can Count On Me" sold out in less than a day. The single "Last Night at the Jetty" was released December 2010. The single "Surfer's Hymn" was released March 28, 2011. His song "Comfy In Nautica" appears in ABC's 2010 global warming movie Earth 2100. Lennox was chosen by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival he planned to curate in December 2011 in Minehead, England. However, Lennox was unable to play when the event was rescheduled to March 2012. In June 2013, Panda Bear performed a set of all new material at ATP. In October 2014, the Mr Noah EP was released, featuring four new songs. The full album, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, was released in January 2015. In 2018, Lennox released the vinyl-only A Day With the Homies EP, a collection of five songs heavily influenced by house + bass music. Included on the packaging of the release were hidden URLs that pointed to samples used on the EP. In February 2019, he released the LP Buoys, featuring production work by longtime collaborator Rusty Santos. It was preceded by the single "Dolphin". Outside musical collaborations Lennox plays in the band Jane and Together with DJ Scott Mou. He has also performed on tracks with Atlas Sound (Bradford Cox of Deerhunter), Ducktails (Matt Mondanile, best known as the former lead guitarist of the American indie rock band Real Estate) and electronic musicians Zomby and Pantha du Prince. Panda Bear appeared on the track "Doin' It Right" on the 2013 Daft Punk album Random Access Memories. The album won Daft Punk the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2014, making Panda Bear a co-winner. Personal life In 2004, Lennox moved from New York City to Lisbon, Portugal. He first visited the city for a vacation following a long Animal Collective tour in 2003. Lennox says about Lisbon: "Since I got off the airplane here [for the first time] I had a good feeling about this place." He met his wife, the fashion designer Fernanda Pereira, there; after visiting each other in Lisbon and New York, Lennox decided to move to Europe because he also felt "connected to the European way of life", considering himself as a "slow moving kind of person" and Lisbon as a "slow moving kind of place". Lennox and Pereira have a daughter, Nadja, born in 2005 and a son, born in June 2010. In 2007, he and Pereira collaborated on a line of sweatshirts called 2nd Things. Musical equipment Synthesizers Minimoog Voyager Korg M3 Digital samplers Elektron Octatrack Roland SP-555 Boss SP-303 "Dr. Sample" Teenage Engineering OP-1 Drum machine/synthesizer JoMoX Xbase 999 Discography Studio albums Extended plays Singles "I'm Not/Comfy in Nautica" (September 22, 2005, UUAR) "Bros" (December 4, 2006, Fat Cat Records) "Carrots" (January 23, 2007, Paw Tracks) "Take Pills" (June 19, 2007, Paw Tracks) "Tomboy" (July 13, 2010, Paw Tracks) "You Can Count on Me" (October 19, 2010, Domino) "Last Night at the Jetty" (December 13, 2010, FatCat Records) "Surfer's Hymn" (March 28, 2011, Kompakt) "Mr Noah" (October 23, 2014, Domino) "Boys Latin" (December 15, 2014, Domino) "Crosswords" (August 20, 2015, Domino) "Dolphin" (November 8, 2018, Domino) "Token" (January 14, 2019, Domino) "Playing the Long Game" (October 9, 2019, Domino) Remixes "Boneless" (remix of Notwist song "Boneless") on "Boneless" 7" "As Young As Yesterday" (remix of Korallreven song "As Young As Yesterday") on "As Young As Yesterday" 12" (2011) "Cheap Treat (Panda Bear Version)" (remix of Eric Copeland song "Cheap Treat") on "Remixes" EP. "Melody Unfair (Panda Bear Remix)" on Essence of Eucalyptus by Avey Tare "Never Ending Game (Panda Bear Remix)" on Bigger House by Angel Du$t Appearances One untitled track on Visionaire 53 – Sound (December 1, 2007, Visionaire Publishing, LLC) "Anna" on the album East of Eden by Taken by Trees (September 7, 2009) "Walkabout" on the album Logos by Atlas Sound (October 20, 2009) "Stick to My Side" on the album Black Noise by Pantha du Prince (February 9, 2010) "Killin the Vibe" (bonus track) on the album Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics by Ducktails (January 18, 2011) "Atiba Song" composed music for a skateboarding montage directed by Atiba Jefferson and Ty Evans. The track was initially created by Atiba, then finished by Panda Bear. "The Preakness" on the cassette tape Keep + Animal Collective (March 2011, Keep) "Things Fall Apart" on the album Dedication by Zomby (July 11, 2011) "Pyjama" on the album Tracer by Teengirl Fantasy (August 21, 2012) "Doin' It Right" on the album Random Access Memories by Daft Punk (May 17, 2013) "Time (Is)", "Binz", "Beltway" and "I'm a Witness" on the album When I Get Home by Solange (March 1, 2019) "I Don't Need a Crowd" on the I Don't Need a Crowd/The One That Got Away 7" by Paul Maroon (March 15, 2019) "Studie" on the album Anicca by Teebs (September 18, 2019) "Gameday Continues" on the album HBCU Gameday by Sporting Life. (January 27, 2020) "Just a Little Piece of Me" on the album All Things Being Equal by Sonic Boom. (June 5, 2020) References External links Interview from 2008 on Onhiat.us Ola's Kool Kitchen on Radio 23 – Panda Bear Live, Primavera 2010 American male singers 1978 births 21st-century American musicians Living people Ableton Live users American expatriates in Portugal Animal Collective members Grammy Award winners Experimental pop musicians Domino Recording Company artists 21st-century American singers
true
[ "Keep + Animal Collective is the sixth EP by experimental pop band Animal Collective, released on the March 26, 2011 on cassette. Bundled with a range of shoes designed by the band, Keep + Animal Collective contains one solo song from each member of the group.\n\nThe EP was released in limited quantities and was only sold in a bundle with the Keep + Animal Collective shoes on a first-come, first-served basis.\n\n\"The Preakness\" was later included on the deluxe edition of Tomboy, and an alternate version was included on the Crosswords EP.\n\nTracklisting\n\nReferences \n\n2010 EPs\nAnimal Collective EPs", "\"Fireworks\" is the second single from Animal Collective's 2007 album, Strawberry Jam, released November 5, 2007 by Domino Records. Rather than including a B-side, the reverse side of the record is an etching. The video for the song premiered in July 2007, which shows the band members watching fireworks. During the tours of 2005 and 2006 this song was known as \"Allman Vibe\".\n\nThe song was listed at No. 35 on Pitchfork Media's top 500 songs of the 2000s.\n\nWhen performed live between 2007 and 2009, the song often stretched upwards of ten minutes with the addition of elements of either \"Essplode\" or \"Lablakely Dress\", two songs from the band's earlier album Danse Manatee.\n\nThis song appeared in the Channel 4 drama series Skins in 2007, and in an episode of the third season of HBO series In Treatment in 2010.\n\nTrack listing\n\n2007 singles\nAnimal Collective songs\n2007 songs\nDomino Recording Company singles" ]
[ "Panda Bear (musician)", "Animal Collective", "What was the Animal Collective?", "The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name \"Animal Collective", "What year did they form?", "2000.", "How long were they active?", "I don't know.", "How many band members are in Animal Collective?", "four" ]
C_10f543ec7eb343aca5b764d21b721d2b_1
What instruments do they play in Animal Collective?
5
What instruments do the band members play in Animal Collective?
Panda Bear (musician)
As a teen, Lennox began listening to electronic music styles such as house and techno, and artists such as Aphex Twin, all of which became a major influence on his later work. He recorded and performed music--solo and with friends. Lennox started using the name "Panda Bear" because he drew pictures of pandas for the artwork of his recordings. Lennox had been friends with Deakin (Josh Dibb) since the second grade. Deakin introduced Lennox to his high school friends Avey Tare (Dave Portner) and Geologist (Brian Weitz). For years, the four of them swapped homemade recordings, shared musical ideas and performed in different group configurations. Lennox, along with Deakin moved to New York in 2000. The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name "Animal Collective". Since the 2007 releases of Panda Bear's Person Pitch and Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam, he has focused more on using samplers and other electronics in their shows. He has named Black Dice as a major influence stating "Black Dice took us on our first tour and I feel like the wisest things I've learned about being in a band I learned by watching them." He said he looks to Black Dice "as a model for a band... I feel like as a band, I can't speak for the other guys [of Animal Collective], but certainly for myself, like I modelled the way I approach to everything with the band watching the way Black Dice did it." In addition to singing, Lennox played drums and occasionally guitar in Animal Collective's live performances. He cites Stewart Copeland as the biggest influence on his drumming style. CANNOTANSWER
electronic music styles such as house and techno,
Noah Benjamin Lennox (born July 17, 1978), also known by his moniker Panda Bear, is an American musician, singer-songwriter and co-founding member of the band Animal Collective. In addition to his work with that group, Lennox has released six solo LPs since 1999. His third, Person Pitch (2007), is noted for influencing a wide range of subsequent indie music in addition to inspiring the chillwave genre and numerous soundalike acts. Lennox was primarily raised in Baltimore, Maryland, where he sang tenor in his high school chamber choir, and studied piano and cello. The name "Panda Bear" derived from his habit of drawing pandas on his early mixtapes as a teenager. He and the other members of Animal Collective began collaborating in the late 1990s. He has lived in Lisbon, Portugal since 2004. Early life Lennox grew up in the Roland Park section of Baltimore, Maryland, and attended Waldorf School of Baltimore through 8th grade, and Kimberton Waldorf School in Chester County, Pennsylvania for high school. His family moved frequently during his early years, owing to his father's studies to be an orthopedic surgeon. As a youth, he played sports, mainly soccer and basketball. His brother, Matt Lennox (the Animal Collective song "Brother Sport" is directed at him), was a leading player on the high school basketball team and Noah was also a team member, playing as point guard. Lennox has also stated in interviews that he enjoyed drawing a lot as a teenager, especially pandas, and later started drawing pandas on his early mixtapes. He also studied piano until he was eight, then cello, and later on he sang tenor in his high school chamber choir. Though he and his family have never been very religious, Lennox briefly attended Boston University, where he majored in religion because of his interest in "the concept of God". Career Animal Collective As a teen, Lennox began listening to electronic music styles such as house and techno, and artists such as Aphex Twin, all of which became a major influence on his later work. He recorded and performed music—solo and with friends. Lennox started using the name "Panda Bear" because he drew pictures of pandas for the artwork of his recordings. Lennox had been friends with Deakin (Josh Dibb) since the second grade. Deakin introduced Lennox to his high school friends Avey Tare (Dave Portner) and Geologist (Brian Weitz). For years, the four of them swapped homemade recordings, shared musical ideas and performed in different group configurations. Lennox, along with Deakin moved to New York in 2000. The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name "Animal Collective". Since the 2007 releases of Panda Bear's Person Pitch and Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam, he has focused more on using samplers and other electronics in their shows. He has named Black Dice as a major influence stating "Black Dice took us on our first tour and I feel like the wisest things I've learned about being in a band I learned by watching them." He said he looks to Black Dice "as a model for a band... I feel like as a band, I can't speak for the other guys [of Animal Collective], but certainly for myself, like I modelled the way I approach to everything with the band watching the way Black Dice did it." In addition to singing, Lennox played drums and occasionally guitar in Animal Collective's live performances. He cites Stewart Copeland as the biggest influence on his drumming style. Solo work Lennox's early musical influences included electronic styles, and his solo work has been variously characterized as experimental pop, electronic, bedroom pop, neo-psychedelic pop, and indie music. The Line of Best Fit called him a "psychedelic pop trailblazer." Lennox's debut album Panda Bear was released in 1999 on Soccer Star Records. After focusing more on touring and recording with Animal Collective, he released the follow-up Young Prayer in 2004 and the highly acclaimed third solo album Person Pitch in 2007. Of his songwriting style, Lennox says "I get impatient writing songs, I can't spend more than a couple of hours before I get frustrated. So I got to kind of spit it out real fast. My favorite songs are the ones where I worked really really fast on, when it comes all out in like two hours or something." Panda Bear's fourth album, Tomboy, was released April 12, 2011, on his own label, Paw Tracks. He started performing material from Tomboy on December 5, 2008, at a show with No Age in Miami, Florida. During a brief European tour in January 2010, he played three shows consisting almost entirely of new material. On March 7, 2010, a tour setlist with titles for ten of the new songs was posted on Panda Bear's MySpace blog. He also played Primavera Sound Festival in 2010. The single "Tomboy" and the b-side "Slow Motion" were released in July 2010. It was announced in August that singles "You Can Count on Me" and "Alsatian Darn" would be released via Domino on September 28. The limited 500 copies of "You Can Count On Me" sold out in less than a day. The single "Last Night at the Jetty" was released December 2010. The single "Surfer's Hymn" was released March 28, 2011. His song "Comfy In Nautica" appears in ABC's 2010 global warming movie Earth 2100. Lennox was chosen by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival he planned to curate in December 2011 in Minehead, England. However, Lennox was unable to play when the event was rescheduled to March 2012. In June 2013, Panda Bear performed a set of all new material at ATP. In October 2014, the Mr Noah EP was released, featuring four new songs. The full album, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, was released in January 2015. In 2018, Lennox released the vinyl-only A Day With the Homies EP, a collection of five songs heavily influenced by house + bass music. Included on the packaging of the release were hidden URLs that pointed to samples used on the EP. In February 2019, he released the LP Buoys, featuring production work by longtime collaborator Rusty Santos. It was preceded by the single "Dolphin". Outside musical collaborations Lennox plays in the band Jane and Together with DJ Scott Mou. He has also performed on tracks with Atlas Sound (Bradford Cox of Deerhunter), Ducktails (Matt Mondanile, best known as the former lead guitarist of the American indie rock band Real Estate) and electronic musicians Zomby and Pantha du Prince. Panda Bear appeared on the track "Doin' It Right" on the 2013 Daft Punk album Random Access Memories. The album won Daft Punk the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2014, making Panda Bear a co-winner. Personal life In 2004, Lennox moved from New York City to Lisbon, Portugal. He first visited the city for a vacation following a long Animal Collective tour in 2003. Lennox says about Lisbon: "Since I got off the airplane here [for the first time] I had a good feeling about this place." He met his wife, the fashion designer Fernanda Pereira, there; after visiting each other in Lisbon and New York, Lennox decided to move to Europe because he also felt "connected to the European way of life", considering himself as a "slow moving kind of person" and Lisbon as a "slow moving kind of place". Lennox and Pereira have a daughter, Nadja, born in 2005 and a son, born in June 2010. In 2007, he and Pereira collaborated on a line of sweatshirts called 2nd Things. Musical equipment Synthesizers Minimoog Voyager Korg M3 Digital samplers Elektron Octatrack Roland SP-555 Boss SP-303 "Dr. Sample" Teenage Engineering OP-1 Drum machine/synthesizer JoMoX Xbase 999 Discography Studio albums Extended plays Singles "I'm Not/Comfy in Nautica" (September 22, 2005, UUAR) "Bros" (December 4, 2006, Fat Cat Records) "Carrots" (January 23, 2007, Paw Tracks) "Take Pills" (June 19, 2007, Paw Tracks) "Tomboy" (July 13, 2010, Paw Tracks) "You Can Count on Me" (October 19, 2010, Domino) "Last Night at the Jetty" (December 13, 2010, FatCat Records) "Surfer's Hymn" (March 28, 2011, Kompakt) "Mr Noah" (October 23, 2014, Domino) "Boys Latin" (December 15, 2014, Domino) "Crosswords" (August 20, 2015, Domino) "Dolphin" (November 8, 2018, Domino) "Token" (January 14, 2019, Domino) "Playing the Long Game" (October 9, 2019, Domino) Remixes "Boneless" (remix of Notwist song "Boneless") on "Boneless" 7" "As Young As Yesterday" (remix of Korallreven song "As Young As Yesterday") on "As Young As Yesterday" 12" (2011) "Cheap Treat (Panda Bear Version)" (remix of Eric Copeland song "Cheap Treat") on "Remixes" EP. "Melody Unfair (Panda Bear Remix)" on Essence of Eucalyptus by Avey Tare "Never Ending Game (Panda Bear Remix)" on Bigger House by Angel Du$t Appearances One untitled track on Visionaire 53 – Sound (December 1, 2007, Visionaire Publishing, LLC) "Anna" on the album East of Eden by Taken by Trees (September 7, 2009) "Walkabout" on the album Logos by Atlas Sound (October 20, 2009) "Stick to My Side" on the album Black Noise by Pantha du Prince (February 9, 2010) "Killin the Vibe" (bonus track) on the album Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics by Ducktails (January 18, 2011) "Atiba Song" composed music for a skateboarding montage directed by Atiba Jefferson and Ty Evans. The track was initially created by Atiba, then finished by Panda Bear. "The Preakness" on the cassette tape Keep + Animal Collective (March 2011, Keep) "Things Fall Apart" on the album Dedication by Zomby (July 11, 2011) "Pyjama" on the album Tracer by Teengirl Fantasy (August 21, 2012) "Doin' It Right" on the album Random Access Memories by Daft Punk (May 17, 2013) "Time (Is)", "Binz", "Beltway" and "I'm a Witness" on the album When I Get Home by Solange (March 1, 2019) "I Don't Need a Crowd" on the I Don't Need a Crowd/The One That Got Away 7" by Paul Maroon (March 15, 2019) "Studie" on the album Anicca by Teebs (September 18, 2019) "Gameday Continues" on the album HBCU Gameday by Sporting Life. (January 27, 2020) "Just a Little Piece of Me" on the album All Things Being Equal by Sonic Boom. (June 5, 2020) References External links Interview from 2008 on Onhiat.us Ola's Kool Kitchen on Radio 23 – Panda Bear Live, Primavera 2010 American male singers 1978 births 21st-century American musicians Living people Ableton Live users American expatriates in Portugal Animal Collective members Grammy Award winners Experimental pop musicians Domino Recording Company artists 21st-century American singers
true
[ "Fonds commun de placement translates to \"investment funds\" or \"mutual funds\", and are open-ended collective investment funds based that are neither trust or company law based. They are similar to common contractual funds in Ireland, tax transparent funds in the UK and \"fondsen voor gemene rekening\" in the Netherlands.\n\nIn France, commonly referred to as FCP or F.C.P., these financial instruments are collective investments that are similar to the SICAV. They are not investment companies; they are more like open partnerships. They have no independent legal status but exist as a set of defined relationships between investors, managers and custodian. They invest in different financial instruments, but they do not have the tax status of the SICAV.\n\nThey are typically issued in the French-speaking countries of Europe.\n\nSee also \n Common fund\n Collective investment scheme\n\nReferences \n\nInvestment funds", "Tangerine Reef is the second visual album by American experimental pop band Animal Collective, released on August 17, 2018, through Domino. It is the band's first full-length release without Panda Bear, and was made in collaboration with art-science duo Coral Morphologic and in celebration of the International Year of the Reef. It was the band’s first visual album since 2010’s ODDSAC. The album is accompanied by a film, which premiered on the band's website upon release.\n\nBackground and recording\nTangerine Reef is the product of longtime collaborations between Animal Collective and Coral Morphologic, an art-science duo consisting of marine biologist Colin Foord and musician J.D. McKay. The two groups first met in 2010 at a screening of Animal Collective's ODDSAC, when Coral Morphologic gave Deakin a DVD consisting of their work. The members of Animal Collective were impressed by the footage and reached out, leading to several collaborations, such as Geologist soundtracking Coral Morphologic's 2011 short film Man o War, and Foord providing spoken word on Avey Tare's solo album Eucalyptus. The two groups have also gone scuba diving together.\n\nThe genesis of Tangerine Reef came in February 2017 at an art exhibition called \"Coral Orgy\", hosted at New World Center in Miami, where Animal Collective performed over video projections made by Coral Morphologic. Material from Tangerine Reef was also played live in May 2018 during a performance at David Lynch's Festival of Disruption in Brooklyn. The band recorded the initial performance with the intent of releasing it as a live album, but found the recording \"unusable\" due to crowd noise. Rather than abandon the project, the band got together at a Baltimore studio run in part by Deakin and \"took a few days and did four or five run-throughs of the Miami set.\" To recapture the feel of the original performance, the album was recorded live and with no overdubs. The recording was then sent to Coral Morphologic to provide the video component. Animal Collective thought it could simply be paired with the video they originally performed to, but Coral Morphologic felt they needed to re-shoot parts of it.\n\nThe album features the standard lineup of the band with the exception of Panda Bear, the band's first full-length release to do so. Panda Bear also did not feature in the live performances of the music. His absence is due to distance, as he lives in Portugal.\n\nThe project commemorates the 2018 International Year of the Reef, and is intended to draw public attention to the issue of coral reef conservation. According to Geologist, the band hopes that \"Animal Collective fans and beyond will see this footage and be inspired to care about the ocean and care about coral reefs and do what they can.\" For Foord, \"the point is to introduce corals into pop culture\", with the aim of speaking to people who would otherwise not have interest in corals.\n\nThe band cited the experimental film Koyaanisqatsi as an influence on the album. The work of filmmaker Jean Painlevé, and the documentary film Powers of Ten, were named by Foord as inspirations for the filmmakers.\n\nRelease\nAnimal Collective announced Tangerine Reef on July 16, 2018, alongside a pre-order of the album and the release of the first single \"Hair Cutter\", which was accompanied by a music video released exclusively on Apple Music and directed by John McSwain and Coral Morphologic. The album's accompanying film premiered on the band's website on the same day of its release on August 17, 2018.\n\nCritical reception\n\nAt Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, Tangerine Reef received an average score of 60, based on 18 reviews, indicating \"generally favorable reviews\". Alex Hudson from Exclaim! gave the album a mixed review, saying, \"For fans of Animal Collective's trippier inclinations, Tangerine Reef is a pleasant bit of oceanic escapism. For new listeners or anyone looking for the next \"My Girls,\" this is decidedly inessential.\" Erik Adams of The A.V. Club wrote, \"The record captures all the noodling self-indulgence that makes the psych-poppers such a maddeningly inconsistent live act. But Tangerine Reef is an incomplete object in this form: It's accompaniment, not feature presentation, the drowsy soundtrack to the iridescent undersea visuals of Australian filmmakers Coral Morphologic.\"\n\nPopMatters critic Chris Ingalls stated, \"Tangerine Reef is a project that may likely polarize Animal Collective fans, and it may not be an ideal jumping-off point for anyone looking to discover this unique band, but it's a worthy addition to their catalog, and it supports a supremely important cause in this day and age.\" Pitchforks Sasha Geffen wrote, \"Without Panda Bear on board, Animal Collective lose the pop edge that has resulted in their most commercially successful music, but this isn't a project for scoring hits. It's a meditative, hypnotic experience, and it's not without the sense of playfulness that has driven Animal Collective throughout their career.\" Emily Mackay of The Observer criticized the album, saying \"AC plumb depths of paucity more than subtlety in this wilfully desolate expanse of dispassionate vocals and vague, awkward ambience.\"\n\nTrack listing\n\nPersonnel\n Avey Tare\n Deakin\n Geologist\n\nCharts\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Official website\n\n2018 albums\nAnimal Collective albums\nDomino Recording Company albums" ]
[ "Panda Bear (musician)", "Animal Collective", "What was the Animal Collective?", "The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name \"Animal Collective", "What year did they form?", "2000.", "How long were they active?", "I don't know.", "How many band members are in Animal Collective?", "four", "What instruments do they play in Animal Collective?", "electronic music styles such as house and techno," ]
C_10f543ec7eb343aca5b764d21b721d2b_1
Where did the band perform?
6
Where did the Animal Collective perform?
Panda Bear (musician)
As a teen, Lennox began listening to electronic music styles such as house and techno, and artists such as Aphex Twin, all of which became a major influence on his later work. He recorded and performed music--solo and with friends. Lennox started using the name "Panda Bear" because he drew pictures of pandas for the artwork of his recordings. Lennox had been friends with Deakin (Josh Dibb) since the second grade. Deakin introduced Lennox to his high school friends Avey Tare (Dave Portner) and Geologist (Brian Weitz). For years, the four of them swapped homemade recordings, shared musical ideas and performed in different group configurations. Lennox, along with Deakin moved to New York in 2000. The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name "Animal Collective". Since the 2007 releases of Panda Bear's Person Pitch and Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam, he has focused more on using samplers and other electronics in their shows. He has named Black Dice as a major influence stating "Black Dice took us on our first tour and I feel like the wisest things I've learned about being in a band I learned by watching them." He said he looks to Black Dice "as a model for a band... I feel like as a band, I can't speak for the other guys [of Animal Collective], but certainly for myself, like I modelled the way I approach to everything with the band watching the way Black Dice did it." In addition to singing, Lennox played drums and occasionally guitar in Animal Collective's live performances. He cites Stewart Copeland as the biggest influence on his drumming style. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
Noah Benjamin Lennox (born July 17, 1978), also known by his moniker Panda Bear, is an American musician, singer-songwriter and co-founding member of the band Animal Collective. In addition to his work with that group, Lennox has released six solo LPs since 1999. His third, Person Pitch (2007), is noted for influencing a wide range of subsequent indie music in addition to inspiring the chillwave genre and numerous soundalike acts. Lennox was primarily raised in Baltimore, Maryland, where he sang tenor in his high school chamber choir, and studied piano and cello. The name "Panda Bear" derived from his habit of drawing pandas on his early mixtapes as a teenager. He and the other members of Animal Collective began collaborating in the late 1990s. He has lived in Lisbon, Portugal since 2004. Early life Lennox grew up in the Roland Park section of Baltimore, Maryland, and attended Waldorf School of Baltimore through 8th grade, and Kimberton Waldorf School in Chester County, Pennsylvania for high school. His family moved frequently during his early years, owing to his father's studies to be an orthopedic surgeon. As a youth, he played sports, mainly soccer and basketball. His brother, Matt Lennox (the Animal Collective song "Brother Sport" is directed at him), was a leading player on the high school basketball team and Noah was also a team member, playing as point guard. Lennox has also stated in interviews that he enjoyed drawing a lot as a teenager, especially pandas, and later started drawing pandas on his early mixtapes. He also studied piano until he was eight, then cello, and later on he sang tenor in his high school chamber choir. Though he and his family have never been very religious, Lennox briefly attended Boston University, where he majored in religion because of his interest in "the concept of God". Career Animal Collective As a teen, Lennox began listening to electronic music styles such as house and techno, and artists such as Aphex Twin, all of which became a major influence on his later work. He recorded and performed music—solo and with friends. Lennox started using the name "Panda Bear" because he drew pictures of pandas for the artwork of his recordings. Lennox had been friends with Deakin (Josh Dibb) since the second grade. Deakin introduced Lennox to his high school friends Avey Tare (Dave Portner) and Geologist (Brian Weitz). For years, the four of them swapped homemade recordings, shared musical ideas and performed in different group configurations. Lennox, along with Deakin moved to New York in 2000. The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name "Animal Collective". Since the 2007 releases of Panda Bear's Person Pitch and Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam, he has focused more on using samplers and other electronics in their shows. He has named Black Dice as a major influence stating "Black Dice took us on our first tour and I feel like the wisest things I've learned about being in a band I learned by watching them." He said he looks to Black Dice "as a model for a band... I feel like as a band, I can't speak for the other guys [of Animal Collective], but certainly for myself, like I modelled the way I approach to everything with the band watching the way Black Dice did it." In addition to singing, Lennox played drums and occasionally guitar in Animal Collective's live performances. He cites Stewart Copeland as the biggest influence on his drumming style. Solo work Lennox's early musical influences included electronic styles, and his solo work has been variously characterized as experimental pop, electronic, bedroom pop, neo-psychedelic pop, and indie music. The Line of Best Fit called him a "psychedelic pop trailblazer." Lennox's debut album Panda Bear was released in 1999 on Soccer Star Records. After focusing more on touring and recording with Animal Collective, he released the follow-up Young Prayer in 2004 and the highly acclaimed third solo album Person Pitch in 2007. Of his songwriting style, Lennox says "I get impatient writing songs, I can't spend more than a couple of hours before I get frustrated. So I got to kind of spit it out real fast. My favorite songs are the ones where I worked really really fast on, when it comes all out in like two hours or something." Panda Bear's fourth album, Tomboy, was released April 12, 2011, on his own label, Paw Tracks. He started performing material from Tomboy on December 5, 2008, at a show with No Age in Miami, Florida. During a brief European tour in January 2010, he played three shows consisting almost entirely of new material. On March 7, 2010, a tour setlist with titles for ten of the new songs was posted on Panda Bear's MySpace blog. He also played Primavera Sound Festival in 2010. The single "Tomboy" and the b-side "Slow Motion" were released in July 2010. It was announced in August that singles "You Can Count on Me" and "Alsatian Darn" would be released via Domino on September 28. The limited 500 copies of "You Can Count On Me" sold out in less than a day. The single "Last Night at the Jetty" was released December 2010. The single "Surfer's Hymn" was released March 28, 2011. His song "Comfy In Nautica" appears in ABC's 2010 global warming movie Earth 2100. Lennox was chosen by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival he planned to curate in December 2011 in Minehead, England. However, Lennox was unable to play when the event was rescheduled to March 2012. In June 2013, Panda Bear performed a set of all new material at ATP. In October 2014, the Mr Noah EP was released, featuring four new songs. The full album, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, was released in January 2015. In 2018, Lennox released the vinyl-only A Day With the Homies EP, a collection of five songs heavily influenced by house + bass music. Included on the packaging of the release were hidden URLs that pointed to samples used on the EP. In February 2019, he released the LP Buoys, featuring production work by longtime collaborator Rusty Santos. It was preceded by the single "Dolphin". Outside musical collaborations Lennox plays in the band Jane and Together with DJ Scott Mou. He has also performed on tracks with Atlas Sound (Bradford Cox of Deerhunter), Ducktails (Matt Mondanile, best known as the former lead guitarist of the American indie rock band Real Estate) and electronic musicians Zomby and Pantha du Prince. Panda Bear appeared on the track "Doin' It Right" on the 2013 Daft Punk album Random Access Memories. The album won Daft Punk the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2014, making Panda Bear a co-winner. Personal life In 2004, Lennox moved from New York City to Lisbon, Portugal. He first visited the city for a vacation following a long Animal Collective tour in 2003. Lennox says about Lisbon: "Since I got off the airplane here [for the first time] I had a good feeling about this place." He met his wife, the fashion designer Fernanda Pereira, there; after visiting each other in Lisbon and New York, Lennox decided to move to Europe because he also felt "connected to the European way of life", considering himself as a "slow moving kind of person" and Lisbon as a "slow moving kind of place". Lennox and Pereira have a daughter, Nadja, born in 2005 and a son, born in June 2010. In 2007, he and Pereira collaborated on a line of sweatshirts called 2nd Things. Musical equipment Synthesizers Minimoog Voyager Korg M3 Digital samplers Elektron Octatrack Roland SP-555 Boss SP-303 "Dr. Sample" Teenage Engineering OP-1 Drum machine/synthesizer JoMoX Xbase 999 Discography Studio albums Extended plays Singles "I'm Not/Comfy in Nautica" (September 22, 2005, UUAR) "Bros" (December 4, 2006, Fat Cat Records) "Carrots" (January 23, 2007, Paw Tracks) "Take Pills" (June 19, 2007, Paw Tracks) "Tomboy" (July 13, 2010, Paw Tracks) "You Can Count on Me" (October 19, 2010, Domino) "Last Night at the Jetty" (December 13, 2010, FatCat Records) "Surfer's Hymn" (March 28, 2011, Kompakt) "Mr Noah" (October 23, 2014, Domino) "Boys Latin" (December 15, 2014, Domino) "Crosswords" (August 20, 2015, Domino) "Dolphin" (November 8, 2018, Domino) "Token" (January 14, 2019, Domino) "Playing the Long Game" (October 9, 2019, Domino) Remixes "Boneless" (remix of Notwist song "Boneless") on "Boneless" 7" "As Young As Yesterday" (remix of Korallreven song "As Young As Yesterday") on "As Young As Yesterday" 12" (2011) "Cheap Treat (Panda Bear Version)" (remix of Eric Copeland song "Cheap Treat") on "Remixes" EP. "Melody Unfair (Panda Bear Remix)" on Essence of Eucalyptus by Avey Tare "Never Ending Game (Panda Bear Remix)" on Bigger House by Angel Du$t Appearances One untitled track on Visionaire 53 – Sound (December 1, 2007, Visionaire Publishing, LLC) "Anna" on the album East of Eden by Taken by Trees (September 7, 2009) "Walkabout" on the album Logos by Atlas Sound (October 20, 2009) "Stick to My Side" on the album Black Noise by Pantha du Prince (February 9, 2010) "Killin the Vibe" (bonus track) on the album Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics by Ducktails (January 18, 2011) "Atiba Song" composed music for a skateboarding montage directed by Atiba Jefferson and Ty Evans. The track was initially created by Atiba, then finished by Panda Bear. "The Preakness" on the cassette tape Keep + Animal Collective (March 2011, Keep) "Things Fall Apart" on the album Dedication by Zomby (July 11, 2011) "Pyjama" on the album Tracer by Teengirl Fantasy (August 21, 2012) "Doin' It Right" on the album Random Access Memories by Daft Punk (May 17, 2013) "Time (Is)", "Binz", "Beltway" and "I'm a Witness" on the album When I Get Home by Solange (March 1, 2019) "I Don't Need a Crowd" on the I Don't Need a Crowd/The One That Got Away 7" by Paul Maroon (March 15, 2019) "Studie" on the album Anicca by Teebs (September 18, 2019) "Gameday Continues" on the album HBCU Gameday by Sporting Life. (January 27, 2020) "Just a Little Piece of Me" on the album All Things Being Equal by Sonic Boom. (June 5, 2020) References External links Interview from 2008 on Onhiat.us Ola's Kool Kitchen on Radio 23 – Panda Bear Live, Primavera 2010 American male singers 1978 births 21st-century American musicians Living people Ableton Live users American expatriates in Portugal Animal Collective members Grammy Award winners Experimental pop musicians Domino Recording Company artists 21st-century American singers
false
[ "The No Sound Without Silence Tour is the third arena tour by Irish pop rock band The Script. Launched in support of their fourth studio album No Sound Without Silence (2014), the tour began in Tokyo on 16 January 2015 and visited Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and Oceania. The opening acts were American singer Phillip Phillips for the South African dates, and English singer Tinie Tempah for the European dates. Pharrell Williams served as a co-headliner for the Croke Park concert on 20 June 2015.\n\nOpening acts\nColton Avery (Europe, North America, Australia, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia)\nMary Lambert (North America)\nPhillip Phillips (South Africa)\nSilent Sanctuary (Philippines)\nTinie Tempah (Europe)\nPharrell Williams (Dublin)\nThe Wailers (Dublin)\nThe Sam Willows (Singapore)\nKensington (Band) (Europe)\n\nSetlist\nThis setlist is based on previous performances of the tour.\n\n \"Paint the Town Green\"\n \"Hail Rain or Sunshine\"\n \"Breakeven\"\n \"Before the Worst\"\n \"Superheroes\"\n \"We Cry\"\n \"If You Could See Me Now\"\n \"Man on a Wire\"\n \"Nothing\"\n \"Good Ol' Days\"\n \"Never Seen Anything (Quite Like You)\"\n \"The Man Who Can't Be Moved\"\n \"You Won't Feel A Thing\"\n \"It's Not Right For You\"\n \"Six Degrees of Separation\"\n \"The Energy Never Dies\"\n \"For the First Time\"\n \"No Good in Goodbye\"\n \"Hall of Fame\"\n\nAdditional information\nDuring the performance in Sheffield, The Script didn't perform \"We Cry\" due to a fan collapsing. Danny called for Paramedic to check on her, she was fine and they carried on.\n\nDuring the performance in Barcelona, The Script didn't perform \"The End Where I Begin\" or \"Nothing\". They also did not perform \"Six Degrees Of Separation\" and \"It's Not Right For You\".\n\nDuring the performance in Oakland, The Script didn't perform \"The End Where I Begin\", \"We Cry\", or \"Six Degrees of Separation\".\n\nDuring the performance in Toronto, The Script did not perform \"The End Where I Begin\" and \"Six Degrees of Separation\".\n\nDuring the performance im Hamburg, The Script did not perform \"Nothing\" and \"Never Seen Anything (Quite Like You)\".\n\nTour dates\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\n2015 concert tours\nThe Script concert tours", "Peter George \"Peet\" Coombes (1952–1997) was an English guitarist, vocalist and songwriter. He was the lead singer and primary songwriter of the group The Tourists, the first charting band to feature guitarist Dave Stewart and singer Annie Lennox, later to gain greater fame as the duo Eurythmics.\n\nThe Catch and The Tourists\nCoombes was born in Bradford, England, but spent most of his early life in Sunderland, where he met Dave Stewart. Stewart introduced Coombes to Annie Lennox, whom he had met when she was working in a London restaurant. In 1976 the three formed a post-disco band called The Catch, which released one single \"Borderline/Black Blood\" that failed to chart. The band renamed itself The Tourists, adding bassist Eddie Chin and drummer Jim Toomey. Coombes played guitar, sang and wrote most of the Tourists' original songs.\n\nAfter releasing their third album in 1980 the band dissolved. Dave Stewart was keen to move from the Tourists' guitar-based new wave sound to explore synthesiser-led pop and formed Eurythmics with Annie Lennox.\n\nPost-Tourists\nPeet Coombes and Eddie Chin started a group called Acid Drops but it did not release recorded material. Coombes moved to London and did not perform during most of the 1980s. In 1992 he moved to Cornwall and created the band Diminished Responsibility with amateur producer and bassist Andy Brown, his wife Cathy and with Dave Farghally on drums. The band did not release any recordings.\n\nIn the 1990s his health deteriorated and by late 1996 he could no longer perform. He died in 1997 due to cirrhosis of the liver related to long term heavy consumption of alcohol. He was 45 years old.\n\nCoombes' sons Joey and Robin Coombes formed the hip hop group Task Force.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n1952 births\n1997 deaths\nEnglish rock guitarists\nEnglish male guitarists\nEnglish new wave musicians\nEnglish songwriters\nPeople from Sunderland\n20th-century English musicians\n20th-century British guitarists\n20th-century British male musicians\nThe Tourists members\nDeaths from cirrhosis\nAlcohol-related deaths in England\nBritish male songwriters" ]
[ "Panda Bear (musician)", "Animal Collective", "What was the Animal Collective?", "The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name \"Animal Collective", "What year did they form?", "2000.", "How long were they active?", "I don't know.", "How many band members are in Animal Collective?", "four", "What instruments do they play in Animal Collective?", "electronic music styles such as house and techno,", "Where did the band perform?", "I don't know." ]
C_10f543ec7eb343aca5b764d21b721d2b_1
Where was the band from?
7
Where was Animal Collective from?
Panda Bear (musician)
As a teen, Lennox began listening to electronic music styles such as house and techno, and artists such as Aphex Twin, all of which became a major influence on his later work. He recorded and performed music--solo and with friends. Lennox started using the name "Panda Bear" because he drew pictures of pandas for the artwork of his recordings. Lennox had been friends with Deakin (Josh Dibb) since the second grade. Deakin introduced Lennox to his high school friends Avey Tare (Dave Portner) and Geologist (Brian Weitz). For years, the four of them swapped homemade recordings, shared musical ideas and performed in different group configurations. Lennox, along with Deakin moved to New York in 2000. The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name "Animal Collective". Since the 2007 releases of Panda Bear's Person Pitch and Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam, he has focused more on using samplers and other electronics in their shows. He has named Black Dice as a major influence stating "Black Dice took us on our first tour and I feel like the wisest things I've learned about being in a band I learned by watching them." He said he looks to Black Dice "as a model for a band... I feel like as a band, I can't speak for the other guys [of Animal Collective], but certainly for myself, like I modelled the way I approach to everything with the band watching the way Black Dice did it." In addition to singing, Lennox played drums and occasionally guitar in Animal Collective's live performances. He cites Stewart Copeland as the biggest influence on his drumming style. CANNOTANSWER
2000.
Noah Benjamin Lennox (born July 17, 1978), also known by his moniker Panda Bear, is an American musician, singer-songwriter and co-founding member of the band Animal Collective. In addition to his work with that group, Lennox has released six solo LPs since 1999. His third, Person Pitch (2007), is noted for influencing a wide range of subsequent indie music in addition to inspiring the chillwave genre and numerous soundalike acts. Lennox was primarily raised in Baltimore, Maryland, where he sang tenor in his high school chamber choir, and studied piano and cello. The name "Panda Bear" derived from his habit of drawing pandas on his early mixtapes as a teenager. He and the other members of Animal Collective began collaborating in the late 1990s. He has lived in Lisbon, Portugal since 2004. Early life Lennox grew up in the Roland Park section of Baltimore, Maryland, and attended Waldorf School of Baltimore through 8th grade, and Kimberton Waldorf School in Chester County, Pennsylvania for high school. His family moved frequently during his early years, owing to his father's studies to be an orthopedic surgeon. As a youth, he played sports, mainly soccer and basketball. His brother, Matt Lennox (the Animal Collective song "Brother Sport" is directed at him), was a leading player on the high school basketball team and Noah was also a team member, playing as point guard. Lennox has also stated in interviews that he enjoyed drawing a lot as a teenager, especially pandas, and later started drawing pandas on his early mixtapes. He also studied piano until he was eight, then cello, and later on he sang tenor in his high school chamber choir. Though he and his family have never been very religious, Lennox briefly attended Boston University, where he majored in religion because of his interest in "the concept of God". Career Animal Collective As a teen, Lennox began listening to electronic music styles such as house and techno, and artists such as Aphex Twin, all of which became a major influence on his later work. He recorded and performed music—solo and with friends. Lennox started using the name "Panda Bear" because he drew pictures of pandas for the artwork of his recordings. Lennox had been friends with Deakin (Josh Dibb) since the second grade. Deakin introduced Lennox to his high school friends Avey Tare (Dave Portner) and Geologist (Brian Weitz). For years, the four of them swapped homemade recordings, shared musical ideas and performed in different group configurations. Lennox, along with Deakin moved to New York in 2000. The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name "Animal Collective". Since the 2007 releases of Panda Bear's Person Pitch and Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam, he has focused more on using samplers and other electronics in their shows. He has named Black Dice as a major influence stating "Black Dice took us on our first tour and I feel like the wisest things I've learned about being in a band I learned by watching them." He said he looks to Black Dice "as a model for a band... I feel like as a band, I can't speak for the other guys [of Animal Collective], but certainly for myself, like I modelled the way I approach to everything with the band watching the way Black Dice did it." In addition to singing, Lennox played drums and occasionally guitar in Animal Collective's live performances. He cites Stewart Copeland as the biggest influence on his drumming style. Solo work Lennox's early musical influences included electronic styles, and his solo work has been variously characterized as experimental pop, electronic, bedroom pop, neo-psychedelic pop, and indie music. The Line of Best Fit called him a "psychedelic pop trailblazer." Lennox's debut album Panda Bear was released in 1999 on Soccer Star Records. After focusing more on touring and recording with Animal Collective, he released the follow-up Young Prayer in 2004 and the highly acclaimed third solo album Person Pitch in 2007. Of his songwriting style, Lennox says "I get impatient writing songs, I can't spend more than a couple of hours before I get frustrated. So I got to kind of spit it out real fast. My favorite songs are the ones where I worked really really fast on, when it comes all out in like two hours or something." Panda Bear's fourth album, Tomboy, was released April 12, 2011, on his own label, Paw Tracks. He started performing material from Tomboy on December 5, 2008, at a show with No Age in Miami, Florida. During a brief European tour in January 2010, he played three shows consisting almost entirely of new material. On March 7, 2010, a tour setlist with titles for ten of the new songs was posted on Panda Bear's MySpace blog. He also played Primavera Sound Festival in 2010. The single "Tomboy" and the b-side "Slow Motion" were released in July 2010. It was announced in August that singles "You Can Count on Me" and "Alsatian Darn" would be released via Domino on September 28. The limited 500 copies of "You Can Count On Me" sold out in less than a day. The single "Last Night at the Jetty" was released December 2010. The single "Surfer's Hymn" was released March 28, 2011. His song "Comfy In Nautica" appears in ABC's 2010 global warming movie Earth 2100. Lennox was chosen by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival he planned to curate in December 2011 in Minehead, England. However, Lennox was unable to play when the event was rescheduled to March 2012. In June 2013, Panda Bear performed a set of all new material at ATP. In October 2014, the Mr Noah EP was released, featuring four new songs. The full album, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, was released in January 2015. In 2018, Lennox released the vinyl-only A Day With the Homies EP, a collection of five songs heavily influenced by house + bass music. Included on the packaging of the release were hidden URLs that pointed to samples used on the EP. In February 2019, he released the LP Buoys, featuring production work by longtime collaborator Rusty Santos. It was preceded by the single "Dolphin". Outside musical collaborations Lennox plays in the band Jane and Together with DJ Scott Mou. He has also performed on tracks with Atlas Sound (Bradford Cox of Deerhunter), Ducktails (Matt Mondanile, best known as the former lead guitarist of the American indie rock band Real Estate) and electronic musicians Zomby and Pantha du Prince. Panda Bear appeared on the track "Doin' It Right" on the 2013 Daft Punk album Random Access Memories. The album won Daft Punk the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2014, making Panda Bear a co-winner. Personal life In 2004, Lennox moved from New York City to Lisbon, Portugal. He first visited the city for a vacation following a long Animal Collective tour in 2003. Lennox says about Lisbon: "Since I got off the airplane here [for the first time] I had a good feeling about this place." He met his wife, the fashion designer Fernanda Pereira, there; after visiting each other in Lisbon and New York, Lennox decided to move to Europe because he also felt "connected to the European way of life", considering himself as a "slow moving kind of person" and Lisbon as a "slow moving kind of place". Lennox and Pereira have a daughter, Nadja, born in 2005 and a son, born in June 2010. In 2007, he and Pereira collaborated on a line of sweatshirts called 2nd Things. Musical equipment Synthesizers Minimoog Voyager Korg M3 Digital samplers Elektron Octatrack Roland SP-555 Boss SP-303 "Dr. Sample" Teenage Engineering OP-1 Drum machine/synthesizer JoMoX Xbase 999 Discography Studio albums Extended plays Singles "I'm Not/Comfy in Nautica" (September 22, 2005, UUAR) "Bros" (December 4, 2006, Fat Cat Records) "Carrots" (January 23, 2007, Paw Tracks) "Take Pills" (June 19, 2007, Paw Tracks) "Tomboy" (July 13, 2010, Paw Tracks) "You Can Count on Me" (October 19, 2010, Domino) "Last Night at the Jetty" (December 13, 2010, FatCat Records) "Surfer's Hymn" (March 28, 2011, Kompakt) "Mr Noah" (October 23, 2014, Domino) "Boys Latin" (December 15, 2014, Domino) "Crosswords" (August 20, 2015, Domino) "Dolphin" (November 8, 2018, Domino) "Token" (January 14, 2019, Domino) "Playing the Long Game" (October 9, 2019, Domino) Remixes "Boneless" (remix of Notwist song "Boneless") on "Boneless" 7" "As Young As Yesterday" (remix of Korallreven song "As Young As Yesterday") on "As Young As Yesterday" 12" (2011) "Cheap Treat (Panda Bear Version)" (remix of Eric Copeland song "Cheap Treat") on "Remixes" EP. "Melody Unfair (Panda Bear Remix)" on Essence of Eucalyptus by Avey Tare "Never Ending Game (Panda Bear Remix)" on Bigger House by Angel Du$t Appearances One untitled track on Visionaire 53 – Sound (December 1, 2007, Visionaire Publishing, LLC) "Anna" on the album East of Eden by Taken by Trees (September 7, 2009) "Walkabout" on the album Logos by Atlas Sound (October 20, 2009) "Stick to My Side" on the album Black Noise by Pantha du Prince (February 9, 2010) "Killin the Vibe" (bonus track) on the album Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics by Ducktails (January 18, 2011) "Atiba Song" composed music for a skateboarding montage directed by Atiba Jefferson and Ty Evans. The track was initially created by Atiba, then finished by Panda Bear. "The Preakness" on the cassette tape Keep + Animal Collective (March 2011, Keep) "Things Fall Apart" on the album Dedication by Zomby (July 11, 2011) "Pyjama" on the album Tracer by Teengirl Fantasy (August 21, 2012) "Doin' It Right" on the album Random Access Memories by Daft Punk (May 17, 2013) "Time (Is)", "Binz", "Beltway" and "I'm a Witness" on the album When I Get Home by Solange (March 1, 2019) "I Don't Need a Crowd" on the I Don't Need a Crowd/The One That Got Away 7" by Paul Maroon (March 15, 2019) "Studie" on the album Anicca by Teebs (September 18, 2019) "Gameday Continues" on the album HBCU Gameday by Sporting Life. (January 27, 2020) "Just a Little Piece of Me" on the album All Things Being Equal by Sonic Boom. (June 5, 2020) References External links Interview from 2008 on Onhiat.us Ola's Kool Kitchen on Radio 23 – Panda Bear Live, Primavera 2010 American male singers 1978 births 21st-century American musicians Living people Ableton Live users American expatriates in Portugal Animal Collective members Grammy Award winners Experimental pop musicians Domino Recording Company artists 21st-century American singers
true
[ "is a Japanese punk rock band that formed in 2009.\n\nBiography \n\nThe band formed in December 2009, and was made up of students from Kwansei Gakuin University's music club in Nishinomiya. After finding it difficult to find full-time employment, the members decided to form the band. For three of the members, this was the fourth time they had formed a band. Seiya Yamasaki and Kazuma Okazawa were originally from a band called , which formed at Kwansei Gakuin University and was active in 2008 and 2009. Keyboardist Shinnosuke Yokota was originally from a band called Blank Map, and drummer Taisuke Sogō from a band called . The band took their name from an accessory from the game Final Fantasy X-2, , which was translated as \"cat nip\" in the English version of the game. The name is a reference to the Japanese proverb .\n\nIn 2010, the band started performing at live houses across the Kansai area. In March 2012, the band released their first album Jūdai de Dashitakatta, followed by Daiji na Oshirase in December. The band entered the Rockin' On Japan web competition Ro69Jack 2011, and were one of 14 prize winning bands.\n\nThe band's 2013 extended play We Are Indies Band!! was successful, debuting in the top 20 of Oricon's albums charts. On April 1, 2014, it was announced that Kyuso Nekokami signed with major label Victor Entertainment, where they released Change the World in June.\n\nThe band has also toured in Asia.\n\nMembers \n is the band's main vocalist and guitarist. His name in kanji is , and he is originally from Gobō, Wakayama.\n is the band's keyboardist and occasional vocalist.\n is the band's guitarist. His name in kanji is , and he is originally from Nishiki-chō in Sasayama, Hyōgo.\n is the band's bassist, who joined the band on November 25, 2011 after Hagane-maru left.\n is the band's drummer.\n\nFormer member \n is the band's former bassist, who left on November 25, 2011 to be replaced by Takurō Kawakubo.\n\nDiscography\n\nStudio albums\n\nExtended plays\n\nSingles\n\nPromotional singles\n\nVideo albums\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n\n Official website\n Official Victor label site\n\n2009 establishments in Japan\nJapanese indie rock groups\nJapanese punk rock groups\nMusical groups established in 2009\nMusical groups from Hyōgo Prefecture\nMusical quintets\nVictor Entertainment artists", "The Pilot EP was the first official release by British rock band Reuben. This recording was with the original Reuben line up, including Mark Lawton on drums. It was recorded in the summer of 2000 at Backline studios in Guildford with ex Redwood guitarist Rob Blackham. The band had met Rob at Guildford festival, where he urged them to record a demo of some sort, so they set about recording five songs in four days. The EP was released on the Badmusic label in January 2001. The initial run was of 500 copies, which sold out fairly fast, but it is regularly repressed and is available at shows and by mail order. It was reviewed in Kerrang! by members of Taproot, and received a KKKK rating, despite being described as 'cheesey' by the singer.\n\nTrack listing\n\"Alpha Signal Seven\"\n\"Words From Reuben\"\n\"Crimson\"\n\"Death Of A Star\"\n\"Shambles\" (hidden track only on the first 500 copies - click for free download from the band's official site)\n\nPersonnel\nJamie Lenman: Guitar, Vocals\nJon Pearce: Bass Guitar\nMark Lawton: Drums\n\nMiscellanea\nAlpha Signal Seven gained the band an early following by being played by DJ Steve Lamacq a number of times by the on his BBC Radio 1 show. It was also the track that convinced Badmusic to put out the EP.\nWords From Reuben was the song the band named themselves after. The title makes reference to receiving a letter from an old friend; 'Reuben' having been the first friend that Jamie ever made. It was decided to shorten the band name to just 'Reuben', because the band cited the longer version as 'way too emo'. The song was the first to be written with drummer Mark in the band. It was also featured on the Farnborough Groove Volume 9 compilation. The funny phased guitar sounds heard on the song were originally just for fun but were left in when the band ran out of time to mix.\nCrimson is said by the band to be \"a failed attempt to sound like the Deftones\". This is a big live favourite and was played a couple of times on XFM around the time of the initial EP release.\nDeath of a Star was written when the band were named Angel and with drummer and producer Jason Wilson, the song was a favourite of the band's at the time. It used to be the standard set-opener from their days at the Tumbledown.\nThe first pressing of the EP (the first 500 copies) included a secret track, 'Shambles'. The track can be downloaded in full at the band's website.\nReuben where unsure of whether or not they had enough money to record the EP, but decided to go for it after they won £100 in a 'battle of the bands' competition staged in Bookham barn hall in front of a panel of twelve year olds.\nThe band changed their name from 'Angel' to 'Reuben' just before the release, for fear that it might get overlooked if it were under a different name.\n Fleet/Farnborough-based alternative rock band Pilot:X took their name from this EP. The band are also heavily influenced by Reuben, citing them as one of their main inspirations.\n\n2001 EPs\nReuben (band) albums" ]
[ "Panda Bear (musician)", "Animal Collective", "What was the Animal Collective?", "The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name \"Animal Collective", "What year did they form?", "2000.", "How long were they active?", "I don't know.", "How many band members are in Animal Collective?", "four", "What instruments do they play in Animal Collective?", "electronic music styles such as house and techno,", "Where did the band perform?", "I don't know.", "Where was the band from?", "2000." ]
C_10f543ec7eb343aca5b764d21b721d2b_1
Is there anything else that's interesting about Animal Collective?
8
Besides Animal Collective forming in 2000,Is there anything else that's interesting about Animal Collective?
Panda Bear (musician)
As a teen, Lennox began listening to electronic music styles such as house and techno, and artists such as Aphex Twin, all of which became a major influence on his later work. He recorded and performed music--solo and with friends. Lennox started using the name "Panda Bear" because he drew pictures of pandas for the artwork of his recordings. Lennox had been friends with Deakin (Josh Dibb) since the second grade. Deakin introduced Lennox to his high school friends Avey Tare (Dave Portner) and Geologist (Brian Weitz). For years, the four of them swapped homemade recordings, shared musical ideas and performed in different group configurations. Lennox, along with Deakin moved to New York in 2000. The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name "Animal Collective". Since the 2007 releases of Panda Bear's Person Pitch and Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam, he has focused more on using samplers and other electronics in their shows. He has named Black Dice as a major influence stating "Black Dice took us on our first tour and I feel like the wisest things I've learned about being in a band I learned by watching them." He said he looks to Black Dice "as a model for a band... I feel like as a band, I can't speak for the other guys [of Animal Collective], but certainly for myself, like I modelled the way I approach to everything with the band watching the way Black Dice did it." In addition to singing, Lennox played drums and occasionally guitar in Animal Collective's live performances. He cites Stewart Copeland as the biggest influence on his drumming style. CANNOTANSWER
Lennox started using the name "Panda Bear" because he drew pictures of pandas for the artwork of his recordings.
Noah Benjamin Lennox (born July 17, 1978), also known by his moniker Panda Bear, is an American musician, singer-songwriter and co-founding member of the band Animal Collective. In addition to his work with that group, Lennox has released six solo LPs since 1999. His third, Person Pitch (2007), is noted for influencing a wide range of subsequent indie music in addition to inspiring the chillwave genre and numerous soundalike acts. Lennox was primarily raised in Baltimore, Maryland, where he sang tenor in his high school chamber choir, and studied piano and cello. The name "Panda Bear" derived from his habit of drawing pandas on his early mixtapes as a teenager. He and the other members of Animal Collective began collaborating in the late 1990s. He has lived in Lisbon, Portugal since 2004. Early life Lennox grew up in the Roland Park section of Baltimore, Maryland, and attended Waldorf School of Baltimore through 8th grade, and Kimberton Waldorf School in Chester County, Pennsylvania for high school. His family moved frequently during his early years, owing to his father's studies to be an orthopedic surgeon. As a youth, he played sports, mainly soccer and basketball. His brother, Matt Lennox (the Animal Collective song "Brother Sport" is directed at him), was a leading player on the high school basketball team and Noah was also a team member, playing as point guard. Lennox has also stated in interviews that he enjoyed drawing a lot as a teenager, especially pandas, and later started drawing pandas on his early mixtapes. He also studied piano until he was eight, then cello, and later on he sang tenor in his high school chamber choir. Though he and his family have never been very religious, Lennox briefly attended Boston University, where he majored in religion because of his interest in "the concept of God". Career Animal Collective As a teen, Lennox began listening to electronic music styles such as house and techno, and artists such as Aphex Twin, all of which became a major influence on his later work. He recorded and performed music—solo and with friends. Lennox started using the name "Panda Bear" because he drew pictures of pandas for the artwork of his recordings. Lennox had been friends with Deakin (Josh Dibb) since the second grade. Deakin introduced Lennox to his high school friends Avey Tare (Dave Portner) and Geologist (Brian Weitz). For years, the four of them swapped homemade recordings, shared musical ideas and performed in different group configurations. Lennox, along with Deakin moved to New York in 2000. The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name "Animal Collective". Since the 2007 releases of Panda Bear's Person Pitch and Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam, he has focused more on using samplers and other electronics in their shows. He has named Black Dice as a major influence stating "Black Dice took us on our first tour and I feel like the wisest things I've learned about being in a band I learned by watching them." He said he looks to Black Dice "as a model for a band... I feel like as a band, I can't speak for the other guys [of Animal Collective], but certainly for myself, like I modelled the way I approach to everything with the band watching the way Black Dice did it." In addition to singing, Lennox played drums and occasionally guitar in Animal Collective's live performances. He cites Stewart Copeland as the biggest influence on his drumming style. Solo work Lennox's early musical influences included electronic styles, and his solo work has been variously characterized as experimental pop, electronic, bedroom pop, neo-psychedelic pop, and indie music. The Line of Best Fit called him a "psychedelic pop trailblazer." Lennox's debut album Panda Bear was released in 1999 on Soccer Star Records. After focusing more on touring and recording with Animal Collective, he released the follow-up Young Prayer in 2004 and the highly acclaimed third solo album Person Pitch in 2007. Of his songwriting style, Lennox says "I get impatient writing songs, I can't spend more than a couple of hours before I get frustrated. So I got to kind of spit it out real fast. My favorite songs are the ones where I worked really really fast on, when it comes all out in like two hours or something." Panda Bear's fourth album, Tomboy, was released April 12, 2011, on his own label, Paw Tracks. He started performing material from Tomboy on December 5, 2008, at a show with No Age in Miami, Florida. During a brief European tour in January 2010, he played three shows consisting almost entirely of new material. On March 7, 2010, a tour setlist with titles for ten of the new songs was posted on Panda Bear's MySpace blog. He also played Primavera Sound Festival in 2010. The single "Tomboy" and the b-side "Slow Motion" were released in July 2010. It was announced in August that singles "You Can Count on Me" and "Alsatian Darn" would be released via Domino on September 28. The limited 500 copies of "You Can Count On Me" sold out in less than a day. The single "Last Night at the Jetty" was released December 2010. The single "Surfer's Hymn" was released March 28, 2011. His song "Comfy In Nautica" appears in ABC's 2010 global warming movie Earth 2100. Lennox was chosen by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival he planned to curate in December 2011 in Minehead, England. However, Lennox was unable to play when the event was rescheduled to March 2012. In June 2013, Panda Bear performed a set of all new material at ATP. In October 2014, the Mr Noah EP was released, featuring four new songs. The full album, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, was released in January 2015. In 2018, Lennox released the vinyl-only A Day With the Homies EP, a collection of five songs heavily influenced by house + bass music. Included on the packaging of the release were hidden URLs that pointed to samples used on the EP. In February 2019, he released the LP Buoys, featuring production work by longtime collaborator Rusty Santos. It was preceded by the single "Dolphin". Outside musical collaborations Lennox plays in the band Jane and Together with DJ Scott Mou. He has also performed on tracks with Atlas Sound (Bradford Cox of Deerhunter), Ducktails (Matt Mondanile, best known as the former lead guitarist of the American indie rock band Real Estate) and electronic musicians Zomby and Pantha du Prince. Panda Bear appeared on the track "Doin' It Right" on the 2013 Daft Punk album Random Access Memories. The album won Daft Punk the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2014, making Panda Bear a co-winner. Personal life In 2004, Lennox moved from New York City to Lisbon, Portugal. He first visited the city for a vacation following a long Animal Collective tour in 2003. Lennox says about Lisbon: "Since I got off the airplane here [for the first time] I had a good feeling about this place." He met his wife, the fashion designer Fernanda Pereira, there; after visiting each other in Lisbon and New York, Lennox decided to move to Europe because he also felt "connected to the European way of life", considering himself as a "slow moving kind of person" and Lisbon as a "slow moving kind of place". Lennox and Pereira have a daughter, Nadja, born in 2005 and a son, born in June 2010. In 2007, he and Pereira collaborated on a line of sweatshirts called 2nd Things. Musical equipment Synthesizers Minimoog Voyager Korg M3 Digital samplers Elektron Octatrack Roland SP-555 Boss SP-303 "Dr. Sample" Teenage Engineering OP-1 Drum machine/synthesizer JoMoX Xbase 999 Discography Studio albums Extended plays Singles "I'm Not/Comfy in Nautica" (September 22, 2005, UUAR) "Bros" (December 4, 2006, Fat Cat Records) "Carrots" (January 23, 2007, Paw Tracks) "Take Pills" (June 19, 2007, Paw Tracks) "Tomboy" (July 13, 2010, Paw Tracks) "You Can Count on Me" (October 19, 2010, Domino) "Last Night at the Jetty" (December 13, 2010, FatCat Records) "Surfer's Hymn" (March 28, 2011, Kompakt) "Mr Noah" (October 23, 2014, Domino) "Boys Latin" (December 15, 2014, Domino) "Crosswords" (August 20, 2015, Domino) "Dolphin" (November 8, 2018, Domino) "Token" (January 14, 2019, Domino) "Playing the Long Game" (October 9, 2019, Domino) Remixes "Boneless" (remix of Notwist song "Boneless") on "Boneless" 7" "As Young As Yesterday" (remix of Korallreven song "As Young As Yesterday") on "As Young As Yesterday" 12" (2011) "Cheap Treat (Panda Bear Version)" (remix of Eric Copeland song "Cheap Treat") on "Remixes" EP. "Melody Unfair (Panda Bear Remix)" on Essence of Eucalyptus by Avey Tare "Never Ending Game (Panda Bear Remix)" on Bigger House by Angel Du$t Appearances One untitled track on Visionaire 53 – Sound (December 1, 2007, Visionaire Publishing, LLC) "Anna" on the album East of Eden by Taken by Trees (September 7, 2009) "Walkabout" on the album Logos by Atlas Sound (October 20, 2009) "Stick to My Side" on the album Black Noise by Pantha du Prince (February 9, 2010) "Killin the Vibe" (bonus track) on the album Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics by Ducktails (January 18, 2011) "Atiba Song" composed music for a skateboarding montage directed by Atiba Jefferson and Ty Evans. The track was initially created by Atiba, then finished by Panda Bear. "The Preakness" on the cassette tape Keep + Animal Collective (March 2011, Keep) "Things Fall Apart" on the album Dedication by Zomby (July 11, 2011) "Pyjama" on the album Tracer by Teengirl Fantasy (August 21, 2012) "Doin' It Right" on the album Random Access Memories by Daft Punk (May 17, 2013) "Time (Is)", "Binz", "Beltway" and "I'm a Witness" on the album When I Get Home by Solange (March 1, 2019) "I Don't Need a Crowd" on the I Don't Need a Crowd/The One That Got Away 7" by Paul Maroon (March 15, 2019) "Studie" on the album Anicca by Teebs (September 18, 2019) "Gameday Continues" on the album HBCU Gameday by Sporting Life. (January 27, 2020) "Just a Little Piece of Me" on the album All Things Being Equal by Sonic Boom. (June 5, 2020) References External links Interview from 2008 on Onhiat.us Ola's Kool Kitchen on Radio 23 – Panda Bear Live, Primavera 2010 American male singers 1978 births 21st-century American musicians Living people Ableton Live users American expatriates in Portugal Animal Collective members Grammy Award winners Experimental pop musicians Domino Recording Company artists 21st-century American singers
true
[ "Monkey Been to Burn Town is an EP by experimental pop band Animal Collective, released on May 27, 2013 on Domino. The release features three remixes of the track, \"Monkey Riches\", from the band's ninth studio album, Centipede Hz (2012), and one remix of \"New Town Burnout\" from the same album.\n\nReception\nWriting for Pitchfork, Mark Richardson gave the EP a mixed review, but praised Shabazz Palaces' contribution, stating: \"The Shabazz Palaces cut is easily the most interesting song here, and seems to be the one you might still be pulling out once in a while in another six months. Considering that the EP, with three versions of the same song in a row, isn’t really meant to be heard as a whole, getting one truly intriguing track out of it isn’t such a bad deal.\"\n\nTrack listing\n\nReferences\n\n≤\n\n2013 EPs\nAnimal Collective EPs\nDomino Recording Company EPs\nRemix EPs", "\"How Interesting: A Tiny Man\" is a 2010 science fiction/magical realism short story by American writer Harlan Ellison. It was first published in Realms of Fantasy.\n\nPlot summary\nA scientist creates a tiny man. The tiny man is initially very popular, but then draws the hatred of the world, and so the tiny man must flee, together with the scientist (who is now likewise hated, for having created the tiny man).\n\nReception\n\"How Interesting: A Tiny Man\" won the 2010 Nebula Award for Best Short Story, tied with Kij Johnson's \"Ponies\". It was Ellison's final Nebula nomination and win, of his record-setting eight nominations and three wins.\n\nTor.com calls the story \"deceptively simple\", with \"execution (that) is flawless\" and a \"Geppetto-like\" narrator, while Publishers Weekly describes it as \"memorably depict(ing) humanity's smallness of spirit\". The SF Site, however, felt it was \"contrived and less than profound\".\n\nNick Mamatas compared \"How Interesting: A Tiny Man\" negatively to Ellison's other Nebula-winning short stories, and stated that the story's two mutually exclusive endings (in one, the tiny man is killed; in the other, he becomes God) are evocative of the process of writing short stories. Ben Peek considered it to be \"more allegory than (...) anything else\", and interpreted it as being about how the media \"give(s) everyone a voice\", and also about how Ellison was treated by science fiction fandom.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nAudio version of ''How Interesting: A Tiny Man, at StarShipSofa\nHow Interesting: A Tiny Man, at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database\n\nNebula Award for Best Short Story-winning works\nShort stories by Harlan Ellison" ]
[ "Daniel Barenboim", "Musical style" ]
C_59da01905ac94f81814fe47c397c115d_0
What year was he born in?
1
What year was Daniel Barenboim born in?
Daniel Barenboim
In the beginning of his career, Barenboim concentrated on music of the classical era, as well as some romantic composers. He made his first recording in 1954. Notable classical recordings include the complete cycles of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert's piano sonatas, and Mozart's piano concertos (in the latter, taking part as both soloist and conductor). Romantic recordings include Brahms's piano concertos (with John Barbirolli), Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, and Chopin's nocturnes. Barenboim also recorded many chamber works, especially in collaboration with his first wife, Jacqueline du Pre, the violinist Itzhak Perlman, and the violinist and violist Pinchas Zukerman. Noted performances include: the complete Mozart violin sonatas (with Perlman), Brahms's violin sonatas (live concert with Perlman, previously in the studio with Zukerman), Beethoven's and Brahms's cello sonatas (with du Pre), Beethoven's and Tchaikovsky's piano trios (with du Pre and Zukerman), and Schubert's Trout Quintet (with du Pre, Perlman, Zukerman, and Zubin Mehta). Notable recordings as a conductor include: the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Schubert and Schumann, the Da Ponte operas of Mozart, numerous operas by Wagner, including the complete Ring Cycle, and various concertos. Barenboim has written about his changing attitude to the music of Mahler; he has recorded Mahler's Fifth, Seventh and Ninth symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde. He has also performed and recorded the Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo and Villa-Lobos guitar concerto with John Williams as the guitar soloist. By the late 1990s, Barenboim had widened his concert repertoire, performing works by baroque as well as twentieth-century classical composers. Examples include: J.S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier (which he has played since childhood) and Goldberg Variations, Albeniz's Iberia, and Debussy's Preludes. In addition, he turned to other musical genres, such as jazz, and the folk music of his birthplace, Argentina. He conducted the 2006 New Year's Eve concert in Buenos Aires, in which tangos were played. Barenboim has continued to perform and record chamber music, sometimes with members of the orchestras he has led. Some examples include the Quartet for the End of Time by Messiaen with members of the Orchestre de Paris during his tenure there, Richard Strauss with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Mozart's Clarinet Trio with members of the Berlin Staatskapelle. To mark Barenboim's 75th birthday, Deutsche Grammophon released a box set of 39 CDs of his solo recordings, and Sony Classical issued a box set of Barenboim's orchestral recordings on 43 CDs and three DVDs in 2017, Daniel Barenboim - A Retrospective. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
Daniel Barenboim (; in , born 15 November 1942) is a pianist and conductor who is a citizen of Argentina, Israel, Palestine, and Spain. The current general music director of the Berlin State Opera and the Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim previously served as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris and La Scala in Milan. Barenboim is known for his work with the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Seville-based orchestra of young Arab and Israeli musicians, and as a resolute critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Barenboim has received many awards and prizes, including seven Grammy awards, an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, France's Légion d'honneur both as a Commander and Grand Officier, and the German Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz mit Stern und Schulterband. In 2002, along with Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, he was given Spain's Prince of Asturias Concord Award. Barenboim is a polyglot, fluent in Spanish, Hebrew, English, French, Italian, and German. A self-described Spinozist, he is significantly influenced by Spinoza's life and thought. Biography Daniel Barenboim was born on 15 November 1942 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Jewish parents Aida (née Schuster) and Enrique Barenboim, both professional pianists. He started piano lessons at the age of five with his mother, continuing to study with his father, who remained his only teacher. On 19 August 1950, at the age of seven, he gave his first formal concert, in Buenos Aires. In 1952, Barenboim's family moved to Israel. Two years later, in the summer of 1954, his parents took him to Salzburg to take part in Igor Markevitch's conducting classes. During that summer he also met and played for Wilhelm Furtwängler, who has remained a central musical influence and ideal for Barenboim. Furtwängler called the young Barenboim a "phenomenon" and invited him to perform the Beethoven First Piano Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic, but Barenboim's father considered it too soon after the Second World War for a Jewish boy to go to Germany. In 1955 Barenboim studied harmony and composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. On 15 June 1967, Barenboim and British cellist Jacqueline du Pré were married in Jerusalem at a Western Wall ceremony, du Pré having converted to Judaism. Acting as one of the witnesses was the conductor Zubin Mehta, a long-time friend of Barenboim. Since "I was not Jewish I had to temporarily be renamed Moshe Cohen, which made me a 'kosher witness'", Mehta recalled. Du Pré retired from music in 1973, after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). The marriage lasted until du Pré's death in 1987. In the early 1980s, Barenboim and Russian pianist Elena Bashkirova started a relationship. Together they had two sons, both born in Paris before du Pré's death: David Arthur, born 1983, and Michael, born 1985. Barenboim worked to keep his relationship with Bashkirova hidden from du Pré, and believed he had succeeded. He and Bashkirova married in 1988. Both sons are part of the music world: David is a manager-writer for the German hip-hop band Level 8, and Michael Barenboim is a classical violinist. Citizenship Barenboim holds citizenship in Argentina, Israel, Palestine, and Spain, and was the first person to hold Palestinian and Israeli citizenship simultaneously. He lives in Berlin. Career After performing in Buenos Aires, Barenboim made his international debut as a pianist at the age of 10 in 1952 in Vienna and Rome. In 1955 he performed in Paris, in 1956 in London, and in 1957 in New York under the baton of Leopold Stokowski. Regular concert tours of Europe, the United States, South America, Australia and the Far East followed thereafter. In June 1967, Barenboim and his then-fiancée Jacqueline du Pré gave concerts in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Beersheba before and during the Six-Day War. His friendship with musicians Itzhak Perlman, Zubin Mehta, and Pinchas Zukerman, and marriage to du Pré led to the 1969 film by Christopher Nupen of their performance of the Schubert "Trout" Quintet. Following his debut as a conductor with the English Chamber Orchestra in Abbey Road Studios, London, in 1966, Barenboim was invited to conduct by many European and American symphony orchestras. Between 1975 and 1989, he was music director of the Orchestre de Paris, where he conducted much contemporary music. Barenboim made his opera conducting debut in 1973 with a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Edinburgh Festival. He made his debut at Bayreuth in 1981, conducting there regularly until 1999. In 1988, he was appointed artistic and musical director of the Opéra Bastille in Paris, scheduled to open in 1990, but was fired in January 1989 by the opera's chairman Pierre Bergé. Barenboim was named music director designate of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1989 and succeeded Sir Georg Solti as its music director in 1991, a post he held until 17 June 2006. He expressed frustration with the need for fund-raising duties in the United States as part of being a music director of an American orchestra. Since 1992, Barenboim has been music director of the Berlin State Opera and the Staatskapelle Berlin, succeeding in maintaining the independent status of the State Opera. He has tried to maintain the orchestra's traditional sound and style. In autumn 2000 he was made conductor for life of the Staatskapelle Berlin. On 15 May 2006, Barenboim was named principal guest conductor of La Scala opera house, in Milan, after Riccardo Muti's resignation. He subsequently became music director of La Scala in 2011. In 2006, Barenboim presented the BBC Reith Lectures, presenting a series of five lectures titled In the Beginning was Sound. The lectures on music were recorded in a range of cities, including London, Chicago, Berlin, and two in Jerusalem. In the autumn of 2006, Barenboim gave the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University, entitling his talk Sound and Thought. In November 2006, Lorin Maazel submitted Barenboim's name as his nominee to succeed him as the New York Philharmonic's music director. Barenboim said he was flattered but "nothing could be further from my thoughts at the moment than the possibility of returning to the United States for a permanent position", repeating in April 2007 his lack of interest in the New York Philharmonic's music directorship or its newly created principal conductor position. Barenboim made his conducting debut on 28 November 2008 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for the House's 450th performance of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. In 2009, Barenboim conducted the Vienna New Year's Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic for the first time. In his New Year message, he expressed the hope that 2009 would be a year for peace and for human justice in the Middle East. He returned to conduct the 2014 Vienna New Year's Concert, and also conducted the 2022 Concert. In 2014, construction began on the Barenboim–Said Academy in Berlin. A joint project Barenboim developed with Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, the academy was planned as a site for young music students from the Arab world and Israel to study music and humanities in Berlin. It opened its doors on 8 December 2016. In 2017, the Pierre Boulez Saal opened as the public face of the academy. The elliptical shaped concert hall was designed by Frank Gehry. Acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota created the hall’s sound profile. In 2015, Barenboim unveiled a new concert grand piano. Designed by Chris Maene with support from Steinway & Sons, the piano features straight parallel strings instead of the conventional diagonally-crossed strings of a modern Steinway. In 2020, Barenboim curated the digital festival of new music “Distance / Intimacy” with flautist Emmanuel Pahud in the Pierre Boulez Saal. At their invitation ten contemporary composers, among them Jörg Widmann, Olga Neuwirth and Matthias Pintscher, contributed new works engaging artistically with the COVID-19 pandemic. All participating composers and musicians waived their fees, inviting listeners to financially support arts and culture. Musical style Barenboim has rejected musical fashions based on current musicological research, such as the authentic performance movement. His recording of Beethoven's symphonies shows his preference for some conventional practices, rather than fully adhering to Bärenreiter's new edition (edited by Jonathan Del Mar). Barenboim has opposed the practice of choosing the tempo of a piece based on historical evidence, such as the composer's metronome marks. He argues instead for finding the tempo from within the music, especially from its harmony and harmonic rhythm. He has reflected this in the general tempi chosen in his recording of Beethoven's symphonies, usually adhering to early-twentieth-century practices. He has not been influenced by the faster tempos chosen by other conductors such as David Zinman and authentic movement advocate Roger Norrington. In his recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier, Barenboim makes frequent use of the right-foot sustaining pedal, a device absent from the keyboard instruments of Bach's time (although the harpsichord was highly resonant), producing a sonority very different from the "dry" and often staccato sound favoured by Glenn Gould. Moreover, in the fugues, he often plays one voice considerably louder than the others, a practice impossible on a harpsichord. According to some scholarship, this practice began in Beethoven's time (see, for example, Matthew Dirst's book Engaging Bach). When justifying his interpretation of Bach, Barenboim claims that he is interested in the long tradition of playing Bach that has existed for two and a half centuries, rather than in the exact style of performance in Bach's time: The study of old instruments and historic performance practice has taught us a great deal, but the main point, the impact of harmony, has been ignored. This is proved by the fact that tempo is described as an independent phenomenon. It is claimed that one of Bach's gavottes must be played fast and another one slowly. But tempo is not independent! ... I think that concerning oneself purely with historic performance practice and the attempt to reproduce the sound of older styles of music-making is limiting and no indication of progress. Mendelssohn and Schumann tried to introduce Bach into their own period, as did Liszt with his transcriptions and Busoni with his arrangements. In America Leopold Stokowski also tried to do it with his arrangements for orchestra. This was always the result of "progressive" efforts to bring Bach closer to the particular period. I have no philosophical problem with someone playing Bach and making it sound like Boulez. My problem is more with someone who tries to imitate the sound of that time ... Recordings In the beginning of his career, Barenboim concentrated on music of the classical era, as well as some romantic composers. He made his first recording in 1954. Notable classical recordings include the complete cycles of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert's piano sonatas, Beethoven's piano concertos (with the New Philharmonia Orchestra and Otto Klemperer), and Mozart's piano concertos (conducting the English Chamber Orchestra from the piano). Romantic recordings include Brahms's piano concertos (with John Barbirolli), Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, and Chopin's Nocturnes. Barenboim also recorded many chamber works, especially in collaboration with his first wife, Jacqueline du Pré, the violinist Itzhak Perlman, and the violinist and violist Pinchas Zukerman. Noted performances include: the complete Mozart violin sonatas (with Perlman), Brahms's violin sonatas (live concert with Perlman, previously in the studio with Zukerman), Beethoven's and Brahms's cello sonatas (with du Pré), Beethoven's and Tchaikovsky's piano trios (with du Pré and Zukerman), and Schubert's Trout Quintet (with du Pré, Perlman, Zukerman, and Zubin Mehta). Notable recordings as a conductor include the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Schubert, and Schumann; the Da Ponte operas of Mozart; numerous operas by Wagner, including the complete Ring Cycle; and various concertos. Barenboim has written about his changing attitude to the music of Mahler; he has recorded Mahler's Fifth, Seventh, and Ninth symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde. He has also performed and recorded the Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo and Villa-Lobos guitar concerto with John Williams as the guitar soloist. By the late 1990s, Barenboim had widened his concert repertoire, performing works by baroque as well as twentieth-century classical composers. Examples include: J. S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier (which he has played since childhood) and Goldberg Variations, Albeniz's Iberia, and Debussy's Préludes. In addition, he turned to other musical genres, such as jazz, and the folk music of his birthplace, Argentina. He conducted the 2006 New Year's Eve concert in Buenos Aires, in which tangos were played. Barenboim has continued to perform and record chamber music, sometimes with members of the orchestras he has led. Some examples include the Quartet for the End of Time by Messiaen with members of the Orchestre de Paris during his tenure there, Richard Strauss with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Mozart's Clarinet Trio with members of the Berlin Staatskapelle. To mark Barenboim's 75th birthday, Deutsche Grammophon released a box set of 39 CDs of his solo recordings, and Sony Classical issued a box set of Barenboim's orchestral recordings on 43 CDs and three DVDs in 2017, Daniel Barenboim – A Retrospective. Conducting Wagner in Israel The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (then Palestine Orchestra) had performed Richard Wagner's music in Mandatory Palestine even during the early days of the Nazi era. But after the Kristallnacht, Jewish musicians avoided playing Wagner's music in Israel because of the use Nazi Germany made of the composer and because of Wagner's own anti-Semitic writings, initiating an unofficial boycott. This informal ban continued when Israel was founded in 1948, but from time to time unsuccessful efforts were made to end it. In 1974 and again in 1981 Zubin Mehta planned to (but did not) lead the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in works of Wagner. During the latter occasion, fist fights broke out in the audience. Barenboim, who had been selected to head the production of Wagner's operas at the 1988 Bayreuth Festival, had since at least 1989 publicly opposed the Israeli ban. In that year, he had the Israel Philharmonic "rehearse" two of Wagner's works. In a conversation with Edward Said, Barenboim said that "Wagner, the person, is absolutely appalling, despicable, and, in a way, very difficult to put together with the music he wrote, which so often has exactly the opposite kind of feelings ... noble, generous, etc." He called Wagner's anti-Semitism obviously "monstrous", and feels it must be faced, but argues that "Wagner did not cause the Holocaust." In 1990, Barenboim conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in its first appearance in Israel, but he excluded Wagner's works. "Although Wagner died in 1883, he is not played [in Israel] because his music is too inextricably linked with Nazism, and so is too painful for those who suffered", Barenboim told a reporter. "Why play what hurts people?" Not long afterwards, it was announced that Barenboim would lead the Israel Philharmonic in two Wagner overtures, which took place on 27 December "before a carefully screened audience". In 2000, the Israel Supreme Court upheld the right of the Rishon LeZion Orchestra to perform Wagner's Siegfried Idyll. At the Israel Festival in Jerusalem in July 2001, Barenboim had scheduled to perform the first act of Die Walküre with three singers, including tenor Plácido Domingo. However, strong protests by some Holocaust survivors, as well as the Israeli government, led the festival authorities to ask for an alternative program. (The Israel Festival's Public Advisory board, which included some Holocaust survivors, had originally approved the program.) The controversy appeared to end in May, after the Israel Festival announced that a selection by Wagner would not be included at the 7 July concert. Barenboim agreed to substitute music by Schumann and Stravinsky. However, at the end of the concert with the Berlin Staatskapelle, Barenboim announced that he would like to play Wagner as a second encore and invited those who objected to leave, saying, "Despite what the Israel Festival believes, there are people sitting in the audience for whom Wagner does not spark Nazi associations. I respect those for whom these associations are oppressive. It will be democratic to play a Wagner encore for those who wish to hear it. I am turning to you now and asking whether I can play Wagner." A half-hour debate ensued, with some audience members calling Barenboim a "fascist". In the end, a small number of attendees walked out and the overwhelming majority remained, applauding loudly after the performance of the Tristan und Isolde Prelude. In September 2001, a public relations associate for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where Barenboim was the Music Director, revealed that season ticket-holders were about evenly divided about the wisdom of Barenboim's decision to play Wagner in Jerusalem. Barenboim regarded the performance of Wagner at the 7 July concert as a political statement. He said he had decided to defy the ban on Wagner after having a news conference he held the previous week interrupted by the ringing of a mobile phone to the tune of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries". "I thought if it can be heard on the ring of a telephone, why can't it be played in a concert hall?" he said. A Knesset committee subsequently called for Barenboim to be declared a persona non-grata in Israel until he apologized for conducting Wagner's music. The move was condemned by the musical director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra Zubin Mehta and members of Knesset. Prior to receiving the $100,000 Wolf Prize, awarded annually in Israel, Barenboim said, "If people were really hurt, of course I regret this, because I don't want to harm anyone". In 2005, Barenboim gave the inaugural Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University, entitled "Wagner, Israel and Palestine". In the speech, according to the Financial Times, Barenboim "called on Israel to accept the Palestinian 'narrative even though they may not agree with it'", and said, "The state of Israel was supposed to provide the instrument for the end of anti-Semitism ... This inability to accept a new narrative has led to a new anti-Semitism that is very different from the European anti-Semitism of the 19th century." According to The New York Times, Barenboim said it was the "fear, this conviction of being yet again the victim, that does not allow the Israeli public to accept Wagner's anti-Semitism ... It is the same cell in the collective brain that does not allow them to make progress in their understanding of the needs of the Palestinian people", and also said that suicide bombings in Israel "had to be seen in the context of the historical development at which we have arrived". The speech caused controversy; the Jewish Telegraphic Agency wrote that Barenboim had "compared Herzl's ideas to Wagner's; criticized Palestinian terrorist attacks but also justified them; and said Israeli actions contributed to the rise of international anti-Semitism". In March 2007, Barenboim said: "The whole subject of Wagner in Israel has been politicized and is a symptom of a malaise that goes very deep in Israeli society..." In 2010, before conducting Wagner's Die Walküre for the gala premiere of La Scala's season in Milan, he said that the perception of Wagner was unjustly influenced by the fact that he was Hitler's favourite composer: "I think a bit of the problem with Wagner isn't what we all know in Israel, anti-Semitism, etc ... It is how the Nazis and Hitler saw Wagner as his own prophet ... This perception of Hitler colors for many people the perception of Wagner ... We need one day to liberate Wagner of all this weight". In a 2012 interview with Der Spiegel, Barenboim said, "It saddens me that official Israel so doggedly refuses to allow Wagner to be performed – as was the case, once again, at the University of Tel Aviv two weeks ago – because I see it as a symptom of a disease. The words I'm about to use are harsh, but I choose them deliberately: There is a politicization of the remembrance of the Holocaust in Israel, and that's terrible." He also argued that after the trial of Adolf Eichmann and the Six-Day War, "a misunderstanding also arose ... namely that the Holocaust, from which the Jews' ultimate claim to Israel was derived, and the Palestinian problem had something to do with each other." He also said, that since the Six-Day War, Israeli politicians have repeatedly established a connection between European anti-Semitism and the fact that the Palestinians don't accept the founding of the State of Israel. But that's absurd! The Palestinians weren't primarily anti-Semitic. They just didn't accept their expulsion. But European anti-Semitism goes much further back than to the partition of Palestine and the establishment of Israel in 1948. In response to a question from the interviewer, he said he conducted Wagner with the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra because, "The musicians wanted it. I said: Sure, but we have to talk about it. It's a tricky decision." When the interviewer asked if the initiative came from Arab musicians in the orchestra, he replied, "On the contrary. It was the Israelis. The Israeli brass players." Over the years, observers of the Wagner battle have weighed in on both sides of the issue. Political views Barenboim, a supporter of human rights, including Palestinian rights, is an outspoken critic of Israel's conservative governments and the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. In an interview with the British music critic Norman Lebrecht in 2003, Barenboim accused Israel of behaving in a manner that was "morally abhorrent and strategically wrong" and "putting in danger the very existence of the state of Israel". In 1967, at the start of the Six-Day War, Barenboim and du Pré had performed for the Israeli troops on the front lines, as well as during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. During the Gulf War, he and an orchestra performed in Israel in gas masks. Barenboim has argued publicly for a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians. In a November 2014 opinion piece in The Guardian, he wrote that the "ongoing security of the state of Israel ... is only possible in the long term if the future of the Palestinian people, too, is secured in its own sovereign state. If this does not happen, the wars and history of that region will be constantly repeated and the unbearable stalemate will continue." West–Eastern Divan In 1999, Barenboim and Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said jointly founded the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra. This initiative brings together, every summer, a group of young classical musicians from Israel, the Palestinian territories and Arab countries to study, perform and to promote mutual reflection and understanding. Barenboim and Said jointly received the 2002 Prince of Asturias Awards for their work in "improving understanding between nations". Together they wrote the book Parallels and Paradoxes, based on a series of public discussions held at New York's Carnegie Hall. In September 2005, presenting the book written with Said, Barenboim refused to be interviewed by uniformed Israel Defense Forces Radio reporter Dafna Arad, considering the wearing of the uniform insensitive for the occasion. In response, Israeli Education Minister Limor Livnat of the Likud party called him "a real Jew hater" and "a real anti-Semite". After being invited for the fourth time to the Doha Festival for Music and Dialogue in Qatar with the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra in 2012, Barenboim's invitation was cancelled by the authorities because of "sensitivity to the developments in the Arab world". There had been a campaign against him in the Arab media, accusing him of "being a Zionist". In July 2012, Barenboim and the orchestra played a pivotal role at the BBC Proms, performing a cycle of Beethoven's nine symphonies, with the Ninth timed to coincide with the opening of the London 2012 Olympic Games. In addition, he was an Olympic flag carrier at the opening ceremony of the Games. Wolf Prize In May 2004, Barenboim was awarded the Wolf Prize at a ceremony at the Israeli Knesset. Education Minister Livnat held up the nomination until Barenboim apologized for his performance of Wagner in Israel. Barenboim called Livnat's demand "politically motivated", adding "I don't see what I need to apologize about. If I ever hurt a person privately or in public, I am sorry, because I have no intention of hurting people...", which was good enough for Livnat. The ceremony was boycotted by Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, also a member of the Likud party. In his acceptance speech, Barenboim expressed his opinion on the political situation, referring to the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948: I am asking today with deep sorrow: Can we, despite all our achievements, ignore the intolerable gap between what the Declaration of Independence promised and what was fulfilled, the gap between the idea and the realities of Israel? Does the condition of occupation and domination over another people fit the Declaration of Independence? Is there any sense in the independence of one at the expense of the fundamental rights of the other? Can the Jewish people whose history is a record of continued suffering and relentless persecution, allow themselves to be indifferent to the rights and suffering of a neighboring people? Can the State of Israel allow itself an unrealistic dream of an ideological end to the conflict instead of pursuing a pragmatic, humanitarian one based on social justice? Israel's President Moshe Katsav and Education Minister Livnat criticized Barenboim for his speech. Livnat accused him of attacking the state of Israel, to which Barenboim replied that he had not done so, but that he instead had cited the text of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. Performing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip Barenboim has performed several times in the West Bank: at Bir Zeit University in 1999 and several times in Ramallah. In December 2007, Barenboim and 20 musicians from Britain, the United States, France and Germany, and one Palestinian were scheduled to play a baroque music concert in Gaza. Although they had received authorization from Israeli authorities, the Palestinian was stopped at the Israel–Gaza border and told that he needed individual permission to enter. The group waited seven hours at the border, and then canceled the concert in solidarity. Barenboim commented: "A baroque music concert in a Roman Catholic church in Gaza – as we all know – has nothing to do with security and would bring so much joy to people who live there in great difficulty." In January 2008, after performing in Ramallah, Barenboim accepted honorary Palestinian citizenship, becoming the first Jewish Israeli citizen to be offered the status. Barenboim said he hoped it would serve as a public gesture of peace. Some Israelis criticized Barenboim's decision to accept Palestinian citizenship. The parliamentary faction chairman of the Shas party demanded that Barenboim be stripped of his Israeli citizenship, but the Interior Minister told the media that "the matter is not even up for discussion". In January 2009, Barenboim cancelled two concerts of the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra in Qatar and Cairo "due to the escalating violence in Gaza and the resulting concerns for the musicians' safety". In May 2011, Barenboim conducted the "Orchestra for Gaza" composed of volunteers from the Berlin Philharmonic, the Berlin Staatskapelle, the Orchestra of La Scala in Milan, the Vienna Philharmonic and the Orchestre de Paris, at al-Mathaf Cultural House. The concert, held in Gaza City, was co-ordinated in secret with the United Nations. The orchestra flew from Berlin to Vienna and from there to El Arish on a plane chartered by Barenboim, entering the Gaza Strip at the Egyptian Rafah Border Crossing. The musicians were escorted by a convoy of United Nations vehicles. The concert, the first performance by an international classical ensemble in the Strip, was attended by an invited audience of several hundred schoolchildren and NGO workers, who greeted Barenboim with applause. The orchestra played Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik and Symphony No. 40, also familiar to an Arab audience as the basis of one of the songs of the famous Arab singer Fairuz. In his speech, Barenboim said: "Everyone has to understand that the Palestinian cause is a just cause therefore it can be only given justice if it is achieved without violence. Violence can only weaken the righteousness of the Palestinian cause". Awards and recognition Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, 2002 Prince of Asturias Awards, 2002 (jointly with Edward Said) Toleranzpreis der Evangelischen Akademie Tutzing, 2002 Wilhelm Furtwängler Prize, 2003 (with Staatskapelle Berlin) Buber-Rosenzweig-Medal, 2004 Wolf Prize in Arts, 2004 (According to the documentary "Knowledge Is the Beginning", Barenboim donated all the proceeds to music education for Israeli and Palestinian youth) Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2005; Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, 2006 Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, 2007 Commander of the Legion of Honour, 2007 Goethe Medal, 2007 Praemium Imperiale, 2007 Nominated "Honorary Guide" by UFO religion Raëlian Movement, 2008 International Service Award for the Global Defence of Human Rights, 2008 Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal, 2008 Istanbul International Music Festival Lifetime Achievement Award, 2009; In 2009 Konex Foundation from Argentina granted him the Diamond Konex Award for Classical Music as the most important musician in the last decade in his country. Léonie Sonning Music Prize, 2009 Westphalian Peace Prize (Westfälischer Friedenspreis), in 2010, for his striving for dialog in the Near East; Otto Hahn Peace Medal (Otto-Hahn-Friedensmedaille) of the United Nations Association of Germany (DGVN), Berlin-Brandenburg, for his efforts in promoting peace, humanity and international understanding, 2010; Grand Officier of the Légion d'honneur, 2011 Edison Award for Lifetime Achievement 2011, the most prestigious music award of The Netherlands Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE), 2011 Dresden Peace Prize, 2011 International Willy-Brandt Prize, 2011 In 2012, he was voted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame. Honorary Member of the Berliner Philharmoniker Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts, 2015 Elgar Medal, 2015 Minor planet 7163 Barenboim is named after him. Honorary degrees Doctor of Philosophy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1996 Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2003 Doctor of Music, University of Oxford, 2007 Doctor of Music, SOAS, University of London, 2008 Doctor of Music, Royal Academy of Music, 2010 Doctor of Philosophy, Weizmann Institute of Science, 2013 University of Florence, 2020 Grammy Awards Barenboim received 6 Grammy Awards. Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording: Christoph Classen (producer), Eberhard Sengpiel, Tobias Lehmann (engineers), Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Jane Eaglen, Thomas Hampson, Waltraud Meier, René Pape, Peter Seiffert, the Chor der Deutschen Staatsoper Berlin & the Staatskapelle Berlin for Wagner: Tannhäuser (2003) Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance: Daniel Barenboim, Dale Clevenger, Larry Combs, Daniele Damiano, Hansjörg Schellenberger & the Berlin Philharmonic for Beethoven/Mozart: Quintets (Chicago-Berlin) (1995) Daniel Barenboim & Itzhak Perlman for Brahms: The Three Violin Sonatas (1991) Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance: Daniel Barenboim (conductor) & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (1992) Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra): Martin Fouqué (producer), Eberhard Sengpiel (engineer), Daniel Barenboim (conductor / piano), Dale Clevenger, Larry Combs, Alex Klein, David McGill & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Richard Strauss Wind Concertos (Horn Concerto; Oboe Concerto, etc.) (2002) Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Itzhak Perlman & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Elgar: Violin Concerto in B Minor (1983) Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Arthur Rubinstein & the London Philharmonic Orchestra for Beethoven: The Five Piano Concertos (1977) (also awarded Grammy Award for Best Classical Album) Straight-strung piano In 2017, Barenboim unveiled a piano that has straight-strung bass strings, as opposed to the crossed-stringed modern instrument. He was inspired by Liszt's Erard piano, which has straight strings. Barenboim appreciates the clarity of tone and a greater control over the tonal quality (or color) his new instrument gives. This piano was developed with the help of Chris Maene at Maene Piano, who also built it. In 2019, Barenboim used this instrument to perform at Berliner Philhamoniker. See also List of peace activists References External links Barenboim Revealed on CNN.com Parallels and Paradoxes, NPR interview with Barenboim and Edward Said, 28 December 2002 "In harmony", The Guardian feature on Barenboim and Said, 5 April 2003 In the Beginning was Sound, 2006 BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures. BBC Radio 3 interviews, November 1991 Discography at SonyBMG Masterworks Elgar Cello Concerto in E minor, opus 85 Jacqueline Du Pré with Daniel Barenboim and The New Philharmonia Orchestra on YouTube Review: Fidelio played by Daniel Barenboim and the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra Westphalian Peace Prize Barenboim's outstanding Beethoven, on the symphony cycle at classicstoday.com Daniel Barenboim and Arab Anti-Israel Sentiment: A Classic Example of Political Naivety Mutual Appreciation Is Essential Interview with Daniel Barenboim Two interviews with Daniel Barenboim by Bruce Duffie, 2 November 1985 & 11 September 1993 1942 births Living people 20th-century Argentine musicians 20th-century classical pianists 20th-century male musicians 21st-century Argentine musicians 21st-century classical pianists 21st-century male musicians Accademia Musicale Chigiana alumni Argentine classical pianists Argentine conductors (music) Argentine emigrants to Israel Argentine Jews Argentine people of Russian-Jewish descent Child classical musicians Commandeurs of the Légion d'honneur Conductors (music) awarded knighthoods Deutsche Grammophon artists Edison Classical Music Awards Oeuvreprijs winners EMI Classics and Virgin Classics artists Erato Records artists Ernst von Siemens Music Prize winners Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Grammy Award winners Grand Crosses with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Grand Officiers of the Légion d'honneur Herbert von Karajan Music Prize winners Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music Illustrious Citizens of Buenos Aires Israeli classical pianists Israeli conductors (music) Israeli expatriates in Germany Israeli expatriates in Italy Israeli Jews Israeli people of Argentine-Jewish descent Israeli people of Russian-Jewish descent Israeli–Palestinian peace process Jewish Argentine musicians Jewish classical pianists Jews in the State of Palestine Male classical pianists Male conductors (music) Music directors of the Berlin State Opera Musicians awarded knighthoods Musicians from Buenos Aires Recipients of the Léonie Sonning Music Prize Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) Recipients of the Praemium Imperiale Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists Spinozists United Nations Messengers of Peace Wolf Prize in Arts laureates Naturalized citizens of the State of Palestine
false
[ "Ma Shilong (1594–1634), courtesy name Yuancang, was a Hui Muslim general in the Ming dynasty. He was born in 1594 in what is now called Ningxia. He was a protégé of Sun Chengzong.\n\nHe started his career as Provincial Level Knight, and served as Youji General in Xuanfu (nowadays Xuanhua, Hebei). He is responsible for the loss in Campagne of Liuhe in the 5th year of Tianqi (1625). In the 7th year of Chongzhen (1634), he died of illness.\n\nReferences \n\n1594 births\n1634 deaths\nMing dynasty generals", "Col. John Reading was the first white landowner in Hunterdon County, New Jersey. His son, Governor John Reading was the first native-born Governor of New Jersey, serving in 1747, and again in from September 1757 to June 1758.\n\nBorn in England, Colonel Reading emigrated to Gloucester, in what was then the Province of New Jersey in approximately 1684. He was a member of the assembly and was Clerk of Gloucester county from 1688–1702. Along with two others, he was commissioned by the Provincial Council of West Jersey to purchase land from the Native Americans which encompassed between the Raritan and Delaware rivers. He served as a judge of the Supreme Court of the Province starting in 1712. He died in Amwell Township, New Jersey in 1717.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Reading Family Biography\n\nYear of birth missing\nYear of death missing\nPeople from Hunterdon County, New Jersey" ]
[ "Daniel Barenboim", "Musical style", "What year was he born in?", "I don't know." ]
C_59da01905ac94f81814fe47c397c115d_0
At what age did he start playing piano?
2
At what age did Daniel Barenboim start playing piano?
Daniel Barenboim
In the beginning of his career, Barenboim concentrated on music of the classical era, as well as some romantic composers. He made his first recording in 1954. Notable classical recordings include the complete cycles of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert's piano sonatas, and Mozart's piano concertos (in the latter, taking part as both soloist and conductor). Romantic recordings include Brahms's piano concertos (with John Barbirolli), Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, and Chopin's nocturnes. Barenboim also recorded many chamber works, especially in collaboration with his first wife, Jacqueline du Pre, the violinist Itzhak Perlman, and the violinist and violist Pinchas Zukerman. Noted performances include: the complete Mozart violin sonatas (with Perlman), Brahms's violin sonatas (live concert with Perlman, previously in the studio with Zukerman), Beethoven's and Brahms's cello sonatas (with du Pre), Beethoven's and Tchaikovsky's piano trios (with du Pre and Zukerman), and Schubert's Trout Quintet (with du Pre, Perlman, Zukerman, and Zubin Mehta). Notable recordings as a conductor include: the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Schubert and Schumann, the Da Ponte operas of Mozart, numerous operas by Wagner, including the complete Ring Cycle, and various concertos. Barenboim has written about his changing attitude to the music of Mahler; he has recorded Mahler's Fifth, Seventh and Ninth symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde. He has also performed and recorded the Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo and Villa-Lobos guitar concerto with John Williams as the guitar soloist. By the late 1990s, Barenboim had widened his concert repertoire, performing works by baroque as well as twentieth-century classical composers. Examples include: J.S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier (which he has played since childhood) and Goldberg Variations, Albeniz's Iberia, and Debussy's Preludes. In addition, he turned to other musical genres, such as jazz, and the folk music of his birthplace, Argentina. He conducted the 2006 New Year's Eve concert in Buenos Aires, in which tangos were played. Barenboim has continued to perform and record chamber music, sometimes with members of the orchestras he has led. Some examples include the Quartet for the End of Time by Messiaen with members of the Orchestre de Paris during his tenure there, Richard Strauss with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Mozart's Clarinet Trio with members of the Berlin Staatskapelle. To mark Barenboim's 75th birthday, Deutsche Grammophon released a box set of 39 CDs of his solo recordings, and Sony Classical issued a box set of Barenboim's orchestral recordings on 43 CDs and three DVDs in 2017, Daniel Barenboim - A Retrospective. CANNOTANSWER
he has played since childhood
Daniel Barenboim (; in , born 15 November 1942) is a pianist and conductor who is a citizen of Argentina, Israel, Palestine, and Spain. The current general music director of the Berlin State Opera and the Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim previously served as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris and La Scala in Milan. Barenboim is known for his work with the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Seville-based orchestra of young Arab and Israeli musicians, and as a resolute critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Barenboim has received many awards and prizes, including seven Grammy awards, an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, France's Légion d'honneur both as a Commander and Grand Officier, and the German Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz mit Stern und Schulterband. In 2002, along with Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, he was given Spain's Prince of Asturias Concord Award. Barenboim is a polyglot, fluent in Spanish, Hebrew, English, French, Italian, and German. A self-described Spinozist, he is significantly influenced by Spinoza's life and thought. Biography Daniel Barenboim was born on 15 November 1942 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Jewish parents Aida (née Schuster) and Enrique Barenboim, both professional pianists. He started piano lessons at the age of five with his mother, continuing to study with his father, who remained his only teacher. On 19 August 1950, at the age of seven, he gave his first formal concert, in Buenos Aires. In 1952, Barenboim's family moved to Israel. Two years later, in the summer of 1954, his parents took him to Salzburg to take part in Igor Markevitch's conducting classes. During that summer he also met and played for Wilhelm Furtwängler, who has remained a central musical influence and ideal for Barenboim. Furtwängler called the young Barenboim a "phenomenon" and invited him to perform the Beethoven First Piano Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic, but Barenboim's father considered it too soon after the Second World War for a Jewish boy to go to Germany. In 1955 Barenboim studied harmony and composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. On 15 June 1967, Barenboim and British cellist Jacqueline du Pré were married in Jerusalem at a Western Wall ceremony, du Pré having converted to Judaism. Acting as one of the witnesses was the conductor Zubin Mehta, a long-time friend of Barenboim. Since "I was not Jewish I had to temporarily be renamed Moshe Cohen, which made me a 'kosher witness'", Mehta recalled. Du Pré retired from music in 1973, after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). The marriage lasted until du Pré's death in 1987. In the early 1980s, Barenboim and Russian pianist Elena Bashkirova started a relationship. Together they had two sons, both born in Paris before du Pré's death: David Arthur, born 1983, and Michael, born 1985. Barenboim worked to keep his relationship with Bashkirova hidden from du Pré, and believed he had succeeded. He and Bashkirova married in 1988. Both sons are part of the music world: David is a manager-writer for the German hip-hop band Level 8, and Michael Barenboim is a classical violinist. Citizenship Barenboim holds citizenship in Argentina, Israel, Palestine, and Spain, and was the first person to hold Palestinian and Israeli citizenship simultaneously. He lives in Berlin. Career After performing in Buenos Aires, Barenboim made his international debut as a pianist at the age of 10 in 1952 in Vienna and Rome. In 1955 he performed in Paris, in 1956 in London, and in 1957 in New York under the baton of Leopold Stokowski. Regular concert tours of Europe, the United States, South America, Australia and the Far East followed thereafter. In June 1967, Barenboim and his then-fiancée Jacqueline du Pré gave concerts in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Beersheba before and during the Six-Day War. His friendship with musicians Itzhak Perlman, Zubin Mehta, and Pinchas Zukerman, and marriage to du Pré led to the 1969 film by Christopher Nupen of their performance of the Schubert "Trout" Quintet. Following his debut as a conductor with the English Chamber Orchestra in Abbey Road Studios, London, in 1966, Barenboim was invited to conduct by many European and American symphony orchestras. Between 1975 and 1989, he was music director of the Orchestre de Paris, where he conducted much contemporary music. Barenboim made his opera conducting debut in 1973 with a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Edinburgh Festival. He made his debut at Bayreuth in 1981, conducting there regularly until 1999. In 1988, he was appointed artistic and musical director of the Opéra Bastille in Paris, scheduled to open in 1990, but was fired in January 1989 by the opera's chairman Pierre Bergé. Barenboim was named music director designate of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1989 and succeeded Sir Georg Solti as its music director in 1991, a post he held until 17 June 2006. He expressed frustration with the need for fund-raising duties in the United States as part of being a music director of an American orchestra. Since 1992, Barenboim has been music director of the Berlin State Opera and the Staatskapelle Berlin, succeeding in maintaining the independent status of the State Opera. He has tried to maintain the orchestra's traditional sound and style. In autumn 2000 he was made conductor for life of the Staatskapelle Berlin. On 15 May 2006, Barenboim was named principal guest conductor of La Scala opera house, in Milan, after Riccardo Muti's resignation. He subsequently became music director of La Scala in 2011. In 2006, Barenboim presented the BBC Reith Lectures, presenting a series of five lectures titled In the Beginning was Sound. The lectures on music were recorded in a range of cities, including London, Chicago, Berlin, and two in Jerusalem. In the autumn of 2006, Barenboim gave the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University, entitling his talk Sound and Thought. In November 2006, Lorin Maazel submitted Barenboim's name as his nominee to succeed him as the New York Philharmonic's music director. Barenboim said he was flattered but "nothing could be further from my thoughts at the moment than the possibility of returning to the United States for a permanent position", repeating in April 2007 his lack of interest in the New York Philharmonic's music directorship or its newly created principal conductor position. Barenboim made his conducting debut on 28 November 2008 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for the House's 450th performance of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. In 2009, Barenboim conducted the Vienna New Year's Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic for the first time. In his New Year message, he expressed the hope that 2009 would be a year for peace and for human justice in the Middle East. He returned to conduct the 2014 Vienna New Year's Concert, and also conducted the 2022 Concert. In 2014, construction began on the Barenboim–Said Academy in Berlin. A joint project Barenboim developed with Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, the academy was planned as a site for young music students from the Arab world and Israel to study music and humanities in Berlin. It opened its doors on 8 December 2016. In 2017, the Pierre Boulez Saal opened as the public face of the academy. The elliptical shaped concert hall was designed by Frank Gehry. Acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota created the hall’s sound profile. In 2015, Barenboim unveiled a new concert grand piano. Designed by Chris Maene with support from Steinway & Sons, the piano features straight parallel strings instead of the conventional diagonally-crossed strings of a modern Steinway. In 2020, Barenboim curated the digital festival of new music “Distance / Intimacy” with flautist Emmanuel Pahud in the Pierre Boulez Saal. At their invitation ten contemporary composers, among them Jörg Widmann, Olga Neuwirth and Matthias Pintscher, contributed new works engaging artistically with the COVID-19 pandemic. All participating composers and musicians waived their fees, inviting listeners to financially support arts and culture. Musical style Barenboim has rejected musical fashions based on current musicological research, such as the authentic performance movement. His recording of Beethoven's symphonies shows his preference for some conventional practices, rather than fully adhering to Bärenreiter's new edition (edited by Jonathan Del Mar). Barenboim has opposed the practice of choosing the tempo of a piece based on historical evidence, such as the composer's metronome marks. He argues instead for finding the tempo from within the music, especially from its harmony and harmonic rhythm. He has reflected this in the general tempi chosen in his recording of Beethoven's symphonies, usually adhering to early-twentieth-century practices. He has not been influenced by the faster tempos chosen by other conductors such as David Zinman and authentic movement advocate Roger Norrington. In his recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier, Barenboim makes frequent use of the right-foot sustaining pedal, a device absent from the keyboard instruments of Bach's time (although the harpsichord was highly resonant), producing a sonority very different from the "dry" and often staccato sound favoured by Glenn Gould. Moreover, in the fugues, he often plays one voice considerably louder than the others, a practice impossible on a harpsichord. According to some scholarship, this practice began in Beethoven's time (see, for example, Matthew Dirst's book Engaging Bach). When justifying his interpretation of Bach, Barenboim claims that he is interested in the long tradition of playing Bach that has existed for two and a half centuries, rather than in the exact style of performance in Bach's time: The study of old instruments and historic performance practice has taught us a great deal, but the main point, the impact of harmony, has been ignored. This is proved by the fact that tempo is described as an independent phenomenon. It is claimed that one of Bach's gavottes must be played fast and another one slowly. But tempo is not independent! ... I think that concerning oneself purely with historic performance practice and the attempt to reproduce the sound of older styles of music-making is limiting and no indication of progress. Mendelssohn and Schumann tried to introduce Bach into their own period, as did Liszt with his transcriptions and Busoni with his arrangements. In America Leopold Stokowski also tried to do it with his arrangements for orchestra. This was always the result of "progressive" efforts to bring Bach closer to the particular period. I have no philosophical problem with someone playing Bach and making it sound like Boulez. My problem is more with someone who tries to imitate the sound of that time ... Recordings In the beginning of his career, Barenboim concentrated on music of the classical era, as well as some romantic composers. He made his first recording in 1954. Notable classical recordings include the complete cycles of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert's piano sonatas, Beethoven's piano concertos (with the New Philharmonia Orchestra and Otto Klemperer), and Mozart's piano concertos (conducting the English Chamber Orchestra from the piano). Romantic recordings include Brahms's piano concertos (with John Barbirolli), Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, and Chopin's Nocturnes. Barenboim also recorded many chamber works, especially in collaboration with his first wife, Jacqueline du Pré, the violinist Itzhak Perlman, and the violinist and violist Pinchas Zukerman. Noted performances include: the complete Mozart violin sonatas (with Perlman), Brahms's violin sonatas (live concert with Perlman, previously in the studio with Zukerman), Beethoven's and Brahms's cello sonatas (with du Pré), Beethoven's and Tchaikovsky's piano trios (with du Pré and Zukerman), and Schubert's Trout Quintet (with du Pré, Perlman, Zukerman, and Zubin Mehta). Notable recordings as a conductor include the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Schubert, and Schumann; the Da Ponte operas of Mozart; numerous operas by Wagner, including the complete Ring Cycle; and various concertos. Barenboim has written about his changing attitude to the music of Mahler; he has recorded Mahler's Fifth, Seventh, and Ninth symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde. He has also performed and recorded the Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo and Villa-Lobos guitar concerto with John Williams as the guitar soloist. By the late 1990s, Barenboim had widened his concert repertoire, performing works by baroque as well as twentieth-century classical composers. Examples include: J. S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier (which he has played since childhood) and Goldberg Variations, Albeniz's Iberia, and Debussy's Préludes. In addition, he turned to other musical genres, such as jazz, and the folk music of his birthplace, Argentina. He conducted the 2006 New Year's Eve concert in Buenos Aires, in which tangos were played. Barenboim has continued to perform and record chamber music, sometimes with members of the orchestras he has led. Some examples include the Quartet for the End of Time by Messiaen with members of the Orchestre de Paris during his tenure there, Richard Strauss with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Mozart's Clarinet Trio with members of the Berlin Staatskapelle. To mark Barenboim's 75th birthday, Deutsche Grammophon released a box set of 39 CDs of his solo recordings, and Sony Classical issued a box set of Barenboim's orchestral recordings on 43 CDs and three DVDs in 2017, Daniel Barenboim – A Retrospective. Conducting Wagner in Israel The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (then Palestine Orchestra) had performed Richard Wagner's music in Mandatory Palestine even during the early days of the Nazi era. But after the Kristallnacht, Jewish musicians avoided playing Wagner's music in Israel because of the use Nazi Germany made of the composer and because of Wagner's own anti-Semitic writings, initiating an unofficial boycott. This informal ban continued when Israel was founded in 1948, but from time to time unsuccessful efforts were made to end it. In 1974 and again in 1981 Zubin Mehta planned to (but did not) lead the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in works of Wagner. During the latter occasion, fist fights broke out in the audience. Barenboim, who had been selected to head the production of Wagner's operas at the 1988 Bayreuth Festival, had since at least 1989 publicly opposed the Israeli ban. In that year, he had the Israel Philharmonic "rehearse" two of Wagner's works. In a conversation with Edward Said, Barenboim said that "Wagner, the person, is absolutely appalling, despicable, and, in a way, very difficult to put together with the music he wrote, which so often has exactly the opposite kind of feelings ... noble, generous, etc." He called Wagner's anti-Semitism obviously "monstrous", and feels it must be faced, but argues that "Wagner did not cause the Holocaust." In 1990, Barenboim conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in its first appearance in Israel, but he excluded Wagner's works. "Although Wagner died in 1883, he is not played [in Israel] because his music is too inextricably linked with Nazism, and so is too painful for those who suffered", Barenboim told a reporter. "Why play what hurts people?" Not long afterwards, it was announced that Barenboim would lead the Israel Philharmonic in two Wagner overtures, which took place on 27 December "before a carefully screened audience". In 2000, the Israel Supreme Court upheld the right of the Rishon LeZion Orchestra to perform Wagner's Siegfried Idyll. At the Israel Festival in Jerusalem in July 2001, Barenboim had scheduled to perform the first act of Die Walküre with three singers, including tenor Plácido Domingo. However, strong protests by some Holocaust survivors, as well as the Israeli government, led the festival authorities to ask for an alternative program. (The Israel Festival's Public Advisory board, which included some Holocaust survivors, had originally approved the program.) The controversy appeared to end in May, after the Israel Festival announced that a selection by Wagner would not be included at the 7 July concert. Barenboim agreed to substitute music by Schumann and Stravinsky. However, at the end of the concert with the Berlin Staatskapelle, Barenboim announced that he would like to play Wagner as a second encore and invited those who objected to leave, saying, "Despite what the Israel Festival believes, there are people sitting in the audience for whom Wagner does not spark Nazi associations. I respect those for whom these associations are oppressive. It will be democratic to play a Wagner encore for those who wish to hear it. I am turning to you now and asking whether I can play Wagner." A half-hour debate ensued, with some audience members calling Barenboim a "fascist". In the end, a small number of attendees walked out and the overwhelming majority remained, applauding loudly after the performance of the Tristan und Isolde Prelude. In September 2001, a public relations associate for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where Barenboim was the Music Director, revealed that season ticket-holders were about evenly divided about the wisdom of Barenboim's decision to play Wagner in Jerusalem. Barenboim regarded the performance of Wagner at the 7 July concert as a political statement. He said he had decided to defy the ban on Wagner after having a news conference he held the previous week interrupted by the ringing of a mobile phone to the tune of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries". "I thought if it can be heard on the ring of a telephone, why can't it be played in a concert hall?" he said. A Knesset committee subsequently called for Barenboim to be declared a persona non-grata in Israel until he apologized for conducting Wagner's music. The move was condemned by the musical director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra Zubin Mehta and members of Knesset. Prior to receiving the $100,000 Wolf Prize, awarded annually in Israel, Barenboim said, "If people were really hurt, of course I regret this, because I don't want to harm anyone". In 2005, Barenboim gave the inaugural Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University, entitled "Wagner, Israel and Palestine". In the speech, according to the Financial Times, Barenboim "called on Israel to accept the Palestinian 'narrative even though they may not agree with it'", and said, "The state of Israel was supposed to provide the instrument for the end of anti-Semitism ... This inability to accept a new narrative has led to a new anti-Semitism that is very different from the European anti-Semitism of the 19th century." According to The New York Times, Barenboim said it was the "fear, this conviction of being yet again the victim, that does not allow the Israeli public to accept Wagner's anti-Semitism ... It is the same cell in the collective brain that does not allow them to make progress in their understanding of the needs of the Palestinian people", and also said that suicide bombings in Israel "had to be seen in the context of the historical development at which we have arrived". The speech caused controversy; the Jewish Telegraphic Agency wrote that Barenboim had "compared Herzl's ideas to Wagner's; criticized Palestinian terrorist attacks but also justified them; and said Israeli actions contributed to the rise of international anti-Semitism". In March 2007, Barenboim said: "The whole subject of Wagner in Israel has been politicized and is a symptom of a malaise that goes very deep in Israeli society..." In 2010, before conducting Wagner's Die Walküre for the gala premiere of La Scala's season in Milan, he said that the perception of Wagner was unjustly influenced by the fact that he was Hitler's favourite composer: "I think a bit of the problem with Wagner isn't what we all know in Israel, anti-Semitism, etc ... It is how the Nazis and Hitler saw Wagner as his own prophet ... This perception of Hitler colors for many people the perception of Wagner ... We need one day to liberate Wagner of all this weight". In a 2012 interview with Der Spiegel, Barenboim said, "It saddens me that official Israel so doggedly refuses to allow Wagner to be performed – as was the case, once again, at the University of Tel Aviv two weeks ago – because I see it as a symptom of a disease. The words I'm about to use are harsh, but I choose them deliberately: There is a politicization of the remembrance of the Holocaust in Israel, and that's terrible." He also argued that after the trial of Adolf Eichmann and the Six-Day War, "a misunderstanding also arose ... namely that the Holocaust, from which the Jews' ultimate claim to Israel was derived, and the Palestinian problem had something to do with each other." He also said, that since the Six-Day War, Israeli politicians have repeatedly established a connection between European anti-Semitism and the fact that the Palestinians don't accept the founding of the State of Israel. But that's absurd! The Palestinians weren't primarily anti-Semitic. They just didn't accept their expulsion. But European anti-Semitism goes much further back than to the partition of Palestine and the establishment of Israel in 1948. In response to a question from the interviewer, he said he conducted Wagner with the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra because, "The musicians wanted it. I said: Sure, but we have to talk about it. It's a tricky decision." When the interviewer asked if the initiative came from Arab musicians in the orchestra, he replied, "On the contrary. It was the Israelis. The Israeli brass players." Over the years, observers of the Wagner battle have weighed in on both sides of the issue. Political views Barenboim, a supporter of human rights, including Palestinian rights, is an outspoken critic of Israel's conservative governments and the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. In an interview with the British music critic Norman Lebrecht in 2003, Barenboim accused Israel of behaving in a manner that was "morally abhorrent and strategically wrong" and "putting in danger the very existence of the state of Israel". In 1967, at the start of the Six-Day War, Barenboim and du Pré had performed for the Israeli troops on the front lines, as well as during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. During the Gulf War, he and an orchestra performed in Israel in gas masks. Barenboim has argued publicly for a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians. In a November 2014 opinion piece in The Guardian, he wrote that the "ongoing security of the state of Israel ... is only possible in the long term if the future of the Palestinian people, too, is secured in its own sovereign state. If this does not happen, the wars and history of that region will be constantly repeated and the unbearable stalemate will continue." West–Eastern Divan In 1999, Barenboim and Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said jointly founded the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra. This initiative brings together, every summer, a group of young classical musicians from Israel, the Palestinian territories and Arab countries to study, perform and to promote mutual reflection and understanding. Barenboim and Said jointly received the 2002 Prince of Asturias Awards for their work in "improving understanding between nations". Together they wrote the book Parallels and Paradoxes, based on a series of public discussions held at New York's Carnegie Hall. In September 2005, presenting the book written with Said, Barenboim refused to be interviewed by uniformed Israel Defense Forces Radio reporter Dafna Arad, considering the wearing of the uniform insensitive for the occasion. In response, Israeli Education Minister Limor Livnat of the Likud party called him "a real Jew hater" and "a real anti-Semite". After being invited for the fourth time to the Doha Festival for Music and Dialogue in Qatar with the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra in 2012, Barenboim's invitation was cancelled by the authorities because of "sensitivity to the developments in the Arab world". There had been a campaign against him in the Arab media, accusing him of "being a Zionist". In July 2012, Barenboim and the orchestra played a pivotal role at the BBC Proms, performing a cycle of Beethoven's nine symphonies, with the Ninth timed to coincide with the opening of the London 2012 Olympic Games. In addition, he was an Olympic flag carrier at the opening ceremony of the Games. Wolf Prize In May 2004, Barenboim was awarded the Wolf Prize at a ceremony at the Israeli Knesset. Education Minister Livnat held up the nomination until Barenboim apologized for his performance of Wagner in Israel. Barenboim called Livnat's demand "politically motivated", adding "I don't see what I need to apologize about. If I ever hurt a person privately or in public, I am sorry, because I have no intention of hurting people...", which was good enough for Livnat. The ceremony was boycotted by Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, also a member of the Likud party. In his acceptance speech, Barenboim expressed his opinion on the political situation, referring to the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948: I am asking today with deep sorrow: Can we, despite all our achievements, ignore the intolerable gap between what the Declaration of Independence promised and what was fulfilled, the gap between the idea and the realities of Israel? Does the condition of occupation and domination over another people fit the Declaration of Independence? Is there any sense in the independence of one at the expense of the fundamental rights of the other? Can the Jewish people whose history is a record of continued suffering and relentless persecution, allow themselves to be indifferent to the rights and suffering of a neighboring people? Can the State of Israel allow itself an unrealistic dream of an ideological end to the conflict instead of pursuing a pragmatic, humanitarian one based on social justice? Israel's President Moshe Katsav and Education Minister Livnat criticized Barenboim for his speech. Livnat accused him of attacking the state of Israel, to which Barenboim replied that he had not done so, but that he instead had cited the text of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. Performing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip Barenboim has performed several times in the West Bank: at Bir Zeit University in 1999 and several times in Ramallah. In December 2007, Barenboim and 20 musicians from Britain, the United States, France and Germany, and one Palestinian were scheduled to play a baroque music concert in Gaza. Although they had received authorization from Israeli authorities, the Palestinian was stopped at the Israel–Gaza border and told that he needed individual permission to enter. The group waited seven hours at the border, and then canceled the concert in solidarity. Barenboim commented: "A baroque music concert in a Roman Catholic church in Gaza – as we all know – has nothing to do with security and would bring so much joy to people who live there in great difficulty." In January 2008, after performing in Ramallah, Barenboim accepted honorary Palestinian citizenship, becoming the first Jewish Israeli citizen to be offered the status. Barenboim said he hoped it would serve as a public gesture of peace. Some Israelis criticized Barenboim's decision to accept Palestinian citizenship. The parliamentary faction chairman of the Shas party demanded that Barenboim be stripped of his Israeli citizenship, but the Interior Minister told the media that "the matter is not even up for discussion". In January 2009, Barenboim cancelled two concerts of the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra in Qatar and Cairo "due to the escalating violence in Gaza and the resulting concerns for the musicians' safety". In May 2011, Barenboim conducted the "Orchestra for Gaza" composed of volunteers from the Berlin Philharmonic, the Berlin Staatskapelle, the Orchestra of La Scala in Milan, the Vienna Philharmonic and the Orchestre de Paris, at al-Mathaf Cultural House. The concert, held in Gaza City, was co-ordinated in secret with the United Nations. The orchestra flew from Berlin to Vienna and from there to El Arish on a plane chartered by Barenboim, entering the Gaza Strip at the Egyptian Rafah Border Crossing. The musicians were escorted by a convoy of United Nations vehicles. The concert, the first performance by an international classical ensemble in the Strip, was attended by an invited audience of several hundred schoolchildren and NGO workers, who greeted Barenboim with applause. The orchestra played Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik and Symphony No. 40, also familiar to an Arab audience as the basis of one of the songs of the famous Arab singer Fairuz. In his speech, Barenboim said: "Everyone has to understand that the Palestinian cause is a just cause therefore it can be only given justice if it is achieved without violence. Violence can only weaken the righteousness of the Palestinian cause". Awards and recognition Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, 2002 Prince of Asturias Awards, 2002 (jointly with Edward Said) Toleranzpreis der Evangelischen Akademie Tutzing, 2002 Wilhelm Furtwängler Prize, 2003 (with Staatskapelle Berlin) Buber-Rosenzweig-Medal, 2004 Wolf Prize in Arts, 2004 (According to the documentary "Knowledge Is the Beginning", Barenboim donated all the proceeds to music education for Israeli and Palestinian youth) Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2005; Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, 2006 Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, 2007 Commander of the Legion of Honour, 2007 Goethe Medal, 2007 Praemium Imperiale, 2007 Nominated "Honorary Guide" by UFO religion Raëlian Movement, 2008 International Service Award for the Global Defence of Human Rights, 2008 Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal, 2008 Istanbul International Music Festival Lifetime Achievement Award, 2009; In 2009 Konex Foundation from Argentina granted him the Diamond Konex Award for Classical Music as the most important musician in the last decade in his country. Léonie Sonning Music Prize, 2009 Westphalian Peace Prize (Westfälischer Friedenspreis), in 2010, for his striving for dialog in the Near East; Otto Hahn Peace Medal (Otto-Hahn-Friedensmedaille) of the United Nations Association of Germany (DGVN), Berlin-Brandenburg, for his efforts in promoting peace, humanity and international understanding, 2010; Grand Officier of the Légion d'honneur, 2011 Edison Award for Lifetime Achievement 2011, the most prestigious music award of The Netherlands Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE), 2011 Dresden Peace Prize, 2011 International Willy-Brandt Prize, 2011 In 2012, he was voted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame. Honorary Member of the Berliner Philharmoniker Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts, 2015 Elgar Medal, 2015 Minor planet 7163 Barenboim is named after him. Honorary degrees Doctor of Philosophy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1996 Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2003 Doctor of Music, University of Oxford, 2007 Doctor of Music, SOAS, University of London, 2008 Doctor of Music, Royal Academy of Music, 2010 Doctor of Philosophy, Weizmann Institute of Science, 2013 University of Florence, 2020 Grammy Awards Barenboim received 6 Grammy Awards. Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording: Christoph Classen (producer), Eberhard Sengpiel, Tobias Lehmann (engineers), Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Jane Eaglen, Thomas Hampson, Waltraud Meier, René Pape, Peter Seiffert, the Chor der Deutschen Staatsoper Berlin & the Staatskapelle Berlin for Wagner: Tannhäuser (2003) Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance: Daniel Barenboim, Dale Clevenger, Larry Combs, Daniele Damiano, Hansjörg Schellenberger & the Berlin Philharmonic for Beethoven/Mozart: Quintets (Chicago-Berlin) (1995) Daniel Barenboim & Itzhak Perlman for Brahms: The Three Violin Sonatas (1991) Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance: Daniel Barenboim (conductor) & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (1992) Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra): Martin Fouqué (producer), Eberhard Sengpiel (engineer), Daniel Barenboim (conductor / piano), Dale Clevenger, Larry Combs, Alex Klein, David McGill & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Richard Strauss Wind Concertos (Horn Concerto; Oboe Concerto, etc.) (2002) Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Itzhak Perlman & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Elgar: Violin Concerto in B Minor (1983) Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Arthur Rubinstein & the London Philharmonic Orchestra for Beethoven: The Five Piano Concertos (1977) (also awarded Grammy Award for Best Classical Album) Straight-strung piano In 2017, Barenboim unveiled a piano that has straight-strung bass strings, as opposed to the crossed-stringed modern instrument. He was inspired by Liszt's Erard piano, which has straight strings. Barenboim appreciates the clarity of tone and a greater control over the tonal quality (or color) his new instrument gives. This piano was developed with the help of Chris Maene at Maene Piano, who also built it. In 2019, Barenboim used this instrument to perform at Berliner Philhamoniker. See also List of peace activists References External links Barenboim Revealed on CNN.com Parallels and Paradoxes, NPR interview with Barenboim and Edward Said, 28 December 2002 "In harmony", The Guardian feature on Barenboim and Said, 5 April 2003 In the Beginning was Sound, 2006 BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures. BBC Radio 3 interviews, November 1991 Discography at SonyBMG Masterworks Elgar Cello Concerto in E minor, opus 85 Jacqueline Du Pré with Daniel Barenboim and The New Philharmonia Orchestra on YouTube Review: Fidelio played by Daniel Barenboim and the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra Westphalian Peace Prize Barenboim's outstanding Beethoven, on the symphony cycle at classicstoday.com Daniel Barenboim and Arab Anti-Israel Sentiment: A Classic Example of Political Naivety Mutual Appreciation Is Essential Interview with Daniel Barenboim Two interviews with Daniel Barenboim by Bruce Duffie, 2 November 1985 & 11 September 1993 1942 births Living people 20th-century Argentine musicians 20th-century classical pianists 20th-century male musicians 21st-century Argentine musicians 21st-century classical pianists 21st-century male musicians Accademia Musicale Chigiana alumni Argentine classical pianists Argentine conductors (music) Argentine emigrants to Israel Argentine Jews Argentine people of Russian-Jewish descent Child classical musicians Commandeurs of the Légion d'honneur Conductors (music) awarded knighthoods Deutsche Grammophon artists Edison Classical Music Awards Oeuvreprijs winners EMI Classics and Virgin Classics artists Erato Records artists Ernst von Siemens Music Prize winners Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Grammy Award winners Grand Crosses with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Grand Officiers of the Légion d'honneur Herbert von Karajan Music Prize winners Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music Illustrious Citizens of Buenos Aires Israeli classical pianists Israeli conductors (music) Israeli expatriates in Germany Israeli expatriates in Italy Israeli Jews Israeli people of Argentine-Jewish descent Israeli people of Russian-Jewish descent Israeli–Palestinian peace process Jewish Argentine musicians Jewish classical pianists Jews in the State of Palestine Male classical pianists Male conductors (music) Music directors of the Berlin State Opera Musicians awarded knighthoods Musicians from Buenos Aires Recipients of the Léonie Sonning Music Prize Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) Recipients of the Praemium Imperiale Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists Spinozists United Nations Messengers of Peace Wolf Prize in Arts laureates Naturalized citizens of the State of Palestine
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[ "Ondref Krajnak is a Slovakian musician.\n\nEarly life \nKrajnak was born on March 1, 1978 in Levice, Slovakia. He came from a musical family. At six, he was already playing classical music and participating in various competitions for young talents. At age ten he heard jazz for the first time. Krajnak became so fascinated by this new form of music that, in the same year, he participated in a young jazz artist competition- Jazz Fest Zilina, where he was awarded the 'Discovery of the year'.\n\nWhen Krajnak was 14, he began to study at the Erkel Ferenc Jazz Academy in Budapest (HUN) under Robert Ratonyi. During this period he participated in various musical competitions in Europe, such as a jazz contest in Poland, where he won a special award, and a piano contest in Hungary, where he was awarded best artist in the category “solo piano”. After graduation he obtained a scholarship at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, which he rejected to start his active career.\n\nCareer \nHe established himself on the European jazz scene. He has recorded over 40 albums and performed at concerts all over the world.\n\nSelected musical collaborations \n Elements duo with Radovan Tariska\n One with Oto Hejnic Trio \n Standards (One) with Oto Hejnic Trio\n Forevernest solo piano album\n Radovan Tariska Sextet\n Partnership Unlimited with Oskar Rozsa\n What´s outside with Stveracek Quartet \n Jazz at Prague Castle with Ondrej Stveracek\n When I Fall in Love with Oľga Skrancova \n Reflections of My Soul with Hanka Gregušová \n Essence with Hanka Gregušová\n Aven Bachtale with Ida Kelarova\n Sumen Savore with Ida Kelarova\n Ethno Fest with Ida Kelarova\n Ida Kelarova and Iva Bittova sings Jazz\n Marija Panna Precista with Zuzana Lapcikova\n Orbis Pictus with Zuzana Lapcikova\n Rozchody, Navraty with Zuzana Lapcikova\n Slovak Jazz Trio with Dodo Sosoka\n Three Pianos with Ľubomír Sramek and Klaudius Kovac\n Hot House with Juraj Bartos\n\nReferences\n\nSlovak jazz musicians\nJazz pianists\n1978 births\nLiving people\n21st-century pianists", "Lara Melda Ömeroğlu (born 16 December 1993), known professionally as Lara Melda, is a British-Turkish concert pianist.\n\nEarly life and education\nLara Melda was born in London, United Kingdom to Turkish parents. She began playing the piano at age 6, her sister Melis Ömeroğlu, being the one who inspired her to start.\n\nMelda began piano lessons with Emily Jeffrey, and at the age of 18 began studies with Ian Jones. Melda studied at The Purcell School for Young Musicians from 2008 to 2011. For her Bachelor of Music she went to the Royal College of Music where she was a Queen Elizabeth Queen Mother Scholar and graduated with a first class honour in 2016. Melda is also an accomplished viola player and plays chamber music on both piano and viola. In 2015 she was a scholarship holder under the Imogen Cooper Music Trust.\n\nProfessional career\n\nMelda performed her debut concert at the age of 8 and her debut concerto at the age of 12 playing Mozart's Piano Concerto in D minor K466 and Piano Concerto in A major K414. In 2009 she was a finalist in the International Franz Liszt Piano Competition in Weimar, Germany. Melda rose to international prominence in 2010 when she won the BBC Young Musician of the Year at the age of sixteen, performing Saint-Saëns' Piano Concerto No. 2 in the final round, with Vasily Petrenko and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in Cardiff. The competition had an international following via television and radio broadcasts on the BBC. Since then she has also performed Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20, as well as Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3, with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.\n\nIn the autumn of 2013, Melda made her debut performing at the Barbican Centre in London and also with the Britten Sinfonia in a performance of Britten's Young Apollo with Paul Daniel. Previous concerto performances have included Rachmaninoff with the Royal Northern Sinfonia and Kirill Karabits, Mozart with the Aurora Orchestra and Nicholas Collon (Kings Place) and the Grieg concerto with English Sinfonia (St John's, Smith Square) Ludwig van Beethoven with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. She has played recitals at the Laeiszhalle (Hamburg); Les Sommets Musicaux in Gstaad, Switzerland; the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival in Germany and performs often at Wigmore Hall in London.\n\nMelda performs regularly in Turkey and made her debut at the International Music Festival (IKSV) in Istanbul in June 2011, playing the Grieg concerto with the Borusan Philharmonic. She has also been presented by the Istanbul Recitals piano series and performed at the Antalya Piano Festival and Boğaziçi University. On 24 March 2012, she received the prestigious 'Promising Young Artist' award from Kadir Has University in Istanbul, and in 2016 was awarded the 'Woman of the Year Arts Award' by the Elele-Avon Women Awards where in her speech, Melda accepted the award on behalf of Turkish women who feel that they don't have a voice in the public square and for those that have not been given the opportunities in life that she has been fortunate to receive.\n\nMelda is most well known and praised for her Chopin interpretations. A performance of Chopin's 2nd sonata prompted this review: \"Unquestionably one of the most outstanding performances of the piece I've ever heard, it evoked its yearning, energy, loneliness, lyricism, fury and gutsiness with playing of stunning precision, technical adroitness and immense, perceptive feeling.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Lara Melda's official website\n Lara Melda's official Facebook page\n\nLiving people\n1993 births\nEnglish people of Turkish descent\nEnglish classical pianists\nEnglish women pianists\nTurkish classical pianists\nTurkish women pianists\nMusicians from London\n21st-century English women musicians\n21st-century classical pianists\nWomen classical pianists" ]
[ "Daniel Barenboim", "Musical style", "What year was he born in?", "I don't know.", "At what age did he start playing piano?", "he has played since childhood" ]
C_59da01905ac94f81814fe47c397c115d_0
When did he perform his first recital?
3
When did Daniel Barenboim perform his first recital?
Daniel Barenboim
In the beginning of his career, Barenboim concentrated on music of the classical era, as well as some romantic composers. He made his first recording in 1954. Notable classical recordings include the complete cycles of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert's piano sonatas, and Mozart's piano concertos (in the latter, taking part as both soloist and conductor). Romantic recordings include Brahms's piano concertos (with John Barbirolli), Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, and Chopin's nocturnes. Barenboim also recorded many chamber works, especially in collaboration with his first wife, Jacqueline du Pre, the violinist Itzhak Perlman, and the violinist and violist Pinchas Zukerman. Noted performances include: the complete Mozart violin sonatas (with Perlman), Brahms's violin sonatas (live concert with Perlman, previously in the studio with Zukerman), Beethoven's and Brahms's cello sonatas (with du Pre), Beethoven's and Tchaikovsky's piano trios (with du Pre and Zukerman), and Schubert's Trout Quintet (with du Pre, Perlman, Zukerman, and Zubin Mehta). Notable recordings as a conductor include: the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Schubert and Schumann, the Da Ponte operas of Mozart, numerous operas by Wagner, including the complete Ring Cycle, and various concertos. Barenboim has written about his changing attitude to the music of Mahler; he has recorded Mahler's Fifth, Seventh and Ninth symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde. He has also performed and recorded the Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo and Villa-Lobos guitar concerto with John Williams as the guitar soloist. By the late 1990s, Barenboim had widened his concert repertoire, performing works by baroque as well as twentieth-century classical composers. Examples include: J.S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier (which he has played since childhood) and Goldberg Variations, Albeniz's Iberia, and Debussy's Preludes. In addition, he turned to other musical genres, such as jazz, and the folk music of his birthplace, Argentina. He conducted the 2006 New Year's Eve concert in Buenos Aires, in which tangos were played. Barenboim has continued to perform and record chamber music, sometimes with members of the orchestras he has led. Some examples include the Quartet for the End of Time by Messiaen with members of the Orchestre de Paris during his tenure there, Richard Strauss with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Mozart's Clarinet Trio with members of the Berlin Staatskapelle. To mark Barenboim's 75th birthday, Deutsche Grammophon released a box set of 39 CDs of his solo recordings, and Sony Classical issued a box set of Barenboim's orchestral recordings on 43 CDs and three DVDs in 2017, Daniel Barenboim - A Retrospective. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
Daniel Barenboim (; in , born 15 November 1942) is a pianist and conductor who is a citizen of Argentina, Israel, Palestine, and Spain. The current general music director of the Berlin State Opera and the Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim previously served as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris and La Scala in Milan. Barenboim is known for his work with the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Seville-based orchestra of young Arab and Israeli musicians, and as a resolute critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Barenboim has received many awards and prizes, including seven Grammy awards, an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, France's Légion d'honneur both as a Commander and Grand Officier, and the German Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz mit Stern und Schulterband. In 2002, along with Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, he was given Spain's Prince of Asturias Concord Award. Barenboim is a polyglot, fluent in Spanish, Hebrew, English, French, Italian, and German. A self-described Spinozist, he is significantly influenced by Spinoza's life and thought. Biography Daniel Barenboim was born on 15 November 1942 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Jewish parents Aida (née Schuster) and Enrique Barenboim, both professional pianists. He started piano lessons at the age of five with his mother, continuing to study with his father, who remained his only teacher. On 19 August 1950, at the age of seven, he gave his first formal concert, in Buenos Aires. In 1952, Barenboim's family moved to Israel. Two years later, in the summer of 1954, his parents took him to Salzburg to take part in Igor Markevitch's conducting classes. During that summer he also met and played for Wilhelm Furtwängler, who has remained a central musical influence and ideal for Barenboim. Furtwängler called the young Barenboim a "phenomenon" and invited him to perform the Beethoven First Piano Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic, but Barenboim's father considered it too soon after the Second World War for a Jewish boy to go to Germany. In 1955 Barenboim studied harmony and composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. On 15 June 1967, Barenboim and British cellist Jacqueline du Pré were married in Jerusalem at a Western Wall ceremony, du Pré having converted to Judaism. Acting as one of the witnesses was the conductor Zubin Mehta, a long-time friend of Barenboim. Since "I was not Jewish I had to temporarily be renamed Moshe Cohen, which made me a 'kosher witness'", Mehta recalled. Du Pré retired from music in 1973, after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). The marriage lasted until du Pré's death in 1987. In the early 1980s, Barenboim and Russian pianist Elena Bashkirova started a relationship. Together they had two sons, both born in Paris before du Pré's death: David Arthur, born 1983, and Michael, born 1985. Barenboim worked to keep his relationship with Bashkirova hidden from du Pré, and believed he had succeeded. He and Bashkirova married in 1988. Both sons are part of the music world: David is a manager-writer for the German hip-hop band Level 8, and Michael Barenboim is a classical violinist. Citizenship Barenboim holds citizenship in Argentina, Israel, Palestine, and Spain, and was the first person to hold Palestinian and Israeli citizenship simultaneously. He lives in Berlin. Career After performing in Buenos Aires, Barenboim made his international debut as a pianist at the age of 10 in 1952 in Vienna and Rome. In 1955 he performed in Paris, in 1956 in London, and in 1957 in New York under the baton of Leopold Stokowski. Regular concert tours of Europe, the United States, South America, Australia and the Far East followed thereafter. In June 1967, Barenboim and his then-fiancée Jacqueline du Pré gave concerts in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Beersheba before and during the Six-Day War. His friendship with musicians Itzhak Perlman, Zubin Mehta, and Pinchas Zukerman, and marriage to du Pré led to the 1969 film by Christopher Nupen of their performance of the Schubert "Trout" Quintet. Following his debut as a conductor with the English Chamber Orchestra in Abbey Road Studios, London, in 1966, Barenboim was invited to conduct by many European and American symphony orchestras. Between 1975 and 1989, he was music director of the Orchestre de Paris, where he conducted much contemporary music. Barenboim made his opera conducting debut in 1973 with a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Edinburgh Festival. He made his debut at Bayreuth in 1981, conducting there regularly until 1999. In 1988, he was appointed artistic and musical director of the Opéra Bastille in Paris, scheduled to open in 1990, but was fired in January 1989 by the opera's chairman Pierre Bergé. Barenboim was named music director designate of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1989 and succeeded Sir Georg Solti as its music director in 1991, a post he held until 17 June 2006. He expressed frustration with the need for fund-raising duties in the United States as part of being a music director of an American orchestra. Since 1992, Barenboim has been music director of the Berlin State Opera and the Staatskapelle Berlin, succeeding in maintaining the independent status of the State Opera. He has tried to maintain the orchestra's traditional sound and style. In autumn 2000 he was made conductor for life of the Staatskapelle Berlin. On 15 May 2006, Barenboim was named principal guest conductor of La Scala opera house, in Milan, after Riccardo Muti's resignation. He subsequently became music director of La Scala in 2011. In 2006, Barenboim presented the BBC Reith Lectures, presenting a series of five lectures titled In the Beginning was Sound. The lectures on music were recorded in a range of cities, including London, Chicago, Berlin, and two in Jerusalem. In the autumn of 2006, Barenboim gave the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University, entitling his talk Sound and Thought. In November 2006, Lorin Maazel submitted Barenboim's name as his nominee to succeed him as the New York Philharmonic's music director. Barenboim said he was flattered but "nothing could be further from my thoughts at the moment than the possibility of returning to the United States for a permanent position", repeating in April 2007 his lack of interest in the New York Philharmonic's music directorship or its newly created principal conductor position. Barenboim made his conducting debut on 28 November 2008 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for the House's 450th performance of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. In 2009, Barenboim conducted the Vienna New Year's Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic for the first time. In his New Year message, he expressed the hope that 2009 would be a year for peace and for human justice in the Middle East. He returned to conduct the 2014 Vienna New Year's Concert, and also conducted the 2022 Concert. In 2014, construction began on the Barenboim–Said Academy in Berlin. A joint project Barenboim developed with Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, the academy was planned as a site for young music students from the Arab world and Israel to study music and humanities in Berlin. It opened its doors on 8 December 2016. In 2017, the Pierre Boulez Saal opened as the public face of the academy. The elliptical shaped concert hall was designed by Frank Gehry. Acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota created the hall’s sound profile. In 2015, Barenboim unveiled a new concert grand piano. Designed by Chris Maene with support from Steinway & Sons, the piano features straight parallel strings instead of the conventional diagonally-crossed strings of a modern Steinway. In 2020, Barenboim curated the digital festival of new music “Distance / Intimacy” with flautist Emmanuel Pahud in the Pierre Boulez Saal. At their invitation ten contemporary composers, among them Jörg Widmann, Olga Neuwirth and Matthias Pintscher, contributed new works engaging artistically with the COVID-19 pandemic. All participating composers and musicians waived their fees, inviting listeners to financially support arts and culture. Musical style Barenboim has rejected musical fashions based on current musicological research, such as the authentic performance movement. His recording of Beethoven's symphonies shows his preference for some conventional practices, rather than fully adhering to Bärenreiter's new edition (edited by Jonathan Del Mar). Barenboim has opposed the practice of choosing the tempo of a piece based on historical evidence, such as the composer's metronome marks. He argues instead for finding the tempo from within the music, especially from its harmony and harmonic rhythm. He has reflected this in the general tempi chosen in his recording of Beethoven's symphonies, usually adhering to early-twentieth-century practices. He has not been influenced by the faster tempos chosen by other conductors such as David Zinman and authentic movement advocate Roger Norrington. In his recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier, Barenboim makes frequent use of the right-foot sustaining pedal, a device absent from the keyboard instruments of Bach's time (although the harpsichord was highly resonant), producing a sonority very different from the "dry" and often staccato sound favoured by Glenn Gould. Moreover, in the fugues, he often plays one voice considerably louder than the others, a practice impossible on a harpsichord. According to some scholarship, this practice began in Beethoven's time (see, for example, Matthew Dirst's book Engaging Bach). When justifying his interpretation of Bach, Barenboim claims that he is interested in the long tradition of playing Bach that has existed for two and a half centuries, rather than in the exact style of performance in Bach's time: The study of old instruments and historic performance practice has taught us a great deal, but the main point, the impact of harmony, has been ignored. This is proved by the fact that tempo is described as an independent phenomenon. It is claimed that one of Bach's gavottes must be played fast and another one slowly. But tempo is not independent! ... I think that concerning oneself purely with historic performance practice and the attempt to reproduce the sound of older styles of music-making is limiting and no indication of progress. Mendelssohn and Schumann tried to introduce Bach into their own period, as did Liszt with his transcriptions and Busoni with his arrangements. In America Leopold Stokowski also tried to do it with his arrangements for orchestra. This was always the result of "progressive" efforts to bring Bach closer to the particular period. I have no philosophical problem with someone playing Bach and making it sound like Boulez. My problem is more with someone who tries to imitate the sound of that time ... Recordings In the beginning of his career, Barenboim concentrated on music of the classical era, as well as some romantic composers. He made his first recording in 1954. Notable classical recordings include the complete cycles of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert's piano sonatas, Beethoven's piano concertos (with the New Philharmonia Orchestra and Otto Klemperer), and Mozart's piano concertos (conducting the English Chamber Orchestra from the piano). Romantic recordings include Brahms's piano concertos (with John Barbirolli), Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, and Chopin's Nocturnes. Barenboim also recorded many chamber works, especially in collaboration with his first wife, Jacqueline du Pré, the violinist Itzhak Perlman, and the violinist and violist Pinchas Zukerman. Noted performances include: the complete Mozart violin sonatas (with Perlman), Brahms's violin sonatas (live concert with Perlman, previously in the studio with Zukerman), Beethoven's and Brahms's cello sonatas (with du Pré), Beethoven's and Tchaikovsky's piano trios (with du Pré and Zukerman), and Schubert's Trout Quintet (with du Pré, Perlman, Zukerman, and Zubin Mehta). Notable recordings as a conductor include the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Schubert, and Schumann; the Da Ponte operas of Mozart; numerous operas by Wagner, including the complete Ring Cycle; and various concertos. Barenboim has written about his changing attitude to the music of Mahler; he has recorded Mahler's Fifth, Seventh, and Ninth symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde. He has also performed and recorded the Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo and Villa-Lobos guitar concerto with John Williams as the guitar soloist. By the late 1990s, Barenboim had widened his concert repertoire, performing works by baroque as well as twentieth-century classical composers. Examples include: J. S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier (which he has played since childhood) and Goldberg Variations, Albeniz's Iberia, and Debussy's Préludes. In addition, he turned to other musical genres, such as jazz, and the folk music of his birthplace, Argentina. He conducted the 2006 New Year's Eve concert in Buenos Aires, in which tangos were played. Barenboim has continued to perform and record chamber music, sometimes with members of the orchestras he has led. Some examples include the Quartet for the End of Time by Messiaen with members of the Orchestre de Paris during his tenure there, Richard Strauss with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Mozart's Clarinet Trio with members of the Berlin Staatskapelle. To mark Barenboim's 75th birthday, Deutsche Grammophon released a box set of 39 CDs of his solo recordings, and Sony Classical issued a box set of Barenboim's orchestral recordings on 43 CDs and three DVDs in 2017, Daniel Barenboim – A Retrospective. Conducting Wagner in Israel The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (then Palestine Orchestra) had performed Richard Wagner's music in Mandatory Palestine even during the early days of the Nazi era. But after the Kristallnacht, Jewish musicians avoided playing Wagner's music in Israel because of the use Nazi Germany made of the composer and because of Wagner's own anti-Semitic writings, initiating an unofficial boycott. This informal ban continued when Israel was founded in 1948, but from time to time unsuccessful efforts were made to end it. In 1974 and again in 1981 Zubin Mehta planned to (but did not) lead the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in works of Wagner. During the latter occasion, fist fights broke out in the audience. Barenboim, who had been selected to head the production of Wagner's operas at the 1988 Bayreuth Festival, had since at least 1989 publicly opposed the Israeli ban. In that year, he had the Israel Philharmonic "rehearse" two of Wagner's works. In a conversation with Edward Said, Barenboim said that "Wagner, the person, is absolutely appalling, despicable, and, in a way, very difficult to put together with the music he wrote, which so often has exactly the opposite kind of feelings ... noble, generous, etc." He called Wagner's anti-Semitism obviously "monstrous", and feels it must be faced, but argues that "Wagner did not cause the Holocaust." In 1990, Barenboim conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in its first appearance in Israel, but he excluded Wagner's works. "Although Wagner died in 1883, he is not played [in Israel] because his music is too inextricably linked with Nazism, and so is too painful for those who suffered", Barenboim told a reporter. "Why play what hurts people?" Not long afterwards, it was announced that Barenboim would lead the Israel Philharmonic in two Wagner overtures, which took place on 27 December "before a carefully screened audience". In 2000, the Israel Supreme Court upheld the right of the Rishon LeZion Orchestra to perform Wagner's Siegfried Idyll. At the Israel Festival in Jerusalem in July 2001, Barenboim had scheduled to perform the first act of Die Walküre with three singers, including tenor Plácido Domingo. However, strong protests by some Holocaust survivors, as well as the Israeli government, led the festival authorities to ask for an alternative program. (The Israel Festival's Public Advisory board, which included some Holocaust survivors, had originally approved the program.) The controversy appeared to end in May, after the Israel Festival announced that a selection by Wagner would not be included at the 7 July concert. Barenboim agreed to substitute music by Schumann and Stravinsky. However, at the end of the concert with the Berlin Staatskapelle, Barenboim announced that he would like to play Wagner as a second encore and invited those who objected to leave, saying, "Despite what the Israel Festival believes, there are people sitting in the audience for whom Wagner does not spark Nazi associations. I respect those for whom these associations are oppressive. It will be democratic to play a Wagner encore for those who wish to hear it. I am turning to you now and asking whether I can play Wagner." A half-hour debate ensued, with some audience members calling Barenboim a "fascist". In the end, a small number of attendees walked out and the overwhelming majority remained, applauding loudly after the performance of the Tristan und Isolde Prelude. In September 2001, a public relations associate for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where Barenboim was the Music Director, revealed that season ticket-holders were about evenly divided about the wisdom of Barenboim's decision to play Wagner in Jerusalem. Barenboim regarded the performance of Wagner at the 7 July concert as a political statement. He said he had decided to defy the ban on Wagner after having a news conference he held the previous week interrupted by the ringing of a mobile phone to the tune of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries". "I thought if it can be heard on the ring of a telephone, why can't it be played in a concert hall?" he said. A Knesset committee subsequently called for Barenboim to be declared a persona non-grata in Israel until he apologized for conducting Wagner's music. The move was condemned by the musical director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra Zubin Mehta and members of Knesset. Prior to receiving the $100,000 Wolf Prize, awarded annually in Israel, Barenboim said, "If people were really hurt, of course I regret this, because I don't want to harm anyone". In 2005, Barenboim gave the inaugural Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University, entitled "Wagner, Israel and Palestine". In the speech, according to the Financial Times, Barenboim "called on Israel to accept the Palestinian 'narrative even though they may not agree with it'", and said, "The state of Israel was supposed to provide the instrument for the end of anti-Semitism ... This inability to accept a new narrative has led to a new anti-Semitism that is very different from the European anti-Semitism of the 19th century." According to The New York Times, Barenboim said it was the "fear, this conviction of being yet again the victim, that does not allow the Israeli public to accept Wagner's anti-Semitism ... It is the same cell in the collective brain that does not allow them to make progress in their understanding of the needs of the Palestinian people", and also said that suicide bombings in Israel "had to be seen in the context of the historical development at which we have arrived". The speech caused controversy; the Jewish Telegraphic Agency wrote that Barenboim had "compared Herzl's ideas to Wagner's; criticized Palestinian terrorist attacks but also justified them; and said Israeli actions contributed to the rise of international anti-Semitism". In March 2007, Barenboim said: "The whole subject of Wagner in Israel has been politicized and is a symptom of a malaise that goes very deep in Israeli society..." In 2010, before conducting Wagner's Die Walküre for the gala premiere of La Scala's season in Milan, he said that the perception of Wagner was unjustly influenced by the fact that he was Hitler's favourite composer: "I think a bit of the problem with Wagner isn't what we all know in Israel, anti-Semitism, etc ... It is how the Nazis and Hitler saw Wagner as his own prophet ... This perception of Hitler colors for many people the perception of Wagner ... We need one day to liberate Wagner of all this weight". In a 2012 interview with Der Spiegel, Barenboim said, "It saddens me that official Israel so doggedly refuses to allow Wagner to be performed – as was the case, once again, at the University of Tel Aviv two weeks ago – because I see it as a symptom of a disease. The words I'm about to use are harsh, but I choose them deliberately: There is a politicization of the remembrance of the Holocaust in Israel, and that's terrible." He also argued that after the trial of Adolf Eichmann and the Six-Day War, "a misunderstanding also arose ... namely that the Holocaust, from which the Jews' ultimate claim to Israel was derived, and the Palestinian problem had something to do with each other." He also said, that since the Six-Day War, Israeli politicians have repeatedly established a connection between European anti-Semitism and the fact that the Palestinians don't accept the founding of the State of Israel. But that's absurd! The Palestinians weren't primarily anti-Semitic. They just didn't accept their expulsion. But European anti-Semitism goes much further back than to the partition of Palestine and the establishment of Israel in 1948. In response to a question from the interviewer, he said he conducted Wagner with the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra because, "The musicians wanted it. I said: Sure, but we have to talk about it. It's a tricky decision." When the interviewer asked if the initiative came from Arab musicians in the orchestra, he replied, "On the contrary. It was the Israelis. The Israeli brass players." Over the years, observers of the Wagner battle have weighed in on both sides of the issue. Political views Barenboim, a supporter of human rights, including Palestinian rights, is an outspoken critic of Israel's conservative governments and the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. In an interview with the British music critic Norman Lebrecht in 2003, Barenboim accused Israel of behaving in a manner that was "morally abhorrent and strategically wrong" and "putting in danger the very existence of the state of Israel". In 1967, at the start of the Six-Day War, Barenboim and du Pré had performed for the Israeli troops on the front lines, as well as during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. During the Gulf War, he and an orchestra performed in Israel in gas masks. Barenboim has argued publicly for a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians. In a November 2014 opinion piece in The Guardian, he wrote that the "ongoing security of the state of Israel ... is only possible in the long term if the future of the Palestinian people, too, is secured in its own sovereign state. If this does not happen, the wars and history of that region will be constantly repeated and the unbearable stalemate will continue." West–Eastern Divan In 1999, Barenboim and Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said jointly founded the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra. This initiative brings together, every summer, a group of young classical musicians from Israel, the Palestinian territories and Arab countries to study, perform and to promote mutual reflection and understanding. Barenboim and Said jointly received the 2002 Prince of Asturias Awards for their work in "improving understanding between nations". Together they wrote the book Parallels and Paradoxes, based on a series of public discussions held at New York's Carnegie Hall. In September 2005, presenting the book written with Said, Barenboim refused to be interviewed by uniformed Israel Defense Forces Radio reporter Dafna Arad, considering the wearing of the uniform insensitive for the occasion. In response, Israeli Education Minister Limor Livnat of the Likud party called him "a real Jew hater" and "a real anti-Semite". After being invited for the fourth time to the Doha Festival for Music and Dialogue in Qatar with the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra in 2012, Barenboim's invitation was cancelled by the authorities because of "sensitivity to the developments in the Arab world". There had been a campaign against him in the Arab media, accusing him of "being a Zionist". In July 2012, Barenboim and the orchestra played a pivotal role at the BBC Proms, performing a cycle of Beethoven's nine symphonies, with the Ninth timed to coincide with the opening of the London 2012 Olympic Games. In addition, he was an Olympic flag carrier at the opening ceremony of the Games. Wolf Prize In May 2004, Barenboim was awarded the Wolf Prize at a ceremony at the Israeli Knesset. Education Minister Livnat held up the nomination until Barenboim apologized for his performance of Wagner in Israel. Barenboim called Livnat's demand "politically motivated", adding "I don't see what I need to apologize about. If I ever hurt a person privately or in public, I am sorry, because I have no intention of hurting people...", which was good enough for Livnat. The ceremony was boycotted by Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, also a member of the Likud party. In his acceptance speech, Barenboim expressed his opinion on the political situation, referring to the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948: I am asking today with deep sorrow: Can we, despite all our achievements, ignore the intolerable gap between what the Declaration of Independence promised and what was fulfilled, the gap between the idea and the realities of Israel? Does the condition of occupation and domination over another people fit the Declaration of Independence? Is there any sense in the independence of one at the expense of the fundamental rights of the other? Can the Jewish people whose history is a record of continued suffering and relentless persecution, allow themselves to be indifferent to the rights and suffering of a neighboring people? Can the State of Israel allow itself an unrealistic dream of an ideological end to the conflict instead of pursuing a pragmatic, humanitarian one based on social justice? Israel's President Moshe Katsav and Education Minister Livnat criticized Barenboim for his speech. Livnat accused him of attacking the state of Israel, to which Barenboim replied that he had not done so, but that he instead had cited the text of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. Performing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip Barenboim has performed several times in the West Bank: at Bir Zeit University in 1999 and several times in Ramallah. In December 2007, Barenboim and 20 musicians from Britain, the United States, France and Germany, and one Palestinian were scheduled to play a baroque music concert in Gaza. Although they had received authorization from Israeli authorities, the Palestinian was stopped at the Israel–Gaza border and told that he needed individual permission to enter. The group waited seven hours at the border, and then canceled the concert in solidarity. Barenboim commented: "A baroque music concert in a Roman Catholic church in Gaza – as we all know – has nothing to do with security and would bring so much joy to people who live there in great difficulty." In January 2008, after performing in Ramallah, Barenboim accepted honorary Palestinian citizenship, becoming the first Jewish Israeli citizen to be offered the status. Barenboim said he hoped it would serve as a public gesture of peace. Some Israelis criticized Barenboim's decision to accept Palestinian citizenship. The parliamentary faction chairman of the Shas party demanded that Barenboim be stripped of his Israeli citizenship, but the Interior Minister told the media that "the matter is not even up for discussion". In January 2009, Barenboim cancelled two concerts of the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra in Qatar and Cairo "due to the escalating violence in Gaza and the resulting concerns for the musicians' safety". In May 2011, Barenboim conducted the "Orchestra for Gaza" composed of volunteers from the Berlin Philharmonic, the Berlin Staatskapelle, the Orchestra of La Scala in Milan, the Vienna Philharmonic and the Orchestre de Paris, at al-Mathaf Cultural House. The concert, held in Gaza City, was co-ordinated in secret with the United Nations. The orchestra flew from Berlin to Vienna and from there to El Arish on a plane chartered by Barenboim, entering the Gaza Strip at the Egyptian Rafah Border Crossing. The musicians were escorted by a convoy of United Nations vehicles. The concert, the first performance by an international classical ensemble in the Strip, was attended by an invited audience of several hundred schoolchildren and NGO workers, who greeted Barenboim with applause. The orchestra played Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik and Symphony No. 40, also familiar to an Arab audience as the basis of one of the songs of the famous Arab singer Fairuz. In his speech, Barenboim said: "Everyone has to understand that the Palestinian cause is a just cause therefore it can be only given justice if it is achieved without violence. Violence can only weaken the righteousness of the Palestinian cause". Awards and recognition Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, 2002 Prince of Asturias Awards, 2002 (jointly with Edward Said) Toleranzpreis der Evangelischen Akademie Tutzing, 2002 Wilhelm Furtwängler Prize, 2003 (with Staatskapelle Berlin) Buber-Rosenzweig-Medal, 2004 Wolf Prize in Arts, 2004 (According to the documentary "Knowledge Is the Beginning", Barenboim donated all the proceeds to music education for Israeli and Palestinian youth) Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2005; Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, 2006 Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, 2007 Commander of the Legion of Honour, 2007 Goethe Medal, 2007 Praemium Imperiale, 2007 Nominated "Honorary Guide" by UFO religion Raëlian Movement, 2008 International Service Award for the Global Defence of Human Rights, 2008 Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal, 2008 Istanbul International Music Festival Lifetime Achievement Award, 2009; In 2009 Konex Foundation from Argentina granted him the Diamond Konex Award for Classical Music as the most important musician in the last decade in his country. Léonie Sonning Music Prize, 2009 Westphalian Peace Prize (Westfälischer Friedenspreis), in 2010, for his striving for dialog in the Near East; Otto Hahn Peace Medal (Otto-Hahn-Friedensmedaille) of the United Nations Association of Germany (DGVN), Berlin-Brandenburg, for his efforts in promoting peace, humanity and international understanding, 2010; Grand Officier of the Légion d'honneur, 2011 Edison Award for Lifetime Achievement 2011, the most prestigious music award of The Netherlands Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE), 2011 Dresden Peace Prize, 2011 International Willy-Brandt Prize, 2011 In 2012, he was voted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame. Honorary Member of the Berliner Philharmoniker Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts, 2015 Elgar Medal, 2015 Minor planet 7163 Barenboim is named after him. Honorary degrees Doctor of Philosophy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1996 Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2003 Doctor of Music, University of Oxford, 2007 Doctor of Music, SOAS, University of London, 2008 Doctor of Music, Royal Academy of Music, 2010 Doctor of Philosophy, Weizmann Institute of Science, 2013 University of Florence, 2020 Grammy Awards Barenboim received 6 Grammy Awards. Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording: Christoph Classen (producer), Eberhard Sengpiel, Tobias Lehmann (engineers), Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Jane Eaglen, Thomas Hampson, Waltraud Meier, René Pape, Peter Seiffert, the Chor der Deutschen Staatsoper Berlin & the Staatskapelle Berlin for Wagner: Tannhäuser (2003) Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance: Daniel Barenboim, Dale Clevenger, Larry Combs, Daniele Damiano, Hansjörg Schellenberger & the Berlin Philharmonic for Beethoven/Mozart: Quintets (Chicago-Berlin) (1995) Daniel Barenboim & Itzhak Perlman for Brahms: The Three Violin Sonatas (1991) Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance: Daniel Barenboim (conductor) & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (1992) Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra): Martin Fouqué (producer), Eberhard Sengpiel (engineer), Daniel Barenboim (conductor / piano), Dale Clevenger, Larry Combs, Alex Klein, David McGill & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Richard Strauss Wind Concertos (Horn Concerto; Oboe Concerto, etc.) (2002) Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Itzhak Perlman & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Elgar: Violin Concerto in B Minor (1983) Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Arthur Rubinstein & the London Philharmonic Orchestra for Beethoven: The Five Piano Concertos (1977) (also awarded Grammy Award for Best Classical Album) Straight-strung piano In 2017, Barenboim unveiled a piano that has straight-strung bass strings, as opposed to the crossed-stringed modern instrument. He was inspired by Liszt's Erard piano, which has straight strings. Barenboim appreciates the clarity of tone and a greater control over the tonal quality (or color) his new instrument gives. This piano was developed with the help of Chris Maene at Maene Piano, who also built it. In 2019, Barenboim used this instrument to perform at Berliner Philhamoniker. See also List of peace activists References External links Barenboim Revealed on CNN.com Parallels and Paradoxes, NPR interview with Barenboim and Edward Said, 28 December 2002 "In harmony", The Guardian feature on Barenboim and Said, 5 April 2003 In the Beginning was Sound, 2006 BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures. BBC Radio 3 interviews, November 1991 Discography at SonyBMG Masterworks Elgar Cello Concerto in E minor, opus 85 Jacqueline Du Pré with Daniel Barenboim and The New Philharmonia Orchestra on YouTube Review: Fidelio played by Daniel Barenboim and the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra Westphalian Peace Prize Barenboim's outstanding Beethoven, on the symphony cycle at classicstoday.com Daniel Barenboim and Arab Anti-Israel Sentiment: A Classic Example of Political Naivety Mutual Appreciation Is Essential Interview with Daniel Barenboim Two interviews with Daniel Barenboim by Bruce Duffie, 2 November 1985 & 11 September 1993 1942 births Living people 20th-century Argentine musicians 20th-century classical pianists 20th-century male musicians 21st-century Argentine musicians 21st-century classical pianists 21st-century male musicians Accademia Musicale Chigiana alumni Argentine classical pianists Argentine conductors (music) Argentine emigrants to Israel Argentine Jews Argentine people of Russian-Jewish descent Child classical musicians Commandeurs of the Légion d'honneur Conductors (music) awarded knighthoods Deutsche Grammophon artists Edison Classical Music Awards Oeuvreprijs winners EMI Classics and Virgin Classics artists Erato Records artists Ernst von Siemens Music Prize winners Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Grammy Award winners Grand Crosses with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Grand Officiers of the Légion d'honneur Herbert von Karajan Music Prize winners Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music Illustrious Citizens of Buenos Aires Israeli classical pianists Israeli conductors (music) Israeli expatriates in Germany Israeli expatriates in Italy Israeli Jews Israeli people of Argentine-Jewish descent Israeli people of Russian-Jewish descent Israeli–Palestinian peace process Jewish Argentine musicians Jewish classical pianists Jews in the State of Palestine Male classical pianists Male conductors (music) Music directors of the Berlin State Opera Musicians awarded knighthoods Musicians from Buenos Aires Recipients of the Léonie Sonning Music Prize Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) Recipients of the Praemium Imperiale Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists Spinozists United Nations Messengers of Peace Wolf Prize in Arts laureates Naturalized citizens of the State of Palestine
false
[ "The Ages of Man is a one-man show performed by John Gielgud featuring a collection of speeches in Shakespeare's plays. Based on an anthology edited by Oxford professor George Rylands in 1939 that organized the speeches to show the journey of life from birth to death, the show takes its title from Jaques' \"Ages of Man\" speech from As You Like It (\"All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players...\"). Like the book, the show was divided into three parts: Youth, Manhood and Old Age.\n\nGielgud was inspired to do a Shakespeare recital by his great-aunt, actress Ellen Terry, who performed her own recital titled Shakespeare's Heroines. Gielgud first attempted such a recital during World War II, when he would perform a collection of speeches he called Shakespeare in Peace and War, culminating in the \"Once More Unto the Breach\" speech from Henry V.\n\nGielgud gave the first experimental performance of The Ages of Man in a house in St. James Square in London. It premiered at the Freemason's Hall at the 1957 Edinburgh Festival to a sold-out house and an overwhelming success. Gielgud would go on to perform the recital for the next ten years all over the world, winning a special Tony Award for the 1959 Broadway engagement (where it was revived in 1963), an Emmy Award for producer David Susskind for Outstanding Dramatic Program – Single Program for its 1966 telecast on CBS, and a 1979 Grammy Award for Gielgud's third audio recording of the recital, having been nominated for the same award for the versions made in 1959 and 1964. The 1966 television version was released on DVD in 2010, and the album made from the play is available as an mp3.\n\nAges of Man\nPlays for one performer\nMonodrama\n1939 plays\nPlays and musicals based on As You Like It", "Ryan Wang is a Canadian pianist and child prodigy. He has performed at Carnegie Hall and was featured on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.\n\nEarly life and education \nWang is from West Vancouver. He mother is named Iris Wang and he has a younger brother. Wang attends Collingwood School in Vancouver.\n\nCareer\nWang was only five years old in 2013 when he performed his first solo recital at Carnegie Hall. He was selected for the performance as part of the American Protégé International Piano and Strings Competition and played Variations on a Russian Theme. He came second in the competition. Shortly after his performance at Carnegie Hall, Wang appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show where he again performed Variations on a Russian Theme. Wang has played with the Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra and the Shanghai Symphony and performed at the Steinway Hall and Italy's Fazioli Hall.\n\nHe was invited to perform as part of the cultural component of Canada's participation in the APEC Summit in Beijing, 2014, and he was also invited to perform a private recital in the Canadian Prime Minister's home.\n\nAwards\nIn 2017 and 2019, Wang was the recipient of the Emerging Artist Grant from the Vancouver Academy of Music.\n\nReferences\n\nYear of birth missing (living people)\nLiving people\n21st-century Canadian pianists\nCollingwood School alumni" ]
[ "Daniel Barenboim", "Musical style", "What year was he born in?", "I don't know.", "At what age did he start playing piano?", "he has played since childhood", "When did he perform his first recital?", "I don't know." ]
C_59da01905ac94f81814fe47c397c115d_0
Is his son a manager for a German Hip hop band?
4
Is Daniel Barenboim's son a manager for a German Hip hop band?
Daniel Barenboim
In the beginning of his career, Barenboim concentrated on music of the classical era, as well as some romantic composers. He made his first recording in 1954. Notable classical recordings include the complete cycles of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert's piano sonatas, and Mozart's piano concertos (in the latter, taking part as both soloist and conductor). Romantic recordings include Brahms's piano concertos (with John Barbirolli), Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, and Chopin's nocturnes. Barenboim also recorded many chamber works, especially in collaboration with his first wife, Jacqueline du Pre, the violinist Itzhak Perlman, and the violinist and violist Pinchas Zukerman. Noted performances include: the complete Mozart violin sonatas (with Perlman), Brahms's violin sonatas (live concert with Perlman, previously in the studio with Zukerman), Beethoven's and Brahms's cello sonatas (with du Pre), Beethoven's and Tchaikovsky's piano trios (with du Pre and Zukerman), and Schubert's Trout Quintet (with du Pre, Perlman, Zukerman, and Zubin Mehta). Notable recordings as a conductor include: the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Schubert and Schumann, the Da Ponte operas of Mozart, numerous operas by Wagner, including the complete Ring Cycle, and various concertos. Barenboim has written about his changing attitude to the music of Mahler; he has recorded Mahler's Fifth, Seventh and Ninth symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde. He has also performed and recorded the Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo and Villa-Lobos guitar concerto with John Williams as the guitar soloist. By the late 1990s, Barenboim had widened his concert repertoire, performing works by baroque as well as twentieth-century classical composers. Examples include: J.S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier (which he has played since childhood) and Goldberg Variations, Albeniz's Iberia, and Debussy's Preludes. In addition, he turned to other musical genres, such as jazz, and the folk music of his birthplace, Argentina. He conducted the 2006 New Year's Eve concert in Buenos Aires, in which tangos were played. Barenboim has continued to perform and record chamber music, sometimes with members of the orchestras he has led. Some examples include the Quartet for the End of Time by Messiaen with members of the Orchestre de Paris during his tenure there, Richard Strauss with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Mozart's Clarinet Trio with members of the Berlin Staatskapelle. To mark Barenboim's 75th birthday, Deutsche Grammophon released a box set of 39 CDs of his solo recordings, and Sony Classical issued a box set of Barenboim's orchestral recordings on 43 CDs and three DVDs in 2017, Daniel Barenboim - A Retrospective. CANNOTANSWER
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Daniel Barenboim (; in , born 15 November 1942) is a pianist and conductor who is a citizen of Argentina, Israel, Palestine, and Spain. The current general music director of the Berlin State Opera and the Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim previously served as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris and La Scala in Milan. Barenboim is known for his work with the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Seville-based orchestra of young Arab and Israeli musicians, and as a resolute critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Barenboim has received many awards and prizes, including seven Grammy awards, an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, France's Légion d'honneur both as a Commander and Grand Officier, and the German Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz mit Stern und Schulterband. In 2002, along with Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, he was given Spain's Prince of Asturias Concord Award. Barenboim is a polyglot, fluent in Spanish, Hebrew, English, French, Italian, and German. A self-described Spinozist, he is significantly influenced by Spinoza's life and thought. Biography Daniel Barenboim was born on 15 November 1942 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Jewish parents Aida (née Schuster) and Enrique Barenboim, both professional pianists. He started piano lessons at the age of five with his mother, continuing to study with his father, who remained his only teacher. On 19 August 1950, at the age of seven, he gave his first formal concert, in Buenos Aires. In 1952, Barenboim's family moved to Israel. Two years later, in the summer of 1954, his parents took him to Salzburg to take part in Igor Markevitch's conducting classes. During that summer he also met and played for Wilhelm Furtwängler, who has remained a central musical influence and ideal for Barenboim. Furtwängler called the young Barenboim a "phenomenon" and invited him to perform the Beethoven First Piano Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic, but Barenboim's father considered it too soon after the Second World War for a Jewish boy to go to Germany. In 1955 Barenboim studied harmony and composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. On 15 June 1967, Barenboim and British cellist Jacqueline du Pré were married in Jerusalem at a Western Wall ceremony, du Pré having converted to Judaism. Acting as one of the witnesses was the conductor Zubin Mehta, a long-time friend of Barenboim. Since "I was not Jewish I had to temporarily be renamed Moshe Cohen, which made me a 'kosher witness'", Mehta recalled. Du Pré retired from music in 1973, after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). The marriage lasted until du Pré's death in 1987. In the early 1980s, Barenboim and Russian pianist Elena Bashkirova started a relationship. Together they had two sons, both born in Paris before du Pré's death: David Arthur, born 1983, and Michael, born 1985. Barenboim worked to keep his relationship with Bashkirova hidden from du Pré, and believed he had succeeded. He and Bashkirova married in 1988. Both sons are part of the music world: David is a manager-writer for the German hip-hop band Level 8, and Michael Barenboim is a classical violinist. Citizenship Barenboim holds citizenship in Argentina, Israel, Palestine, and Spain, and was the first person to hold Palestinian and Israeli citizenship simultaneously. He lives in Berlin. Career After performing in Buenos Aires, Barenboim made his international debut as a pianist at the age of 10 in 1952 in Vienna and Rome. In 1955 he performed in Paris, in 1956 in London, and in 1957 in New York under the baton of Leopold Stokowski. Regular concert tours of Europe, the United States, South America, Australia and the Far East followed thereafter. In June 1967, Barenboim and his then-fiancée Jacqueline du Pré gave concerts in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Beersheba before and during the Six-Day War. His friendship with musicians Itzhak Perlman, Zubin Mehta, and Pinchas Zukerman, and marriage to du Pré led to the 1969 film by Christopher Nupen of their performance of the Schubert "Trout" Quintet. Following his debut as a conductor with the English Chamber Orchestra in Abbey Road Studios, London, in 1966, Barenboim was invited to conduct by many European and American symphony orchestras. Between 1975 and 1989, he was music director of the Orchestre de Paris, where he conducted much contemporary music. Barenboim made his opera conducting debut in 1973 with a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Edinburgh Festival. He made his debut at Bayreuth in 1981, conducting there regularly until 1999. In 1988, he was appointed artistic and musical director of the Opéra Bastille in Paris, scheduled to open in 1990, but was fired in January 1989 by the opera's chairman Pierre Bergé. Barenboim was named music director designate of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1989 and succeeded Sir Georg Solti as its music director in 1991, a post he held until 17 June 2006. He expressed frustration with the need for fund-raising duties in the United States as part of being a music director of an American orchestra. Since 1992, Barenboim has been music director of the Berlin State Opera and the Staatskapelle Berlin, succeeding in maintaining the independent status of the State Opera. He has tried to maintain the orchestra's traditional sound and style. In autumn 2000 he was made conductor for life of the Staatskapelle Berlin. On 15 May 2006, Barenboim was named principal guest conductor of La Scala opera house, in Milan, after Riccardo Muti's resignation. He subsequently became music director of La Scala in 2011. In 2006, Barenboim presented the BBC Reith Lectures, presenting a series of five lectures titled In the Beginning was Sound. The lectures on music were recorded in a range of cities, including London, Chicago, Berlin, and two in Jerusalem. In the autumn of 2006, Barenboim gave the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University, entitling his talk Sound and Thought. In November 2006, Lorin Maazel submitted Barenboim's name as his nominee to succeed him as the New York Philharmonic's music director. Barenboim said he was flattered but "nothing could be further from my thoughts at the moment than the possibility of returning to the United States for a permanent position", repeating in April 2007 his lack of interest in the New York Philharmonic's music directorship or its newly created principal conductor position. Barenboim made his conducting debut on 28 November 2008 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for the House's 450th performance of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. In 2009, Barenboim conducted the Vienna New Year's Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic for the first time. In his New Year message, he expressed the hope that 2009 would be a year for peace and for human justice in the Middle East. He returned to conduct the 2014 Vienna New Year's Concert, and also conducted the 2022 Concert. In 2014, construction began on the Barenboim–Said Academy in Berlin. A joint project Barenboim developed with Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, the academy was planned as a site for young music students from the Arab world and Israel to study music and humanities in Berlin. It opened its doors on 8 December 2016. In 2017, the Pierre Boulez Saal opened as the public face of the academy. The elliptical shaped concert hall was designed by Frank Gehry. Acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota created the hall’s sound profile. In 2015, Barenboim unveiled a new concert grand piano. Designed by Chris Maene with support from Steinway & Sons, the piano features straight parallel strings instead of the conventional diagonally-crossed strings of a modern Steinway. In 2020, Barenboim curated the digital festival of new music “Distance / Intimacy” with flautist Emmanuel Pahud in the Pierre Boulez Saal. At their invitation ten contemporary composers, among them Jörg Widmann, Olga Neuwirth and Matthias Pintscher, contributed new works engaging artistically with the COVID-19 pandemic. All participating composers and musicians waived their fees, inviting listeners to financially support arts and culture. Musical style Barenboim has rejected musical fashions based on current musicological research, such as the authentic performance movement. His recording of Beethoven's symphonies shows his preference for some conventional practices, rather than fully adhering to Bärenreiter's new edition (edited by Jonathan Del Mar). Barenboim has opposed the practice of choosing the tempo of a piece based on historical evidence, such as the composer's metronome marks. He argues instead for finding the tempo from within the music, especially from its harmony and harmonic rhythm. He has reflected this in the general tempi chosen in his recording of Beethoven's symphonies, usually adhering to early-twentieth-century practices. He has not been influenced by the faster tempos chosen by other conductors such as David Zinman and authentic movement advocate Roger Norrington. In his recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier, Barenboim makes frequent use of the right-foot sustaining pedal, a device absent from the keyboard instruments of Bach's time (although the harpsichord was highly resonant), producing a sonority very different from the "dry" and often staccato sound favoured by Glenn Gould. Moreover, in the fugues, he often plays one voice considerably louder than the others, a practice impossible on a harpsichord. According to some scholarship, this practice began in Beethoven's time (see, for example, Matthew Dirst's book Engaging Bach). When justifying his interpretation of Bach, Barenboim claims that he is interested in the long tradition of playing Bach that has existed for two and a half centuries, rather than in the exact style of performance in Bach's time: The study of old instruments and historic performance practice has taught us a great deal, but the main point, the impact of harmony, has been ignored. This is proved by the fact that tempo is described as an independent phenomenon. It is claimed that one of Bach's gavottes must be played fast and another one slowly. But tempo is not independent! ... I think that concerning oneself purely with historic performance practice and the attempt to reproduce the sound of older styles of music-making is limiting and no indication of progress. Mendelssohn and Schumann tried to introduce Bach into their own period, as did Liszt with his transcriptions and Busoni with his arrangements. In America Leopold Stokowski also tried to do it with his arrangements for orchestra. This was always the result of "progressive" efforts to bring Bach closer to the particular period. I have no philosophical problem with someone playing Bach and making it sound like Boulez. My problem is more with someone who tries to imitate the sound of that time ... Recordings In the beginning of his career, Barenboim concentrated on music of the classical era, as well as some romantic composers. He made his first recording in 1954. Notable classical recordings include the complete cycles of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert's piano sonatas, Beethoven's piano concertos (with the New Philharmonia Orchestra and Otto Klemperer), and Mozart's piano concertos (conducting the English Chamber Orchestra from the piano). Romantic recordings include Brahms's piano concertos (with John Barbirolli), Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, and Chopin's Nocturnes. Barenboim also recorded many chamber works, especially in collaboration with his first wife, Jacqueline du Pré, the violinist Itzhak Perlman, and the violinist and violist Pinchas Zukerman. Noted performances include: the complete Mozart violin sonatas (with Perlman), Brahms's violin sonatas (live concert with Perlman, previously in the studio with Zukerman), Beethoven's and Brahms's cello sonatas (with du Pré), Beethoven's and Tchaikovsky's piano trios (with du Pré and Zukerman), and Schubert's Trout Quintet (with du Pré, Perlman, Zukerman, and Zubin Mehta). Notable recordings as a conductor include the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Schubert, and Schumann; the Da Ponte operas of Mozart; numerous operas by Wagner, including the complete Ring Cycle; and various concertos. Barenboim has written about his changing attitude to the music of Mahler; he has recorded Mahler's Fifth, Seventh, and Ninth symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde. He has also performed and recorded the Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo and Villa-Lobos guitar concerto with John Williams as the guitar soloist. By the late 1990s, Barenboim had widened his concert repertoire, performing works by baroque as well as twentieth-century classical composers. Examples include: J. S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier (which he has played since childhood) and Goldberg Variations, Albeniz's Iberia, and Debussy's Préludes. In addition, he turned to other musical genres, such as jazz, and the folk music of his birthplace, Argentina. He conducted the 2006 New Year's Eve concert in Buenos Aires, in which tangos were played. Barenboim has continued to perform and record chamber music, sometimes with members of the orchestras he has led. Some examples include the Quartet for the End of Time by Messiaen with members of the Orchestre de Paris during his tenure there, Richard Strauss with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Mozart's Clarinet Trio with members of the Berlin Staatskapelle. To mark Barenboim's 75th birthday, Deutsche Grammophon released a box set of 39 CDs of his solo recordings, and Sony Classical issued a box set of Barenboim's orchestral recordings on 43 CDs and three DVDs in 2017, Daniel Barenboim – A Retrospective. Conducting Wagner in Israel The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (then Palestine Orchestra) had performed Richard Wagner's music in Mandatory Palestine even during the early days of the Nazi era. But after the Kristallnacht, Jewish musicians avoided playing Wagner's music in Israel because of the use Nazi Germany made of the composer and because of Wagner's own anti-Semitic writings, initiating an unofficial boycott. This informal ban continued when Israel was founded in 1948, but from time to time unsuccessful efforts were made to end it. In 1974 and again in 1981 Zubin Mehta planned to (but did not) lead the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in works of Wagner. During the latter occasion, fist fights broke out in the audience. Barenboim, who had been selected to head the production of Wagner's operas at the 1988 Bayreuth Festival, had since at least 1989 publicly opposed the Israeli ban. In that year, he had the Israel Philharmonic "rehearse" two of Wagner's works. In a conversation with Edward Said, Barenboim said that "Wagner, the person, is absolutely appalling, despicable, and, in a way, very difficult to put together with the music he wrote, which so often has exactly the opposite kind of feelings ... noble, generous, etc." He called Wagner's anti-Semitism obviously "monstrous", and feels it must be faced, but argues that "Wagner did not cause the Holocaust." In 1990, Barenboim conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in its first appearance in Israel, but he excluded Wagner's works. "Although Wagner died in 1883, he is not played [in Israel] because his music is too inextricably linked with Nazism, and so is too painful for those who suffered", Barenboim told a reporter. "Why play what hurts people?" Not long afterwards, it was announced that Barenboim would lead the Israel Philharmonic in two Wagner overtures, which took place on 27 December "before a carefully screened audience". In 2000, the Israel Supreme Court upheld the right of the Rishon LeZion Orchestra to perform Wagner's Siegfried Idyll. At the Israel Festival in Jerusalem in July 2001, Barenboim had scheduled to perform the first act of Die Walküre with three singers, including tenor Plácido Domingo. However, strong protests by some Holocaust survivors, as well as the Israeli government, led the festival authorities to ask for an alternative program. (The Israel Festival's Public Advisory board, which included some Holocaust survivors, had originally approved the program.) The controversy appeared to end in May, after the Israel Festival announced that a selection by Wagner would not be included at the 7 July concert. Barenboim agreed to substitute music by Schumann and Stravinsky. However, at the end of the concert with the Berlin Staatskapelle, Barenboim announced that he would like to play Wagner as a second encore and invited those who objected to leave, saying, "Despite what the Israel Festival believes, there are people sitting in the audience for whom Wagner does not spark Nazi associations. I respect those for whom these associations are oppressive. It will be democratic to play a Wagner encore for those who wish to hear it. I am turning to you now and asking whether I can play Wagner." A half-hour debate ensued, with some audience members calling Barenboim a "fascist". In the end, a small number of attendees walked out and the overwhelming majority remained, applauding loudly after the performance of the Tristan und Isolde Prelude. In September 2001, a public relations associate for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where Barenboim was the Music Director, revealed that season ticket-holders were about evenly divided about the wisdom of Barenboim's decision to play Wagner in Jerusalem. Barenboim regarded the performance of Wagner at the 7 July concert as a political statement. He said he had decided to defy the ban on Wagner after having a news conference he held the previous week interrupted by the ringing of a mobile phone to the tune of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries". "I thought if it can be heard on the ring of a telephone, why can't it be played in a concert hall?" he said. A Knesset committee subsequently called for Barenboim to be declared a persona non-grata in Israel until he apologized for conducting Wagner's music. The move was condemned by the musical director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra Zubin Mehta and members of Knesset. Prior to receiving the $100,000 Wolf Prize, awarded annually in Israel, Barenboim said, "If people were really hurt, of course I regret this, because I don't want to harm anyone". In 2005, Barenboim gave the inaugural Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University, entitled "Wagner, Israel and Palestine". In the speech, according to the Financial Times, Barenboim "called on Israel to accept the Palestinian 'narrative even though they may not agree with it'", and said, "The state of Israel was supposed to provide the instrument for the end of anti-Semitism ... This inability to accept a new narrative has led to a new anti-Semitism that is very different from the European anti-Semitism of the 19th century." According to The New York Times, Barenboim said it was the "fear, this conviction of being yet again the victim, that does not allow the Israeli public to accept Wagner's anti-Semitism ... It is the same cell in the collective brain that does not allow them to make progress in their understanding of the needs of the Palestinian people", and also said that suicide bombings in Israel "had to be seen in the context of the historical development at which we have arrived". The speech caused controversy; the Jewish Telegraphic Agency wrote that Barenboim had "compared Herzl's ideas to Wagner's; criticized Palestinian terrorist attacks but also justified them; and said Israeli actions contributed to the rise of international anti-Semitism". In March 2007, Barenboim said: "The whole subject of Wagner in Israel has been politicized and is a symptom of a malaise that goes very deep in Israeli society..." In 2010, before conducting Wagner's Die Walküre for the gala premiere of La Scala's season in Milan, he said that the perception of Wagner was unjustly influenced by the fact that he was Hitler's favourite composer: "I think a bit of the problem with Wagner isn't what we all know in Israel, anti-Semitism, etc ... It is how the Nazis and Hitler saw Wagner as his own prophet ... This perception of Hitler colors for many people the perception of Wagner ... We need one day to liberate Wagner of all this weight". In a 2012 interview with Der Spiegel, Barenboim said, "It saddens me that official Israel so doggedly refuses to allow Wagner to be performed – as was the case, once again, at the University of Tel Aviv two weeks ago – because I see it as a symptom of a disease. The words I'm about to use are harsh, but I choose them deliberately: There is a politicization of the remembrance of the Holocaust in Israel, and that's terrible." He also argued that after the trial of Adolf Eichmann and the Six-Day War, "a misunderstanding also arose ... namely that the Holocaust, from which the Jews' ultimate claim to Israel was derived, and the Palestinian problem had something to do with each other." He also said, that since the Six-Day War, Israeli politicians have repeatedly established a connection between European anti-Semitism and the fact that the Palestinians don't accept the founding of the State of Israel. But that's absurd! The Palestinians weren't primarily anti-Semitic. They just didn't accept their expulsion. But European anti-Semitism goes much further back than to the partition of Palestine and the establishment of Israel in 1948. In response to a question from the interviewer, he said he conducted Wagner with the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra because, "The musicians wanted it. I said: Sure, but we have to talk about it. It's a tricky decision." When the interviewer asked if the initiative came from Arab musicians in the orchestra, he replied, "On the contrary. It was the Israelis. The Israeli brass players." Over the years, observers of the Wagner battle have weighed in on both sides of the issue. Political views Barenboim, a supporter of human rights, including Palestinian rights, is an outspoken critic of Israel's conservative governments and the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. In an interview with the British music critic Norman Lebrecht in 2003, Barenboim accused Israel of behaving in a manner that was "morally abhorrent and strategically wrong" and "putting in danger the very existence of the state of Israel". In 1967, at the start of the Six-Day War, Barenboim and du Pré had performed for the Israeli troops on the front lines, as well as during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. During the Gulf War, he and an orchestra performed in Israel in gas masks. Barenboim has argued publicly for a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians. In a November 2014 opinion piece in The Guardian, he wrote that the "ongoing security of the state of Israel ... is only possible in the long term if the future of the Palestinian people, too, is secured in its own sovereign state. If this does not happen, the wars and history of that region will be constantly repeated and the unbearable stalemate will continue." West–Eastern Divan In 1999, Barenboim and Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said jointly founded the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra. This initiative brings together, every summer, a group of young classical musicians from Israel, the Palestinian territories and Arab countries to study, perform and to promote mutual reflection and understanding. Barenboim and Said jointly received the 2002 Prince of Asturias Awards for their work in "improving understanding between nations". Together they wrote the book Parallels and Paradoxes, based on a series of public discussions held at New York's Carnegie Hall. In September 2005, presenting the book written with Said, Barenboim refused to be interviewed by uniformed Israel Defense Forces Radio reporter Dafna Arad, considering the wearing of the uniform insensitive for the occasion. In response, Israeli Education Minister Limor Livnat of the Likud party called him "a real Jew hater" and "a real anti-Semite". After being invited for the fourth time to the Doha Festival for Music and Dialogue in Qatar with the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra in 2012, Barenboim's invitation was cancelled by the authorities because of "sensitivity to the developments in the Arab world". There had been a campaign against him in the Arab media, accusing him of "being a Zionist". In July 2012, Barenboim and the orchestra played a pivotal role at the BBC Proms, performing a cycle of Beethoven's nine symphonies, with the Ninth timed to coincide with the opening of the London 2012 Olympic Games. In addition, he was an Olympic flag carrier at the opening ceremony of the Games. Wolf Prize In May 2004, Barenboim was awarded the Wolf Prize at a ceremony at the Israeli Knesset. Education Minister Livnat held up the nomination until Barenboim apologized for his performance of Wagner in Israel. Barenboim called Livnat's demand "politically motivated", adding "I don't see what I need to apologize about. If I ever hurt a person privately or in public, I am sorry, because I have no intention of hurting people...", which was good enough for Livnat. The ceremony was boycotted by Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, also a member of the Likud party. In his acceptance speech, Barenboim expressed his opinion on the political situation, referring to the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948: I am asking today with deep sorrow: Can we, despite all our achievements, ignore the intolerable gap between what the Declaration of Independence promised and what was fulfilled, the gap between the idea and the realities of Israel? Does the condition of occupation and domination over another people fit the Declaration of Independence? Is there any sense in the independence of one at the expense of the fundamental rights of the other? Can the Jewish people whose history is a record of continued suffering and relentless persecution, allow themselves to be indifferent to the rights and suffering of a neighboring people? Can the State of Israel allow itself an unrealistic dream of an ideological end to the conflict instead of pursuing a pragmatic, humanitarian one based on social justice? Israel's President Moshe Katsav and Education Minister Livnat criticized Barenboim for his speech. Livnat accused him of attacking the state of Israel, to which Barenboim replied that he had not done so, but that he instead had cited the text of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. Performing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip Barenboim has performed several times in the West Bank: at Bir Zeit University in 1999 and several times in Ramallah. In December 2007, Barenboim and 20 musicians from Britain, the United States, France and Germany, and one Palestinian were scheduled to play a baroque music concert in Gaza. Although they had received authorization from Israeli authorities, the Palestinian was stopped at the Israel–Gaza border and told that he needed individual permission to enter. The group waited seven hours at the border, and then canceled the concert in solidarity. Barenboim commented: "A baroque music concert in a Roman Catholic church in Gaza – as we all know – has nothing to do with security and would bring so much joy to people who live there in great difficulty." In January 2008, after performing in Ramallah, Barenboim accepted honorary Palestinian citizenship, becoming the first Jewish Israeli citizen to be offered the status. Barenboim said he hoped it would serve as a public gesture of peace. Some Israelis criticized Barenboim's decision to accept Palestinian citizenship. The parliamentary faction chairman of the Shas party demanded that Barenboim be stripped of his Israeli citizenship, but the Interior Minister told the media that "the matter is not even up for discussion". In January 2009, Barenboim cancelled two concerts of the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra in Qatar and Cairo "due to the escalating violence in Gaza and the resulting concerns for the musicians' safety". In May 2011, Barenboim conducted the "Orchestra for Gaza" composed of volunteers from the Berlin Philharmonic, the Berlin Staatskapelle, the Orchestra of La Scala in Milan, the Vienna Philharmonic and the Orchestre de Paris, at al-Mathaf Cultural House. The concert, held in Gaza City, was co-ordinated in secret with the United Nations. The orchestra flew from Berlin to Vienna and from there to El Arish on a plane chartered by Barenboim, entering the Gaza Strip at the Egyptian Rafah Border Crossing. The musicians were escorted by a convoy of United Nations vehicles. The concert, the first performance by an international classical ensemble in the Strip, was attended by an invited audience of several hundred schoolchildren and NGO workers, who greeted Barenboim with applause. The orchestra played Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik and Symphony No. 40, also familiar to an Arab audience as the basis of one of the songs of the famous Arab singer Fairuz. In his speech, Barenboim said: "Everyone has to understand that the Palestinian cause is a just cause therefore it can be only given justice if it is achieved without violence. Violence can only weaken the righteousness of the Palestinian cause". Awards and recognition Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, 2002 Prince of Asturias Awards, 2002 (jointly with Edward Said) Toleranzpreis der Evangelischen Akademie Tutzing, 2002 Wilhelm Furtwängler Prize, 2003 (with Staatskapelle Berlin) Buber-Rosenzweig-Medal, 2004 Wolf Prize in Arts, 2004 (According to the documentary "Knowledge Is the Beginning", Barenboim donated all the proceeds to music education for Israeli and Palestinian youth) Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2005; Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, 2006 Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, 2007 Commander of the Legion of Honour, 2007 Goethe Medal, 2007 Praemium Imperiale, 2007 Nominated "Honorary Guide" by UFO religion Raëlian Movement, 2008 International Service Award for the Global Defence of Human Rights, 2008 Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal, 2008 Istanbul International Music Festival Lifetime Achievement Award, 2009; In 2009 Konex Foundation from Argentina granted him the Diamond Konex Award for Classical Music as the most important musician in the last decade in his country. Léonie Sonning Music Prize, 2009 Westphalian Peace Prize (Westfälischer Friedenspreis), in 2010, for his striving for dialog in the Near East; Otto Hahn Peace Medal (Otto-Hahn-Friedensmedaille) of the United Nations Association of Germany (DGVN), Berlin-Brandenburg, for his efforts in promoting peace, humanity and international understanding, 2010; Grand Officier of the Légion d'honneur, 2011 Edison Award for Lifetime Achievement 2011, the most prestigious music award of The Netherlands Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE), 2011 Dresden Peace Prize, 2011 International Willy-Brandt Prize, 2011 In 2012, he was voted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame. Honorary Member of the Berliner Philharmoniker Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts, 2015 Elgar Medal, 2015 Minor planet 7163 Barenboim is named after him. Honorary degrees Doctor of Philosophy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1996 Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 2003 Doctor of Music, University of Oxford, 2007 Doctor of Music, SOAS, University of London, 2008 Doctor of Music, Royal Academy of Music, 2010 Doctor of Philosophy, Weizmann Institute of Science, 2013 University of Florence, 2020 Grammy Awards Barenboim received 6 Grammy Awards. Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording: Christoph Classen (producer), Eberhard Sengpiel, Tobias Lehmann (engineers), Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Jane Eaglen, Thomas Hampson, Waltraud Meier, René Pape, Peter Seiffert, the Chor der Deutschen Staatsoper Berlin & the Staatskapelle Berlin for Wagner: Tannhäuser (2003) Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance: Daniel Barenboim, Dale Clevenger, Larry Combs, Daniele Damiano, Hansjörg Schellenberger & the Berlin Philharmonic for Beethoven/Mozart: Quintets (Chicago-Berlin) (1995) Daniel Barenboim & Itzhak Perlman for Brahms: The Three Violin Sonatas (1991) Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance: Daniel Barenboim (conductor) & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Corigliano: Symphony No. 1 (1992) Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra): Martin Fouqué (producer), Eberhard Sengpiel (engineer), Daniel Barenboim (conductor / piano), Dale Clevenger, Larry Combs, Alex Klein, David McGill & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Richard Strauss Wind Concertos (Horn Concerto; Oboe Concerto, etc.) (2002) Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Itzhak Perlman & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Elgar: Violin Concerto in B Minor (1983) Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Arthur Rubinstein & the London Philharmonic Orchestra for Beethoven: The Five Piano Concertos (1977) (also awarded Grammy Award for Best Classical Album) Straight-strung piano In 2017, Barenboim unveiled a piano that has straight-strung bass strings, as opposed to the crossed-stringed modern instrument. He was inspired by Liszt's Erard piano, which has straight strings. Barenboim appreciates the clarity of tone and a greater control over the tonal quality (or color) his new instrument gives. This piano was developed with the help of Chris Maene at Maene Piano, who also built it. In 2019, Barenboim used this instrument to perform at Berliner Philhamoniker. See also List of peace activists References External links Barenboim Revealed on CNN.com Parallels and Paradoxes, NPR interview with Barenboim and Edward Said, 28 December 2002 "In harmony", The Guardian feature on Barenboim and Said, 5 April 2003 In the Beginning was Sound, 2006 BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures. BBC Radio 3 interviews, November 1991 Discography at SonyBMG Masterworks Elgar Cello Concerto in E minor, opus 85 Jacqueline Du Pré with Daniel Barenboim and The New Philharmonia Orchestra on YouTube Review: Fidelio played by Daniel Barenboim and the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra Westphalian Peace Prize Barenboim's outstanding Beethoven, on the symphony cycle at classicstoday.com Daniel Barenboim and Arab Anti-Israel Sentiment: A Classic Example of Political Naivety Mutual Appreciation Is Essential Interview with Daniel Barenboim Two interviews with Daniel Barenboim by Bruce Duffie, 2 November 1985 & 11 September 1993 1942 births Living people 20th-century Argentine musicians 20th-century classical pianists 20th-century male musicians 21st-century Argentine musicians 21st-century classical pianists 21st-century male musicians Accademia Musicale Chigiana alumni Argentine classical pianists Argentine conductors (music) Argentine emigrants to Israel Argentine Jews Argentine people of Russian-Jewish descent Child classical musicians Commandeurs of the Légion d'honneur Conductors (music) awarded knighthoods Deutsche Grammophon artists Edison Classical Music Awards Oeuvreprijs winners EMI Classics and Virgin Classics artists Erato Records artists Ernst von Siemens Music Prize winners Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Grammy Award winners Grand Crosses with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Grand Officiers of the Légion d'honneur Herbert von Karajan Music Prize winners Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music Illustrious Citizens of Buenos Aires Israeli classical pianists Israeli conductors (music) Israeli expatriates in Germany Israeli expatriates in Italy Israeli Jews Israeli people of Argentine-Jewish descent Israeli people of Russian-Jewish descent Israeli–Palestinian peace process Jewish Argentine musicians Jewish classical pianists Jews in the State of Palestine Male classical pianists Male conductors (music) Music directors of the Berlin State Opera Musicians awarded knighthoods Musicians from Buenos Aires Recipients of the Léonie Sonning Music Prize Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) Recipients of the Praemium Imperiale Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists Spinozists United Nations Messengers of Peace Wolf Prize in Arts laureates Naturalized citizens of the State of Palestine
false
[ "Grand Analog is a Canadian hip hop band, fronted by Odario Williams. The project combines R&B, jazz, reggae and rock influences into a hip hop style performed mainly on live instruments instead of digital electronics.\n\nHistory\nGrand Analog was first formed by Williams in 2002 as a short-lived rock-oriented side project from his main band Mood Ruff. After Mood Ruff's breakup, he revived the project with a new focus on reggae and hip hop in 2006. Williams has told the press that \"sonically, I knew that I wanted to dig into dub and rock and soul. I’ve always wanted to do that, but years ago I wasn’t free enough upstairs to know that I could.\"\n\nThe band released their first album, Calligraffiti, in 2007. A follow-up album, titled Metropolis Is Burning, was released on May 26, 2009. The album topped the Canadian community and campus radio hip hop chart for several weeks.\n\nGrand Analog won two Western Canadian Music Awards for Best Rap/Hip-Hop Recording in 2009 for Touch Your Toes EP and 2010 for Metropolis Is Burning.\n\nThe band's third album, Modern Thunder, was released in Canada on August 20, 2013. Modern Thunder was also released in various European countries on German label Ferryhouse Records; and released in the U.S. on Brooklyn label Feel Up Records.\n\nIn 2015 the band released an album, Roll Dub Soul Rap, and performed at a number of clubs in western Canada., In 2016 they released a video, Love is a Battlefield.\n\nDiscography\n Calligraffiti (2007)\n Metropolis Is Burning (2009)\n Modern Thunder (2013)\n Roll Dub Soul Rap (2015)\n Survival (2018)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n Feelup Records\n\nCanadian hip hop groups\nMusical groups from Winnipeg\nMusical groups from Toronto\nMusical groups established in 2006\n2006 establishments in Manitoba", "Cartel is a 1995 Turkish hip hop CD project involving three groups of rappers from different German cities, which received attention and popularity in both Turkey and Germany. It was notable for using samples of traditional Turkish music instruments in hip hop music. Cartel was the first Turkish-language project to get off the ground and often credited as the group that ignited \"Oriental hip hop\".\n\nDuring Cartel's short career, the band gave around 120 extremely successful concerts in Turkey, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands and France. Cartel is the only hip-hop group that managed to fill Istanbul's İnönü Stadium (as of December 2006). In addition to German and Turkish-speaking media, BBC London also reported on the group, as did the music channels VIVA and MTV.\n\nIn Turkey, where the band, which also appears in English, Spanish and German, has remained most successful, Cartel has sold more than half a million CDs through official sales to date. On February 4, 2011 the group released their new album Bugünkü Neşen Cartel'den and their new video Bir Oluruz, but without Kabus Kerim.\n\nDiscography\n\nReferences\n\nCrossover (music)\nMusical groups established in 1995\nGerman hip hop groups\nTurkish hip hop groups" ]
[ "Anton Webern", "Performance style" ]
C_1951dee9c9e740108b2e390bd3a0eac7_0
What was Webern's style like?
1
What was Anton Webern's performance style like?
Anton Webern
Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music; this is evidenced by anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction, many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors and associations everywhere throughout his sketches. As both a composer and conductor he was one of many (e.g., Wilhelm Furtwangler, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Hermann Scherchen) in a contemporaneous tradition of conscientiously and non-literally handling notated musical figures, phrases, and even entire scores so as to maximize expressivity in performance and to cultivate audience engagement and understanding. This aspect of Webern's work had been typically missed in his immediate post-war reception, however, even as it may radically affect the music's reception. For example, Boulez's "complete" recording of Webern's music yielded more to this aesthetic the second time after largely missing it the first; but Eliahu Inbal's rendition of Webern's symphony with the hr-Sinfonieorchester is still far more within the spirit of the late Romantic performance tradition (which Webern seemingly intended for his music), nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work. Gunter Wand's 1966 recording of the Cantata No. 1 (1938-40), op. 29, with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks et al., may likewise be contrasted with both of Boulez's renditions. CANNOTANSWER
Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music;
Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), known as simply Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor. Along with his mentor Arnold Schoenberg and his colleague Alban Berg, Webern was in the core of those in the circle of the Second Viennese School, including Theodor W. Adorno, Heinrich Jalowetz, and Ernst Krenek. As an exponent of atonality and twelve-tone technique, Webern exerted influence on contemporaries Luigi Dallapiccola, Krenek, and even Schoenberg himself. As a tutor, Webern guided and variously influenced Arnold Elston, Frederick Dorian (Friederich Deutsch), , , Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Philipp Herschkowitz, René Leibowitz, Humphrey Searle, Leopold Spinner, and Stefan Wolpe. Webern's music was among the most radical of its milieu, both in its concision and in its rigorous and resolute apprehension of twelve-tone technique. His innovations in schematic organization of pitch, rhythm, register, timbre, dynamics, articulation, and melodic contour; his eagerness to redefine imitative contrapuntal techniques such as canon and fugue; and his inclination toward athematicism, abstraction, and lyricism all greatly informed and oriented intra- and post-war European, typically serial or avant-garde composers such as Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, Henri Pousseur, and György Ligeti. In the United States, meanwhile, his music attracted the interest of Elliott Carter, whose critical ambivalence was marked by a certain enthusiasm nonetheless; Milton Babbitt, who ultimately derived more inspiration from Schoenberg's twelve-tone practice than that of Webern; and Igor Stravinsky, to whom it was very fruitfully reintroduced by Robert Craft. During and shortly after the post-war period, then, Webern was posthumously received with attention first diverted from his sociocultural upbringing and surroundings and, moreover, focused in a direction apparently antithetical to his participation in German Romanticism and Expressionism. A richer understanding of Webern began to emerge in the later half of the 20th century, notably in the work of scholars Kathryn Bailey, Julian Johnson, Felix Meyer, Anne Shreffler, as archivists and biographers (most importantly Hans and Rosaleen Moldenhauer) gained access to sketches, letters, lectures, audio recordings, and other articles of or associated with Webern's estate. Biography Youth, education, and other early experiences in Austria-Hungary Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern was born in Vienna, then in Austria-Hungary. He was the only surviving son of Carl von Webern, a civil servant, and Amalie (née Geer) who was a competent pianist and accomplished singer—possibly the only obvious source of the future composer's talent. He never used his middle names and dropped the "von" in 1918 as directed by the Austrian government's reforms after World War I. He lived in Graz and Klagenfurt for much of his youth. But his distinct and lasting sense of Heimat was shaped by readings of Peter Rosegger; and moreover by frequent and extended retreats with his parents, sisters, and cousins to his family's country estate, the Preglhof, which Webern's father had inherited upon the death of Webern's grandfather in 1889. Webern memorialized the Preglhof in a diary poem "An der Preglhof" and in the tone poem Im Sommerwind (1904), both after Bruno Wille's idyll. Once Webern's father sold the estate in 1912, Webern referred to it nostalgically as a "lost paradise". He continued to revisit the Preglhof, the family cemetery in Schwabegg, and the surrounding landscape for the rest of his life; and he clearly associated the area, which he took as his home, very closely with the memory of his mother Amelie, who had died in 1906 and whose loss also profoundly affected Webern for decades. Art historian Ernst Dietz, Webern's cousin and at that time a student at Graz, may have introduced Webern to the work of the painters Arnold Böcklin and Giovanni Segantini, whom Webern came to admire. Segantini's work was a likely inspiration for Webern's 1905 single-movement string quartet. In 1902, Webern began attending classes at Vienna University. There he studied musicology with Guido Adler, writing his thesis on the Choralis Constantinus of Heinrich Isaac. This interest in early music would greatly influence his compositional technique in later years, especially in terms of his use of palindromic form on both the micro- and macro-scale and the economical use of musical materials. With the help of friends and colleagues, Webern later began working peripatetically as a conductor and musical coach in various towns and cities, among them Ischl, Teplitz (now Teplice, Czech Republic), Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland), and Prague, before finally moving back to Vienna. As might be expected, the young Webern was enthusiastic about the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert ("so genuinely Viennese"), Hugo Wolf, and Richard Wagner, visiting Bayreuth in 1902. He also enjoyed the music of Hector Berlioz and Georges Bizet. In 1904, he reportedly stormed out of a meeting with Hans Pfitzner, from whom he was seeking instruction, when the latter criticized Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. In 1908, Webern wrote rapturously to Schoenberg about Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande. He conducted some of Debussy's music in 1911. It may have been at Guido Adler's advice that he paid Schoenberg for composition lessons. Webern progressed quickly under Schoenberg's tutelage, publishing his Passacaglia, Op. 1, as his graduation piece in 1908. He also met Berg, then another of Schoenberg's pupils. These two relationships would be the most important in his life in shaping his own musical direction. Some of Webern's earlier thoughts (from 1903) are as amusing as they might be surprising: besides describing some of Alexander Scriabin's music as "languishing junk," he wrote of Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 4 that it was "boring," that Carl Maria von Weber's Konzertstück in F minor was passé, and that he found Johannes Brahms's Symphony No. 3 (which struck Eduard Hanslick as "artistically the most nearly perfect") "cold and without particular inspiration, ... badly orchestrated—grey on grey." These youthful impressions are in some, but not complete or altogether necessarily very significant, contrast to the considered opinions of Webern in the 1930s, by then a decided nationalist who, as Roland Leich described, "lectured at some length on the utter supremacy of German music, emphasizing that leading composers of other lands are but pale reflections of Germanic masters: Berlioz a French Beethoven, Tchaikovsky a Russian Schumann, Elgar an English Mendelssohn, etc." After all, even when young, Webern had described one of Alexander Glazunov's symphonies as "not particularly Russian" (in contrast to some of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's music at the same all-Russian concert) in the same passage as he praised it. Red Vienna in the First Austrian Republic From 1918 to 1921, Webern helped organize and operate the Society for Private Musical Performances, which gave concerts of then-recent or -new music by Béla Bartók, Berg, Ferruccio Busoni, Debussy, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Mahler, Maurice Ravel, Max Reger, Erik Satie, Strauss, Stravinsky, and Webern himself. After their Society performances in 1919 (and while working on his own Opp. 14–15), Webern wrote to Berg that Stravinsky's Berceuses du chat "[move] me completely beyond belief," describing them as "indescribably touching," and that Stravinsky's Pribaoutki were "something really glorious." After the dissolution of the Society amid catastrophic hyperinflation in 1921, Webern conducted the Vienna Workers' Symphony Orchestra and Chorus from 1922 to 1934. In 1926, Webern noted his voluntary resignation as chorusmaster of the Mödling Men's Choral Society, a paid position, in controversy over his hiring of a Jewish singer, Greta Wilheim, to replace a sick one. Letters document their correspondence in many subsequent years, and she (among others) would in turn provide him with facilities to teach private lessons as a convenience to Webern, his family, and his students. Civil War, Austrofascism, Nazism, and World War II Webern's music, along with that of Berg, Křenek, Schoenberg, and others, was denounced as "cultural Bolshevism" and "degenerate art" by the Nazi Party in Germany, and both publication and performances of it were banned soon after the Anschluss in 1938, although neither did it fare well under the preceding years of Austrofascism. As early as 1933, an Austrian gauleiter on Bayerischer Rundfunk mistakenly and very likely maliciously characterized both Berg and Webern as Jewish composers. As a result of official disapproval throughout the '30s, both found it harder to earn a living; Webern lost a promising conducting career which might have otherwise been more noted and recorded and had to take on work as an editor and proofreader for his publishers, Universal Edition. His family's financial situation deteriorated until, by August 1940, his personal records reflected no monthly income. It was thanks to the Swiss philanthropist Werner Reinhart that Webern was able to attend the festive premiere of his Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30, in Winterthur, Switzerland in 1943. Reinhart invested all the financial and diplomatic means at his disposal to enable Webern to travel to Switzerland. In return for this support, Webern dedicated the work to him. There are different descriptions of Webern's attitude towards Nazism; this is perhaps attributable to its complexity, his internal ambivalence, his prosperity in the preceding years (1918–1934) of post-war Red Vienna in the First Republic of Austria, the subsequently divided political factions of his homeland as represented in his friends and family (from Zionist Schoenberg to his Nazi son Peter), as well as the different contexts in which or audiences to whom his views were expressed. Further insight into Webern's attitudes comes with the realization that Nazism itself was deeply multifaceted, marked "not [by] a coherent doctrine or body of systemically interrelated ideas, but rather [by] a vaguer worldview made up of a number of prejudices with varied appeals to different audiences which could scarcely be dignified with the term 'ideology'". There is, moreover, significant political complexity to be treated, more than enough to complicate any consideration of individual culpability: it is imperative to note that some Social Democrats viewed the National Socialists as an alternative to the Christian Social Party and later Vaterländische Front in the context of reunification with Germany; for example, Karl Renner, the chancellor who served in both the First (1919–33) and Second (post-1945) Austrian Republics, favored a German Anschluss as an alternative to the then Austrofascist regime, under which Berg, Webern, and the Social Democrats suffered. And Webern's professional circle in Vienna included, besides many Jews, many Social Democrats; for example, for David Josef Bach, a close friend of Schoenberg's as well, Webern conducted many workers' and amateur ensembles. Under the Nazis, some Social Democrats expected, there might be more work and protections for workers and laborers, as well as other social reforms and political stability, if not democracy; Webern may well have hoped to again be able to conduct and to be better able to secure a future for his family. In broad terms, Webern's attitude seems to have first warmed to a degree of characteristic fervor and perhaps only much later, in conjunction with widespread German disillusionment, cooled to Hitler and the Nazis. On the one hand, notes that Webern attacked Nazi cultural policies in private lectures given in 1933, whose hypothetical publication "would have exposed Webern to serious consequences" later. On the other, some private correspondence attests to his Nazi sympathies. Webern's patriotism led him to endorse the Nazi regime in a series of letters to Joseph Hueber, who was serving in the army and himself held such views. Webern described Hitler on 2 May 1940, as "this unique man" who created "the new state" of Germany; thus Alex Ross characterizes him as "an unashamed Hitler enthusiast". Violinist Louis Krasner painted not a sentimental portrait but one imbued with a wealth of factual and personal detail for its publication in 1987, describing Webern as clearly naive and idealistic but not entirely without his wits, shame, or conscience; Krasner carefully contextualizes Webern as a member of Austrian society at the time, one departed by Schoenberg and one in which the already pro-Nazi Vienna Philharmonic had even refused to play the late Berg's Violin Concerto. As Krasner vividly recalled, he and Webern were visiting at the latter's home in Maria Enzersdorf, Mödling when the Nazis invaded Austria; Webern, uncannily seeming to anticipate the timing down to 4 o'clock in the afternoon, turned on the radio to hear this news and immediately warned Krasner, urging him to flee, whereupon he did (first to Vienna). Whether this was for Krasner's safety or to save Webern the embarrassment of Krasner's presence during a time of possible celebration in the pro-Nazi Webern family (or indeed in most of pro-Nazi Mödling, by Krasner's description as well as one even more vivid of Arnold Greissle-Schönberg), Krasner was ambivalent and uncertain, withholding judgment. Only later did Krasner himself realize how self-admittedly "foolhardy" he had been and in what danger he had placed himself, revealing an ignorance perhaps shared by Webern. Krasner had even revisited frequently, hoping to convince friends (e.g., Schoenberg's daughter Gertrude and her husband Felix Greissle) to emigrate before time ran out. Krasner eventually left more permanently, after a 1941 incident wherein he felt only his US passport saved him from both locals and police. Krasner retold from a story related to him in long discussion with Schoenberg's son Görgi, a Jew who remained in Vienna during the war, that the Weberns, much to their risk and credit, had provided Görgi and his family with food and shelter toward the end of the war at the Weberns' home in a Mödling apartment belonging to their son-in-law. Görgi and his family were left behind for their safety when Webern fled on foot with his family to Mittersill, about 75 km. away, for safety of their own in light of the coming Russian invasion; Amalie, one of Webern's daughters, wrote of '17 persons pressed together in the smallest possible space' upon their arrival. Ironically, the Russians pronounced Görgi a "Nazi spy" when he was discovered due to the Nazi munitions and propaganda in the Weberns' basement store-room. Görgi is said to have saved himself from execution by protesting and drawing attention to his clothes, sewn as specified by the Nazis with the yellow Star of David. He continued to live in this apartment with this family until 1969. Webern is also known to have aided Josef Polnauer, a Jewish friend who, as an albino, managed to largely escape the Nazis' attention and later edit a publication of Webern's correspondence from this time with Hildegard Jone, Webern's then lyricist and collaborator, and her husband, sculptor Josef Humplik. However, Krasner was particularly troubled by a 1936 conversation with Webern about the Jews, in which Webern expressed his vague but unambiguously anti-Semitic opinion that "Even Schoenberg, had he not been a Jew, would have been quite different!" Krasner remembered, perhaps with the benefit of hindsight at the time (1987), that "Jews ... were at the center of the difficulty. Those who wanted to, put the blame for all this calamity, for all this depraved condition, on the Jews who had brought it with them—along with a lot of radical ideas—from the East. People blamed the Jews for their financial worries. The Jews were, at the same time, the poverty-stricken people who came with nothing, and the capitalists who controlled everything." When once asked by Schoenberg about his feelings toward the Nazis, Webern nonetheless sought to allay Schoenberg's concerns; similarly, when in 1938 Eduard Steuermann asked Krasner about rumors of Webern's possible "interest in and devotion to the Nazis" on Schoenberg's behalf, Krasner lied by denying the rumors categorically and entirely. As a result, Schoenberg's Violin Concerto of 1934 (or 1935)–36 continued to bear a dedication to Webern, although whittled down as a result of Schoenberg's continuing suspicions or, indeed, on Webern's behalf, i.e., to protect Webern from further Nazi suspicion and persecution. Schoenberg's tone was ultimately conciliatory in remembrance of both Berg and Webern in 1947: "Let us—for the moment at least—forget all that might have at one time divided us ... even if those who tried might have succeeded in confounding us." Musicologist Richard Taruskin describes Webern accurately if vaguely as a pan-German nationalist but then goes much further in claiming specifically that Webern joyfully welcomed the Nazis with the 1938 Anschluss, at best extrapolating from the account of his cited source Krasner and at worst exaggerating or distorting it, as well as describing it sardonically as "heart-breaking". Taruskin's authority on this delicate issue must be credited, if at all, then only with the significant limitations that he has been polemical in general and hostile in particular to the Second Viennese School, of whom Webern is often considered the most extreme and difficult (i.e., the least accessible). New Complexity composer and performer Franklin Cox not only faults Taruskin as an inaccurate and unreliable historian but also critiques Taruskin as an "ideologist of tonal restoration" (musicologist Martin Kaltenecker similarly refers to the "Restoration of the 1980s," but he also describes a paradigm shift from structure to perception). Taruskin's "reactionary historicist" project, Cox argues, stands in opposition to that of the Second Viennese School, viz. the "progressivist historicist" emancipation of the dissonance. Taruskin himself admits to having acquired a "dubious reputation" on the Second Viennese School and notes that he has been described in his work on Webern as "coming, like Shakespeare's Marc Anthony, 'to bury Webern, not to praise him'". In contradistinction to Taruskin's methods and pronouncements, musicologist Pamela M. Potter advises that "[i]t is important to consider all the scholarship on musical life in the Third Reich that, taken together, reveals the complexity of the day-to-day existence of musicians and composers", as "[i]t seems inevitable that debates about the political culpability of individuals will persist, especially if the stakes remain so high for composers, for whom an up or down vote can determine inclusion in the canon". In this vein, it might be noted in relation to Taruskin's claim that Webern wrote to friends (husband and wife Josef Humplik and Hildegard Jone) on the day of Anschluss not to invite celebration or to observe developments but to be left alone: "I am totally immersed in my work [composing] and cannot, cannot be disturbed"; Krasner's presence could have been a disturbance to Webern for this reason, and musicologist Kathryn Bailey speculates that this may indeed be why he was rushed off by Webern. Webern's 1944–1945 correspondence is strewn with references to bombings, deaths, destruction, privation, and the disintegration of local order; but also noted are the births of several grandchildren. At the age of sixty (i.e., in Dec. 1943), Webern writes that he is living in a barrack away from home and working from 6 am to 5 pm, compelled by the state in a time of war to serve as an air-raid protection police officer. On 3 March 1945, news was relayed to Webern that his only son, Peter, died on 14 February of wounds suffered in a strafing attack on a military train two days earlier. Death in Allied-administered Austria On 15 September 1945, back at his home during the Allied occupation of Austria, Webern was shot and killed by an American Army soldier following the arrest of his son-in-law for black market activities. This incident occurred when, three-quarters of an hour before a curfew was to have gone into effect, he stepped outside the house so as not to disturb his sleeping grandchildren, to enjoy a few draws on a cigar given to him that evening by his son-in-law. The soldier responsible for his death was U. S. Army cook PFC Raymond Norwood Bell of North Carolina, who was overcome by remorse and died of alcoholism in 1955. Webern's wife, Wilhelmine Mörtl, died in 1949. They had three daughters and a son. Music Webern's compositions are concise, distilled, and select; just thirty-one of his compositions were published in his lifetime, and when Pierre Boulez later oversaw a project to record all of his compositions, including some of those without opus numbers, the results fit on just six CDs. Although Webern's music changed over time, as is often the case over a long career, it is typified by very spartan textures, in which every note can be clearly heard; carefully chosen timbres, often resulting in very detailed instructions to the performers and use of extended instrumental techniques (flutter tonguing, col legno, and so on); wide-ranging melodic lines, often with leaps greater than an octave; and brevity: the Six Bagatelles for string quartet (1913), for instance, last about three minutes in total. Formative juvenilia and emergence from study, Opp. 1–2, 1899–1908 Webern published little of his early work in particular; Webern was characteristically meticulous and revised extensively. Many juvenilia remained unknown until the work and findings of the Moldenhauers in the 1960s, effectively obscuring and undermining formative facets of Webern's musical identity, highly significant even more so in the case of an innovator whose music was crucially marked by rapid stylistic shifts. Thus when Boulez first oversaw a project to record "all" of Webern's music, not including the juvenilia, the results fit on three rather than six CDs. Webern's earliest works consist primarily of lieder, the genre that most testifies to his roots in Romanticism, specifically German Romanticism; one in which the music yields brief but explicit, potent, and spoken meaning manifested only latently or programmatically in purely instrumental genres; one marked by significant intimacy and lyricism; and one which often associates nature, especially landscapes, with themes of homesickness, solace, wistful yearning, distance, utopia, and belonging. Robert Schumann's "Mondnacht" is an iconic example; Eichendorff, whose lyric poetry inspired it, is not far removed from the poets (e.g., Richard Dehmel, Gustav Falke, Theodor Storm) whose work inspired Webern and his contemporaries Alban Berg, Max Reger, Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf, and Alexander Zemlinsky. Wolf's Mörike-Lieder were especially influential on Webern's efforts from this period. But well beyond these lieder alone, all of Webern's music may be said to possess such concerns and qualities, as is evident from his sketches, albeit in an increasingly symbolic, abstract, spare, introverted, and idealized manner. Webern's first piece after completing his studies with Schoenberg was the Passacaglia for orchestra (1908). Harmonically, it is a step forward into a more advanced language, and the orchestration is somewhat more distinctive than his earlier orchestral work. However, it bears little relation to the fully mature works he is best known for today. One element that is typical is the form itself: the passacaglia is a form which dates back to the 17th century, and a distinguishing feature of Webern's later work was to be the use of traditional compositional techniques (especially canons) and forms (the Symphony, the Concerto, the String Trio, and String Quartet, and the piano and orchestral Variations) in a modern harmonic and melodic language. Atonality, lieder, and aphorism, Opp. 3–16 and Tot, 1908–1924 For a number of years, Webern wrote pieces which were freely atonal, much in the style of Schoenberg's early atonal works. Indeed, so in lockstep with Schoenberg was Webern for much of his artistic development that Schoenberg in 1951 wrote that he sometimes no longer knew who he was, Webern had followed so well in his footsteps and shadow, occasionally outdoing or stepping ahead of Schoenberg in execution of Schoenberg's own or their shared ideas. There are, however, important cases where Webern may have even more profoundly influenced Schoenberg. Haimo marks the swift, radical influence in 1909 of Webern's novel and arresting Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5, on Schoenberg's subsequent piano piece Op. 11, No. 3; Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16; and monodrama Erwartung, Op. 17. This shift is distinctly pronounced in a letter Schoenberg wrote to Busoni, which describes a rather Webernian aesthetic: In 1949, Schoenberg still remembered being "intoxicated by the enthusiasm of having freed music from the shackles of tonality" and believing with his pupils "that now music could renounce motivic features and remain coherent and comprehensible nonetheless". But with Opp. 18–20, Schoenberg turned back and revived old techniques, very self-consciously returning to and transforming tradition by the concluding songs of Pierrot lunaire (1912), Op. 21, with, e.g., intricately interrelated canons in "Der Mondfleck", clear waltz rhythms in "Serenade", a barcarolle ("Heimfahrt"), triadic harmony throughout "O alter Duft". Pierrot was received by Webern as a direction for the composition of his own Opp. 14–16, most of all with respect to contrapuntal procedures (and to a lesser degree with respect to the diverse and innovative textural treatment among instruments in increasingly smaller ensembles). "How much I owe to your Pierrot", he wrote Schoenberg upon completing a setting of Georg Trakl's "Abendland III", Op. 14, No. 4, in which, rather unusually for Webern, there is no silence or rest until a pause at the concluding gesture. Indeed, a recurring theme of Webern's World War I settings is that of the wanderer, estranged or lost and seeking return to or at least retrieval from an earlier time and place; and of some fifty-six songs on which Webern worked 1914–1926, he ultimately finished and later published only thirty-two set in order as Opp. 12–19. This wartime theme of wandering in search of home ties in with two intricately involved concerns more broadly evident in Webern's work: first, the death and memory of members of Webern's family, especially his mother but also including his father and a nephew; and second, Webern's broad and complex sense of rural and spiritual Heimat. Their importance is marked by Webern's stage play, Tot (October 1913), which, over the course of six alpine scenes of reflection and self-consolation, draws on Emanuel Swedenborg's notion of correspondence to relate and to unite the two concerns, the first embodied but otherworldly and the second concrete if increasingly abstracted and idealized. The similarities between Tot and Webern's music are striking. In an often programmatic or cinematic fashion, Webern ordered his published movements, themselves dramatic or visual tableaux with melodies that frequently begin and end on weak beats or else settle into ostinati or the background. In them, tonality – useful for communicating direction and narrative in programmatic pieces – becomes more tenuous, fragmented, static, symbolic, and visual or spatial in function, thus mirroring the concerns and topics, explicit or implicit, of Webern's music and his selections for it from the poetry of Stefan George and later Georg Trakl. Webern's dynamics, orchestration, and timbre are given so as to produce a fragile, intimate, and often novel sound, despite distinctly recalling Mahler, not infrequently bordering on silence at a typical . In some cases, Webern's choice of instrument in particular functions to represent or to allude to a female voice (e.g., the use of solo violin), to inward or outward luminosity or darkness (e.g., the use of the entire range of register within the ensemble; registral compression and expansion; the use of celesta, harp, and glockenspiel; the use of harmonics and sul ponticello), or to angels and heaven (e.g., the use of harp and trumpet in the circling ostinati of Op. 6, No. 5, and winding to conclusion at the very end of Op. 15, No. 5). Technical consolidation and formal coherence and expansion, Opp. 17–31, 1924–1943 With the Drei Volkstexte (1925), Op. 17, Webern used Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique for the first time, and all his subsequent works used this technique. The String Trio (1926–1927), Op. 20, was both the first purely instrumental work using the twelve-tone technique (the other pieces were songs) and the first cast in a traditional musical form. Webern's music, like that of both Brahms and Schoenberg, is marked by its emphasis on counterpoint and formal considerations; and Webern's commitment to systematic pitch organization in the twelve-tone method is inseparable from this prior commitment. Webern's tone rows are often arranged to take advantage of internal symmetries; for example, a twelve-tone row may be divisible into four groups of three pitches which are variations, such as inversions and retrogrades, of each other, thus creating invariance. This gives Webern's work considerable motivic unity, although this is often obscured by the fragmentation of the melodic lines. This fragmentation occurs through octave displacement (using intervals greater than an octave) and by moving the line rapidly from instrument to instrument in a technique referred to as Klangfarbenmelodie. Arrangements and orchestrations In his youth (1903), Webern orchestrated at least five of Franz Schubert's various lieder, giving the piano accompaniment to an appropriately Schubertian orchestra of strings and pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horns: "Der Vollmond Strahlt auf Bergeshöhn" (the Romanze from Rosamunde), "Tränenregen" (from Die schöne Müllerin), "Der Wegweiser" (from Winterreise), "Du bist die Ruh", and "Ihr Bild"; in 1934, he did the same for Schubert's six Deutsche Tänze (German Dances) of 1824. For Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performances in 1921, Webern arranged, among other things, the 1888 Schatz-Walzer (Treasure Waltz) of Johann Strauss II's Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron) for string quartet, harmonium, and piano. In 1924, Webern arranged Franz Liszt's Arbeiterchor (Workers' Chorus, c. 1847–1848) for bass solo, mixed chorus, and large orchestra; it was premièred for the first time in any form on 13 and 14 March 1925, with Webern conducting the first full-length concert of the Austrian Association of Workers Choir. A review in the Amtliche Wiener Zeitung (28 March 1925) read "neu in jedem Sinne, frisch, unverbraucht, durch ihn zieht die Jugend, die Freude" ("new in every respect, fresh, vital, pervaded by youth and joy"). The text, in English translation, reads in part: "Let us have the adorned spades and scoops,/ Come along all, who wield a sword or pen,/ Come here ye, industrious, brave and strong/ All who create things great or small." Liszt, initially inspired by his revolutionary countrymen, had left it in manuscript at publisher 's discretion. Performance style Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music; this is evidenced by anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tänze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction, many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors and associations everywhere throughout his sketches. As both a composer and conductor, he was one of many (e.g., Wilhelm Furtwängler, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Hermann Scherchen) in a contemporaneous tradition of conscientiously and non-literally handling notated musical figures, phrases, and even entire scores so as to maximize expressivity in performance and to cultivate audience engagement and understanding. This aspect of Webern's work had been typically missed in his immediate post-war reception, however, even as it may radically affect the music's reception. For example, Boulez's "complete" recording of Webern's music yielded more to this aesthetic the second time after largely missing it the first; but Eliahu Inbal's rendition of Webern's Symphony, Op. 21 with the hr-Sinfonieorchester is still far more within the spirit of the late Romantic performance tradition (which Webern seemingly intended for his music), nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work. Legacy, influence, and posthumous reception Webern's music began to be performed more widely in the 1920s; by the mid-1940s, its effect was decisive on many composers, even as far-flung as John Cage. In part because Webern had largely remained the most obscure and arcane composer of the Second Viennese School during his own lifetime, interest in Webern's music increased after World War II as it came to represent a universally or generally valid, systematic, and compellingly logical model of new composition, with his œuvre acquiring what Alex Ross calls "a saintly, visionary aura". When Webern's Piano Variations were performed at Darmstadt in 1948, young composers listened in a quasi-religious trance. In 1955, the second issue of Eimert and Stockhausen's journal Die Reihe was devoted to Webern's œuvre, and in 1960 his lectures were published by Universal Edition. Meanwhile, Webern's characteristically passionate pan-German nationalism and censurable, sordid political sympathies (however naive or delusional and whether ever dispelled or faltered) were not widely known or went unmentioned; perhaps in some part due to his personal and political associations before the German Reich, his degradation and mistreatment under it, and his fate immediately after the war. Significantly as relates to his reception, Webern never compromised his artistic identity and values, as Stravinsky was later to note. It has been suggested that the early 1950s' serialists' fascination with Webern was concerned not with his music as such so much as enabled by its concision and some its apparent plainness in the score, thereby facilitating musical analysis; indeed, composer Gottfried Michael Koenig speculates on the basis of his personal experience that since Webern's scores represented such a highly concentrated source, they may have been considered the better for didactic purposes than those of other composers. Composer thus criticized the approach of early serialists to Webern's music as reductive and narrowly focused on some of Webern's apparent methods rather than on his music more generally, especially neglecting timbre in their typical selection of Opp. 27–28. Composer Karel Goeyvaerts recalled that at least on first impression, the sound of Webern's music reminded him of "a Mondrian canvas," explaining that "things of which I had acquired an extremely intimate knowledge, came across as crude and unfinished when seen in reality." Expressing a related opinion, noted contemporaneous German music critic and contributor to Die Reihe, Wolf-Eberhard von Lewinski wrote in the Darmstädter Tagblatt (3 September 1959) that some of the later and more radical music at Darmstadt was "acoustically absurd [if] visually amusing"; several days later, one of his articles in the Der Kurier was similarly headlined "Meager modern music—only interesting to look at." To composers in the then Communist Bloc in Central and Eastern Europe, Webern's music and its techniques promised an exciting, unique, and challenging alternative to socialist realism, with its perceived tendency to kitsch and its nationalist and traditionalist overtones. Whereas Berg's Lyric Suite may have influenced the third and fourth string quartets of Bartók in 1927 via an ISCM concert (in which Bartók himself performed his own Piano Sonata), Webern's influence on later composers from what became the Hungarian People's Republic and from other countries behind the Iron Curtain was sometimes mediated or obstructed by politics. As Ligeti explained to a student in 1970, "In countries where there exists a certain isolation, in Eastern Europe, one cannot obtain correct information. One is cut off from the circulation of blood." Nonetheless, Webern's work was a seminal influence on that of both Endre Szervánszky and György Kurtág following the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, as well as on Ligeti himself. Later still and farther east, Sofia Gubaidulina, for whom music was an escape from the socio-political atmosphere of post-Stalinist Soviet Russia, cited the influence of both J. S. Bach and Webern in particular. Recordings by Webern Webern conducts "Berg – Violin Concerto" Webern conducts his arrangement of Schubert's German Dances See also List of Austrians in music Notes References Bibliography Further reading Ahrend, Thomas, and Stefan Münnich. 2018. Anton Webern. Oxford Bibliographies in Music. Oxford University Press. .}}{{subscription Ahrend, Thomas, and Matthias Schmidt (eds.). 2015. Der junge Webern. Texte und Kontexte. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 2b. Wien: Lafite. . Ahrend, Thomas, and Matthias Schmidt (eds.). 2016. Webern-Philologien. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 3. Wien: Lafite. . Bailey, Kathryn. 1991. The Twelve-Note Music of Anton Webern: Old Forms in a New Language. Music in the Twentieth Century 2. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. (cloth) (pbk. ed., 2006). Cavallotti, Pietro, and Simon Obert, and Rainer Schmusch (eds.). 2019. Neue Perspektiven. Anton Webern und das Komponieren im 20. Jahrhundert. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 4. Wien: Lafite. . Ewen, David. 1971. "Anton Webern (1883–1945)". In Composers of Tomorrow's Music, by David Ewen, 66–77. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. . Forte, Allen. 1998. The Atonal Music of Anton Webern New Haven: Yale University Press. . Galliari, Alain. 2007. "Anton von Webern". Paris: Fayard. . Kröpfl, Monika, and Simon Obert (eds.). 2015. Der junge Webern. Künstlerische Orientierungen in Wien nach 1900. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 2a. Wien: Lafite. . Mead, Andrew. 1993. "Webern, Tradition, and 'Composing with Twelve Tones'". Music Theory Spectrum 15, no. 2:173–204. Moldenhauer, Hans. 1966. Anton von Webern Perspectives. Edited by Demar Irvine, with an introductory interview with Igor Stravinsky. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Needham, Alex. 2012. Brahms Piano Piece to Get Its Premiere 159 Years After Its Creation. The Guardian (Thursday 12 January). Noller, Joachim. 1990. "Bedeutungsstrukturen: zu Anton Weberns 'alpinen' Programmen". Neue Zeitschrift für Musik151, no. 9 (September): 12–18. Obert, Simon (ed.). 2012. Wechselnde Erscheinung. Sechs Perspektiven auf Anton Weberns sechste Bagatelle. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 1. Wien: Lafite. . Perle, George. 1991. Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. Sixth ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Peyser, Joan. 2007. To Boulez and Beyond. Scarecrow Press. . Rockwell, John. 1983. All American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century. New York: Alfred Knopf. Reprinted New York: Da Capo Press, 1997. , . Tsang, Lee. 2002. "The Atonal Music of Anton Webern (1998) by Allen Forte". Music Analysis 21, no. 3 (October): 417–427. Wildgans, Friedrich. 1966. Anton Webern. Translated by Edith Temple Roberts and Humphrey Searle. Introduction and notes by Humphrey Searle. New York: October House. External links Anton Webern biography and works on the UE website (publisher) Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe (Complete Edition) 1883 births 1945 deaths Austrian Roman Catholics 20th-century classical composers Deaths by firearm in Austria Expressionist music Twelve-tone and serial composers Second Viennese School University of Vienna alumni Composers from Vienna Accidental deaths in Austria Pupils of Arnold Schoenberg Austrian male classical composers Austrian classical composers String quartet composers 20th-century Austrian composers 20th-century Austrian male musicians Firearm accident victims
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[ "Variations for piano, Op. 27, is a twelve-tone piece for piano composed by Anton Webern in 1936. It consists of three movements:\n\nWebern's only published work for solo piano, the Variations are one of his major instrumental works and a signal example of his late style. Webern dedicated the work to pianist Eduard Steuermann. However, it was premiered (after months of coaching from Webern) by Peter Stadlen on 26 October 1937 in Vienna. Much later Stadlen produced the definitive interpretive edition of Op. 27, published by Universal Edition in 1979.\n\nHistory of composition\nBy the early 1930s, Webern was one of the composers and artists criticised by the Nazi Party, which was rapidly gaining power. By 1934, Webern's conducting career, a major source of income for the composer, was practically over, and he earned his living by teaching composition to a few private pupils. Despite the considerable disadvantages this financial situation had, the lack of a stable job provided Webern with more time to compose.\n\nOpus 27 took Webern about a year to complete. The three movements were not composed in the order they appear in the work:\n Third movement: begun 14 October 1935, completed 8 July 1936\n First movement: begun 22 July 1936, completed 19 August 1936\n Second movement: begun 25 August 1936, completed 5 November 1936\nThe piece is the only work for piano solo that was published by the composer and assigned an opus number. It was also the last work by Webern to be published by Universal Edition during his lifetime.\n\nAnalysis\n\nStructure\nAll three movements of the work are 12-tone pieces based on the following row (as found at the beginning of the second movement):\n\nThe work's title, Variations, is ambiguous. In a letter dated 18 July, Webern wrote: \"The completed part is a variations movement; the whole will be a kind of 'Suite'\". Only the third movement was completed at the time, and it is clearly a set of variations. The form of the other two movements conforms to the \"Suite\" plan: the first movement is a ternary form, A–B–A, and the second is a binary form. However, to refer to an entire work by the form of its last movement is very unusual, and numerous attempts have been made to explain the title.\n\nWebern scholar Kathryn Bailey outlined three possible views on the structure of the piece. Webern's Variations may be considered any of these:\n A three-movement sonata: sonata form – binary scherzo – variations\n A three-movement suite: ternary movement – binary movement – variations\n A set of variations, in which the first two movements have little connection to the third\n\nOne of the earliest explanations was offered by René Leibowitz, who in 1948 described the first movement as a theme and two variations, the second movement as a theme with a single variation, and the third movement as five variations of yet another theme. Willi Reich, a member of Arnold Schoenberg's circle, described the work as a sonatina which begins with a set of variations (first movement) and ends with a sonata form (third movement). Reich claimed his explanation was identical to Webern's and stemmed from the two men's conversations, however, the authenticity of this claim has been questioned.\n\nYet another explanation was provided by Friedhelm Döhl (who published Reich's analysis, but did not find it satisfactory), who viewed each of the fourteen phrases in the first movement as a variation of the prime/retrograde idea, and found the same structure in the second movement. Robert U. Nelson published a similar analysis in 1969. Finally, Kathryn Bailey's analysis suggests that the first movement is a sonata form, her ideas supported by Webern's own remarks in the original manuscript, published in 1979 by Peter Stadlen.\n\nSymmetry\nA particularly notable feature of Variations is symmetry, which is featured throughout the work. Horizontal symmetry can be observed, for example, in successive phrases of the first movement: bars 1–18 comprise four phrases, each built from the normal row and its retrograde stated simultaneously, and the second half of the phrase is always a reverse of the first. Each phrase is therefore a palindrome, though only the first pair of rows in the beginning of the movement is perfectly palindromic. Vertical symmetry pervades the second movement, which is a canon. The pitches are arranged around the pitch axis of A4. Each downward reaching interval is replicated exactly in the opposite direction.\n\nNotes\n\nSources\n Paperback reprint 2006. .\n \n \n Translation of Muziek van de twintigste eeuw: een onderzoek naar haar elementen en structuur. Utrecht: Oosthoek, 1964. Third impression, Utrecht: Bohn, Scheltema & Holkema, 1977. .\n\nFurther reading\n Bailey, Kathryn. Juni 1988. \"Willi Reich's Webern\". Tempo, New Series, no. 165, Emigres and 'Internal Exiles', pp. 18–22.\n Fiori, Mary E. 1970. \"Webern's Use of Motive in the 'Piano Variations'\". In: Lincoln, Harry B. (ed.). The Computer and Music, pp. 115–122. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.\n Jones, James Rives. Autumn–Winter 1968. \"Some Aspects of Rhythm and Meter in Webern's Opus 27\". Perspectives of New Music, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 103–109.\n Leleu, Jean-Louis. 1998. \"Intuition et esprit de système. Réflexions sur le schéma formel du deuxième mouvement des Variations pour piano op. 27 de Webern\". Revue belge de Musicologie / Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Muziekwetenschap, vol. 52, pp. 101–122.\n Lewin, David. October 1993. \"A Metrical Problem in Webern's Op. 27\". Music Analysis, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 343–354.\n Moldenhauer, Hans, and Rosaleen Moldenhauer. 1978. Anton von Webern: A Chronicle of His Life and Work. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. . London: Gollancz. \n Ogden, Wilbur. Spring 1962. \"A Webern Analysis\". Journal of Music Theory, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 133–135.\n Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1963. \"Gruppenkomposition: Klavierstück I (Anleitung zum Hören)\". In his Texte zur Musik, vol. 1, edited by Dieter Schnebel, 63–74. DuMont Dokumente. Cologne: Verlag M. DuMont Schauberg.\n Travis, Roy. Spring–Summer 1966. \"Directed Motion in Two Brief Piano Pieces by Schoenberg and Webern\". Perspectives of New Music 4.2, pp. 85–89.\n Westergaard, Peter. Spring 1963. \"Webern and 'Total Organization': an analysis of the Second Movement of Piano Variations, op. 27\". Perspectives of New Music 1.2, pp. 107–120.\n\nExternal links\nA Metrical Analysis and Re-notation of Webern's Variations for Piano, 1st movement, Joseph L. Monzo 2010, tonalsoft.com\nPerformance of Variations for Piano by Jonathan Biss from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in MP3 format\n\nCompositions by Anton Webern\nCompositions for solo piano\nTwelve-tone compositions\nVariations\n1936 compositions\nMusic dedicated to ensembles or performers", "The String Quartet, Op. 28, by Anton Webern is written for the standard string quartet group of two violins, viola and cello. It was the last piece of chamber music that Webern wrote (his other late works include two cantatas Op. 29/31 and the Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30).\n\nThe work was initially planned in November 1936 and was premiered at the Coolidge Festival in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on September 22, 1938, in response to a commission that year from Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. When Webern sent the score of the piece to Coolidge, he accompanied it with a letter saying that the piece was \"purely lyrical\" and comparing it to the two and three movement piano sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven.\n\nIt is in three movements:\n\nThe string quartet is atonal and uses twelve-tone technique. The tone row on which the piece is based (B, A, C, B, D, E, C, D, G, F, A, G) is based on the BACH motif (B, A, C, B) and is composed of three tetrachords:\n\nThe first four notes of the row are the BACH motif itself, followed by its inversion, followed by same motif transposed up a minor sixth. A special property of this row is that its inversion (G, A, F, G, D, C, E, D, B, C, A, B) is equivalent to its retrograde.\n\nThe piece was first published in 1939 by Boosey & Hawkes, and was the last of Webern's works to be published in his lifetime. In 1955 another edition appeared from Universal Edition.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \nProgram notes on the quartet (and other works) by Wayne Shirley\n\nCompositions by Anton Webern\nWebern\nMusic commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge\nTwelve-tone compositions\n1938 compositions" ]
[ "Anton Webern", "Performance style", "What was Webern's style like?", "Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music;" ]
C_1951dee9c9e740108b2e390bd3a0eac7_0
What was he best known for?
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What was Anton Webern best known for?
Anton Webern
Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music; this is evidenced by anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction, many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors and associations everywhere throughout his sketches. As both a composer and conductor he was one of many (e.g., Wilhelm Furtwangler, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Hermann Scherchen) in a contemporaneous tradition of conscientiously and non-literally handling notated musical figures, phrases, and even entire scores so as to maximize expressivity in performance and to cultivate audience engagement and understanding. This aspect of Webern's work had been typically missed in his immediate post-war reception, however, even as it may radically affect the music's reception. For example, Boulez's "complete" recording of Webern's music yielded more to this aesthetic the second time after largely missing it the first; but Eliahu Inbal's rendition of Webern's symphony with the hr-Sinfonieorchester is still far more within the spirit of the late Romantic performance tradition (which Webern seemingly intended for his music), nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work. Gunter Wand's 1966 recording of the Cantata No. 1 (1938-40), op. 29, with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks et al., may likewise be contrasted with both of Boulez's renditions. CANNOTANSWER
extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction,
Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), known as simply Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor. Along with his mentor Arnold Schoenberg and his colleague Alban Berg, Webern was in the core of those in the circle of the Second Viennese School, including Theodor W. Adorno, Heinrich Jalowetz, and Ernst Krenek. As an exponent of atonality and twelve-tone technique, Webern exerted influence on contemporaries Luigi Dallapiccola, Krenek, and even Schoenberg himself. As a tutor, Webern guided and variously influenced Arnold Elston, Frederick Dorian (Friederich Deutsch), , , Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Philipp Herschkowitz, René Leibowitz, Humphrey Searle, Leopold Spinner, and Stefan Wolpe. Webern's music was among the most radical of its milieu, both in its concision and in its rigorous and resolute apprehension of twelve-tone technique. His innovations in schematic organization of pitch, rhythm, register, timbre, dynamics, articulation, and melodic contour; his eagerness to redefine imitative contrapuntal techniques such as canon and fugue; and his inclination toward athematicism, abstraction, and lyricism all greatly informed and oriented intra- and post-war European, typically serial or avant-garde composers such as Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, Henri Pousseur, and György Ligeti. In the United States, meanwhile, his music attracted the interest of Elliott Carter, whose critical ambivalence was marked by a certain enthusiasm nonetheless; Milton Babbitt, who ultimately derived more inspiration from Schoenberg's twelve-tone practice than that of Webern; and Igor Stravinsky, to whom it was very fruitfully reintroduced by Robert Craft. During and shortly after the post-war period, then, Webern was posthumously received with attention first diverted from his sociocultural upbringing and surroundings and, moreover, focused in a direction apparently antithetical to his participation in German Romanticism and Expressionism. A richer understanding of Webern began to emerge in the later half of the 20th century, notably in the work of scholars Kathryn Bailey, Julian Johnson, Felix Meyer, Anne Shreffler, as archivists and biographers (most importantly Hans and Rosaleen Moldenhauer) gained access to sketches, letters, lectures, audio recordings, and other articles of or associated with Webern's estate. Biography Youth, education, and other early experiences in Austria-Hungary Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern was born in Vienna, then in Austria-Hungary. He was the only surviving son of Carl von Webern, a civil servant, and Amalie (née Geer) who was a competent pianist and accomplished singer—possibly the only obvious source of the future composer's talent. He never used his middle names and dropped the "von" in 1918 as directed by the Austrian government's reforms after World War I. He lived in Graz and Klagenfurt for much of his youth. But his distinct and lasting sense of Heimat was shaped by readings of Peter Rosegger; and moreover by frequent and extended retreats with his parents, sisters, and cousins to his family's country estate, the Preglhof, which Webern's father had inherited upon the death of Webern's grandfather in 1889. Webern memorialized the Preglhof in a diary poem "An der Preglhof" and in the tone poem Im Sommerwind (1904), both after Bruno Wille's idyll. Once Webern's father sold the estate in 1912, Webern referred to it nostalgically as a "lost paradise". He continued to revisit the Preglhof, the family cemetery in Schwabegg, and the surrounding landscape for the rest of his life; and he clearly associated the area, which he took as his home, very closely with the memory of his mother Amelie, who had died in 1906 and whose loss also profoundly affected Webern for decades. Art historian Ernst Dietz, Webern's cousin and at that time a student at Graz, may have introduced Webern to the work of the painters Arnold Böcklin and Giovanni Segantini, whom Webern came to admire. Segantini's work was a likely inspiration for Webern's 1905 single-movement string quartet. In 1902, Webern began attending classes at Vienna University. There he studied musicology with Guido Adler, writing his thesis on the Choralis Constantinus of Heinrich Isaac. This interest in early music would greatly influence his compositional technique in later years, especially in terms of his use of palindromic form on both the micro- and macro-scale and the economical use of musical materials. With the help of friends and colleagues, Webern later began working peripatetically as a conductor and musical coach in various towns and cities, among them Ischl, Teplitz (now Teplice, Czech Republic), Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland), and Prague, before finally moving back to Vienna. As might be expected, the young Webern was enthusiastic about the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert ("so genuinely Viennese"), Hugo Wolf, and Richard Wagner, visiting Bayreuth in 1902. He also enjoyed the music of Hector Berlioz and Georges Bizet. In 1904, he reportedly stormed out of a meeting with Hans Pfitzner, from whom he was seeking instruction, when the latter criticized Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. In 1908, Webern wrote rapturously to Schoenberg about Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande. He conducted some of Debussy's music in 1911. It may have been at Guido Adler's advice that he paid Schoenberg for composition lessons. Webern progressed quickly under Schoenberg's tutelage, publishing his Passacaglia, Op. 1, as his graduation piece in 1908. He also met Berg, then another of Schoenberg's pupils. These two relationships would be the most important in his life in shaping his own musical direction. Some of Webern's earlier thoughts (from 1903) are as amusing as they might be surprising: besides describing some of Alexander Scriabin's music as "languishing junk," he wrote of Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 4 that it was "boring," that Carl Maria von Weber's Konzertstück in F minor was passé, and that he found Johannes Brahms's Symphony No. 3 (which struck Eduard Hanslick as "artistically the most nearly perfect") "cold and without particular inspiration, ... badly orchestrated—grey on grey." These youthful impressions are in some, but not complete or altogether necessarily very significant, contrast to the considered opinions of Webern in the 1930s, by then a decided nationalist who, as Roland Leich described, "lectured at some length on the utter supremacy of German music, emphasizing that leading composers of other lands are but pale reflections of Germanic masters: Berlioz a French Beethoven, Tchaikovsky a Russian Schumann, Elgar an English Mendelssohn, etc." After all, even when young, Webern had described one of Alexander Glazunov's symphonies as "not particularly Russian" (in contrast to some of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's music at the same all-Russian concert) in the same passage as he praised it. Red Vienna in the First Austrian Republic From 1918 to 1921, Webern helped organize and operate the Society for Private Musical Performances, which gave concerts of then-recent or -new music by Béla Bartók, Berg, Ferruccio Busoni, Debussy, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Mahler, Maurice Ravel, Max Reger, Erik Satie, Strauss, Stravinsky, and Webern himself. After their Society performances in 1919 (and while working on his own Opp. 14–15), Webern wrote to Berg that Stravinsky's Berceuses du chat "[move] me completely beyond belief," describing them as "indescribably touching," and that Stravinsky's Pribaoutki were "something really glorious." After the dissolution of the Society amid catastrophic hyperinflation in 1921, Webern conducted the Vienna Workers' Symphony Orchestra and Chorus from 1922 to 1934. In 1926, Webern noted his voluntary resignation as chorusmaster of the Mödling Men's Choral Society, a paid position, in controversy over his hiring of a Jewish singer, Greta Wilheim, to replace a sick one. Letters document their correspondence in many subsequent years, and she (among others) would in turn provide him with facilities to teach private lessons as a convenience to Webern, his family, and his students. Civil War, Austrofascism, Nazism, and World War II Webern's music, along with that of Berg, Křenek, Schoenberg, and others, was denounced as "cultural Bolshevism" and "degenerate art" by the Nazi Party in Germany, and both publication and performances of it were banned soon after the Anschluss in 1938, although neither did it fare well under the preceding years of Austrofascism. As early as 1933, an Austrian gauleiter on Bayerischer Rundfunk mistakenly and very likely maliciously characterized both Berg and Webern as Jewish composers. As a result of official disapproval throughout the '30s, both found it harder to earn a living; Webern lost a promising conducting career which might have otherwise been more noted and recorded and had to take on work as an editor and proofreader for his publishers, Universal Edition. His family's financial situation deteriorated until, by August 1940, his personal records reflected no monthly income. It was thanks to the Swiss philanthropist Werner Reinhart that Webern was able to attend the festive premiere of his Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30, in Winterthur, Switzerland in 1943. Reinhart invested all the financial and diplomatic means at his disposal to enable Webern to travel to Switzerland. In return for this support, Webern dedicated the work to him. There are different descriptions of Webern's attitude towards Nazism; this is perhaps attributable to its complexity, his internal ambivalence, his prosperity in the preceding years (1918–1934) of post-war Red Vienna in the First Republic of Austria, the subsequently divided political factions of his homeland as represented in his friends and family (from Zionist Schoenberg to his Nazi son Peter), as well as the different contexts in which or audiences to whom his views were expressed. Further insight into Webern's attitudes comes with the realization that Nazism itself was deeply multifaceted, marked "not [by] a coherent doctrine or body of systemically interrelated ideas, but rather [by] a vaguer worldview made up of a number of prejudices with varied appeals to different audiences which could scarcely be dignified with the term 'ideology'". There is, moreover, significant political complexity to be treated, more than enough to complicate any consideration of individual culpability: it is imperative to note that some Social Democrats viewed the National Socialists as an alternative to the Christian Social Party and later Vaterländische Front in the context of reunification with Germany; for example, Karl Renner, the chancellor who served in both the First (1919–33) and Second (post-1945) Austrian Republics, favored a German Anschluss as an alternative to the then Austrofascist regime, under which Berg, Webern, and the Social Democrats suffered. And Webern's professional circle in Vienna included, besides many Jews, many Social Democrats; for example, for David Josef Bach, a close friend of Schoenberg's as well, Webern conducted many workers' and amateur ensembles. Under the Nazis, some Social Democrats expected, there might be more work and protections for workers and laborers, as well as other social reforms and political stability, if not democracy; Webern may well have hoped to again be able to conduct and to be better able to secure a future for his family. In broad terms, Webern's attitude seems to have first warmed to a degree of characteristic fervor and perhaps only much later, in conjunction with widespread German disillusionment, cooled to Hitler and the Nazis. On the one hand, notes that Webern attacked Nazi cultural policies in private lectures given in 1933, whose hypothetical publication "would have exposed Webern to serious consequences" later. On the other, some private correspondence attests to his Nazi sympathies. Webern's patriotism led him to endorse the Nazi regime in a series of letters to Joseph Hueber, who was serving in the army and himself held such views. Webern described Hitler on 2 May 1940, as "this unique man" who created "the new state" of Germany; thus Alex Ross characterizes him as "an unashamed Hitler enthusiast". Violinist Louis Krasner painted not a sentimental portrait but one imbued with a wealth of factual and personal detail for its publication in 1987, describing Webern as clearly naive and idealistic but not entirely without his wits, shame, or conscience; Krasner carefully contextualizes Webern as a member of Austrian society at the time, one departed by Schoenberg and one in which the already pro-Nazi Vienna Philharmonic had even refused to play the late Berg's Violin Concerto. As Krasner vividly recalled, he and Webern were visiting at the latter's home in Maria Enzersdorf, Mödling when the Nazis invaded Austria; Webern, uncannily seeming to anticipate the timing down to 4 o'clock in the afternoon, turned on the radio to hear this news and immediately warned Krasner, urging him to flee, whereupon he did (first to Vienna). Whether this was for Krasner's safety or to save Webern the embarrassment of Krasner's presence during a time of possible celebration in the pro-Nazi Webern family (or indeed in most of pro-Nazi Mödling, by Krasner's description as well as one even more vivid of Arnold Greissle-Schönberg), Krasner was ambivalent and uncertain, withholding judgment. Only later did Krasner himself realize how self-admittedly "foolhardy" he had been and in what danger he had placed himself, revealing an ignorance perhaps shared by Webern. Krasner had even revisited frequently, hoping to convince friends (e.g., Schoenberg's daughter Gertrude and her husband Felix Greissle) to emigrate before time ran out. Krasner eventually left more permanently, after a 1941 incident wherein he felt only his US passport saved him from both locals and police. Krasner retold from a story related to him in long discussion with Schoenberg's son Görgi, a Jew who remained in Vienna during the war, that the Weberns, much to their risk and credit, had provided Görgi and his family with food and shelter toward the end of the war at the Weberns' home in a Mödling apartment belonging to their son-in-law. Görgi and his family were left behind for their safety when Webern fled on foot with his family to Mittersill, about 75 km. away, for safety of their own in light of the coming Russian invasion; Amalie, one of Webern's daughters, wrote of '17 persons pressed together in the smallest possible space' upon their arrival. Ironically, the Russians pronounced Görgi a "Nazi spy" when he was discovered due to the Nazi munitions and propaganda in the Weberns' basement store-room. Görgi is said to have saved himself from execution by protesting and drawing attention to his clothes, sewn as specified by the Nazis with the yellow Star of David. He continued to live in this apartment with this family until 1969. Webern is also known to have aided Josef Polnauer, a Jewish friend who, as an albino, managed to largely escape the Nazis' attention and later edit a publication of Webern's correspondence from this time with Hildegard Jone, Webern's then lyricist and collaborator, and her husband, sculptor Josef Humplik. However, Krasner was particularly troubled by a 1936 conversation with Webern about the Jews, in which Webern expressed his vague but unambiguously anti-Semitic opinion that "Even Schoenberg, had he not been a Jew, would have been quite different!" Krasner remembered, perhaps with the benefit of hindsight at the time (1987), that "Jews ... were at the center of the difficulty. Those who wanted to, put the blame for all this calamity, for all this depraved condition, on the Jews who had brought it with them—along with a lot of radical ideas—from the East. People blamed the Jews for their financial worries. The Jews were, at the same time, the poverty-stricken people who came with nothing, and the capitalists who controlled everything." When once asked by Schoenberg about his feelings toward the Nazis, Webern nonetheless sought to allay Schoenberg's concerns; similarly, when in 1938 Eduard Steuermann asked Krasner about rumors of Webern's possible "interest in and devotion to the Nazis" on Schoenberg's behalf, Krasner lied by denying the rumors categorically and entirely. As a result, Schoenberg's Violin Concerto of 1934 (or 1935)–36 continued to bear a dedication to Webern, although whittled down as a result of Schoenberg's continuing suspicions or, indeed, on Webern's behalf, i.e., to protect Webern from further Nazi suspicion and persecution. Schoenberg's tone was ultimately conciliatory in remembrance of both Berg and Webern in 1947: "Let us—for the moment at least—forget all that might have at one time divided us ... even if those who tried might have succeeded in confounding us." Musicologist Richard Taruskin describes Webern accurately if vaguely as a pan-German nationalist but then goes much further in claiming specifically that Webern joyfully welcomed the Nazis with the 1938 Anschluss, at best extrapolating from the account of his cited source Krasner and at worst exaggerating or distorting it, as well as describing it sardonically as "heart-breaking". Taruskin's authority on this delicate issue must be credited, if at all, then only with the significant limitations that he has been polemical in general and hostile in particular to the Second Viennese School, of whom Webern is often considered the most extreme and difficult (i.e., the least accessible). New Complexity composer and performer Franklin Cox not only faults Taruskin as an inaccurate and unreliable historian but also critiques Taruskin as an "ideologist of tonal restoration" (musicologist Martin Kaltenecker similarly refers to the "Restoration of the 1980s," but he also describes a paradigm shift from structure to perception). Taruskin's "reactionary historicist" project, Cox argues, stands in opposition to that of the Second Viennese School, viz. the "progressivist historicist" emancipation of the dissonance. Taruskin himself admits to having acquired a "dubious reputation" on the Second Viennese School and notes that he has been described in his work on Webern as "coming, like Shakespeare's Marc Anthony, 'to bury Webern, not to praise him'". In contradistinction to Taruskin's methods and pronouncements, musicologist Pamela M. Potter advises that "[i]t is important to consider all the scholarship on musical life in the Third Reich that, taken together, reveals the complexity of the day-to-day existence of musicians and composers", as "[i]t seems inevitable that debates about the political culpability of individuals will persist, especially if the stakes remain so high for composers, for whom an up or down vote can determine inclusion in the canon". In this vein, it might be noted in relation to Taruskin's claim that Webern wrote to friends (husband and wife Josef Humplik and Hildegard Jone) on the day of Anschluss not to invite celebration or to observe developments but to be left alone: "I am totally immersed in my work [composing] and cannot, cannot be disturbed"; Krasner's presence could have been a disturbance to Webern for this reason, and musicologist Kathryn Bailey speculates that this may indeed be why he was rushed off by Webern. Webern's 1944–1945 correspondence is strewn with references to bombings, deaths, destruction, privation, and the disintegration of local order; but also noted are the births of several grandchildren. At the age of sixty (i.e., in Dec. 1943), Webern writes that he is living in a barrack away from home and working from 6 am to 5 pm, compelled by the state in a time of war to serve as an air-raid protection police officer. On 3 March 1945, news was relayed to Webern that his only son, Peter, died on 14 February of wounds suffered in a strafing attack on a military train two days earlier. Death in Allied-administered Austria On 15 September 1945, back at his home during the Allied occupation of Austria, Webern was shot and killed by an American Army soldier following the arrest of his son-in-law for black market activities. This incident occurred when, three-quarters of an hour before a curfew was to have gone into effect, he stepped outside the house so as not to disturb his sleeping grandchildren, to enjoy a few draws on a cigar given to him that evening by his son-in-law. The soldier responsible for his death was U. S. Army cook PFC Raymond Norwood Bell of North Carolina, who was overcome by remorse and died of alcoholism in 1955. Webern's wife, Wilhelmine Mörtl, died in 1949. They had three daughters and a son. Music Webern's compositions are concise, distilled, and select; just thirty-one of his compositions were published in his lifetime, and when Pierre Boulez later oversaw a project to record all of his compositions, including some of those without opus numbers, the results fit on just six CDs. Although Webern's music changed over time, as is often the case over a long career, it is typified by very spartan textures, in which every note can be clearly heard; carefully chosen timbres, often resulting in very detailed instructions to the performers and use of extended instrumental techniques (flutter tonguing, col legno, and so on); wide-ranging melodic lines, often with leaps greater than an octave; and brevity: the Six Bagatelles for string quartet (1913), for instance, last about three minutes in total. Formative juvenilia and emergence from study, Opp. 1–2, 1899–1908 Webern published little of his early work in particular; Webern was characteristically meticulous and revised extensively. Many juvenilia remained unknown until the work and findings of the Moldenhauers in the 1960s, effectively obscuring and undermining formative facets of Webern's musical identity, highly significant even more so in the case of an innovator whose music was crucially marked by rapid stylistic shifts. Thus when Boulez first oversaw a project to record "all" of Webern's music, not including the juvenilia, the results fit on three rather than six CDs. Webern's earliest works consist primarily of lieder, the genre that most testifies to his roots in Romanticism, specifically German Romanticism; one in which the music yields brief but explicit, potent, and spoken meaning manifested only latently or programmatically in purely instrumental genres; one marked by significant intimacy and lyricism; and one which often associates nature, especially landscapes, with themes of homesickness, solace, wistful yearning, distance, utopia, and belonging. Robert Schumann's "Mondnacht" is an iconic example; Eichendorff, whose lyric poetry inspired it, is not far removed from the poets (e.g., Richard Dehmel, Gustav Falke, Theodor Storm) whose work inspired Webern and his contemporaries Alban Berg, Max Reger, Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf, and Alexander Zemlinsky. Wolf's Mörike-Lieder were especially influential on Webern's efforts from this period. But well beyond these lieder alone, all of Webern's music may be said to possess such concerns and qualities, as is evident from his sketches, albeit in an increasingly symbolic, abstract, spare, introverted, and idealized manner. Webern's first piece after completing his studies with Schoenberg was the Passacaglia for orchestra (1908). Harmonically, it is a step forward into a more advanced language, and the orchestration is somewhat more distinctive than his earlier orchestral work. However, it bears little relation to the fully mature works he is best known for today. One element that is typical is the form itself: the passacaglia is a form which dates back to the 17th century, and a distinguishing feature of Webern's later work was to be the use of traditional compositional techniques (especially canons) and forms (the Symphony, the Concerto, the String Trio, and String Quartet, and the piano and orchestral Variations) in a modern harmonic and melodic language. Atonality, lieder, and aphorism, Opp. 3–16 and Tot, 1908–1924 For a number of years, Webern wrote pieces which were freely atonal, much in the style of Schoenberg's early atonal works. Indeed, so in lockstep with Schoenberg was Webern for much of his artistic development that Schoenberg in 1951 wrote that he sometimes no longer knew who he was, Webern had followed so well in his footsteps and shadow, occasionally outdoing or stepping ahead of Schoenberg in execution of Schoenberg's own or their shared ideas. There are, however, important cases where Webern may have even more profoundly influenced Schoenberg. Haimo marks the swift, radical influence in 1909 of Webern's novel and arresting Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5, on Schoenberg's subsequent piano piece Op. 11, No. 3; Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16; and monodrama Erwartung, Op. 17. This shift is distinctly pronounced in a letter Schoenberg wrote to Busoni, which describes a rather Webernian aesthetic: In 1949, Schoenberg still remembered being "intoxicated by the enthusiasm of having freed music from the shackles of tonality" and believing with his pupils "that now music could renounce motivic features and remain coherent and comprehensible nonetheless". But with Opp. 18–20, Schoenberg turned back and revived old techniques, very self-consciously returning to and transforming tradition by the concluding songs of Pierrot lunaire (1912), Op. 21, with, e.g., intricately interrelated canons in "Der Mondfleck", clear waltz rhythms in "Serenade", a barcarolle ("Heimfahrt"), triadic harmony throughout "O alter Duft". Pierrot was received by Webern as a direction for the composition of his own Opp. 14–16, most of all with respect to contrapuntal procedures (and to a lesser degree with respect to the diverse and innovative textural treatment among instruments in increasingly smaller ensembles). "How much I owe to your Pierrot", he wrote Schoenberg upon completing a setting of Georg Trakl's "Abendland III", Op. 14, No. 4, in which, rather unusually for Webern, there is no silence or rest until a pause at the concluding gesture. Indeed, a recurring theme of Webern's World War I settings is that of the wanderer, estranged or lost and seeking return to or at least retrieval from an earlier time and place; and of some fifty-six songs on which Webern worked 1914–1926, he ultimately finished and later published only thirty-two set in order as Opp. 12–19. This wartime theme of wandering in search of home ties in with two intricately involved concerns more broadly evident in Webern's work: first, the death and memory of members of Webern's family, especially his mother but also including his father and a nephew; and second, Webern's broad and complex sense of rural and spiritual Heimat. Their importance is marked by Webern's stage play, Tot (October 1913), which, over the course of six alpine scenes of reflection and self-consolation, draws on Emanuel Swedenborg's notion of correspondence to relate and to unite the two concerns, the first embodied but otherworldly and the second concrete if increasingly abstracted and idealized. The similarities between Tot and Webern's music are striking. In an often programmatic or cinematic fashion, Webern ordered his published movements, themselves dramatic or visual tableaux with melodies that frequently begin and end on weak beats or else settle into ostinati or the background. In them, tonality – useful for communicating direction and narrative in programmatic pieces – becomes more tenuous, fragmented, static, symbolic, and visual or spatial in function, thus mirroring the concerns and topics, explicit or implicit, of Webern's music and his selections for it from the poetry of Stefan George and later Georg Trakl. Webern's dynamics, orchestration, and timbre are given so as to produce a fragile, intimate, and often novel sound, despite distinctly recalling Mahler, not infrequently bordering on silence at a typical . In some cases, Webern's choice of instrument in particular functions to represent or to allude to a female voice (e.g., the use of solo violin), to inward or outward luminosity or darkness (e.g., the use of the entire range of register within the ensemble; registral compression and expansion; the use of celesta, harp, and glockenspiel; the use of harmonics and sul ponticello), or to angels and heaven (e.g., the use of harp and trumpet in the circling ostinati of Op. 6, No. 5, and winding to conclusion at the very end of Op. 15, No. 5). Technical consolidation and formal coherence and expansion, Opp. 17–31, 1924–1943 With the Drei Volkstexte (1925), Op. 17, Webern used Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique for the first time, and all his subsequent works used this technique. The String Trio (1926–1927), Op. 20, was both the first purely instrumental work using the twelve-tone technique (the other pieces were songs) and the first cast in a traditional musical form. Webern's music, like that of both Brahms and Schoenberg, is marked by its emphasis on counterpoint and formal considerations; and Webern's commitment to systematic pitch organization in the twelve-tone method is inseparable from this prior commitment. Webern's tone rows are often arranged to take advantage of internal symmetries; for example, a twelve-tone row may be divisible into four groups of three pitches which are variations, such as inversions and retrogrades, of each other, thus creating invariance. This gives Webern's work considerable motivic unity, although this is often obscured by the fragmentation of the melodic lines. This fragmentation occurs through octave displacement (using intervals greater than an octave) and by moving the line rapidly from instrument to instrument in a technique referred to as Klangfarbenmelodie. Arrangements and orchestrations In his youth (1903), Webern orchestrated at least five of Franz Schubert's various lieder, giving the piano accompaniment to an appropriately Schubertian orchestra of strings and pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horns: "Der Vollmond Strahlt auf Bergeshöhn" (the Romanze from Rosamunde), "Tränenregen" (from Die schöne Müllerin), "Der Wegweiser" (from Winterreise), "Du bist die Ruh", and "Ihr Bild"; in 1934, he did the same for Schubert's six Deutsche Tänze (German Dances) of 1824. For Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performances in 1921, Webern arranged, among other things, the 1888 Schatz-Walzer (Treasure Waltz) of Johann Strauss II's Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron) for string quartet, harmonium, and piano. In 1924, Webern arranged Franz Liszt's Arbeiterchor (Workers' Chorus, c. 1847–1848) for bass solo, mixed chorus, and large orchestra; it was premièred for the first time in any form on 13 and 14 March 1925, with Webern conducting the first full-length concert of the Austrian Association of Workers Choir. A review in the Amtliche Wiener Zeitung (28 March 1925) read "neu in jedem Sinne, frisch, unverbraucht, durch ihn zieht die Jugend, die Freude" ("new in every respect, fresh, vital, pervaded by youth and joy"). The text, in English translation, reads in part: "Let us have the adorned spades and scoops,/ Come along all, who wield a sword or pen,/ Come here ye, industrious, brave and strong/ All who create things great or small." Liszt, initially inspired by his revolutionary countrymen, had left it in manuscript at publisher 's discretion. Performance style Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music; this is evidenced by anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tänze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction, many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors and associations everywhere throughout his sketches. As both a composer and conductor, he was one of many (e.g., Wilhelm Furtwängler, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Hermann Scherchen) in a contemporaneous tradition of conscientiously and non-literally handling notated musical figures, phrases, and even entire scores so as to maximize expressivity in performance and to cultivate audience engagement and understanding. This aspect of Webern's work had been typically missed in his immediate post-war reception, however, even as it may radically affect the music's reception. For example, Boulez's "complete" recording of Webern's music yielded more to this aesthetic the second time after largely missing it the first; but Eliahu Inbal's rendition of Webern's Symphony, Op. 21 with the hr-Sinfonieorchester is still far more within the spirit of the late Romantic performance tradition (which Webern seemingly intended for his music), nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work. Legacy, influence, and posthumous reception Webern's music began to be performed more widely in the 1920s; by the mid-1940s, its effect was decisive on many composers, even as far-flung as John Cage. In part because Webern had largely remained the most obscure and arcane composer of the Second Viennese School during his own lifetime, interest in Webern's music increased after World War II as it came to represent a universally or generally valid, systematic, and compellingly logical model of new composition, with his œuvre acquiring what Alex Ross calls "a saintly, visionary aura". When Webern's Piano Variations were performed at Darmstadt in 1948, young composers listened in a quasi-religious trance. In 1955, the second issue of Eimert and Stockhausen's journal Die Reihe was devoted to Webern's œuvre, and in 1960 his lectures were published by Universal Edition. Meanwhile, Webern's characteristically passionate pan-German nationalism and censurable, sordid political sympathies (however naive or delusional and whether ever dispelled or faltered) were not widely known or went unmentioned; perhaps in some part due to his personal and political associations before the German Reich, his degradation and mistreatment under it, and his fate immediately after the war. Significantly as relates to his reception, Webern never compromised his artistic identity and values, as Stravinsky was later to note. It has been suggested that the early 1950s' serialists' fascination with Webern was concerned not with his music as such so much as enabled by its concision and some its apparent plainness in the score, thereby facilitating musical analysis; indeed, composer Gottfried Michael Koenig speculates on the basis of his personal experience that since Webern's scores represented such a highly concentrated source, they may have been considered the better for didactic purposes than those of other composers. Composer thus criticized the approach of early serialists to Webern's music as reductive and narrowly focused on some of Webern's apparent methods rather than on his music more generally, especially neglecting timbre in their typical selection of Opp. 27–28. Composer Karel Goeyvaerts recalled that at least on first impression, the sound of Webern's music reminded him of "a Mondrian canvas," explaining that "things of which I had acquired an extremely intimate knowledge, came across as crude and unfinished when seen in reality." Expressing a related opinion, noted contemporaneous German music critic and contributor to Die Reihe, Wolf-Eberhard von Lewinski wrote in the Darmstädter Tagblatt (3 September 1959) that some of the later and more radical music at Darmstadt was "acoustically absurd [if] visually amusing"; several days later, one of his articles in the Der Kurier was similarly headlined "Meager modern music—only interesting to look at." To composers in the then Communist Bloc in Central and Eastern Europe, Webern's music and its techniques promised an exciting, unique, and challenging alternative to socialist realism, with its perceived tendency to kitsch and its nationalist and traditionalist overtones. Whereas Berg's Lyric Suite may have influenced the third and fourth string quartets of Bartók in 1927 via an ISCM concert (in which Bartók himself performed his own Piano Sonata), Webern's influence on later composers from what became the Hungarian People's Republic and from other countries behind the Iron Curtain was sometimes mediated or obstructed by politics. As Ligeti explained to a student in 1970, "In countries where there exists a certain isolation, in Eastern Europe, one cannot obtain correct information. One is cut off from the circulation of blood." Nonetheless, Webern's work was a seminal influence on that of both Endre Szervánszky and György Kurtág following the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, as well as on Ligeti himself. Later still and farther east, Sofia Gubaidulina, for whom music was an escape from the socio-political atmosphere of post-Stalinist Soviet Russia, cited the influence of both J. S. Bach and Webern in particular. Recordings by Webern Webern conducts "Berg – Violin Concerto" Webern conducts his arrangement of Schubert's German Dances See also List of Austrians in music Notes References Bibliography Further reading Ahrend, Thomas, and Stefan Münnich. 2018. Anton Webern. Oxford Bibliographies in Music. Oxford University Press. .}}{{subscription Ahrend, Thomas, and Matthias Schmidt (eds.). 2015. Der junge Webern. Texte und Kontexte. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 2b. Wien: Lafite. . Ahrend, Thomas, and Matthias Schmidt (eds.). 2016. Webern-Philologien. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 3. Wien: Lafite. . Bailey, Kathryn. 1991. The Twelve-Note Music of Anton Webern: Old Forms in a New Language. Music in the Twentieth Century 2. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. (cloth) (pbk. ed., 2006). Cavallotti, Pietro, and Simon Obert, and Rainer Schmusch (eds.). 2019. Neue Perspektiven. Anton Webern und das Komponieren im 20. Jahrhundert. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 4. Wien: Lafite. . Ewen, David. 1971. "Anton Webern (1883–1945)". In Composers of Tomorrow's Music, by David Ewen, 66–77. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. . Forte, Allen. 1998. The Atonal Music of Anton Webern New Haven: Yale University Press. . Galliari, Alain. 2007. "Anton von Webern". Paris: Fayard. . Kröpfl, Monika, and Simon Obert (eds.). 2015. Der junge Webern. Künstlerische Orientierungen in Wien nach 1900. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 2a. Wien: Lafite. . Mead, Andrew. 1993. "Webern, Tradition, and 'Composing with Twelve Tones'". Music Theory Spectrum 15, no. 2:173–204. Moldenhauer, Hans. 1966. Anton von Webern Perspectives. Edited by Demar Irvine, with an introductory interview with Igor Stravinsky. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Needham, Alex. 2012. Brahms Piano Piece to Get Its Premiere 159 Years After Its Creation. The Guardian (Thursday 12 January). Noller, Joachim. 1990. "Bedeutungsstrukturen: zu Anton Weberns 'alpinen' Programmen". Neue Zeitschrift für Musik151, no. 9 (September): 12–18. Obert, Simon (ed.). 2012. Wechselnde Erscheinung. Sechs Perspektiven auf Anton Weberns sechste Bagatelle. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 1. Wien: Lafite. . Perle, George. 1991. Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. Sixth ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Peyser, Joan. 2007. To Boulez and Beyond. Scarecrow Press. . Rockwell, John. 1983. All American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century. New York: Alfred Knopf. Reprinted New York: Da Capo Press, 1997. , . Tsang, Lee. 2002. "The Atonal Music of Anton Webern (1998) by Allen Forte". Music Analysis 21, no. 3 (October): 417–427. Wildgans, Friedrich. 1966. Anton Webern. Translated by Edith Temple Roberts and Humphrey Searle. Introduction and notes by Humphrey Searle. New York: October House. External links Anton Webern biography and works on the UE website (publisher) Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe (Complete Edition) 1883 births 1945 deaths Austrian Roman Catholics 20th-century classical composers Deaths by firearm in Austria Expressionist music Twelve-tone and serial composers Second Viennese School University of Vienna alumni Composers from Vienna Accidental deaths in Austria Pupils of Arnold Schoenberg Austrian male classical composers Austrian classical composers String quartet composers 20th-century Austrian composers 20th-century Austrian male musicians Firearm accident victims
false
[ "Alex Nepomniaschy is an American cinematographer. He was born in Moscow in what was then the Soviet Union. Nepomniaschy graduated from the AFI Conservatory's cinematography program with a Master of Fine Arts in 1982.\n\nAwards\nAt the 1988 Sundance Film Festival, he won the Best Cinematographer Award for his work on Beirut: The Last Home Movie. In 1995 he was given awards for Best Cinematographer by the National Board of Review, and the Boston Society of Film Critics for the film Safe.\n\nNepomniaschy was nominated in 1989 for an award from the American Society of Cinematographers for the television series, Sable. And was nominated for Best Cinematography in the 2003 Independent Spirit Awards for Narc.\n\nFilmography\n Narc\n Safe\n Never Been Kissed\n Poltergeist III\n It's the Rage\n The Alarmist\n A Time for Dancing\n The End of Innocence\n Rites of Passage\n\nReferences\n\n1955 births\nLiving people\nPeople from Moscow\nAmerican cinematographers\nAFI Conservatory alumni", "David Austin (March 29, 1935 – November 19, 2005) was a British cartoonist. He was best known for his pocket cartoons in The Guardian, which he contributed from 1990 to 2005, and for the strip Hom Sap in Private Eye, which began in 1970. The Guardian's obituary said that he \"was one of the central pillars in what made the paper important to its readers.\"\n\nHe has had a train named after him by his widow, Janet.\n\nReferences\n\n1935 births\nPeople from Chelmsford\nBritish cartoonists\nPrivate Eye contributors\nThe Guardian journalists\n2005 deaths" ]
[ "Anton Webern", "Performance style", "What was Webern's style like?", "Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music;", "What was he best known for?", "extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction," ]
C_1951dee9c9e740108b2e390bd3a0eac7_0
What is his most famous recording?
3
What is Anton Webern's most famous recording?
Anton Webern
Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music; this is evidenced by anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction, many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors and associations everywhere throughout his sketches. As both a composer and conductor he was one of many (e.g., Wilhelm Furtwangler, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Hermann Scherchen) in a contemporaneous tradition of conscientiously and non-literally handling notated musical figures, phrases, and even entire scores so as to maximize expressivity in performance and to cultivate audience engagement and understanding. This aspect of Webern's work had been typically missed in his immediate post-war reception, however, even as it may radically affect the music's reception. For example, Boulez's "complete" recording of Webern's music yielded more to this aesthetic the second time after largely missing it the first; but Eliahu Inbal's rendition of Webern's symphony with the hr-Sinfonieorchester is still far more within the spirit of the late Romantic performance tradition (which Webern seemingly intended for his music), nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work. Gunter Wand's 1966 recording of the Cantata No. 1 (1938-40), op. 29, with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks et al., may likewise be contrasted with both of Boulez's renditions. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), known as simply Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor. Along with his mentor Arnold Schoenberg and his colleague Alban Berg, Webern was in the core of those in the circle of the Second Viennese School, including Theodor W. Adorno, Heinrich Jalowetz, and Ernst Krenek. As an exponent of atonality and twelve-tone technique, Webern exerted influence on contemporaries Luigi Dallapiccola, Krenek, and even Schoenberg himself. As a tutor, Webern guided and variously influenced Arnold Elston, Frederick Dorian (Friederich Deutsch), , , Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Philipp Herschkowitz, René Leibowitz, Humphrey Searle, Leopold Spinner, and Stefan Wolpe. Webern's music was among the most radical of its milieu, both in its concision and in its rigorous and resolute apprehension of twelve-tone technique. His innovations in schematic organization of pitch, rhythm, register, timbre, dynamics, articulation, and melodic contour; his eagerness to redefine imitative contrapuntal techniques such as canon and fugue; and his inclination toward athematicism, abstraction, and lyricism all greatly informed and oriented intra- and post-war European, typically serial or avant-garde composers such as Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, Henri Pousseur, and György Ligeti. In the United States, meanwhile, his music attracted the interest of Elliott Carter, whose critical ambivalence was marked by a certain enthusiasm nonetheless; Milton Babbitt, who ultimately derived more inspiration from Schoenberg's twelve-tone practice than that of Webern; and Igor Stravinsky, to whom it was very fruitfully reintroduced by Robert Craft. During and shortly after the post-war period, then, Webern was posthumously received with attention first diverted from his sociocultural upbringing and surroundings and, moreover, focused in a direction apparently antithetical to his participation in German Romanticism and Expressionism. A richer understanding of Webern began to emerge in the later half of the 20th century, notably in the work of scholars Kathryn Bailey, Julian Johnson, Felix Meyer, Anne Shreffler, as archivists and biographers (most importantly Hans and Rosaleen Moldenhauer) gained access to sketches, letters, lectures, audio recordings, and other articles of or associated with Webern's estate. Biography Youth, education, and other early experiences in Austria-Hungary Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern was born in Vienna, then in Austria-Hungary. He was the only surviving son of Carl von Webern, a civil servant, and Amalie (née Geer) who was a competent pianist and accomplished singer—possibly the only obvious source of the future composer's talent. He never used his middle names and dropped the "von" in 1918 as directed by the Austrian government's reforms after World War I. He lived in Graz and Klagenfurt for much of his youth. But his distinct and lasting sense of Heimat was shaped by readings of Peter Rosegger; and moreover by frequent and extended retreats with his parents, sisters, and cousins to his family's country estate, the Preglhof, which Webern's father had inherited upon the death of Webern's grandfather in 1889. Webern memorialized the Preglhof in a diary poem "An der Preglhof" and in the tone poem Im Sommerwind (1904), both after Bruno Wille's idyll. Once Webern's father sold the estate in 1912, Webern referred to it nostalgically as a "lost paradise". He continued to revisit the Preglhof, the family cemetery in Schwabegg, and the surrounding landscape for the rest of his life; and he clearly associated the area, which he took as his home, very closely with the memory of his mother Amelie, who had died in 1906 and whose loss also profoundly affected Webern for decades. Art historian Ernst Dietz, Webern's cousin and at that time a student at Graz, may have introduced Webern to the work of the painters Arnold Böcklin and Giovanni Segantini, whom Webern came to admire. Segantini's work was a likely inspiration for Webern's 1905 single-movement string quartet. In 1902, Webern began attending classes at Vienna University. There he studied musicology with Guido Adler, writing his thesis on the Choralis Constantinus of Heinrich Isaac. This interest in early music would greatly influence his compositional technique in later years, especially in terms of his use of palindromic form on both the micro- and macro-scale and the economical use of musical materials. With the help of friends and colleagues, Webern later began working peripatetically as a conductor and musical coach in various towns and cities, among them Ischl, Teplitz (now Teplice, Czech Republic), Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland), and Prague, before finally moving back to Vienna. As might be expected, the young Webern was enthusiastic about the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert ("so genuinely Viennese"), Hugo Wolf, and Richard Wagner, visiting Bayreuth in 1902. He also enjoyed the music of Hector Berlioz and Georges Bizet. In 1904, he reportedly stormed out of a meeting with Hans Pfitzner, from whom he was seeking instruction, when the latter criticized Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. In 1908, Webern wrote rapturously to Schoenberg about Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande. He conducted some of Debussy's music in 1911. It may have been at Guido Adler's advice that he paid Schoenberg for composition lessons. Webern progressed quickly under Schoenberg's tutelage, publishing his Passacaglia, Op. 1, as his graduation piece in 1908. He also met Berg, then another of Schoenberg's pupils. These two relationships would be the most important in his life in shaping his own musical direction. Some of Webern's earlier thoughts (from 1903) are as amusing as they might be surprising: besides describing some of Alexander Scriabin's music as "languishing junk," he wrote of Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 4 that it was "boring," that Carl Maria von Weber's Konzertstück in F minor was passé, and that he found Johannes Brahms's Symphony No. 3 (which struck Eduard Hanslick as "artistically the most nearly perfect") "cold and without particular inspiration, ... badly orchestrated—grey on grey." These youthful impressions are in some, but not complete or altogether necessarily very significant, contrast to the considered opinions of Webern in the 1930s, by then a decided nationalist who, as Roland Leich described, "lectured at some length on the utter supremacy of German music, emphasizing that leading composers of other lands are but pale reflections of Germanic masters: Berlioz a French Beethoven, Tchaikovsky a Russian Schumann, Elgar an English Mendelssohn, etc." After all, even when young, Webern had described one of Alexander Glazunov's symphonies as "not particularly Russian" (in contrast to some of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's music at the same all-Russian concert) in the same passage as he praised it. Red Vienna in the First Austrian Republic From 1918 to 1921, Webern helped organize and operate the Society for Private Musical Performances, which gave concerts of then-recent or -new music by Béla Bartók, Berg, Ferruccio Busoni, Debussy, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Mahler, Maurice Ravel, Max Reger, Erik Satie, Strauss, Stravinsky, and Webern himself. After their Society performances in 1919 (and while working on his own Opp. 14–15), Webern wrote to Berg that Stravinsky's Berceuses du chat "[move] me completely beyond belief," describing them as "indescribably touching," and that Stravinsky's Pribaoutki were "something really glorious." After the dissolution of the Society amid catastrophic hyperinflation in 1921, Webern conducted the Vienna Workers' Symphony Orchestra and Chorus from 1922 to 1934. In 1926, Webern noted his voluntary resignation as chorusmaster of the Mödling Men's Choral Society, a paid position, in controversy over his hiring of a Jewish singer, Greta Wilheim, to replace a sick one. Letters document their correspondence in many subsequent years, and she (among others) would in turn provide him with facilities to teach private lessons as a convenience to Webern, his family, and his students. Civil War, Austrofascism, Nazism, and World War II Webern's music, along with that of Berg, Křenek, Schoenberg, and others, was denounced as "cultural Bolshevism" and "degenerate art" by the Nazi Party in Germany, and both publication and performances of it were banned soon after the Anschluss in 1938, although neither did it fare well under the preceding years of Austrofascism. As early as 1933, an Austrian gauleiter on Bayerischer Rundfunk mistakenly and very likely maliciously characterized both Berg and Webern as Jewish composers. As a result of official disapproval throughout the '30s, both found it harder to earn a living; Webern lost a promising conducting career which might have otherwise been more noted and recorded and had to take on work as an editor and proofreader for his publishers, Universal Edition. His family's financial situation deteriorated until, by August 1940, his personal records reflected no monthly income. It was thanks to the Swiss philanthropist Werner Reinhart that Webern was able to attend the festive premiere of his Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30, in Winterthur, Switzerland in 1943. Reinhart invested all the financial and diplomatic means at his disposal to enable Webern to travel to Switzerland. In return for this support, Webern dedicated the work to him. There are different descriptions of Webern's attitude towards Nazism; this is perhaps attributable to its complexity, his internal ambivalence, his prosperity in the preceding years (1918–1934) of post-war Red Vienna in the First Republic of Austria, the subsequently divided political factions of his homeland as represented in his friends and family (from Zionist Schoenberg to his Nazi son Peter), as well as the different contexts in which or audiences to whom his views were expressed. Further insight into Webern's attitudes comes with the realization that Nazism itself was deeply multifaceted, marked "not [by] a coherent doctrine or body of systemically interrelated ideas, but rather [by] a vaguer worldview made up of a number of prejudices with varied appeals to different audiences which could scarcely be dignified with the term 'ideology'". There is, moreover, significant political complexity to be treated, more than enough to complicate any consideration of individual culpability: it is imperative to note that some Social Democrats viewed the National Socialists as an alternative to the Christian Social Party and later Vaterländische Front in the context of reunification with Germany; for example, Karl Renner, the chancellor who served in both the First (1919–33) and Second (post-1945) Austrian Republics, favored a German Anschluss as an alternative to the then Austrofascist regime, under which Berg, Webern, and the Social Democrats suffered. And Webern's professional circle in Vienna included, besides many Jews, many Social Democrats; for example, for David Josef Bach, a close friend of Schoenberg's as well, Webern conducted many workers' and amateur ensembles. Under the Nazis, some Social Democrats expected, there might be more work and protections for workers and laborers, as well as other social reforms and political stability, if not democracy; Webern may well have hoped to again be able to conduct and to be better able to secure a future for his family. In broad terms, Webern's attitude seems to have first warmed to a degree of characteristic fervor and perhaps only much later, in conjunction with widespread German disillusionment, cooled to Hitler and the Nazis. On the one hand, notes that Webern attacked Nazi cultural policies in private lectures given in 1933, whose hypothetical publication "would have exposed Webern to serious consequences" later. On the other, some private correspondence attests to his Nazi sympathies. Webern's patriotism led him to endorse the Nazi regime in a series of letters to Joseph Hueber, who was serving in the army and himself held such views. Webern described Hitler on 2 May 1940, as "this unique man" who created "the new state" of Germany; thus Alex Ross characterizes him as "an unashamed Hitler enthusiast". Violinist Louis Krasner painted not a sentimental portrait but one imbued with a wealth of factual and personal detail for its publication in 1987, describing Webern as clearly naive and idealistic but not entirely without his wits, shame, or conscience; Krasner carefully contextualizes Webern as a member of Austrian society at the time, one departed by Schoenberg and one in which the already pro-Nazi Vienna Philharmonic had even refused to play the late Berg's Violin Concerto. As Krasner vividly recalled, he and Webern were visiting at the latter's home in Maria Enzersdorf, Mödling when the Nazis invaded Austria; Webern, uncannily seeming to anticipate the timing down to 4 o'clock in the afternoon, turned on the radio to hear this news and immediately warned Krasner, urging him to flee, whereupon he did (first to Vienna). Whether this was for Krasner's safety or to save Webern the embarrassment of Krasner's presence during a time of possible celebration in the pro-Nazi Webern family (or indeed in most of pro-Nazi Mödling, by Krasner's description as well as one even more vivid of Arnold Greissle-Schönberg), Krasner was ambivalent and uncertain, withholding judgment. Only later did Krasner himself realize how self-admittedly "foolhardy" he had been and in what danger he had placed himself, revealing an ignorance perhaps shared by Webern. Krasner had even revisited frequently, hoping to convince friends (e.g., Schoenberg's daughter Gertrude and her husband Felix Greissle) to emigrate before time ran out. Krasner eventually left more permanently, after a 1941 incident wherein he felt only his US passport saved him from both locals and police. Krasner retold from a story related to him in long discussion with Schoenberg's son Görgi, a Jew who remained in Vienna during the war, that the Weberns, much to their risk and credit, had provided Görgi and his family with food and shelter toward the end of the war at the Weberns' home in a Mödling apartment belonging to their son-in-law. Görgi and his family were left behind for their safety when Webern fled on foot with his family to Mittersill, about 75 km. away, for safety of their own in light of the coming Russian invasion; Amalie, one of Webern's daughters, wrote of '17 persons pressed together in the smallest possible space' upon their arrival. Ironically, the Russians pronounced Görgi a "Nazi spy" when he was discovered due to the Nazi munitions and propaganda in the Weberns' basement store-room. Görgi is said to have saved himself from execution by protesting and drawing attention to his clothes, sewn as specified by the Nazis with the yellow Star of David. He continued to live in this apartment with this family until 1969. Webern is also known to have aided Josef Polnauer, a Jewish friend who, as an albino, managed to largely escape the Nazis' attention and later edit a publication of Webern's correspondence from this time with Hildegard Jone, Webern's then lyricist and collaborator, and her husband, sculptor Josef Humplik. However, Krasner was particularly troubled by a 1936 conversation with Webern about the Jews, in which Webern expressed his vague but unambiguously anti-Semitic opinion that "Even Schoenberg, had he not been a Jew, would have been quite different!" Krasner remembered, perhaps with the benefit of hindsight at the time (1987), that "Jews ... were at the center of the difficulty. Those who wanted to, put the blame for all this calamity, for all this depraved condition, on the Jews who had brought it with them—along with a lot of radical ideas—from the East. People blamed the Jews for their financial worries. The Jews were, at the same time, the poverty-stricken people who came with nothing, and the capitalists who controlled everything." When once asked by Schoenberg about his feelings toward the Nazis, Webern nonetheless sought to allay Schoenberg's concerns; similarly, when in 1938 Eduard Steuermann asked Krasner about rumors of Webern's possible "interest in and devotion to the Nazis" on Schoenberg's behalf, Krasner lied by denying the rumors categorically and entirely. As a result, Schoenberg's Violin Concerto of 1934 (or 1935)–36 continued to bear a dedication to Webern, although whittled down as a result of Schoenberg's continuing suspicions or, indeed, on Webern's behalf, i.e., to protect Webern from further Nazi suspicion and persecution. Schoenberg's tone was ultimately conciliatory in remembrance of both Berg and Webern in 1947: "Let us—for the moment at least—forget all that might have at one time divided us ... even if those who tried might have succeeded in confounding us." Musicologist Richard Taruskin describes Webern accurately if vaguely as a pan-German nationalist but then goes much further in claiming specifically that Webern joyfully welcomed the Nazis with the 1938 Anschluss, at best extrapolating from the account of his cited source Krasner and at worst exaggerating or distorting it, as well as describing it sardonically as "heart-breaking". Taruskin's authority on this delicate issue must be credited, if at all, then only with the significant limitations that he has been polemical in general and hostile in particular to the Second Viennese School, of whom Webern is often considered the most extreme and difficult (i.e., the least accessible). New Complexity composer and performer Franklin Cox not only faults Taruskin as an inaccurate and unreliable historian but also critiques Taruskin as an "ideologist of tonal restoration" (musicologist Martin Kaltenecker similarly refers to the "Restoration of the 1980s," but he also describes a paradigm shift from structure to perception). Taruskin's "reactionary historicist" project, Cox argues, stands in opposition to that of the Second Viennese School, viz. the "progressivist historicist" emancipation of the dissonance. Taruskin himself admits to having acquired a "dubious reputation" on the Second Viennese School and notes that he has been described in his work on Webern as "coming, like Shakespeare's Marc Anthony, 'to bury Webern, not to praise him'". In contradistinction to Taruskin's methods and pronouncements, musicologist Pamela M. Potter advises that "[i]t is important to consider all the scholarship on musical life in the Third Reich that, taken together, reveals the complexity of the day-to-day existence of musicians and composers", as "[i]t seems inevitable that debates about the political culpability of individuals will persist, especially if the stakes remain so high for composers, for whom an up or down vote can determine inclusion in the canon". In this vein, it might be noted in relation to Taruskin's claim that Webern wrote to friends (husband and wife Josef Humplik and Hildegard Jone) on the day of Anschluss not to invite celebration or to observe developments but to be left alone: "I am totally immersed in my work [composing] and cannot, cannot be disturbed"; Krasner's presence could have been a disturbance to Webern for this reason, and musicologist Kathryn Bailey speculates that this may indeed be why he was rushed off by Webern. Webern's 1944–1945 correspondence is strewn with references to bombings, deaths, destruction, privation, and the disintegration of local order; but also noted are the births of several grandchildren. At the age of sixty (i.e., in Dec. 1943), Webern writes that he is living in a barrack away from home and working from 6 am to 5 pm, compelled by the state in a time of war to serve as an air-raid protection police officer. On 3 March 1945, news was relayed to Webern that his only son, Peter, died on 14 February of wounds suffered in a strafing attack on a military train two days earlier. Death in Allied-administered Austria On 15 September 1945, back at his home during the Allied occupation of Austria, Webern was shot and killed by an American Army soldier following the arrest of his son-in-law for black market activities. This incident occurred when, three-quarters of an hour before a curfew was to have gone into effect, he stepped outside the house so as not to disturb his sleeping grandchildren, to enjoy a few draws on a cigar given to him that evening by his son-in-law. The soldier responsible for his death was U. S. Army cook PFC Raymond Norwood Bell of North Carolina, who was overcome by remorse and died of alcoholism in 1955. Webern's wife, Wilhelmine Mörtl, died in 1949. They had three daughters and a son. Music Webern's compositions are concise, distilled, and select; just thirty-one of his compositions were published in his lifetime, and when Pierre Boulez later oversaw a project to record all of his compositions, including some of those without opus numbers, the results fit on just six CDs. Although Webern's music changed over time, as is often the case over a long career, it is typified by very spartan textures, in which every note can be clearly heard; carefully chosen timbres, often resulting in very detailed instructions to the performers and use of extended instrumental techniques (flutter tonguing, col legno, and so on); wide-ranging melodic lines, often with leaps greater than an octave; and brevity: the Six Bagatelles for string quartet (1913), for instance, last about three minutes in total. Formative juvenilia and emergence from study, Opp. 1–2, 1899–1908 Webern published little of his early work in particular; Webern was characteristically meticulous and revised extensively. Many juvenilia remained unknown until the work and findings of the Moldenhauers in the 1960s, effectively obscuring and undermining formative facets of Webern's musical identity, highly significant even more so in the case of an innovator whose music was crucially marked by rapid stylistic shifts. Thus when Boulez first oversaw a project to record "all" of Webern's music, not including the juvenilia, the results fit on three rather than six CDs. Webern's earliest works consist primarily of lieder, the genre that most testifies to his roots in Romanticism, specifically German Romanticism; one in which the music yields brief but explicit, potent, and spoken meaning manifested only latently or programmatically in purely instrumental genres; one marked by significant intimacy and lyricism; and one which often associates nature, especially landscapes, with themes of homesickness, solace, wistful yearning, distance, utopia, and belonging. Robert Schumann's "Mondnacht" is an iconic example; Eichendorff, whose lyric poetry inspired it, is not far removed from the poets (e.g., Richard Dehmel, Gustav Falke, Theodor Storm) whose work inspired Webern and his contemporaries Alban Berg, Max Reger, Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf, and Alexander Zemlinsky. Wolf's Mörike-Lieder were especially influential on Webern's efforts from this period. But well beyond these lieder alone, all of Webern's music may be said to possess such concerns and qualities, as is evident from his sketches, albeit in an increasingly symbolic, abstract, spare, introverted, and idealized manner. Webern's first piece after completing his studies with Schoenberg was the Passacaglia for orchestra (1908). Harmonically, it is a step forward into a more advanced language, and the orchestration is somewhat more distinctive than his earlier orchestral work. However, it bears little relation to the fully mature works he is best known for today. One element that is typical is the form itself: the passacaglia is a form which dates back to the 17th century, and a distinguishing feature of Webern's later work was to be the use of traditional compositional techniques (especially canons) and forms (the Symphony, the Concerto, the String Trio, and String Quartet, and the piano and orchestral Variations) in a modern harmonic and melodic language. Atonality, lieder, and aphorism, Opp. 3–16 and Tot, 1908–1924 For a number of years, Webern wrote pieces which were freely atonal, much in the style of Schoenberg's early atonal works. Indeed, so in lockstep with Schoenberg was Webern for much of his artistic development that Schoenberg in 1951 wrote that he sometimes no longer knew who he was, Webern had followed so well in his footsteps and shadow, occasionally outdoing or stepping ahead of Schoenberg in execution of Schoenberg's own or their shared ideas. There are, however, important cases where Webern may have even more profoundly influenced Schoenberg. Haimo marks the swift, radical influence in 1909 of Webern's novel and arresting Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5, on Schoenberg's subsequent piano piece Op. 11, No. 3; Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16; and monodrama Erwartung, Op. 17. This shift is distinctly pronounced in a letter Schoenberg wrote to Busoni, which describes a rather Webernian aesthetic: In 1949, Schoenberg still remembered being "intoxicated by the enthusiasm of having freed music from the shackles of tonality" and believing with his pupils "that now music could renounce motivic features and remain coherent and comprehensible nonetheless". But with Opp. 18–20, Schoenberg turned back and revived old techniques, very self-consciously returning to and transforming tradition by the concluding songs of Pierrot lunaire (1912), Op. 21, with, e.g., intricately interrelated canons in "Der Mondfleck", clear waltz rhythms in "Serenade", a barcarolle ("Heimfahrt"), triadic harmony throughout "O alter Duft". Pierrot was received by Webern as a direction for the composition of his own Opp. 14–16, most of all with respect to contrapuntal procedures (and to a lesser degree with respect to the diverse and innovative textural treatment among instruments in increasingly smaller ensembles). "How much I owe to your Pierrot", he wrote Schoenberg upon completing a setting of Georg Trakl's "Abendland III", Op. 14, No. 4, in which, rather unusually for Webern, there is no silence or rest until a pause at the concluding gesture. Indeed, a recurring theme of Webern's World War I settings is that of the wanderer, estranged or lost and seeking return to or at least retrieval from an earlier time and place; and of some fifty-six songs on which Webern worked 1914–1926, he ultimately finished and later published only thirty-two set in order as Opp. 12–19. This wartime theme of wandering in search of home ties in with two intricately involved concerns more broadly evident in Webern's work: first, the death and memory of members of Webern's family, especially his mother but also including his father and a nephew; and second, Webern's broad and complex sense of rural and spiritual Heimat. Their importance is marked by Webern's stage play, Tot (October 1913), which, over the course of six alpine scenes of reflection and self-consolation, draws on Emanuel Swedenborg's notion of correspondence to relate and to unite the two concerns, the first embodied but otherworldly and the second concrete if increasingly abstracted and idealized. The similarities between Tot and Webern's music are striking. In an often programmatic or cinematic fashion, Webern ordered his published movements, themselves dramatic or visual tableaux with melodies that frequently begin and end on weak beats or else settle into ostinati or the background. In them, tonality – useful for communicating direction and narrative in programmatic pieces – becomes more tenuous, fragmented, static, symbolic, and visual or spatial in function, thus mirroring the concerns and topics, explicit or implicit, of Webern's music and his selections for it from the poetry of Stefan George and later Georg Trakl. Webern's dynamics, orchestration, and timbre are given so as to produce a fragile, intimate, and often novel sound, despite distinctly recalling Mahler, not infrequently bordering on silence at a typical . In some cases, Webern's choice of instrument in particular functions to represent or to allude to a female voice (e.g., the use of solo violin), to inward or outward luminosity or darkness (e.g., the use of the entire range of register within the ensemble; registral compression and expansion; the use of celesta, harp, and glockenspiel; the use of harmonics and sul ponticello), or to angels and heaven (e.g., the use of harp and trumpet in the circling ostinati of Op. 6, No. 5, and winding to conclusion at the very end of Op. 15, No. 5). Technical consolidation and formal coherence and expansion, Opp. 17–31, 1924–1943 With the Drei Volkstexte (1925), Op. 17, Webern used Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique for the first time, and all his subsequent works used this technique. The String Trio (1926–1927), Op. 20, was both the first purely instrumental work using the twelve-tone technique (the other pieces were songs) and the first cast in a traditional musical form. Webern's music, like that of both Brahms and Schoenberg, is marked by its emphasis on counterpoint and formal considerations; and Webern's commitment to systematic pitch organization in the twelve-tone method is inseparable from this prior commitment. Webern's tone rows are often arranged to take advantage of internal symmetries; for example, a twelve-tone row may be divisible into four groups of three pitches which are variations, such as inversions and retrogrades, of each other, thus creating invariance. This gives Webern's work considerable motivic unity, although this is often obscured by the fragmentation of the melodic lines. This fragmentation occurs through octave displacement (using intervals greater than an octave) and by moving the line rapidly from instrument to instrument in a technique referred to as Klangfarbenmelodie. Arrangements and orchestrations In his youth (1903), Webern orchestrated at least five of Franz Schubert's various lieder, giving the piano accompaniment to an appropriately Schubertian orchestra of strings and pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horns: "Der Vollmond Strahlt auf Bergeshöhn" (the Romanze from Rosamunde), "Tränenregen" (from Die schöne Müllerin), "Der Wegweiser" (from Winterreise), "Du bist die Ruh", and "Ihr Bild"; in 1934, he did the same for Schubert's six Deutsche Tänze (German Dances) of 1824. For Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performances in 1921, Webern arranged, among other things, the 1888 Schatz-Walzer (Treasure Waltz) of Johann Strauss II's Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron) for string quartet, harmonium, and piano. In 1924, Webern arranged Franz Liszt's Arbeiterchor (Workers' Chorus, c. 1847–1848) for bass solo, mixed chorus, and large orchestra; it was premièred for the first time in any form on 13 and 14 March 1925, with Webern conducting the first full-length concert of the Austrian Association of Workers Choir. A review in the Amtliche Wiener Zeitung (28 March 1925) read "neu in jedem Sinne, frisch, unverbraucht, durch ihn zieht die Jugend, die Freude" ("new in every respect, fresh, vital, pervaded by youth and joy"). The text, in English translation, reads in part: "Let us have the adorned spades and scoops,/ Come along all, who wield a sword or pen,/ Come here ye, industrious, brave and strong/ All who create things great or small." Liszt, initially inspired by his revolutionary countrymen, had left it in manuscript at publisher 's discretion. Performance style Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music; this is evidenced by anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tänze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction, many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors and associations everywhere throughout his sketches. As both a composer and conductor, he was one of many (e.g., Wilhelm Furtwängler, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Hermann Scherchen) in a contemporaneous tradition of conscientiously and non-literally handling notated musical figures, phrases, and even entire scores so as to maximize expressivity in performance and to cultivate audience engagement and understanding. This aspect of Webern's work had been typically missed in his immediate post-war reception, however, even as it may radically affect the music's reception. For example, Boulez's "complete" recording of Webern's music yielded more to this aesthetic the second time after largely missing it the first; but Eliahu Inbal's rendition of Webern's Symphony, Op. 21 with the hr-Sinfonieorchester is still far more within the spirit of the late Romantic performance tradition (which Webern seemingly intended for his music), nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work. Legacy, influence, and posthumous reception Webern's music began to be performed more widely in the 1920s; by the mid-1940s, its effect was decisive on many composers, even as far-flung as John Cage. In part because Webern had largely remained the most obscure and arcane composer of the Second Viennese School during his own lifetime, interest in Webern's music increased after World War II as it came to represent a universally or generally valid, systematic, and compellingly logical model of new composition, with his œuvre acquiring what Alex Ross calls "a saintly, visionary aura". When Webern's Piano Variations were performed at Darmstadt in 1948, young composers listened in a quasi-religious trance. In 1955, the second issue of Eimert and Stockhausen's journal Die Reihe was devoted to Webern's œuvre, and in 1960 his lectures were published by Universal Edition. Meanwhile, Webern's characteristically passionate pan-German nationalism and censurable, sordid political sympathies (however naive or delusional and whether ever dispelled or faltered) were not widely known or went unmentioned; perhaps in some part due to his personal and political associations before the German Reich, his degradation and mistreatment under it, and his fate immediately after the war. Significantly as relates to his reception, Webern never compromised his artistic identity and values, as Stravinsky was later to note. It has been suggested that the early 1950s' serialists' fascination with Webern was concerned not with his music as such so much as enabled by its concision and some its apparent plainness in the score, thereby facilitating musical analysis; indeed, composer Gottfried Michael Koenig speculates on the basis of his personal experience that since Webern's scores represented such a highly concentrated source, they may have been considered the better for didactic purposes than those of other composers. Composer thus criticized the approach of early serialists to Webern's music as reductive and narrowly focused on some of Webern's apparent methods rather than on his music more generally, especially neglecting timbre in their typical selection of Opp. 27–28. Composer Karel Goeyvaerts recalled that at least on first impression, the sound of Webern's music reminded him of "a Mondrian canvas," explaining that "things of which I had acquired an extremely intimate knowledge, came across as crude and unfinished when seen in reality." Expressing a related opinion, noted contemporaneous German music critic and contributor to Die Reihe, Wolf-Eberhard von Lewinski wrote in the Darmstädter Tagblatt (3 September 1959) that some of the later and more radical music at Darmstadt was "acoustically absurd [if] visually amusing"; several days later, one of his articles in the Der Kurier was similarly headlined "Meager modern music—only interesting to look at." To composers in the then Communist Bloc in Central and Eastern Europe, Webern's music and its techniques promised an exciting, unique, and challenging alternative to socialist realism, with its perceived tendency to kitsch and its nationalist and traditionalist overtones. Whereas Berg's Lyric Suite may have influenced the third and fourth string quartets of Bartók in 1927 via an ISCM concert (in which Bartók himself performed his own Piano Sonata), Webern's influence on later composers from what became the Hungarian People's Republic and from other countries behind the Iron Curtain was sometimes mediated or obstructed by politics. As Ligeti explained to a student in 1970, "In countries where there exists a certain isolation, in Eastern Europe, one cannot obtain correct information. One is cut off from the circulation of blood." Nonetheless, Webern's work was a seminal influence on that of both Endre Szervánszky and György Kurtág following the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, as well as on Ligeti himself. Later still and farther east, Sofia Gubaidulina, for whom music was an escape from the socio-political atmosphere of post-Stalinist Soviet Russia, cited the influence of both J. S. Bach and Webern in particular. Recordings by Webern Webern conducts "Berg – Violin Concerto" Webern conducts his arrangement of Schubert's German Dances See also List of Austrians in music Notes References Bibliography Further reading Ahrend, Thomas, and Stefan Münnich. 2018. Anton Webern. Oxford Bibliographies in Music. Oxford University Press. .}}{{subscription Ahrend, Thomas, and Matthias Schmidt (eds.). 2015. Der junge Webern. Texte und Kontexte. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 2b. Wien: Lafite. . Ahrend, Thomas, and Matthias Schmidt (eds.). 2016. Webern-Philologien. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 3. Wien: Lafite. . Bailey, Kathryn. 1991. The Twelve-Note Music of Anton Webern: Old Forms in a New Language. Music in the Twentieth Century 2. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. (cloth) (pbk. ed., 2006). Cavallotti, Pietro, and Simon Obert, and Rainer Schmusch (eds.). 2019. Neue Perspektiven. Anton Webern und das Komponieren im 20. Jahrhundert. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 4. Wien: Lafite. . Ewen, David. 1971. "Anton Webern (1883–1945)". In Composers of Tomorrow's Music, by David Ewen, 66–77. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. . Forte, Allen. 1998. The Atonal Music of Anton Webern New Haven: Yale University Press. . Galliari, Alain. 2007. "Anton von Webern". Paris: Fayard. . Kröpfl, Monika, and Simon Obert (eds.). 2015. Der junge Webern. Künstlerische Orientierungen in Wien nach 1900. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 2a. Wien: Lafite. . Mead, Andrew. 1993. "Webern, Tradition, and 'Composing with Twelve Tones'". Music Theory Spectrum 15, no. 2:173–204. Moldenhauer, Hans. 1966. Anton von Webern Perspectives. Edited by Demar Irvine, with an introductory interview with Igor Stravinsky. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Needham, Alex. 2012. Brahms Piano Piece to Get Its Premiere 159 Years After Its Creation. The Guardian (Thursday 12 January). Noller, Joachim. 1990. "Bedeutungsstrukturen: zu Anton Weberns 'alpinen' Programmen". Neue Zeitschrift für Musik151, no. 9 (September): 12–18. Obert, Simon (ed.). 2012. Wechselnde Erscheinung. Sechs Perspektiven auf Anton Weberns sechste Bagatelle. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 1. Wien: Lafite. . Perle, George. 1991. Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. Sixth ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Peyser, Joan. 2007. To Boulez and Beyond. Scarecrow Press. . Rockwell, John. 1983. All American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century. New York: Alfred Knopf. Reprinted New York: Da Capo Press, 1997. , . Tsang, Lee. 2002. "The Atonal Music of Anton Webern (1998) by Allen Forte". Music Analysis 21, no. 3 (October): 417–427. Wildgans, Friedrich. 1966. Anton Webern. Translated by Edith Temple Roberts and Humphrey Searle. Introduction and notes by Humphrey Searle. New York: October House. External links Anton Webern biography and works on the UE website (publisher) Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe (Complete Edition) 1883 births 1945 deaths Austrian Roman Catholics 20th-century classical composers Deaths by firearm in Austria Expressionist music Twelve-tone and serial composers Second Viennese School University of Vienna alumni Composers from Vienna Accidental deaths in Austria Pupils of Arnold Schoenberg Austrian male classical composers Austrian classical composers String quartet composers 20th-century Austrian composers 20th-century Austrian male musicians Firearm accident victims
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[ "Casting television is a competition television program where the winner wins a recording contract, or takes part in a competition.\n\nSlovakia \n\nSlovakia's competition is Superstars, and the prize is a car, cash and recording contracts. Stars such as Zdenka Predna came to prominence this way.\n\nUnited Kingdom \n\nSimon Cowell's \"Popstars\" is perhaps the most famous one of the lot, and other shows on a similar focus are Stars in Their Eyes, and Andrew Lloyd Webber's How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?.\n\nUnited States \nFollowing directly on the UK template is the American Idol competition.\n\nRepublic of Ireland \n\nIreland's version, called You're a Star, had a unique twist: winners came into the Eurovision Song Contest as the prize. However, after the disaster of the McCall Twins that format has been abandoned. The most famous winner and most successful in Eurovision (though he did not win) was Mickey Joe Harte.\n\nReferences \n\n http://www.superstars.markiza.sk\n http://www.rte.ie/tv.yourastar\n\nTelevision genres", "Cullen Hightower (1923 – November 27, 2008) was a well-known quotation and quip writer from the United States. He is often associated with the American conservative political movement.\n\nHightower served in the U.S. army during World War II before beginning a career in sales. He began to publish his writing upon retirement. A collection of his quotations was published as Cullen Hightower's Wit Kit. One of Hightower's most notable quotations is \"People seldom become famous for what they say until after they are famous for what they've done.\" Ironically, Hightower became famous for what he said rather than for what he did. A number of other quotes are in his obituary.\n\nReferences\n\nAmerican humorists\n1923 births\n2008 deaths\nUnited States Army personnel of World War II" ]
[ "Anton Webern", "Performance style", "What was Webern's style like?", "Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music;", "What was he best known for?", "extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction,", "What is his most famous recording?", "I don't know." ]
C_1951dee9c9e740108b2e390bd3a0eac7_0
Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?
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Are there any other interesting aspects about this article on Anton Webern other than his performance style?
Anton Webern
Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music; this is evidenced by anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction, many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors and associations everywhere throughout his sketches. As both a composer and conductor he was one of many (e.g., Wilhelm Furtwangler, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Hermann Scherchen) in a contemporaneous tradition of conscientiously and non-literally handling notated musical figures, phrases, and even entire scores so as to maximize expressivity in performance and to cultivate audience engagement and understanding. This aspect of Webern's work had been typically missed in his immediate post-war reception, however, even as it may radically affect the music's reception. For example, Boulez's "complete" recording of Webern's music yielded more to this aesthetic the second time after largely missing it the first; but Eliahu Inbal's rendition of Webern's symphony with the hr-Sinfonieorchester is still far more within the spirit of the late Romantic performance tradition (which Webern seemingly intended for his music), nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work. Gunter Wand's 1966 recording of the Cantata No. 1 (1938-40), op. 29, with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks et al., may likewise be contrasted with both of Boulez's renditions. CANNOTANSWER
many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors
Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), known as simply Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor. Along with his mentor Arnold Schoenberg and his colleague Alban Berg, Webern was in the core of those in the circle of the Second Viennese School, including Theodor W. Adorno, Heinrich Jalowetz, and Ernst Krenek. As an exponent of atonality and twelve-tone technique, Webern exerted influence on contemporaries Luigi Dallapiccola, Krenek, and even Schoenberg himself. As a tutor, Webern guided and variously influenced Arnold Elston, Frederick Dorian (Friederich Deutsch), , , Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Philipp Herschkowitz, René Leibowitz, Humphrey Searle, Leopold Spinner, and Stefan Wolpe. Webern's music was among the most radical of its milieu, both in its concision and in its rigorous and resolute apprehension of twelve-tone technique. His innovations in schematic organization of pitch, rhythm, register, timbre, dynamics, articulation, and melodic contour; his eagerness to redefine imitative contrapuntal techniques such as canon and fugue; and his inclination toward athematicism, abstraction, and lyricism all greatly informed and oriented intra- and post-war European, typically serial or avant-garde composers such as Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, Henri Pousseur, and György Ligeti. In the United States, meanwhile, his music attracted the interest of Elliott Carter, whose critical ambivalence was marked by a certain enthusiasm nonetheless; Milton Babbitt, who ultimately derived more inspiration from Schoenberg's twelve-tone practice than that of Webern; and Igor Stravinsky, to whom it was very fruitfully reintroduced by Robert Craft. During and shortly after the post-war period, then, Webern was posthumously received with attention first diverted from his sociocultural upbringing and surroundings and, moreover, focused in a direction apparently antithetical to his participation in German Romanticism and Expressionism. A richer understanding of Webern began to emerge in the later half of the 20th century, notably in the work of scholars Kathryn Bailey, Julian Johnson, Felix Meyer, Anne Shreffler, as archivists and biographers (most importantly Hans and Rosaleen Moldenhauer) gained access to sketches, letters, lectures, audio recordings, and other articles of or associated with Webern's estate. Biography Youth, education, and other early experiences in Austria-Hungary Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern was born in Vienna, then in Austria-Hungary. He was the only surviving son of Carl von Webern, a civil servant, and Amalie (née Geer) who was a competent pianist and accomplished singer—possibly the only obvious source of the future composer's talent. He never used his middle names and dropped the "von" in 1918 as directed by the Austrian government's reforms after World War I. He lived in Graz and Klagenfurt for much of his youth. But his distinct and lasting sense of Heimat was shaped by readings of Peter Rosegger; and moreover by frequent and extended retreats with his parents, sisters, and cousins to his family's country estate, the Preglhof, which Webern's father had inherited upon the death of Webern's grandfather in 1889. Webern memorialized the Preglhof in a diary poem "An der Preglhof" and in the tone poem Im Sommerwind (1904), both after Bruno Wille's idyll. Once Webern's father sold the estate in 1912, Webern referred to it nostalgically as a "lost paradise". He continued to revisit the Preglhof, the family cemetery in Schwabegg, and the surrounding landscape for the rest of his life; and he clearly associated the area, which he took as his home, very closely with the memory of his mother Amelie, who had died in 1906 and whose loss also profoundly affected Webern for decades. Art historian Ernst Dietz, Webern's cousin and at that time a student at Graz, may have introduced Webern to the work of the painters Arnold Böcklin and Giovanni Segantini, whom Webern came to admire. Segantini's work was a likely inspiration for Webern's 1905 single-movement string quartet. In 1902, Webern began attending classes at Vienna University. There he studied musicology with Guido Adler, writing his thesis on the Choralis Constantinus of Heinrich Isaac. This interest in early music would greatly influence his compositional technique in later years, especially in terms of his use of palindromic form on both the micro- and macro-scale and the economical use of musical materials. With the help of friends and colleagues, Webern later began working peripatetically as a conductor and musical coach in various towns and cities, among them Ischl, Teplitz (now Teplice, Czech Republic), Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland), and Prague, before finally moving back to Vienna. As might be expected, the young Webern was enthusiastic about the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert ("so genuinely Viennese"), Hugo Wolf, and Richard Wagner, visiting Bayreuth in 1902. He also enjoyed the music of Hector Berlioz and Georges Bizet. In 1904, he reportedly stormed out of a meeting with Hans Pfitzner, from whom he was seeking instruction, when the latter criticized Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. In 1908, Webern wrote rapturously to Schoenberg about Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande. He conducted some of Debussy's music in 1911. It may have been at Guido Adler's advice that he paid Schoenberg for composition lessons. Webern progressed quickly under Schoenberg's tutelage, publishing his Passacaglia, Op. 1, as his graduation piece in 1908. He also met Berg, then another of Schoenberg's pupils. These two relationships would be the most important in his life in shaping his own musical direction. Some of Webern's earlier thoughts (from 1903) are as amusing as they might be surprising: besides describing some of Alexander Scriabin's music as "languishing junk," he wrote of Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 4 that it was "boring," that Carl Maria von Weber's Konzertstück in F minor was passé, and that he found Johannes Brahms's Symphony No. 3 (which struck Eduard Hanslick as "artistically the most nearly perfect") "cold and without particular inspiration, ... badly orchestrated—grey on grey." These youthful impressions are in some, but not complete or altogether necessarily very significant, contrast to the considered opinions of Webern in the 1930s, by then a decided nationalist who, as Roland Leich described, "lectured at some length on the utter supremacy of German music, emphasizing that leading composers of other lands are but pale reflections of Germanic masters: Berlioz a French Beethoven, Tchaikovsky a Russian Schumann, Elgar an English Mendelssohn, etc." After all, even when young, Webern had described one of Alexander Glazunov's symphonies as "not particularly Russian" (in contrast to some of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's music at the same all-Russian concert) in the same passage as he praised it. Red Vienna in the First Austrian Republic From 1918 to 1921, Webern helped organize and operate the Society for Private Musical Performances, which gave concerts of then-recent or -new music by Béla Bartók, Berg, Ferruccio Busoni, Debussy, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Mahler, Maurice Ravel, Max Reger, Erik Satie, Strauss, Stravinsky, and Webern himself. After their Society performances in 1919 (and while working on his own Opp. 14–15), Webern wrote to Berg that Stravinsky's Berceuses du chat "[move] me completely beyond belief," describing them as "indescribably touching," and that Stravinsky's Pribaoutki were "something really glorious." After the dissolution of the Society amid catastrophic hyperinflation in 1921, Webern conducted the Vienna Workers' Symphony Orchestra and Chorus from 1922 to 1934. In 1926, Webern noted his voluntary resignation as chorusmaster of the Mödling Men's Choral Society, a paid position, in controversy over his hiring of a Jewish singer, Greta Wilheim, to replace a sick one. Letters document their correspondence in many subsequent years, and she (among others) would in turn provide him with facilities to teach private lessons as a convenience to Webern, his family, and his students. Civil War, Austrofascism, Nazism, and World War II Webern's music, along with that of Berg, Křenek, Schoenberg, and others, was denounced as "cultural Bolshevism" and "degenerate art" by the Nazi Party in Germany, and both publication and performances of it were banned soon after the Anschluss in 1938, although neither did it fare well under the preceding years of Austrofascism. As early as 1933, an Austrian gauleiter on Bayerischer Rundfunk mistakenly and very likely maliciously characterized both Berg and Webern as Jewish composers. As a result of official disapproval throughout the '30s, both found it harder to earn a living; Webern lost a promising conducting career which might have otherwise been more noted and recorded and had to take on work as an editor and proofreader for his publishers, Universal Edition. His family's financial situation deteriorated until, by August 1940, his personal records reflected no monthly income. It was thanks to the Swiss philanthropist Werner Reinhart that Webern was able to attend the festive premiere of his Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30, in Winterthur, Switzerland in 1943. Reinhart invested all the financial and diplomatic means at his disposal to enable Webern to travel to Switzerland. In return for this support, Webern dedicated the work to him. There are different descriptions of Webern's attitude towards Nazism; this is perhaps attributable to its complexity, his internal ambivalence, his prosperity in the preceding years (1918–1934) of post-war Red Vienna in the First Republic of Austria, the subsequently divided political factions of his homeland as represented in his friends and family (from Zionist Schoenberg to his Nazi son Peter), as well as the different contexts in which or audiences to whom his views were expressed. Further insight into Webern's attitudes comes with the realization that Nazism itself was deeply multifaceted, marked "not [by] a coherent doctrine or body of systemically interrelated ideas, but rather [by] a vaguer worldview made up of a number of prejudices with varied appeals to different audiences which could scarcely be dignified with the term 'ideology'". There is, moreover, significant political complexity to be treated, more than enough to complicate any consideration of individual culpability: it is imperative to note that some Social Democrats viewed the National Socialists as an alternative to the Christian Social Party and later Vaterländische Front in the context of reunification with Germany; for example, Karl Renner, the chancellor who served in both the First (1919–33) and Second (post-1945) Austrian Republics, favored a German Anschluss as an alternative to the then Austrofascist regime, under which Berg, Webern, and the Social Democrats suffered. And Webern's professional circle in Vienna included, besides many Jews, many Social Democrats; for example, for David Josef Bach, a close friend of Schoenberg's as well, Webern conducted many workers' and amateur ensembles. Under the Nazis, some Social Democrats expected, there might be more work and protections for workers and laborers, as well as other social reforms and political stability, if not democracy; Webern may well have hoped to again be able to conduct and to be better able to secure a future for his family. In broad terms, Webern's attitude seems to have first warmed to a degree of characteristic fervor and perhaps only much later, in conjunction with widespread German disillusionment, cooled to Hitler and the Nazis. On the one hand, notes that Webern attacked Nazi cultural policies in private lectures given in 1933, whose hypothetical publication "would have exposed Webern to serious consequences" later. On the other, some private correspondence attests to his Nazi sympathies. Webern's patriotism led him to endorse the Nazi regime in a series of letters to Joseph Hueber, who was serving in the army and himself held such views. Webern described Hitler on 2 May 1940, as "this unique man" who created "the new state" of Germany; thus Alex Ross characterizes him as "an unashamed Hitler enthusiast". Violinist Louis Krasner painted not a sentimental portrait but one imbued with a wealth of factual and personal detail for its publication in 1987, describing Webern as clearly naive and idealistic but not entirely without his wits, shame, or conscience; Krasner carefully contextualizes Webern as a member of Austrian society at the time, one departed by Schoenberg and one in which the already pro-Nazi Vienna Philharmonic had even refused to play the late Berg's Violin Concerto. As Krasner vividly recalled, he and Webern were visiting at the latter's home in Maria Enzersdorf, Mödling when the Nazis invaded Austria; Webern, uncannily seeming to anticipate the timing down to 4 o'clock in the afternoon, turned on the radio to hear this news and immediately warned Krasner, urging him to flee, whereupon he did (first to Vienna). Whether this was for Krasner's safety or to save Webern the embarrassment of Krasner's presence during a time of possible celebration in the pro-Nazi Webern family (or indeed in most of pro-Nazi Mödling, by Krasner's description as well as one even more vivid of Arnold Greissle-Schönberg), Krasner was ambivalent and uncertain, withholding judgment. Only later did Krasner himself realize how self-admittedly "foolhardy" he had been and in what danger he had placed himself, revealing an ignorance perhaps shared by Webern. Krasner had even revisited frequently, hoping to convince friends (e.g., Schoenberg's daughter Gertrude and her husband Felix Greissle) to emigrate before time ran out. Krasner eventually left more permanently, after a 1941 incident wherein he felt only his US passport saved him from both locals and police. Krasner retold from a story related to him in long discussion with Schoenberg's son Görgi, a Jew who remained in Vienna during the war, that the Weberns, much to their risk and credit, had provided Görgi and his family with food and shelter toward the end of the war at the Weberns' home in a Mödling apartment belonging to their son-in-law. Görgi and his family were left behind for their safety when Webern fled on foot with his family to Mittersill, about 75 km. away, for safety of their own in light of the coming Russian invasion; Amalie, one of Webern's daughters, wrote of '17 persons pressed together in the smallest possible space' upon their arrival. Ironically, the Russians pronounced Görgi a "Nazi spy" when he was discovered due to the Nazi munitions and propaganda in the Weberns' basement store-room. Görgi is said to have saved himself from execution by protesting and drawing attention to his clothes, sewn as specified by the Nazis with the yellow Star of David. He continued to live in this apartment with this family until 1969. Webern is also known to have aided Josef Polnauer, a Jewish friend who, as an albino, managed to largely escape the Nazis' attention and later edit a publication of Webern's correspondence from this time with Hildegard Jone, Webern's then lyricist and collaborator, and her husband, sculptor Josef Humplik. However, Krasner was particularly troubled by a 1936 conversation with Webern about the Jews, in which Webern expressed his vague but unambiguously anti-Semitic opinion that "Even Schoenberg, had he not been a Jew, would have been quite different!" Krasner remembered, perhaps with the benefit of hindsight at the time (1987), that "Jews ... were at the center of the difficulty. Those who wanted to, put the blame for all this calamity, for all this depraved condition, on the Jews who had brought it with them—along with a lot of radical ideas—from the East. People blamed the Jews for their financial worries. The Jews were, at the same time, the poverty-stricken people who came with nothing, and the capitalists who controlled everything." When once asked by Schoenberg about his feelings toward the Nazis, Webern nonetheless sought to allay Schoenberg's concerns; similarly, when in 1938 Eduard Steuermann asked Krasner about rumors of Webern's possible "interest in and devotion to the Nazis" on Schoenberg's behalf, Krasner lied by denying the rumors categorically and entirely. As a result, Schoenberg's Violin Concerto of 1934 (or 1935)–36 continued to bear a dedication to Webern, although whittled down as a result of Schoenberg's continuing suspicions or, indeed, on Webern's behalf, i.e., to protect Webern from further Nazi suspicion and persecution. Schoenberg's tone was ultimately conciliatory in remembrance of both Berg and Webern in 1947: "Let us—for the moment at least—forget all that might have at one time divided us ... even if those who tried might have succeeded in confounding us." Musicologist Richard Taruskin describes Webern accurately if vaguely as a pan-German nationalist but then goes much further in claiming specifically that Webern joyfully welcomed the Nazis with the 1938 Anschluss, at best extrapolating from the account of his cited source Krasner and at worst exaggerating or distorting it, as well as describing it sardonically as "heart-breaking". Taruskin's authority on this delicate issue must be credited, if at all, then only with the significant limitations that he has been polemical in general and hostile in particular to the Second Viennese School, of whom Webern is often considered the most extreme and difficult (i.e., the least accessible). New Complexity composer and performer Franklin Cox not only faults Taruskin as an inaccurate and unreliable historian but also critiques Taruskin as an "ideologist of tonal restoration" (musicologist Martin Kaltenecker similarly refers to the "Restoration of the 1980s," but he also describes a paradigm shift from structure to perception). Taruskin's "reactionary historicist" project, Cox argues, stands in opposition to that of the Second Viennese School, viz. the "progressivist historicist" emancipation of the dissonance. Taruskin himself admits to having acquired a "dubious reputation" on the Second Viennese School and notes that he has been described in his work on Webern as "coming, like Shakespeare's Marc Anthony, 'to bury Webern, not to praise him'". In contradistinction to Taruskin's methods and pronouncements, musicologist Pamela M. Potter advises that "[i]t is important to consider all the scholarship on musical life in the Third Reich that, taken together, reveals the complexity of the day-to-day existence of musicians and composers", as "[i]t seems inevitable that debates about the political culpability of individuals will persist, especially if the stakes remain so high for composers, for whom an up or down vote can determine inclusion in the canon". In this vein, it might be noted in relation to Taruskin's claim that Webern wrote to friends (husband and wife Josef Humplik and Hildegard Jone) on the day of Anschluss not to invite celebration or to observe developments but to be left alone: "I am totally immersed in my work [composing] and cannot, cannot be disturbed"; Krasner's presence could have been a disturbance to Webern for this reason, and musicologist Kathryn Bailey speculates that this may indeed be why he was rushed off by Webern. Webern's 1944–1945 correspondence is strewn with references to bombings, deaths, destruction, privation, and the disintegration of local order; but also noted are the births of several grandchildren. At the age of sixty (i.e., in Dec. 1943), Webern writes that he is living in a barrack away from home and working from 6 am to 5 pm, compelled by the state in a time of war to serve as an air-raid protection police officer. On 3 March 1945, news was relayed to Webern that his only son, Peter, died on 14 February of wounds suffered in a strafing attack on a military train two days earlier. Death in Allied-administered Austria On 15 September 1945, back at his home during the Allied occupation of Austria, Webern was shot and killed by an American Army soldier following the arrest of his son-in-law for black market activities. This incident occurred when, three-quarters of an hour before a curfew was to have gone into effect, he stepped outside the house so as not to disturb his sleeping grandchildren, to enjoy a few draws on a cigar given to him that evening by his son-in-law. The soldier responsible for his death was U. S. Army cook PFC Raymond Norwood Bell of North Carolina, who was overcome by remorse and died of alcoholism in 1955. Webern's wife, Wilhelmine Mörtl, died in 1949. They had three daughters and a son. Music Webern's compositions are concise, distilled, and select; just thirty-one of his compositions were published in his lifetime, and when Pierre Boulez later oversaw a project to record all of his compositions, including some of those without opus numbers, the results fit on just six CDs. Although Webern's music changed over time, as is often the case over a long career, it is typified by very spartan textures, in which every note can be clearly heard; carefully chosen timbres, often resulting in very detailed instructions to the performers and use of extended instrumental techniques (flutter tonguing, col legno, and so on); wide-ranging melodic lines, often with leaps greater than an octave; and brevity: the Six Bagatelles for string quartet (1913), for instance, last about three minutes in total. Formative juvenilia and emergence from study, Opp. 1–2, 1899–1908 Webern published little of his early work in particular; Webern was characteristically meticulous and revised extensively. Many juvenilia remained unknown until the work and findings of the Moldenhauers in the 1960s, effectively obscuring and undermining formative facets of Webern's musical identity, highly significant even more so in the case of an innovator whose music was crucially marked by rapid stylistic shifts. Thus when Boulez first oversaw a project to record "all" of Webern's music, not including the juvenilia, the results fit on three rather than six CDs. Webern's earliest works consist primarily of lieder, the genre that most testifies to his roots in Romanticism, specifically German Romanticism; one in which the music yields brief but explicit, potent, and spoken meaning manifested only latently or programmatically in purely instrumental genres; one marked by significant intimacy and lyricism; and one which often associates nature, especially landscapes, with themes of homesickness, solace, wistful yearning, distance, utopia, and belonging. Robert Schumann's "Mondnacht" is an iconic example; Eichendorff, whose lyric poetry inspired it, is not far removed from the poets (e.g., Richard Dehmel, Gustav Falke, Theodor Storm) whose work inspired Webern and his contemporaries Alban Berg, Max Reger, Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf, and Alexander Zemlinsky. Wolf's Mörike-Lieder were especially influential on Webern's efforts from this period. But well beyond these lieder alone, all of Webern's music may be said to possess such concerns and qualities, as is evident from his sketches, albeit in an increasingly symbolic, abstract, spare, introverted, and idealized manner. Webern's first piece after completing his studies with Schoenberg was the Passacaglia for orchestra (1908). Harmonically, it is a step forward into a more advanced language, and the orchestration is somewhat more distinctive than his earlier orchestral work. However, it bears little relation to the fully mature works he is best known for today. One element that is typical is the form itself: the passacaglia is a form which dates back to the 17th century, and a distinguishing feature of Webern's later work was to be the use of traditional compositional techniques (especially canons) and forms (the Symphony, the Concerto, the String Trio, and String Quartet, and the piano and orchestral Variations) in a modern harmonic and melodic language. Atonality, lieder, and aphorism, Opp. 3–16 and Tot, 1908–1924 For a number of years, Webern wrote pieces which were freely atonal, much in the style of Schoenberg's early atonal works. Indeed, so in lockstep with Schoenberg was Webern for much of his artistic development that Schoenberg in 1951 wrote that he sometimes no longer knew who he was, Webern had followed so well in his footsteps and shadow, occasionally outdoing or stepping ahead of Schoenberg in execution of Schoenberg's own or their shared ideas. There are, however, important cases where Webern may have even more profoundly influenced Schoenberg. Haimo marks the swift, radical influence in 1909 of Webern's novel and arresting Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5, on Schoenberg's subsequent piano piece Op. 11, No. 3; Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16; and monodrama Erwartung, Op. 17. This shift is distinctly pronounced in a letter Schoenberg wrote to Busoni, which describes a rather Webernian aesthetic: In 1949, Schoenberg still remembered being "intoxicated by the enthusiasm of having freed music from the shackles of tonality" and believing with his pupils "that now music could renounce motivic features and remain coherent and comprehensible nonetheless". But with Opp. 18–20, Schoenberg turned back and revived old techniques, very self-consciously returning to and transforming tradition by the concluding songs of Pierrot lunaire (1912), Op. 21, with, e.g., intricately interrelated canons in "Der Mondfleck", clear waltz rhythms in "Serenade", a barcarolle ("Heimfahrt"), triadic harmony throughout "O alter Duft". Pierrot was received by Webern as a direction for the composition of his own Opp. 14–16, most of all with respect to contrapuntal procedures (and to a lesser degree with respect to the diverse and innovative textural treatment among instruments in increasingly smaller ensembles). "How much I owe to your Pierrot", he wrote Schoenberg upon completing a setting of Georg Trakl's "Abendland III", Op. 14, No. 4, in which, rather unusually for Webern, there is no silence or rest until a pause at the concluding gesture. Indeed, a recurring theme of Webern's World War I settings is that of the wanderer, estranged or lost and seeking return to or at least retrieval from an earlier time and place; and of some fifty-six songs on which Webern worked 1914–1926, he ultimately finished and later published only thirty-two set in order as Opp. 12–19. This wartime theme of wandering in search of home ties in with two intricately involved concerns more broadly evident in Webern's work: first, the death and memory of members of Webern's family, especially his mother but also including his father and a nephew; and second, Webern's broad and complex sense of rural and spiritual Heimat. Their importance is marked by Webern's stage play, Tot (October 1913), which, over the course of six alpine scenes of reflection and self-consolation, draws on Emanuel Swedenborg's notion of correspondence to relate and to unite the two concerns, the first embodied but otherworldly and the second concrete if increasingly abstracted and idealized. The similarities between Tot and Webern's music are striking. In an often programmatic or cinematic fashion, Webern ordered his published movements, themselves dramatic or visual tableaux with melodies that frequently begin and end on weak beats or else settle into ostinati or the background. In them, tonality – useful for communicating direction and narrative in programmatic pieces – becomes more tenuous, fragmented, static, symbolic, and visual or spatial in function, thus mirroring the concerns and topics, explicit or implicit, of Webern's music and his selections for it from the poetry of Stefan George and later Georg Trakl. Webern's dynamics, orchestration, and timbre are given so as to produce a fragile, intimate, and often novel sound, despite distinctly recalling Mahler, not infrequently bordering on silence at a typical . In some cases, Webern's choice of instrument in particular functions to represent or to allude to a female voice (e.g., the use of solo violin), to inward or outward luminosity or darkness (e.g., the use of the entire range of register within the ensemble; registral compression and expansion; the use of celesta, harp, and glockenspiel; the use of harmonics and sul ponticello), or to angels and heaven (e.g., the use of harp and trumpet in the circling ostinati of Op. 6, No. 5, and winding to conclusion at the very end of Op. 15, No. 5). Technical consolidation and formal coherence and expansion, Opp. 17–31, 1924–1943 With the Drei Volkstexte (1925), Op. 17, Webern used Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique for the first time, and all his subsequent works used this technique. The String Trio (1926–1927), Op. 20, was both the first purely instrumental work using the twelve-tone technique (the other pieces were songs) and the first cast in a traditional musical form. Webern's music, like that of both Brahms and Schoenberg, is marked by its emphasis on counterpoint and formal considerations; and Webern's commitment to systematic pitch organization in the twelve-tone method is inseparable from this prior commitment. Webern's tone rows are often arranged to take advantage of internal symmetries; for example, a twelve-tone row may be divisible into four groups of three pitches which are variations, such as inversions and retrogrades, of each other, thus creating invariance. This gives Webern's work considerable motivic unity, although this is often obscured by the fragmentation of the melodic lines. This fragmentation occurs through octave displacement (using intervals greater than an octave) and by moving the line rapidly from instrument to instrument in a technique referred to as Klangfarbenmelodie. Arrangements and orchestrations In his youth (1903), Webern orchestrated at least five of Franz Schubert's various lieder, giving the piano accompaniment to an appropriately Schubertian orchestra of strings and pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horns: "Der Vollmond Strahlt auf Bergeshöhn" (the Romanze from Rosamunde), "Tränenregen" (from Die schöne Müllerin), "Der Wegweiser" (from Winterreise), "Du bist die Ruh", and "Ihr Bild"; in 1934, he did the same for Schubert's six Deutsche Tänze (German Dances) of 1824. For Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performances in 1921, Webern arranged, among other things, the 1888 Schatz-Walzer (Treasure Waltz) of Johann Strauss II's Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron) for string quartet, harmonium, and piano. In 1924, Webern arranged Franz Liszt's Arbeiterchor (Workers' Chorus, c. 1847–1848) for bass solo, mixed chorus, and large orchestra; it was premièred for the first time in any form on 13 and 14 March 1925, with Webern conducting the first full-length concert of the Austrian Association of Workers Choir. A review in the Amtliche Wiener Zeitung (28 March 1925) read "neu in jedem Sinne, frisch, unverbraucht, durch ihn zieht die Jugend, die Freude" ("new in every respect, fresh, vital, pervaded by youth and joy"). The text, in English translation, reads in part: "Let us have the adorned spades and scoops,/ Come along all, who wield a sword or pen,/ Come here ye, industrious, brave and strong/ All who create things great or small." Liszt, initially inspired by his revolutionary countrymen, had left it in manuscript at publisher 's discretion. Performance style Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music; this is evidenced by anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tänze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction, many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors and associations everywhere throughout his sketches. As both a composer and conductor, he was one of many (e.g., Wilhelm Furtwängler, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Hermann Scherchen) in a contemporaneous tradition of conscientiously and non-literally handling notated musical figures, phrases, and even entire scores so as to maximize expressivity in performance and to cultivate audience engagement and understanding. This aspect of Webern's work had been typically missed in his immediate post-war reception, however, even as it may radically affect the music's reception. For example, Boulez's "complete" recording of Webern's music yielded more to this aesthetic the second time after largely missing it the first; but Eliahu Inbal's rendition of Webern's Symphony, Op. 21 with the hr-Sinfonieorchester is still far more within the spirit of the late Romantic performance tradition (which Webern seemingly intended for his music), nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work. Legacy, influence, and posthumous reception Webern's music began to be performed more widely in the 1920s; by the mid-1940s, its effect was decisive on many composers, even as far-flung as John Cage. In part because Webern had largely remained the most obscure and arcane composer of the Second Viennese School during his own lifetime, interest in Webern's music increased after World War II as it came to represent a universally or generally valid, systematic, and compellingly logical model of new composition, with his œuvre acquiring what Alex Ross calls "a saintly, visionary aura". When Webern's Piano Variations were performed at Darmstadt in 1948, young composers listened in a quasi-religious trance. In 1955, the second issue of Eimert and Stockhausen's journal Die Reihe was devoted to Webern's œuvre, and in 1960 his lectures were published by Universal Edition. Meanwhile, Webern's characteristically passionate pan-German nationalism and censurable, sordid political sympathies (however naive or delusional and whether ever dispelled or faltered) were not widely known or went unmentioned; perhaps in some part due to his personal and political associations before the German Reich, his degradation and mistreatment under it, and his fate immediately after the war. Significantly as relates to his reception, Webern never compromised his artistic identity and values, as Stravinsky was later to note. It has been suggested that the early 1950s' serialists' fascination with Webern was concerned not with his music as such so much as enabled by its concision and some its apparent plainness in the score, thereby facilitating musical analysis; indeed, composer Gottfried Michael Koenig speculates on the basis of his personal experience that since Webern's scores represented such a highly concentrated source, they may have been considered the better for didactic purposes than those of other composers. Composer thus criticized the approach of early serialists to Webern's music as reductive and narrowly focused on some of Webern's apparent methods rather than on his music more generally, especially neglecting timbre in their typical selection of Opp. 27–28. Composer Karel Goeyvaerts recalled that at least on first impression, the sound of Webern's music reminded him of "a Mondrian canvas," explaining that "things of which I had acquired an extremely intimate knowledge, came across as crude and unfinished when seen in reality." Expressing a related opinion, noted contemporaneous German music critic and contributor to Die Reihe, Wolf-Eberhard von Lewinski wrote in the Darmstädter Tagblatt (3 September 1959) that some of the later and more radical music at Darmstadt was "acoustically absurd [if] visually amusing"; several days later, one of his articles in the Der Kurier was similarly headlined "Meager modern music—only interesting to look at." To composers in the then Communist Bloc in Central and Eastern Europe, Webern's music and its techniques promised an exciting, unique, and challenging alternative to socialist realism, with its perceived tendency to kitsch and its nationalist and traditionalist overtones. Whereas Berg's Lyric Suite may have influenced the third and fourth string quartets of Bartók in 1927 via an ISCM concert (in which Bartók himself performed his own Piano Sonata), Webern's influence on later composers from what became the Hungarian People's Republic and from other countries behind the Iron Curtain was sometimes mediated or obstructed by politics. As Ligeti explained to a student in 1970, "In countries where there exists a certain isolation, in Eastern Europe, one cannot obtain correct information. One is cut off from the circulation of blood." Nonetheless, Webern's work was a seminal influence on that of both Endre Szervánszky and György Kurtág following the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, as well as on Ligeti himself. Later still and farther east, Sofia Gubaidulina, for whom music was an escape from the socio-political atmosphere of post-Stalinist Soviet Russia, cited the influence of both J. S. Bach and Webern in particular. Recordings by Webern Webern conducts "Berg – Violin Concerto" Webern conducts his arrangement of Schubert's German Dances See also List of Austrians in music Notes References Bibliography Further reading Ahrend, Thomas, and Stefan Münnich. 2018. Anton Webern. Oxford Bibliographies in Music. Oxford University Press. .}}{{subscription Ahrend, Thomas, and Matthias Schmidt (eds.). 2015. Der junge Webern. Texte und Kontexte. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 2b. Wien: Lafite. . Ahrend, Thomas, and Matthias Schmidt (eds.). 2016. Webern-Philologien. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 3. Wien: Lafite. . Bailey, Kathryn. 1991. The Twelve-Note Music of Anton Webern: Old Forms in a New Language. Music in the Twentieth Century 2. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. (cloth) (pbk. ed., 2006). Cavallotti, Pietro, and Simon Obert, and Rainer Schmusch (eds.). 2019. Neue Perspektiven. Anton Webern und das Komponieren im 20. Jahrhundert. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 4. Wien: Lafite. . Ewen, David. 1971. "Anton Webern (1883–1945)". In Composers of Tomorrow's Music, by David Ewen, 66–77. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. . Forte, Allen. 1998. The Atonal Music of Anton Webern New Haven: Yale University Press. . Galliari, Alain. 2007. "Anton von Webern". Paris: Fayard. . Kröpfl, Monika, and Simon Obert (eds.). 2015. Der junge Webern. Künstlerische Orientierungen in Wien nach 1900. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 2a. Wien: Lafite. . Mead, Andrew. 1993. "Webern, Tradition, and 'Composing with Twelve Tones'". Music Theory Spectrum 15, no. 2:173–204. Moldenhauer, Hans. 1966. Anton von Webern Perspectives. Edited by Demar Irvine, with an introductory interview with Igor Stravinsky. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Needham, Alex. 2012. Brahms Piano Piece to Get Its Premiere 159 Years After Its Creation. The Guardian (Thursday 12 January). Noller, Joachim. 1990. "Bedeutungsstrukturen: zu Anton Weberns 'alpinen' Programmen". Neue Zeitschrift für Musik151, no. 9 (September): 12–18. Obert, Simon (ed.). 2012. Wechselnde Erscheinung. Sechs Perspektiven auf Anton Weberns sechste Bagatelle. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 1. Wien: Lafite. . Perle, George. 1991. Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. Sixth ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Peyser, Joan. 2007. To Boulez and Beyond. Scarecrow Press. . Rockwell, John. 1983. All American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century. New York: Alfred Knopf. Reprinted New York: Da Capo Press, 1997. , . Tsang, Lee. 2002. "The Atonal Music of Anton Webern (1998) by Allen Forte". Music Analysis 21, no. 3 (October): 417–427. Wildgans, Friedrich. 1966. Anton Webern. Translated by Edith Temple Roberts and Humphrey Searle. Introduction and notes by Humphrey Searle. New York: October House. External links Anton Webern biography and works on the UE website (publisher) Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe (Complete Edition) 1883 births 1945 deaths Austrian Roman Catholics 20th-century classical composers Deaths by firearm in Austria Expressionist music Twelve-tone and serial composers Second Viennese School University of Vienna alumni Composers from Vienna Accidental deaths in Austria Pupils of Arnold Schoenberg Austrian male classical composers Austrian classical composers String quartet composers 20th-century Austrian composers 20th-century Austrian male musicians Firearm accident victims
true
[ "Přírodní park Třebíčsko (before Oblast klidu Třebíčsko) is a natural park near Třebíč in the Czech Republic. There are many interesting plants. The park was founded in 1983.\n\nKobylinec and Ptáčovský kopeček\n\nKobylinec is a natural monument situated ca 0,5 km from the village of Trnava.\nThe area of this monument is 0,44 ha. Pulsatilla grandis can be found here and in the Ptáčovský kopeček park near Ptáčov near Třebíč. Both monuments are very popular for tourists.\n\nPonds\n\nIn the natural park there are some interesting ponds such as Velký Bor, Malý Bor, Buršík near Přeckov and a brook Březinka. Dams on the brook are examples of European beaver activity.\n\nSyenitové skály near Pocoucov\n\nSyenitové skály (rocks of syenit) near Pocoucov is one of famed locations. There are interesting granite boulders. The area of the reservation is 0,77 ha.\n\nExternal links\nParts of this article or all article was translated from Czech. The original article is :cs:Přírodní park Třebíčsko.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNature near the village Trnava which is there\n\nTřebíč\nParks in the Czech Republic\nTourist attractions in the Vysočina Region", "Damn Interesting is an independent website founded by Alan Bellows in 2005. The website presents true stories from science, history, and psychology, primarily as long-form articles, often illustrated with original artwork. Works are written by various authors, and published at irregular intervals. The website openly rejects advertising, relying on reader and listener donations to cover operating costs.\n\nAs of October 2012, each article is also published as a podcast under the same name. In November 2019, a second podcast was launched under the title Damn Interesting Week, featuring unscripted commentary on an assortment of news articles featured on the website's \"Curated Links\" section that week. In mid-2020, a third podcast called Damn Interesting Curio Cabinet began highlighting the website's periodic short-form articles in the same radioplay format as the original podcast.\n\nIn July 2009, Damn Interesting published the print book Alien Hand Syndrome through Workman Publishing. It contains some favorites from the site and some exclusive content.\n\nAwards and recognition \nIn August 2007, PC Magazine named Damn Interesting one of the \"Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites\".\nThe article \"The Zero-Armed Bandit\" by Alan Bellows won a 2015 Sidney Award from David Brooks in The New York Times.\nThe article \"Ghoulish Acts and Dastardly Deeds\" by Alan Bellows was cited as \"nonfiction journalism from 2017 that will stand the test of time\" by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.\nThe article \"Dupes and Duplicity\" by Jennifer Lee Noonan won a 2020 Sidney Award from David Brooks in the New York Times.\n\nAccusing The Dollop of plagiarism \n\nOn July 9, 2015, Bellows posted an open letter accusing The Dollop, a comedy podcast about history, of plagiarism due to their repeated use of verbatim text from Damn Interesting articles without permission or attribution. Dave Anthony, the writer of The Dollop, responded on reddit, admitting to using Damn Interesting content, but claiming that the use was protected by fair use, and that \"historical facts are not copyrightable.\" In an article about the controversy on Plagiarism Today, Jonathan Bailey concluded, \"Any way one looks at it, The Dollop failed its ethical obligations to all of the people, not just those writing for Damn Interesting, who put in the time, energy and expertise into writing the original content upon which their show is based.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n\n2005 podcast debuts" ]
[ "Anton Webern", "Performance style", "What was Webern's style like?", "Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music;", "What was he best known for?", "extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction,", "What is his most famous recording?", "I don't know.", "Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?", "many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors" ]
C_1951dee9c9e740108b2e390bd3a0eac7_0
What types of markings are in his scores?
5
What types of markings are in Anton Webern's scores?
Anton Webern
Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music; this is evidenced by anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction, many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors and associations everywhere throughout his sketches. As both a composer and conductor he was one of many (e.g., Wilhelm Furtwangler, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Hermann Scherchen) in a contemporaneous tradition of conscientiously and non-literally handling notated musical figures, phrases, and even entire scores so as to maximize expressivity in performance and to cultivate audience engagement and understanding. This aspect of Webern's work had been typically missed in his immediate post-war reception, however, even as it may radically affect the music's reception. For example, Boulez's "complete" recording of Webern's music yielded more to this aesthetic the second time after largely missing it the first; but Eliahu Inbal's rendition of Webern's symphony with the hr-Sinfonieorchester is still far more within the spirit of the late Romantic performance tradition (which Webern seemingly intended for his music), nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work. Gunter Wand's 1966 recording of the Cantata No. 1 (1938-40), op. 29, with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks et al., may likewise be contrasted with both of Boulez's renditions. CANNOTANSWER
anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze
Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), known as simply Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor. Along with his mentor Arnold Schoenberg and his colleague Alban Berg, Webern was in the core of those in the circle of the Second Viennese School, including Theodor W. Adorno, Heinrich Jalowetz, and Ernst Krenek. As an exponent of atonality and twelve-tone technique, Webern exerted influence on contemporaries Luigi Dallapiccola, Krenek, and even Schoenberg himself. As a tutor, Webern guided and variously influenced Arnold Elston, Frederick Dorian (Friederich Deutsch), , , Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Philipp Herschkowitz, René Leibowitz, Humphrey Searle, Leopold Spinner, and Stefan Wolpe. Webern's music was among the most radical of its milieu, both in its concision and in its rigorous and resolute apprehension of twelve-tone technique. His innovations in schematic organization of pitch, rhythm, register, timbre, dynamics, articulation, and melodic contour; his eagerness to redefine imitative contrapuntal techniques such as canon and fugue; and his inclination toward athematicism, abstraction, and lyricism all greatly informed and oriented intra- and post-war European, typically serial or avant-garde composers such as Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, Henri Pousseur, and György Ligeti. In the United States, meanwhile, his music attracted the interest of Elliott Carter, whose critical ambivalence was marked by a certain enthusiasm nonetheless; Milton Babbitt, who ultimately derived more inspiration from Schoenberg's twelve-tone practice than that of Webern; and Igor Stravinsky, to whom it was very fruitfully reintroduced by Robert Craft. During and shortly after the post-war period, then, Webern was posthumously received with attention first diverted from his sociocultural upbringing and surroundings and, moreover, focused in a direction apparently antithetical to his participation in German Romanticism and Expressionism. A richer understanding of Webern began to emerge in the later half of the 20th century, notably in the work of scholars Kathryn Bailey, Julian Johnson, Felix Meyer, Anne Shreffler, as archivists and biographers (most importantly Hans and Rosaleen Moldenhauer) gained access to sketches, letters, lectures, audio recordings, and other articles of or associated with Webern's estate. Biography Youth, education, and other early experiences in Austria-Hungary Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern was born in Vienna, then in Austria-Hungary. He was the only surviving son of Carl von Webern, a civil servant, and Amalie (née Geer) who was a competent pianist and accomplished singer—possibly the only obvious source of the future composer's talent. He never used his middle names and dropped the "von" in 1918 as directed by the Austrian government's reforms after World War I. He lived in Graz and Klagenfurt for much of his youth. But his distinct and lasting sense of Heimat was shaped by readings of Peter Rosegger; and moreover by frequent and extended retreats with his parents, sisters, and cousins to his family's country estate, the Preglhof, which Webern's father had inherited upon the death of Webern's grandfather in 1889. Webern memorialized the Preglhof in a diary poem "An der Preglhof" and in the tone poem Im Sommerwind (1904), both after Bruno Wille's idyll. Once Webern's father sold the estate in 1912, Webern referred to it nostalgically as a "lost paradise". He continued to revisit the Preglhof, the family cemetery in Schwabegg, and the surrounding landscape for the rest of his life; and he clearly associated the area, which he took as his home, very closely with the memory of his mother Amelie, who had died in 1906 and whose loss also profoundly affected Webern for decades. Art historian Ernst Dietz, Webern's cousin and at that time a student at Graz, may have introduced Webern to the work of the painters Arnold Böcklin and Giovanni Segantini, whom Webern came to admire. Segantini's work was a likely inspiration for Webern's 1905 single-movement string quartet. In 1902, Webern began attending classes at Vienna University. There he studied musicology with Guido Adler, writing his thesis on the Choralis Constantinus of Heinrich Isaac. This interest in early music would greatly influence his compositional technique in later years, especially in terms of his use of palindromic form on both the micro- and macro-scale and the economical use of musical materials. With the help of friends and colleagues, Webern later began working peripatetically as a conductor and musical coach in various towns and cities, among them Ischl, Teplitz (now Teplice, Czech Republic), Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland), and Prague, before finally moving back to Vienna. As might be expected, the young Webern was enthusiastic about the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert ("so genuinely Viennese"), Hugo Wolf, and Richard Wagner, visiting Bayreuth in 1902. He also enjoyed the music of Hector Berlioz and Georges Bizet. In 1904, he reportedly stormed out of a meeting with Hans Pfitzner, from whom he was seeking instruction, when the latter criticized Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. In 1908, Webern wrote rapturously to Schoenberg about Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande. He conducted some of Debussy's music in 1911. It may have been at Guido Adler's advice that he paid Schoenberg for composition lessons. Webern progressed quickly under Schoenberg's tutelage, publishing his Passacaglia, Op. 1, as his graduation piece in 1908. He also met Berg, then another of Schoenberg's pupils. These two relationships would be the most important in his life in shaping his own musical direction. Some of Webern's earlier thoughts (from 1903) are as amusing as they might be surprising: besides describing some of Alexander Scriabin's music as "languishing junk," he wrote of Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 4 that it was "boring," that Carl Maria von Weber's Konzertstück in F minor was passé, and that he found Johannes Brahms's Symphony No. 3 (which struck Eduard Hanslick as "artistically the most nearly perfect") "cold and without particular inspiration, ... badly orchestrated—grey on grey." These youthful impressions are in some, but not complete or altogether necessarily very significant, contrast to the considered opinions of Webern in the 1930s, by then a decided nationalist who, as Roland Leich described, "lectured at some length on the utter supremacy of German music, emphasizing that leading composers of other lands are but pale reflections of Germanic masters: Berlioz a French Beethoven, Tchaikovsky a Russian Schumann, Elgar an English Mendelssohn, etc." After all, even when young, Webern had described one of Alexander Glazunov's symphonies as "not particularly Russian" (in contrast to some of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's music at the same all-Russian concert) in the same passage as he praised it. Red Vienna in the First Austrian Republic From 1918 to 1921, Webern helped organize and operate the Society for Private Musical Performances, which gave concerts of then-recent or -new music by Béla Bartók, Berg, Ferruccio Busoni, Debussy, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Mahler, Maurice Ravel, Max Reger, Erik Satie, Strauss, Stravinsky, and Webern himself. After their Society performances in 1919 (and while working on his own Opp. 14–15), Webern wrote to Berg that Stravinsky's Berceuses du chat "[move] me completely beyond belief," describing them as "indescribably touching," and that Stravinsky's Pribaoutki were "something really glorious." After the dissolution of the Society amid catastrophic hyperinflation in 1921, Webern conducted the Vienna Workers' Symphony Orchestra and Chorus from 1922 to 1934. In 1926, Webern noted his voluntary resignation as chorusmaster of the Mödling Men's Choral Society, a paid position, in controversy over his hiring of a Jewish singer, Greta Wilheim, to replace a sick one. Letters document their correspondence in many subsequent years, and she (among others) would in turn provide him with facilities to teach private lessons as a convenience to Webern, his family, and his students. Civil War, Austrofascism, Nazism, and World War II Webern's music, along with that of Berg, Křenek, Schoenberg, and others, was denounced as "cultural Bolshevism" and "degenerate art" by the Nazi Party in Germany, and both publication and performances of it were banned soon after the Anschluss in 1938, although neither did it fare well under the preceding years of Austrofascism. As early as 1933, an Austrian gauleiter on Bayerischer Rundfunk mistakenly and very likely maliciously characterized both Berg and Webern as Jewish composers. As a result of official disapproval throughout the '30s, both found it harder to earn a living; Webern lost a promising conducting career which might have otherwise been more noted and recorded and had to take on work as an editor and proofreader for his publishers, Universal Edition. His family's financial situation deteriorated until, by August 1940, his personal records reflected no monthly income. It was thanks to the Swiss philanthropist Werner Reinhart that Webern was able to attend the festive premiere of his Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30, in Winterthur, Switzerland in 1943. Reinhart invested all the financial and diplomatic means at his disposal to enable Webern to travel to Switzerland. In return for this support, Webern dedicated the work to him. There are different descriptions of Webern's attitude towards Nazism; this is perhaps attributable to its complexity, his internal ambivalence, his prosperity in the preceding years (1918–1934) of post-war Red Vienna in the First Republic of Austria, the subsequently divided political factions of his homeland as represented in his friends and family (from Zionist Schoenberg to his Nazi son Peter), as well as the different contexts in which or audiences to whom his views were expressed. Further insight into Webern's attitudes comes with the realization that Nazism itself was deeply multifaceted, marked "not [by] a coherent doctrine or body of systemically interrelated ideas, but rather [by] a vaguer worldview made up of a number of prejudices with varied appeals to different audiences which could scarcely be dignified with the term 'ideology'". There is, moreover, significant political complexity to be treated, more than enough to complicate any consideration of individual culpability: it is imperative to note that some Social Democrats viewed the National Socialists as an alternative to the Christian Social Party and later Vaterländische Front in the context of reunification with Germany; for example, Karl Renner, the chancellor who served in both the First (1919–33) and Second (post-1945) Austrian Republics, favored a German Anschluss as an alternative to the then Austrofascist regime, under which Berg, Webern, and the Social Democrats suffered. And Webern's professional circle in Vienna included, besides many Jews, many Social Democrats; for example, for David Josef Bach, a close friend of Schoenberg's as well, Webern conducted many workers' and amateur ensembles. Under the Nazis, some Social Democrats expected, there might be more work and protections for workers and laborers, as well as other social reforms and political stability, if not democracy; Webern may well have hoped to again be able to conduct and to be better able to secure a future for his family. In broad terms, Webern's attitude seems to have first warmed to a degree of characteristic fervor and perhaps only much later, in conjunction with widespread German disillusionment, cooled to Hitler and the Nazis. On the one hand, notes that Webern attacked Nazi cultural policies in private lectures given in 1933, whose hypothetical publication "would have exposed Webern to serious consequences" later. On the other, some private correspondence attests to his Nazi sympathies. Webern's patriotism led him to endorse the Nazi regime in a series of letters to Joseph Hueber, who was serving in the army and himself held such views. Webern described Hitler on 2 May 1940, as "this unique man" who created "the new state" of Germany; thus Alex Ross characterizes him as "an unashamed Hitler enthusiast". Violinist Louis Krasner painted not a sentimental portrait but one imbued with a wealth of factual and personal detail for its publication in 1987, describing Webern as clearly naive and idealistic but not entirely without his wits, shame, or conscience; Krasner carefully contextualizes Webern as a member of Austrian society at the time, one departed by Schoenberg and one in which the already pro-Nazi Vienna Philharmonic had even refused to play the late Berg's Violin Concerto. As Krasner vividly recalled, he and Webern were visiting at the latter's home in Maria Enzersdorf, Mödling when the Nazis invaded Austria; Webern, uncannily seeming to anticipate the timing down to 4 o'clock in the afternoon, turned on the radio to hear this news and immediately warned Krasner, urging him to flee, whereupon he did (first to Vienna). Whether this was for Krasner's safety or to save Webern the embarrassment of Krasner's presence during a time of possible celebration in the pro-Nazi Webern family (or indeed in most of pro-Nazi Mödling, by Krasner's description as well as one even more vivid of Arnold Greissle-Schönberg), Krasner was ambivalent and uncertain, withholding judgment. Only later did Krasner himself realize how self-admittedly "foolhardy" he had been and in what danger he had placed himself, revealing an ignorance perhaps shared by Webern. Krasner had even revisited frequently, hoping to convince friends (e.g., Schoenberg's daughter Gertrude and her husband Felix Greissle) to emigrate before time ran out. Krasner eventually left more permanently, after a 1941 incident wherein he felt only his US passport saved him from both locals and police. Krasner retold from a story related to him in long discussion with Schoenberg's son Görgi, a Jew who remained in Vienna during the war, that the Weberns, much to their risk and credit, had provided Görgi and his family with food and shelter toward the end of the war at the Weberns' home in a Mödling apartment belonging to their son-in-law. Görgi and his family were left behind for their safety when Webern fled on foot with his family to Mittersill, about 75 km. away, for safety of their own in light of the coming Russian invasion; Amalie, one of Webern's daughters, wrote of '17 persons pressed together in the smallest possible space' upon their arrival. Ironically, the Russians pronounced Görgi a "Nazi spy" when he was discovered due to the Nazi munitions and propaganda in the Weberns' basement store-room. Görgi is said to have saved himself from execution by protesting and drawing attention to his clothes, sewn as specified by the Nazis with the yellow Star of David. He continued to live in this apartment with this family until 1969. Webern is also known to have aided Josef Polnauer, a Jewish friend who, as an albino, managed to largely escape the Nazis' attention and later edit a publication of Webern's correspondence from this time with Hildegard Jone, Webern's then lyricist and collaborator, and her husband, sculptor Josef Humplik. However, Krasner was particularly troubled by a 1936 conversation with Webern about the Jews, in which Webern expressed his vague but unambiguously anti-Semitic opinion that "Even Schoenberg, had he not been a Jew, would have been quite different!" Krasner remembered, perhaps with the benefit of hindsight at the time (1987), that "Jews ... were at the center of the difficulty. Those who wanted to, put the blame for all this calamity, for all this depraved condition, on the Jews who had brought it with them—along with a lot of radical ideas—from the East. People blamed the Jews for their financial worries. The Jews were, at the same time, the poverty-stricken people who came with nothing, and the capitalists who controlled everything." When once asked by Schoenberg about his feelings toward the Nazis, Webern nonetheless sought to allay Schoenberg's concerns; similarly, when in 1938 Eduard Steuermann asked Krasner about rumors of Webern's possible "interest in and devotion to the Nazis" on Schoenberg's behalf, Krasner lied by denying the rumors categorically and entirely. As a result, Schoenberg's Violin Concerto of 1934 (or 1935)–36 continued to bear a dedication to Webern, although whittled down as a result of Schoenberg's continuing suspicions or, indeed, on Webern's behalf, i.e., to protect Webern from further Nazi suspicion and persecution. Schoenberg's tone was ultimately conciliatory in remembrance of both Berg and Webern in 1947: "Let us—for the moment at least—forget all that might have at one time divided us ... even if those who tried might have succeeded in confounding us." Musicologist Richard Taruskin describes Webern accurately if vaguely as a pan-German nationalist but then goes much further in claiming specifically that Webern joyfully welcomed the Nazis with the 1938 Anschluss, at best extrapolating from the account of his cited source Krasner and at worst exaggerating or distorting it, as well as describing it sardonically as "heart-breaking". Taruskin's authority on this delicate issue must be credited, if at all, then only with the significant limitations that he has been polemical in general and hostile in particular to the Second Viennese School, of whom Webern is often considered the most extreme and difficult (i.e., the least accessible). New Complexity composer and performer Franklin Cox not only faults Taruskin as an inaccurate and unreliable historian but also critiques Taruskin as an "ideologist of tonal restoration" (musicologist Martin Kaltenecker similarly refers to the "Restoration of the 1980s," but he also describes a paradigm shift from structure to perception). Taruskin's "reactionary historicist" project, Cox argues, stands in opposition to that of the Second Viennese School, viz. the "progressivist historicist" emancipation of the dissonance. Taruskin himself admits to having acquired a "dubious reputation" on the Second Viennese School and notes that he has been described in his work on Webern as "coming, like Shakespeare's Marc Anthony, 'to bury Webern, not to praise him'". In contradistinction to Taruskin's methods and pronouncements, musicologist Pamela M. Potter advises that "[i]t is important to consider all the scholarship on musical life in the Third Reich that, taken together, reveals the complexity of the day-to-day existence of musicians and composers", as "[i]t seems inevitable that debates about the political culpability of individuals will persist, especially if the stakes remain so high for composers, for whom an up or down vote can determine inclusion in the canon". In this vein, it might be noted in relation to Taruskin's claim that Webern wrote to friends (husband and wife Josef Humplik and Hildegard Jone) on the day of Anschluss not to invite celebration or to observe developments but to be left alone: "I am totally immersed in my work [composing] and cannot, cannot be disturbed"; Krasner's presence could have been a disturbance to Webern for this reason, and musicologist Kathryn Bailey speculates that this may indeed be why he was rushed off by Webern. Webern's 1944–1945 correspondence is strewn with references to bombings, deaths, destruction, privation, and the disintegration of local order; but also noted are the births of several grandchildren. At the age of sixty (i.e., in Dec. 1943), Webern writes that he is living in a barrack away from home and working from 6 am to 5 pm, compelled by the state in a time of war to serve as an air-raid protection police officer. On 3 March 1945, news was relayed to Webern that his only son, Peter, died on 14 February of wounds suffered in a strafing attack on a military train two days earlier. Death in Allied-administered Austria On 15 September 1945, back at his home during the Allied occupation of Austria, Webern was shot and killed by an American Army soldier following the arrest of his son-in-law for black market activities. This incident occurred when, three-quarters of an hour before a curfew was to have gone into effect, he stepped outside the house so as not to disturb his sleeping grandchildren, to enjoy a few draws on a cigar given to him that evening by his son-in-law. The soldier responsible for his death was U. S. Army cook PFC Raymond Norwood Bell of North Carolina, who was overcome by remorse and died of alcoholism in 1955. Webern's wife, Wilhelmine Mörtl, died in 1949. They had three daughters and a son. Music Webern's compositions are concise, distilled, and select; just thirty-one of his compositions were published in his lifetime, and when Pierre Boulez later oversaw a project to record all of his compositions, including some of those without opus numbers, the results fit on just six CDs. Although Webern's music changed over time, as is often the case over a long career, it is typified by very spartan textures, in which every note can be clearly heard; carefully chosen timbres, often resulting in very detailed instructions to the performers and use of extended instrumental techniques (flutter tonguing, col legno, and so on); wide-ranging melodic lines, often with leaps greater than an octave; and brevity: the Six Bagatelles for string quartet (1913), for instance, last about three minutes in total. Formative juvenilia and emergence from study, Opp. 1–2, 1899–1908 Webern published little of his early work in particular; Webern was characteristically meticulous and revised extensively. Many juvenilia remained unknown until the work and findings of the Moldenhauers in the 1960s, effectively obscuring and undermining formative facets of Webern's musical identity, highly significant even more so in the case of an innovator whose music was crucially marked by rapid stylistic shifts. Thus when Boulez first oversaw a project to record "all" of Webern's music, not including the juvenilia, the results fit on three rather than six CDs. Webern's earliest works consist primarily of lieder, the genre that most testifies to his roots in Romanticism, specifically German Romanticism; one in which the music yields brief but explicit, potent, and spoken meaning manifested only latently or programmatically in purely instrumental genres; one marked by significant intimacy and lyricism; and one which often associates nature, especially landscapes, with themes of homesickness, solace, wistful yearning, distance, utopia, and belonging. Robert Schumann's "Mondnacht" is an iconic example; Eichendorff, whose lyric poetry inspired it, is not far removed from the poets (e.g., Richard Dehmel, Gustav Falke, Theodor Storm) whose work inspired Webern and his contemporaries Alban Berg, Max Reger, Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf, and Alexander Zemlinsky. Wolf's Mörike-Lieder were especially influential on Webern's efforts from this period. But well beyond these lieder alone, all of Webern's music may be said to possess such concerns and qualities, as is evident from his sketches, albeit in an increasingly symbolic, abstract, spare, introverted, and idealized manner. Webern's first piece after completing his studies with Schoenberg was the Passacaglia for orchestra (1908). Harmonically, it is a step forward into a more advanced language, and the orchestration is somewhat more distinctive than his earlier orchestral work. However, it bears little relation to the fully mature works he is best known for today. One element that is typical is the form itself: the passacaglia is a form which dates back to the 17th century, and a distinguishing feature of Webern's later work was to be the use of traditional compositional techniques (especially canons) and forms (the Symphony, the Concerto, the String Trio, and String Quartet, and the piano and orchestral Variations) in a modern harmonic and melodic language. Atonality, lieder, and aphorism, Opp. 3–16 and Tot, 1908–1924 For a number of years, Webern wrote pieces which were freely atonal, much in the style of Schoenberg's early atonal works. Indeed, so in lockstep with Schoenberg was Webern for much of his artistic development that Schoenberg in 1951 wrote that he sometimes no longer knew who he was, Webern had followed so well in his footsteps and shadow, occasionally outdoing or stepping ahead of Schoenberg in execution of Schoenberg's own or their shared ideas. There are, however, important cases where Webern may have even more profoundly influenced Schoenberg. Haimo marks the swift, radical influence in 1909 of Webern's novel and arresting Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5, on Schoenberg's subsequent piano piece Op. 11, No. 3; Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16; and monodrama Erwartung, Op. 17. This shift is distinctly pronounced in a letter Schoenberg wrote to Busoni, which describes a rather Webernian aesthetic: In 1949, Schoenberg still remembered being "intoxicated by the enthusiasm of having freed music from the shackles of tonality" and believing with his pupils "that now music could renounce motivic features and remain coherent and comprehensible nonetheless". But with Opp. 18–20, Schoenberg turned back and revived old techniques, very self-consciously returning to and transforming tradition by the concluding songs of Pierrot lunaire (1912), Op. 21, with, e.g., intricately interrelated canons in "Der Mondfleck", clear waltz rhythms in "Serenade", a barcarolle ("Heimfahrt"), triadic harmony throughout "O alter Duft". Pierrot was received by Webern as a direction for the composition of his own Opp. 14–16, most of all with respect to contrapuntal procedures (and to a lesser degree with respect to the diverse and innovative textural treatment among instruments in increasingly smaller ensembles). "How much I owe to your Pierrot", he wrote Schoenberg upon completing a setting of Georg Trakl's "Abendland III", Op. 14, No. 4, in which, rather unusually for Webern, there is no silence or rest until a pause at the concluding gesture. Indeed, a recurring theme of Webern's World War I settings is that of the wanderer, estranged or lost and seeking return to or at least retrieval from an earlier time and place; and of some fifty-six songs on which Webern worked 1914–1926, he ultimately finished and later published only thirty-two set in order as Opp. 12–19. This wartime theme of wandering in search of home ties in with two intricately involved concerns more broadly evident in Webern's work: first, the death and memory of members of Webern's family, especially his mother but also including his father and a nephew; and second, Webern's broad and complex sense of rural and spiritual Heimat. Their importance is marked by Webern's stage play, Tot (October 1913), which, over the course of six alpine scenes of reflection and self-consolation, draws on Emanuel Swedenborg's notion of correspondence to relate and to unite the two concerns, the first embodied but otherworldly and the second concrete if increasingly abstracted and idealized. The similarities between Tot and Webern's music are striking. In an often programmatic or cinematic fashion, Webern ordered his published movements, themselves dramatic or visual tableaux with melodies that frequently begin and end on weak beats or else settle into ostinati or the background. In them, tonality – useful for communicating direction and narrative in programmatic pieces – becomes more tenuous, fragmented, static, symbolic, and visual or spatial in function, thus mirroring the concerns and topics, explicit or implicit, of Webern's music and his selections for it from the poetry of Stefan George and later Georg Trakl. Webern's dynamics, orchestration, and timbre are given so as to produce a fragile, intimate, and often novel sound, despite distinctly recalling Mahler, not infrequently bordering on silence at a typical . In some cases, Webern's choice of instrument in particular functions to represent or to allude to a female voice (e.g., the use of solo violin), to inward or outward luminosity or darkness (e.g., the use of the entire range of register within the ensemble; registral compression and expansion; the use of celesta, harp, and glockenspiel; the use of harmonics and sul ponticello), or to angels and heaven (e.g., the use of harp and trumpet in the circling ostinati of Op. 6, No. 5, and winding to conclusion at the very end of Op. 15, No. 5). Technical consolidation and formal coherence and expansion, Opp. 17–31, 1924–1943 With the Drei Volkstexte (1925), Op. 17, Webern used Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique for the first time, and all his subsequent works used this technique. The String Trio (1926–1927), Op. 20, was both the first purely instrumental work using the twelve-tone technique (the other pieces were songs) and the first cast in a traditional musical form. Webern's music, like that of both Brahms and Schoenberg, is marked by its emphasis on counterpoint and formal considerations; and Webern's commitment to systematic pitch organization in the twelve-tone method is inseparable from this prior commitment. Webern's tone rows are often arranged to take advantage of internal symmetries; for example, a twelve-tone row may be divisible into four groups of three pitches which are variations, such as inversions and retrogrades, of each other, thus creating invariance. This gives Webern's work considerable motivic unity, although this is often obscured by the fragmentation of the melodic lines. This fragmentation occurs through octave displacement (using intervals greater than an octave) and by moving the line rapidly from instrument to instrument in a technique referred to as Klangfarbenmelodie. Arrangements and orchestrations In his youth (1903), Webern orchestrated at least five of Franz Schubert's various lieder, giving the piano accompaniment to an appropriately Schubertian orchestra of strings and pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horns: "Der Vollmond Strahlt auf Bergeshöhn" (the Romanze from Rosamunde), "Tränenregen" (from Die schöne Müllerin), "Der Wegweiser" (from Winterreise), "Du bist die Ruh", and "Ihr Bild"; in 1934, he did the same for Schubert's six Deutsche Tänze (German Dances) of 1824. For Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performances in 1921, Webern arranged, among other things, the 1888 Schatz-Walzer (Treasure Waltz) of Johann Strauss II's Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron) for string quartet, harmonium, and piano. In 1924, Webern arranged Franz Liszt's Arbeiterchor (Workers' Chorus, c. 1847–1848) for bass solo, mixed chorus, and large orchestra; it was premièred for the first time in any form on 13 and 14 March 1925, with Webern conducting the first full-length concert of the Austrian Association of Workers Choir. A review in the Amtliche Wiener Zeitung (28 March 1925) read "neu in jedem Sinne, frisch, unverbraucht, durch ihn zieht die Jugend, die Freude" ("new in every respect, fresh, vital, pervaded by youth and joy"). The text, in English translation, reads in part: "Let us have the adorned spades and scoops,/ Come along all, who wield a sword or pen,/ Come here ye, industrious, brave and strong/ All who create things great or small." Liszt, initially inspired by his revolutionary countrymen, had left it in manuscript at publisher 's discretion. Performance style Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music; this is evidenced by anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tänze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction, many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors and associations everywhere throughout his sketches. As both a composer and conductor, he was one of many (e.g., Wilhelm Furtwängler, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Hermann Scherchen) in a contemporaneous tradition of conscientiously and non-literally handling notated musical figures, phrases, and even entire scores so as to maximize expressivity in performance and to cultivate audience engagement and understanding. This aspect of Webern's work had been typically missed in his immediate post-war reception, however, even as it may radically affect the music's reception. For example, Boulez's "complete" recording of Webern's music yielded more to this aesthetic the second time after largely missing it the first; but Eliahu Inbal's rendition of Webern's Symphony, Op. 21 with the hr-Sinfonieorchester is still far more within the spirit of the late Romantic performance tradition (which Webern seemingly intended for his music), nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work. Legacy, influence, and posthumous reception Webern's music began to be performed more widely in the 1920s; by the mid-1940s, its effect was decisive on many composers, even as far-flung as John Cage. In part because Webern had largely remained the most obscure and arcane composer of the Second Viennese School during his own lifetime, interest in Webern's music increased after World War II as it came to represent a universally or generally valid, systematic, and compellingly logical model of new composition, with his œuvre acquiring what Alex Ross calls "a saintly, visionary aura". When Webern's Piano Variations were performed at Darmstadt in 1948, young composers listened in a quasi-religious trance. In 1955, the second issue of Eimert and Stockhausen's journal Die Reihe was devoted to Webern's œuvre, and in 1960 his lectures were published by Universal Edition. Meanwhile, Webern's characteristically passionate pan-German nationalism and censurable, sordid political sympathies (however naive or delusional and whether ever dispelled or faltered) were not widely known or went unmentioned; perhaps in some part due to his personal and political associations before the German Reich, his degradation and mistreatment under it, and his fate immediately after the war. Significantly as relates to his reception, Webern never compromised his artistic identity and values, as Stravinsky was later to note. It has been suggested that the early 1950s' serialists' fascination with Webern was concerned not with his music as such so much as enabled by its concision and some its apparent plainness in the score, thereby facilitating musical analysis; indeed, composer Gottfried Michael Koenig speculates on the basis of his personal experience that since Webern's scores represented such a highly concentrated source, they may have been considered the better for didactic purposes than those of other composers. Composer thus criticized the approach of early serialists to Webern's music as reductive and narrowly focused on some of Webern's apparent methods rather than on his music more generally, especially neglecting timbre in their typical selection of Opp. 27–28. Composer Karel Goeyvaerts recalled that at least on first impression, the sound of Webern's music reminded him of "a Mondrian canvas," explaining that "things of which I had acquired an extremely intimate knowledge, came across as crude and unfinished when seen in reality." Expressing a related opinion, noted contemporaneous German music critic and contributor to Die Reihe, Wolf-Eberhard von Lewinski wrote in the Darmstädter Tagblatt (3 September 1959) that some of the later and more radical music at Darmstadt was "acoustically absurd [if] visually amusing"; several days later, one of his articles in the Der Kurier was similarly headlined "Meager modern music—only interesting to look at." To composers in the then Communist Bloc in Central and Eastern Europe, Webern's music and its techniques promised an exciting, unique, and challenging alternative to socialist realism, with its perceived tendency to kitsch and its nationalist and traditionalist overtones. Whereas Berg's Lyric Suite may have influenced the third and fourth string quartets of Bartók in 1927 via an ISCM concert (in which Bartók himself performed his own Piano Sonata), Webern's influence on later composers from what became the Hungarian People's Republic and from other countries behind the Iron Curtain was sometimes mediated or obstructed by politics. As Ligeti explained to a student in 1970, "In countries where there exists a certain isolation, in Eastern Europe, one cannot obtain correct information. One is cut off from the circulation of blood." Nonetheless, Webern's work was a seminal influence on that of both Endre Szervánszky and György Kurtág following the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, as well as on Ligeti himself. Later still and farther east, Sofia Gubaidulina, for whom music was an escape from the socio-political atmosphere of post-Stalinist Soviet Russia, cited the influence of both J. S. Bach and Webern in particular. Recordings by Webern Webern conducts "Berg – Violin Concerto" Webern conducts his arrangement of Schubert's German Dances See also List of Austrians in music Notes References Bibliography Further reading Ahrend, Thomas, and Stefan Münnich. 2018. Anton Webern. Oxford Bibliographies in Music. Oxford University Press. .}}{{subscription Ahrend, Thomas, and Matthias Schmidt (eds.). 2015. Der junge Webern. Texte und Kontexte. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 2b. Wien: Lafite. . Ahrend, Thomas, and Matthias Schmidt (eds.). 2016. Webern-Philologien. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 3. Wien: Lafite. . Bailey, Kathryn. 1991. The Twelve-Note Music of Anton Webern: Old Forms in a New Language. Music in the Twentieth Century 2. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. (cloth) (pbk. ed., 2006). Cavallotti, Pietro, and Simon Obert, and Rainer Schmusch (eds.). 2019. Neue Perspektiven. Anton Webern und das Komponieren im 20. Jahrhundert. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 4. Wien: Lafite. . Ewen, David. 1971. "Anton Webern (1883–1945)". In Composers of Tomorrow's Music, by David Ewen, 66–77. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. . Forte, Allen. 1998. The Atonal Music of Anton Webern New Haven: Yale University Press. . Galliari, Alain. 2007. "Anton von Webern". Paris: Fayard. . Kröpfl, Monika, and Simon Obert (eds.). 2015. Der junge Webern. Künstlerische Orientierungen in Wien nach 1900. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 2a. Wien: Lafite. . Mead, Andrew. 1993. "Webern, Tradition, and 'Composing with Twelve Tones'". Music Theory Spectrum 15, no. 2:173–204. Moldenhauer, Hans. 1966. Anton von Webern Perspectives. Edited by Demar Irvine, with an introductory interview with Igor Stravinsky. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Needham, Alex. 2012. Brahms Piano Piece to Get Its Premiere 159 Years After Its Creation. The Guardian (Thursday 12 January). Noller, Joachim. 1990. "Bedeutungsstrukturen: zu Anton Weberns 'alpinen' Programmen". Neue Zeitschrift für Musik151, no. 9 (September): 12–18. Obert, Simon (ed.). 2012. Wechselnde Erscheinung. Sechs Perspektiven auf Anton Weberns sechste Bagatelle. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 1. Wien: Lafite. . Perle, George. 1991. Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. Sixth ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Peyser, Joan. 2007. To Boulez and Beyond. Scarecrow Press. . Rockwell, John. 1983. All American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century. New York: Alfred Knopf. Reprinted New York: Da Capo Press, 1997. , . Tsang, Lee. 2002. "The Atonal Music of Anton Webern (1998) by Allen Forte". Music Analysis 21, no. 3 (October): 417–427. Wildgans, Friedrich. 1966. Anton Webern. Translated by Edith Temple Roberts and Humphrey Searle. Introduction and notes by Humphrey Searle. New York: October House. External links Anton Webern biography and works on the UE website (publisher) Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe (Complete Edition) 1883 births 1945 deaths Austrian Roman Catholics 20th-century classical composers Deaths by firearm in Austria Expressionist music Twelve-tone and serial composers Second Viennese School University of Vienna alumni Composers from Vienna Accidental deaths in Austria Pupils of Arnold Schoenberg Austrian male classical composers Austrian classical composers String quartet composers 20th-century Austrian composers 20th-century Austrian male musicians Firearm accident victims
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[ "A postal marking is any kind of annotation applied to a letter by a postal service. The most common types are postmarks and cancellations; almost every letter will have those. Less common types include forwarding addresses, routing annotations, warnings, postage due notices and explanations, such as for damaged or delayed mail and censored or inspected mail. A key part of postal history is the identification of postal markings, their purpose, and period of use.\n\nService marks provide information to the sender, recipient, or another post office. Advice marks notify about forwarding, missending, letters received in bad condition, letters received too late for delivery by a certain time, or the reason for a delay in mail delivery. (For example, a letter may be marked \"snowbank\" if snow accumulation not cleared by the potential recipient, or for whatever other reason, makes it difficult or impossible for the carrier to deliver the mail.) Dead letter offices would use various markings to keep track of their progress in finding the addressee, such as a notation that the letter had been advertised in the local newspaper. The tracking process for registered mail may entail multiple marks, notations and backstamps.\n\nAuxiliary marks are applied by an organization other than the postal administration. For instance, 19th century mail delivery often relied on a mix of private ships, steamboats, stagecoaches, railroads, and other transportation organizations to transport mail. Many of these organizations applied their own markings to each item, sometimes saying simply \"STEAMSHIP\" or some such, while others had elaborate designs. Similar routing notations were also used in the early days of airmail.\n\nShortly after the outbreak of the American Civil War, the Northern authorities declared the existing postage stamps invalid and issued new types. Letters using the demonetized stamps received a marking \"OLD STAMPS NOT RECOGNIZED\", an unintentionally humorous comment much prized by collectors today.\n\nPost offices may add cachets for special events such as a first flight.\n\nThe traditional way to apply a postal marking is with the use of a rubber or metal handstamp; handwritten notations are sometimes seen for unusual situations or in very small post offices. In the United States, modern postal markings may appear in the form of yellow adhesive labels with the text printed on them. Many postal administrations now have the ability to print inkjet annotations directly onto a cover, either as a barcode for reading by other equipment, or as text.\n\nAlthough it is technically possible to query postal services to find out what kinds of postal markings they use, in practice they do not seem to know about all the kinds of handstamps used in their offices, and previously unknown types of postal markings, both early and modern, regularly come to light. Hundreds of specialized works make up the philatelic literature of postal markings.\n\nSee also\n Indicia (philately)\n\nReferences \nSome representative works:\n Harry M. Konwiser, Postal Markings (1980)\n Tracy W. Simpson, United States Postal Markings and Related Mail Services, 1851 to 1861 (1959); Simpson's U.S. Postal Markings, 1851-61 (revised and enlarged edition, 1979)\n William Kane, Catalogue of the postal markings of Dublin, c. 1840-1922 \n John Leathes, Postal Markings of the German U-boat Arm During the First World War 1914 to 1918 (1997)\n\nExternal links \n British postal markings\n Hawaiian postal markings\n\nPhilatelic terminology\n\nde:Poststempel\nja:郵便印\npl:datownik\nru:Почтовый штемпель\nth:ตราประทับ\nzh:邮戳", "Battenburg markings or Battenberg markings are a pattern of high-visibility markings developed in the United Kingdom in the 1990s and currently seen on many types of emergency service vehicles in the UK, Crown dependencies, British Overseas Territories and several other European countries such as Czechia, Iceland, Sweden, Germany, Romania, Spain, Ireland, and Belgium as well as in New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong and Trinidad and Tobago. The name comes from its similarity in appearance to the cross-section of a Battenberg cake.\n\nHistory\n\nBattenburg markings were developed in the mid-1990s in the United Kingdom by the Police Scientific Development Branch (now the Home Office Centre for Applied Science and Technology) at the request of the national motorway policing sub-committee of the Association of Chief Police Officers. They were first developed for traffic patrol cars for United Kingdom police forces; private organisations and civil emergency services have also used them since then.\n\nThe brief was to design a livery for motorway and trunk road police vehicles that would maximise the vehicles' visibility, from a distance of up to , when stopped either in daylight or under headlights, and which distinctively marked them as police vehicles.\n\nThe primary objectives were to design markings that:\n Made officers and vehicles more conspicuous (e.g. to prevent collisions when stopped)\n Made police vehicles recognisable at a distance of up to in daylight\n Assisted in high-visibility policing for public reassurance and deterrence of traffic violations\n Made police vehicles nationally recognisable\n Were an equal-cost option compared to existing markings\n Were acceptable to at least 75% of the staff\n\nConspicuity\n \n\nBattenburg design uses a regular pattern and the contrast between a light and a dark colour to increase conspicuity for the human eye.\nThe lighter colour is daylight-fluorescent (such as fluorescent-yellow) for better visibility in daytime, dusk and dawn. \nFor night-time visibility, the complete pattern is retroreflective.\n\nThe Battenburg design typically has two rows of alternating rectangles, usually starting with yellow at the top corner, then the alternating colour, along the sides of a vehicle. Most cars use two block rows in the design (so-called full-Battenburg scheme). Some car designs use a single row (so-called half-Battenburg scheme) or one and a half rows.\n\nUnless precautions are taken, pattern markings can have a camouflage effect, concealing a vehicle's outline, particularly in front of a cluttered background.\nWith Battenburg markings, this can be avoided by:\n Making rectangles large enough for optical resolution from distance—at least 600 × 300 mm. A typical car pattern consists of seven blocks along the vehicle side. (An odd number of blocks also allows both top corner blocks to be the same fluorescent colour.)\n Clearly marking cars' outlines in fluorescent colour along the roof pillars\n Avoiding designs with more than two block rows (even for higher vehicles) by including a large area of plain or daylight-fluorescent colour.\n Avoiding hybrid designs of Battenburg markings and other high-visibility patterns or check patterns.\n\nThe Battenburg livery is not used on the rear of vehicles; upward-facing chevrons of yellow and red are most commonly used there.\n\nSillitoe tartan\n\nIn the development of Battenburg markings, one of the key goals was to clearly identify vehicles associated with police. In this regard, the pattern was reminiscent of the Sillitoe tartan black-and-white or blue-and-white chequered markings first introduced by the City of Glasgow Police in the 1930s, which were subsequently adopted as a symbol of police services throughout the United Kingdom; they are also used by the Chicago Police Department, Australia, and New Zealand. (Although Sillitoe patterns identified vehicles associated with police and other emergency services, they were not highly visible.)\n\nAfter the launch of Battenburg markings, police added retro-reflective Sillitoe tartan markings to their uniforms, usually in blue and white.\n\nSafety\n \nBattenburg side markings and chevron front-and-rear markings provide conspicuity for emergency vehicles, helping to reduce accidents, especially when they are in unusual traffic situations—e.g. stopped in fast-moving traffic, or moving at different speeds or in different directions. \n\nSeveral criticisms of the Battenburg scheme were stated at the 3rd Annual US Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Safety Summit in October 2010 about their use on ambulances, including:\n The difficulty of applying them to small, curved, and oddly-shaped surfaces\n The high costs of adopting the markings\n The confusing pattern caused when several parked Battenburg vehicles visually overlap\n Obscuring the vehicle's shapes against complex backgrounds, or with open doors and hatches\n Combinations other than police yellow-and-blue being less effective, and sometimes even making emergency personnel harder to see\n Confronting the public with unfamiliar markings\n\nThe pattern's use by services other than UK police, and in other countries, was also criticised. \n\nThe high-visibility chevrons often used on the rear and front of Battenburg-marked vehicles, \"through popular opinion rather than by a scientific process of testing and research\", were found ineffective at reducing rear-end collisions. Stationary vehicles on high-speed roads were likely to be noticed, but not the fact that they were stopped. Parking at an angle was found a far more effective way of indicating the vehicles were stopped.\n\nUsage by country\n\nAustralia \n\nIn Western Australia, St John Ambulance Western Australia uses green-and-yellow markings, while New South Wales Ambulance uses red-and-white Battenburg markings on ambulances and patient transport vehicles. Australian police utilise the similar Sillitoe tartan markings.\n\nBelgium \n\nIn response to the terrorist attacks on 13 November 2015 in Paris and 22 March 2016 in Brussels, the Belgian federal government conducted an analysis on the functioning of the emergency services during terrorist attacks. The main issue identified regarding the emergency medical services was that their recognizability (of both vehicles and personnel) had to improve, so that emergency workers would be able to identify qualified medical providers more quickly during an intervention. \n\nAn agreement was made between the federal government and the communities and regions to implement the same new vehicle markings and uniforms. Specifically, emergency ambulances and response vehicles would keep the yellow base colour, whilst non-emergency ambulances would get a white base colour. Both types of vehicles would be marked with retroreflective yellow-and-green Battenburg markings, similar to British ambulances. \n\nA new uniform for medical personnel was also introduced, with different colours for the Star of Life for the different types of workers.\n\nAside from medical vehicles, some new fire brigade, Civil Protection and highway services vehicles also use respectively yellow-and-red, blue-and-orange and yellow-and-black Battenburg markings.\n\nChina\nHong Kong was a British Dependent Territory until 1997. Some emergency vehicles and special vehicles in the Hong Kong Police Force, Hong Kong Fire Services Department, Auxiliary Medical Service, and Hong Kong St. John Ambulance use Battenburg markings.\n\nCzech Republic\n\nDenmark \n\nDanish emergency vehicles can have one of two options: a series of diagonal lines, or a Battenburg pattern. The diagonal lines must be either red-and-white or red-and-yellow at an angle of 45° ± 5° and have a width of 100 mm ± 2,5 mm. In the front and rear of the vehicle, the markings must be made symmetrical in a way that traffic is lead around the vehicle.\n\nVehicles may have a reflective text in the above colours, describing their function; for example \"POLITI\" (Police), \"ALARM 112\", \"AMBULANCE\", \"LÆGEVAGT\" (Doctor), \"INDSATSLEDER\" (Incident Commander) or similar text.\n\nThe above patterns are not obligatory. For example the Danish Emergency Management Agency have chosen to simply not have any reflective marking on their vehicles.\n\nGermany \nAll rescue vehicles in Bavaria which have been procured uniformly since 2017 have a foiling in the Battenburg marker. From 2019 the ambulance service in Schleswig-Holstein started to adapt the design.\n\nIceland\nIn 2018 the Icelandic police started marking new police cars with blue and neon yellow markings similar to Battenburg markings used in Europe. Since then the police cars in the capital region have been made even more visible. In 2020 were Icelandic ambulances changed to look more like ambulances in Europe, adopting yellow and green markings. Icelandic Search and Rescue started adopting Battenburg markings in 2016 with red and yellow markings similar to the fire services.\n\nIreland\n\n\t\n\nIn Ireland, a similar system to the UK is used with some variations.\n\nNew Zealand\n\nThe New Zealand Police use yellow-and-blue Battenburg markings on some vehicles. Until October 2008 general duties vehicles were marked in orange and blue, with yellow and blue for highway patrol units; orange and blue was phased out in 2014. Vehicles of New Zealand's St John's Ambulance Service/ Wellington Free Ambulance are marked with green-and-yellow Battenburg markings or rows of green-and-yellow half-chevrons. On 1 July 2017, New Zealand's urban and rural firefighting organisations amalgamated into Fire and Emergency New Zealand, with a new brand including Battenburg markings to be rolled out to the fleet.\n\nSweden\n\nOriginally Swedish Police vehicles were painted with black roofs and doors or black roofs, bonnet, and boot. During the 1980s the cars became white with the word \"Polis\" written on the side in a semi-futuristic typeface. Later the livery became simply blue and white. In 2005 they began using a light blue and fluorescent yellow Battenburg livery. Swedish police cars have been Saabs, Volvos or Volkswagens, with the same livery all over Sweden. A recent Swedish trend is to also use Battenburg markings on road maintenance vehicles, with an orange-and-blue colour scheme, as in the UK rail response type shown above. A study by the Swedish Road Administration showed a significant traffic calming effect when using orange-and-blue Battenburg marking to improve the visibility of road maintenance vehicles.\n\nSwitzerland\n\nThe first Swiss ambulance service with Battenburg markings was the emergency medical services in Zofingen. Since 2008, they have used Battenburg markings on their Volkswagen Crafters and Mercedes-Benz Sprinters. They use white-and-red markings on their ALS units.\n\nAnother Swiss service with Battenburg markings is the Swiss Border Guard agency, which uses yellow block markings on its vehicles.\n\nUnited Kingdom\n\nIn the United Kingdom, the majority of the emergency services have adopted the Battenburg style of markings; nearly half of all police forces adopted the markings within three years of their introduction, and over three quarters were using it by 2003.\n\nIn 2004, following the widespread adoption and recognition of the Battenburg markings on police vehicles, the Home Office recommended that all police vehicles, not just those on traffic duty, use \"half-Battenburg\" livery, formalising the practice of a number of forces.\n\nIn the United Kingdom each emergency service has been allocated a specified darker colour in addition to yellow, with the police continuing to use blue, ambulances using green, and the fire service their traditional red. Other government agencies such as immigration enforcement have adopted a variation, without using the reflective yellow.\n\nThe use of these colours in retro-reflective material is controlled by the Road Vehicle Lighting Regulations 1989, with vehicles only legally allowed the use of amber reflective material (and red near the rear of the vehicle), A number of civilian organisations have also adopted the pattern, which is not legally protected, and a number of these also use other reflective colours.\n\nAn alternative to the use of reflective materials is the use of fluorescent or other non-reflective markings, which may be used by any vehicle.\n\nUnited States\nBattenburg markings on law enforcement vehicles in the US are rare; however for a time the Miami Township Police Department in Ohio has previously used ones similar to those found in the UK on their police cars.\n\nBattenburg markings are also used in South Carolina's Charleston County for EMS vehicles.\n\nSee also\n Sillitoe tartan\n Aerial roof markings\n Blues and twos\n Panda car\n Jam sandwich (police car)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nHigh Conspicuity Livery for Police Cars 14-04\nHigh Conspicuity Livery for Police Motorcycles 47-06\n\nEmergency vehicles\nVehicle markings\nVisibility\nBritish inventions" ]
[ "Anton Webern", "Performance style", "What was Webern's style like?", "Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music;", "What was he best known for?", "extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction,", "What is his most famous recording?", "I don't know.", "Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?", "many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors", "What types of markings are in his scores?", "anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze" ]
C_1951dee9c9e740108b2e390bd3a0eac7_0
Does he add anything else to his music?
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Does Anton Webern add anything else to his music in addition to style?
Anton Webern
Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music; this is evidenced by anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction, many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors and associations everywhere throughout his sketches. As both a composer and conductor he was one of many (e.g., Wilhelm Furtwangler, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Hermann Scherchen) in a contemporaneous tradition of conscientiously and non-literally handling notated musical figures, phrases, and even entire scores so as to maximize expressivity in performance and to cultivate audience engagement and understanding. This aspect of Webern's work had been typically missed in his immediate post-war reception, however, even as it may radically affect the music's reception. For example, Boulez's "complete" recording of Webern's music yielded more to this aesthetic the second time after largely missing it the first; but Eliahu Inbal's rendition of Webern's symphony with the hr-Sinfonieorchester is still far more within the spirit of the late Romantic performance tradition (which Webern seemingly intended for his music), nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work. Gunter Wand's 1966 recording of the Cantata No. 1 (1938-40), op. 29, with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks et al., may likewise be contrasted with both of Boulez's renditions. CANNOTANSWER
nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work.
Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), known as simply Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor. Along with his mentor Arnold Schoenberg and his colleague Alban Berg, Webern was in the core of those in the circle of the Second Viennese School, including Theodor W. Adorno, Heinrich Jalowetz, and Ernst Krenek. As an exponent of atonality and twelve-tone technique, Webern exerted influence on contemporaries Luigi Dallapiccola, Krenek, and even Schoenberg himself. As a tutor, Webern guided and variously influenced Arnold Elston, Frederick Dorian (Friederich Deutsch), , , Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Philipp Herschkowitz, René Leibowitz, Humphrey Searle, Leopold Spinner, and Stefan Wolpe. Webern's music was among the most radical of its milieu, both in its concision and in its rigorous and resolute apprehension of twelve-tone technique. His innovations in schematic organization of pitch, rhythm, register, timbre, dynamics, articulation, and melodic contour; his eagerness to redefine imitative contrapuntal techniques such as canon and fugue; and his inclination toward athematicism, abstraction, and lyricism all greatly informed and oriented intra- and post-war European, typically serial or avant-garde composers such as Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, Henri Pousseur, and György Ligeti. In the United States, meanwhile, his music attracted the interest of Elliott Carter, whose critical ambivalence was marked by a certain enthusiasm nonetheless; Milton Babbitt, who ultimately derived more inspiration from Schoenberg's twelve-tone practice than that of Webern; and Igor Stravinsky, to whom it was very fruitfully reintroduced by Robert Craft. During and shortly after the post-war period, then, Webern was posthumously received with attention first diverted from his sociocultural upbringing and surroundings and, moreover, focused in a direction apparently antithetical to his participation in German Romanticism and Expressionism. A richer understanding of Webern began to emerge in the later half of the 20th century, notably in the work of scholars Kathryn Bailey, Julian Johnson, Felix Meyer, Anne Shreffler, as archivists and biographers (most importantly Hans and Rosaleen Moldenhauer) gained access to sketches, letters, lectures, audio recordings, and other articles of or associated with Webern's estate. Biography Youth, education, and other early experiences in Austria-Hungary Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern was born in Vienna, then in Austria-Hungary. He was the only surviving son of Carl von Webern, a civil servant, and Amalie (née Geer) who was a competent pianist and accomplished singer—possibly the only obvious source of the future composer's talent. He never used his middle names and dropped the "von" in 1918 as directed by the Austrian government's reforms after World War I. He lived in Graz and Klagenfurt for much of his youth. But his distinct and lasting sense of Heimat was shaped by readings of Peter Rosegger; and moreover by frequent and extended retreats with his parents, sisters, and cousins to his family's country estate, the Preglhof, which Webern's father had inherited upon the death of Webern's grandfather in 1889. Webern memorialized the Preglhof in a diary poem "An der Preglhof" and in the tone poem Im Sommerwind (1904), both after Bruno Wille's idyll. Once Webern's father sold the estate in 1912, Webern referred to it nostalgically as a "lost paradise". He continued to revisit the Preglhof, the family cemetery in Schwabegg, and the surrounding landscape for the rest of his life; and he clearly associated the area, which he took as his home, very closely with the memory of his mother Amelie, who had died in 1906 and whose loss also profoundly affected Webern for decades. Art historian Ernst Dietz, Webern's cousin and at that time a student at Graz, may have introduced Webern to the work of the painters Arnold Böcklin and Giovanni Segantini, whom Webern came to admire. Segantini's work was a likely inspiration for Webern's 1905 single-movement string quartet. In 1902, Webern began attending classes at Vienna University. There he studied musicology with Guido Adler, writing his thesis on the Choralis Constantinus of Heinrich Isaac. This interest in early music would greatly influence his compositional technique in later years, especially in terms of his use of palindromic form on both the micro- and macro-scale and the economical use of musical materials. With the help of friends and colleagues, Webern later began working peripatetically as a conductor and musical coach in various towns and cities, among them Ischl, Teplitz (now Teplice, Czech Republic), Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland), and Prague, before finally moving back to Vienna. As might be expected, the young Webern was enthusiastic about the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert ("so genuinely Viennese"), Hugo Wolf, and Richard Wagner, visiting Bayreuth in 1902. He also enjoyed the music of Hector Berlioz and Georges Bizet. In 1904, he reportedly stormed out of a meeting with Hans Pfitzner, from whom he was seeking instruction, when the latter criticized Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. In 1908, Webern wrote rapturously to Schoenberg about Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande. He conducted some of Debussy's music in 1911. It may have been at Guido Adler's advice that he paid Schoenberg for composition lessons. Webern progressed quickly under Schoenberg's tutelage, publishing his Passacaglia, Op. 1, as his graduation piece in 1908. He also met Berg, then another of Schoenberg's pupils. These two relationships would be the most important in his life in shaping his own musical direction. Some of Webern's earlier thoughts (from 1903) are as amusing as they might be surprising: besides describing some of Alexander Scriabin's music as "languishing junk," he wrote of Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 4 that it was "boring," that Carl Maria von Weber's Konzertstück in F minor was passé, and that he found Johannes Brahms's Symphony No. 3 (which struck Eduard Hanslick as "artistically the most nearly perfect") "cold and without particular inspiration, ... badly orchestrated—grey on grey." These youthful impressions are in some, but not complete or altogether necessarily very significant, contrast to the considered opinions of Webern in the 1930s, by then a decided nationalist who, as Roland Leich described, "lectured at some length on the utter supremacy of German music, emphasizing that leading composers of other lands are but pale reflections of Germanic masters: Berlioz a French Beethoven, Tchaikovsky a Russian Schumann, Elgar an English Mendelssohn, etc." After all, even when young, Webern had described one of Alexander Glazunov's symphonies as "not particularly Russian" (in contrast to some of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's music at the same all-Russian concert) in the same passage as he praised it. Red Vienna in the First Austrian Republic From 1918 to 1921, Webern helped organize and operate the Society for Private Musical Performances, which gave concerts of then-recent or -new music by Béla Bartók, Berg, Ferruccio Busoni, Debussy, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Mahler, Maurice Ravel, Max Reger, Erik Satie, Strauss, Stravinsky, and Webern himself. After their Society performances in 1919 (and while working on his own Opp. 14–15), Webern wrote to Berg that Stravinsky's Berceuses du chat "[move] me completely beyond belief," describing them as "indescribably touching," and that Stravinsky's Pribaoutki were "something really glorious." After the dissolution of the Society amid catastrophic hyperinflation in 1921, Webern conducted the Vienna Workers' Symphony Orchestra and Chorus from 1922 to 1934. In 1926, Webern noted his voluntary resignation as chorusmaster of the Mödling Men's Choral Society, a paid position, in controversy over his hiring of a Jewish singer, Greta Wilheim, to replace a sick one. Letters document their correspondence in many subsequent years, and she (among others) would in turn provide him with facilities to teach private lessons as a convenience to Webern, his family, and his students. Civil War, Austrofascism, Nazism, and World War II Webern's music, along with that of Berg, Křenek, Schoenberg, and others, was denounced as "cultural Bolshevism" and "degenerate art" by the Nazi Party in Germany, and both publication and performances of it were banned soon after the Anschluss in 1938, although neither did it fare well under the preceding years of Austrofascism. As early as 1933, an Austrian gauleiter on Bayerischer Rundfunk mistakenly and very likely maliciously characterized both Berg and Webern as Jewish composers. As a result of official disapproval throughout the '30s, both found it harder to earn a living; Webern lost a promising conducting career which might have otherwise been more noted and recorded and had to take on work as an editor and proofreader for his publishers, Universal Edition. His family's financial situation deteriorated until, by August 1940, his personal records reflected no monthly income. It was thanks to the Swiss philanthropist Werner Reinhart that Webern was able to attend the festive premiere of his Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30, in Winterthur, Switzerland in 1943. Reinhart invested all the financial and diplomatic means at his disposal to enable Webern to travel to Switzerland. In return for this support, Webern dedicated the work to him. There are different descriptions of Webern's attitude towards Nazism; this is perhaps attributable to its complexity, his internal ambivalence, his prosperity in the preceding years (1918–1934) of post-war Red Vienna in the First Republic of Austria, the subsequently divided political factions of his homeland as represented in his friends and family (from Zionist Schoenberg to his Nazi son Peter), as well as the different contexts in which or audiences to whom his views were expressed. Further insight into Webern's attitudes comes with the realization that Nazism itself was deeply multifaceted, marked "not [by] a coherent doctrine or body of systemically interrelated ideas, but rather [by] a vaguer worldview made up of a number of prejudices with varied appeals to different audiences which could scarcely be dignified with the term 'ideology'". There is, moreover, significant political complexity to be treated, more than enough to complicate any consideration of individual culpability: it is imperative to note that some Social Democrats viewed the National Socialists as an alternative to the Christian Social Party and later Vaterländische Front in the context of reunification with Germany; for example, Karl Renner, the chancellor who served in both the First (1919–33) and Second (post-1945) Austrian Republics, favored a German Anschluss as an alternative to the then Austrofascist regime, under which Berg, Webern, and the Social Democrats suffered. And Webern's professional circle in Vienna included, besides many Jews, many Social Democrats; for example, for David Josef Bach, a close friend of Schoenberg's as well, Webern conducted many workers' and amateur ensembles. Under the Nazis, some Social Democrats expected, there might be more work and protections for workers and laborers, as well as other social reforms and political stability, if not democracy; Webern may well have hoped to again be able to conduct and to be better able to secure a future for his family. In broad terms, Webern's attitude seems to have first warmed to a degree of characteristic fervor and perhaps only much later, in conjunction with widespread German disillusionment, cooled to Hitler and the Nazis. On the one hand, notes that Webern attacked Nazi cultural policies in private lectures given in 1933, whose hypothetical publication "would have exposed Webern to serious consequences" later. On the other, some private correspondence attests to his Nazi sympathies. Webern's patriotism led him to endorse the Nazi regime in a series of letters to Joseph Hueber, who was serving in the army and himself held such views. Webern described Hitler on 2 May 1940, as "this unique man" who created "the new state" of Germany; thus Alex Ross characterizes him as "an unashamed Hitler enthusiast". Violinist Louis Krasner painted not a sentimental portrait but one imbued with a wealth of factual and personal detail for its publication in 1987, describing Webern as clearly naive and idealistic but not entirely without his wits, shame, or conscience; Krasner carefully contextualizes Webern as a member of Austrian society at the time, one departed by Schoenberg and one in which the already pro-Nazi Vienna Philharmonic had even refused to play the late Berg's Violin Concerto. As Krasner vividly recalled, he and Webern were visiting at the latter's home in Maria Enzersdorf, Mödling when the Nazis invaded Austria; Webern, uncannily seeming to anticipate the timing down to 4 o'clock in the afternoon, turned on the radio to hear this news and immediately warned Krasner, urging him to flee, whereupon he did (first to Vienna). Whether this was for Krasner's safety or to save Webern the embarrassment of Krasner's presence during a time of possible celebration in the pro-Nazi Webern family (or indeed in most of pro-Nazi Mödling, by Krasner's description as well as one even more vivid of Arnold Greissle-Schönberg), Krasner was ambivalent and uncertain, withholding judgment. Only later did Krasner himself realize how self-admittedly "foolhardy" he had been and in what danger he had placed himself, revealing an ignorance perhaps shared by Webern. Krasner had even revisited frequently, hoping to convince friends (e.g., Schoenberg's daughter Gertrude and her husband Felix Greissle) to emigrate before time ran out. Krasner eventually left more permanently, after a 1941 incident wherein he felt only his US passport saved him from both locals and police. Krasner retold from a story related to him in long discussion with Schoenberg's son Görgi, a Jew who remained in Vienna during the war, that the Weberns, much to their risk and credit, had provided Görgi and his family with food and shelter toward the end of the war at the Weberns' home in a Mödling apartment belonging to their son-in-law. Görgi and his family were left behind for their safety when Webern fled on foot with his family to Mittersill, about 75 km. away, for safety of their own in light of the coming Russian invasion; Amalie, one of Webern's daughters, wrote of '17 persons pressed together in the smallest possible space' upon their arrival. Ironically, the Russians pronounced Görgi a "Nazi spy" when he was discovered due to the Nazi munitions and propaganda in the Weberns' basement store-room. Görgi is said to have saved himself from execution by protesting and drawing attention to his clothes, sewn as specified by the Nazis with the yellow Star of David. He continued to live in this apartment with this family until 1969. Webern is also known to have aided Josef Polnauer, a Jewish friend who, as an albino, managed to largely escape the Nazis' attention and later edit a publication of Webern's correspondence from this time with Hildegard Jone, Webern's then lyricist and collaborator, and her husband, sculptor Josef Humplik. However, Krasner was particularly troubled by a 1936 conversation with Webern about the Jews, in which Webern expressed his vague but unambiguously anti-Semitic opinion that "Even Schoenberg, had he not been a Jew, would have been quite different!" Krasner remembered, perhaps with the benefit of hindsight at the time (1987), that "Jews ... were at the center of the difficulty. Those who wanted to, put the blame for all this calamity, for all this depraved condition, on the Jews who had brought it with them—along with a lot of radical ideas—from the East. People blamed the Jews for their financial worries. The Jews were, at the same time, the poverty-stricken people who came with nothing, and the capitalists who controlled everything." When once asked by Schoenberg about his feelings toward the Nazis, Webern nonetheless sought to allay Schoenberg's concerns; similarly, when in 1938 Eduard Steuermann asked Krasner about rumors of Webern's possible "interest in and devotion to the Nazis" on Schoenberg's behalf, Krasner lied by denying the rumors categorically and entirely. As a result, Schoenberg's Violin Concerto of 1934 (or 1935)–36 continued to bear a dedication to Webern, although whittled down as a result of Schoenberg's continuing suspicions or, indeed, on Webern's behalf, i.e., to protect Webern from further Nazi suspicion and persecution. Schoenberg's tone was ultimately conciliatory in remembrance of both Berg and Webern in 1947: "Let us—for the moment at least—forget all that might have at one time divided us ... even if those who tried might have succeeded in confounding us." Musicologist Richard Taruskin describes Webern accurately if vaguely as a pan-German nationalist but then goes much further in claiming specifically that Webern joyfully welcomed the Nazis with the 1938 Anschluss, at best extrapolating from the account of his cited source Krasner and at worst exaggerating or distorting it, as well as describing it sardonically as "heart-breaking". Taruskin's authority on this delicate issue must be credited, if at all, then only with the significant limitations that he has been polemical in general and hostile in particular to the Second Viennese School, of whom Webern is often considered the most extreme and difficult (i.e., the least accessible). New Complexity composer and performer Franklin Cox not only faults Taruskin as an inaccurate and unreliable historian but also critiques Taruskin as an "ideologist of tonal restoration" (musicologist Martin Kaltenecker similarly refers to the "Restoration of the 1980s," but he also describes a paradigm shift from structure to perception). Taruskin's "reactionary historicist" project, Cox argues, stands in opposition to that of the Second Viennese School, viz. the "progressivist historicist" emancipation of the dissonance. Taruskin himself admits to having acquired a "dubious reputation" on the Second Viennese School and notes that he has been described in his work on Webern as "coming, like Shakespeare's Marc Anthony, 'to bury Webern, not to praise him'". In contradistinction to Taruskin's methods and pronouncements, musicologist Pamela M. Potter advises that "[i]t is important to consider all the scholarship on musical life in the Third Reich that, taken together, reveals the complexity of the day-to-day existence of musicians and composers", as "[i]t seems inevitable that debates about the political culpability of individuals will persist, especially if the stakes remain so high for composers, for whom an up or down vote can determine inclusion in the canon". In this vein, it might be noted in relation to Taruskin's claim that Webern wrote to friends (husband and wife Josef Humplik and Hildegard Jone) on the day of Anschluss not to invite celebration or to observe developments but to be left alone: "I am totally immersed in my work [composing] and cannot, cannot be disturbed"; Krasner's presence could have been a disturbance to Webern for this reason, and musicologist Kathryn Bailey speculates that this may indeed be why he was rushed off by Webern. Webern's 1944–1945 correspondence is strewn with references to bombings, deaths, destruction, privation, and the disintegration of local order; but also noted are the births of several grandchildren. At the age of sixty (i.e., in Dec. 1943), Webern writes that he is living in a barrack away from home and working from 6 am to 5 pm, compelled by the state in a time of war to serve as an air-raid protection police officer. On 3 March 1945, news was relayed to Webern that his only son, Peter, died on 14 February of wounds suffered in a strafing attack on a military train two days earlier. Death in Allied-administered Austria On 15 September 1945, back at his home during the Allied occupation of Austria, Webern was shot and killed by an American Army soldier following the arrest of his son-in-law for black market activities. This incident occurred when, three-quarters of an hour before a curfew was to have gone into effect, he stepped outside the house so as not to disturb his sleeping grandchildren, to enjoy a few draws on a cigar given to him that evening by his son-in-law. The soldier responsible for his death was U. S. Army cook PFC Raymond Norwood Bell of North Carolina, who was overcome by remorse and died of alcoholism in 1955. Webern's wife, Wilhelmine Mörtl, died in 1949. They had three daughters and a son. Music Webern's compositions are concise, distilled, and select; just thirty-one of his compositions were published in his lifetime, and when Pierre Boulez later oversaw a project to record all of his compositions, including some of those without opus numbers, the results fit on just six CDs. Although Webern's music changed over time, as is often the case over a long career, it is typified by very spartan textures, in which every note can be clearly heard; carefully chosen timbres, often resulting in very detailed instructions to the performers and use of extended instrumental techniques (flutter tonguing, col legno, and so on); wide-ranging melodic lines, often with leaps greater than an octave; and brevity: the Six Bagatelles for string quartet (1913), for instance, last about three minutes in total. Formative juvenilia and emergence from study, Opp. 1–2, 1899–1908 Webern published little of his early work in particular; Webern was characteristically meticulous and revised extensively. Many juvenilia remained unknown until the work and findings of the Moldenhauers in the 1960s, effectively obscuring and undermining formative facets of Webern's musical identity, highly significant even more so in the case of an innovator whose music was crucially marked by rapid stylistic shifts. Thus when Boulez first oversaw a project to record "all" of Webern's music, not including the juvenilia, the results fit on three rather than six CDs. Webern's earliest works consist primarily of lieder, the genre that most testifies to his roots in Romanticism, specifically German Romanticism; one in which the music yields brief but explicit, potent, and spoken meaning manifested only latently or programmatically in purely instrumental genres; one marked by significant intimacy and lyricism; and one which often associates nature, especially landscapes, with themes of homesickness, solace, wistful yearning, distance, utopia, and belonging. Robert Schumann's "Mondnacht" is an iconic example; Eichendorff, whose lyric poetry inspired it, is not far removed from the poets (e.g., Richard Dehmel, Gustav Falke, Theodor Storm) whose work inspired Webern and his contemporaries Alban Berg, Max Reger, Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf, and Alexander Zemlinsky. Wolf's Mörike-Lieder were especially influential on Webern's efforts from this period. But well beyond these lieder alone, all of Webern's music may be said to possess such concerns and qualities, as is evident from his sketches, albeit in an increasingly symbolic, abstract, spare, introverted, and idealized manner. Webern's first piece after completing his studies with Schoenberg was the Passacaglia for orchestra (1908). Harmonically, it is a step forward into a more advanced language, and the orchestration is somewhat more distinctive than his earlier orchestral work. However, it bears little relation to the fully mature works he is best known for today. One element that is typical is the form itself: the passacaglia is a form which dates back to the 17th century, and a distinguishing feature of Webern's later work was to be the use of traditional compositional techniques (especially canons) and forms (the Symphony, the Concerto, the String Trio, and String Quartet, and the piano and orchestral Variations) in a modern harmonic and melodic language. Atonality, lieder, and aphorism, Opp. 3–16 and Tot, 1908–1924 For a number of years, Webern wrote pieces which were freely atonal, much in the style of Schoenberg's early atonal works. Indeed, so in lockstep with Schoenberg was Webern for much of his artistic development that Schoenberg in 1951 wrote that he sometimes no longer knew who he was, Webern had followed so well in his footsteps and shadow, occasionally outdoing or stepping ahead of Schoenberg in execution of Schoenberg's own or their shared ideas. There are, however, important cases where Webern may have even more profoundly influenced Schoenberg. Haimo marks the swift, radical influence in 1909 of Webern's novel and arresting Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5, on Schoenberg's subsequent piano piece Op. 11, No. 3; Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16; and monodrama Erwartung, Op. 17. This shift is distinctly pronounced in a letter Schoenberg wrote to Busoni, which describes a rather Webernian aesthetic: In 1949, Schoenberg still remembered being "intoxicated by the enthusiasm of having freed music from the shackles of tonality" and believing with his pupils "that now music could renounce motivic features and remain coherent and comprehensible nonetheless". But with Opp. 18–20, Schoenberg turned back and revived old techniques, very self-consciously returning to and transforming tradition by the concluding songs of Pierrot lunaire (1912), Op. 21, with, e.g., intricately interrelated canons in "Der Mondfleck", clear waltz rhythms in "Serenade", a barcarolle ("Heimfahrt"), triadic harmony throughout "O alter Duft". Pierrot was received by Webern as a direction for the composition of his own Opp. 14–16, most of all with respect to contrapuntal procedures (and to a lesser degree with respect to the diverse and innovative textural treatment among instruments in increasingly smaller ensembles). "How much I owe to your Pierrot", he wrote Schoenberg upon completing a setting of Georg Trakl's "Abendland III", Op. 14, No. 4, in which, rather unusually for Webern, there is no silence or rest until a pause at the concluding gesture. Indeed, a recurring theme of Webern's World War I settings is that of the wanderer, estranged or lost and seeking return to or at least retrieval from an earlier time and place; and of some fifty-six songs on which Webern worked 1914–1926, he ultimately finished and later published only thirty-two set in order as Opp. 12–19. This wartime theme of wandering in search of home ties in with two intricately involved concerns more broadly evident in Webern's work: first, the death and memory of members of Webern's family, especially his mother but also including his father and a nephew; and second, Webern's broad and complex sense of rural and spiritual Heimat. Their importance is marked by Webern's stage play, Tot (October 1913), which, over the course of six alpine scenes of reflection and self-consolation, draws on Emanuel Swedenborg's notion of correspondence to relate and to unite the two concerns, the first embodied but otherworldly and the second concrete if increasingly abstracted and idealized. The similarities between Tot and Webern's music are striking. In an often programmatic or cinematic fashion, Webern ordered his published movements, themselves dramatic or visual tableaux with melodies that frequently begin and end on weak beats or else settle into ostinati or the background. In them, tonality – useful for communicating direction and narrative in programmatic pieces – becomes more tenuous, fragmented, static, symbolic, and visual or spatial in function, thus mirroring the concerns and topics, explicit or implicit, of Webern's music and his selections for it from the poetry of Stefan George and later Georg Trakl. Webern's dynamics, orchestration, and timbre are given so as to produce a fragile, intimate, and often novel sound, despite distinctly recalling Mahler, not infrequently bordering on silence at a typical . In some cases, Webern's choice of instrument in particular functions to represent or to allude to a female voice (e.g., the use of solo violin), to inward or outward luminosity or darkness (e.g., the use of the entire range of register within the ensemble; registral compression and expansion; the use of celesta, harp, and glockenspiel; the use of harmonics and sul ponticello), or to angels and heaven (e.g., the use of harp and trumpet in the circling ostinati of Op. 6, No. 5, and winding to conclusion at the very end of Op. 15, No. 5). Technical consolidation and formal coherence and expansion, Opp. 17–31, 1924–1943 With the Drei Volkstexte (1925), Op. 17, Webern used Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique for the first time, and all his subsequent works used this technique. The String Trio (1926–1927), Op. 20, was both the first purely instrumental work using the twelve-tone technique (the other pieces were songs) and the first cast in a traditional musical form. Webern's music, like that of both Brahms and Schoenberg, is marked by its emphasis on counterpoint and formal considerations; and Webern's commitment to systematic pitch organization in the twelve-tone method is inseparable from this prior commitment. Webern's tone rows are often arranged to take advantage of internal symmetries; for example, a twelve-tone row may be divisible into four groups of three pitches which are variations, such as inversions and retrogrades, of each other, thus creating invariance. This gives Webern's work considerable motivic unity, although this is often obscured by the fragmentation of the melodic lines. This fragmentation occurs through octave displacement (using intervals greater than an octave) and by moving the line rapidly from instrument to instrument in a technique referred to as Klangfarbenmelodie. Arrangements and orchestrations In his youth (1903), Webern orchestrated at least five of Franz Schubert's various lieder, giving the piano accompaniment to an appropriately Schubertian orchestra of strings and pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horns: "Der Vollmond Strahlt auf Bergeshöhn" (the Romanze from Rosamunde), "Tränenregen" (from Die schöne Müllerin), "Der Wegweiser" (from Winterreise), "Du bist die Ruh", and "Ihr Bild"; in 1934, he did the same for Schubert's six Deutsche Tänze (German Dances) of 1824. For Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performances in 1921, Webern arranged, among other things, the 1888 Schatz-Walzer (Treasure Waltz) of Johann Strauss II's Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron) for string quartet, harmonium, and piano. In 1924, Webern arranged Franz Liszt's Arbeiterchor (Workers' Chorus, c. 1847–1848) for bass solo, mixed chorus, and large orchestra; it was premièred for the first time in any form on 13 and 14 March 1925, with Webern conducting the first full-length concert of the Austrian Association of Workers Choir. A review in the Amtliche Wiener Zeitung (28 March 1925) read "neu in jedem Sinne, frisch, unverbraucht, durch ihn zieht die Jugend, die Freude" ("new in every respect, fresh, vital, pervaded by youth and joy"). The text, in English translation, reads in part: "Let us have the adorned spades and scoops,/ Come along all, who wield a sword or pen,/ Come here ye, industrious, brave and strong/ All who create things great or small." Liszt, initially inspired by his revolutionary countrymen, had left it in manuscript at publisher 's discretion. Performance style Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music; this is evidenced by anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tänze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction, many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors and associations everywhere throughout his sketches. As both a composer and conductor, he was one of many (e.g., Wilhelm Furtwängler, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Hermann Scherchen) in a contemporaneous tradition of conscientiously and non-literally handling notated musical figures, phrases, and even entire scores so as to maximize expressivity in performance and to cultivate audience engagement and understanding. This aspect of Webern's work had been typically missed in his immediate post-war reception, however, even as it may radically affect the music's reception. For example, Boulez's "complete" recording of Webern's music yielded more to this aesthetic the second time after largely missing it the first; but Eliahu Inbal's rendition of Webern's Symphony, Op. 21 with the hr-Sinfonieorchester is still far more within the spirit of the late Romantic performance tradition (which Webern seemingly intended for his music), nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work. Legacy, influence, and posthumous reception Webern's music began to be performed more widely in the 1920s; by the mid-1940s, its effect was decisive on many composers, even as far-flung as John Cage. In part because Webern had largely remained the most obscure and arcane composer of the Second Viennese School during his own lifetime, interest in Webern's music increased after World War II as it came to represent a universally or generally valid, systematic, and compellingly logical model of new composition, with his œuvre acquiring what Alex Ross calls "a saintly, visionary aura". When Webern's Piano Variations were performed at Darmstadt in 1948, young composers listened in a quasi-religious trance. In 1955, the second issue of Eimert and Stockhausen's journal Die Reihe was devoted to Webern's œuvre, and in 1960 his lectures were published by Universal Edition. Meanwhile, Webern's characteristically passionate pan-German nationalism and censurable, sordid political sympathies (however naive or delusional and whether ever dispelled or faltered) were not widely known or went unmentioned; perhaps in some part due to his personal and political associations before the German Reich, his degradation and mistreatment under it, and his fate immediately after the war. Significantly as relates to his reception, Webern never compromised his artistic identity and values, as Stravinsky was later to note. It has been suggested that the early 1950s' serialists' fascination with Webern was concerned not with his music as such so much as enabled by its concision and some its apparent plainness in the score, thereby facilitating musical analysis; indeed, composer Gottfried Michael Koenig speculates on the basis of his personal experience that since Webern's scores represented such a highly concentrated source, they may have been considered the better for didactic purposes than those of other composers. Composer thus criticized the approach of early serialists to Webern's music as reductive and narrowly focused on some of Webern's apparent methods rather than on his music more generally, especially neglecting timbre in their typical selection of Opp. 27–28. Composer Karel Goeyvaerts recalled that at least on first impression, the sound of Webern's music reminded him of "a Mondrian canvas," explaining that "things of which I had acquired an extremely intimate knowledge, came across as crude and unfinished when seen in reality." Expressing a related opinion, noted contemporaneous German music critic and contributor to Die Reihe, Wolf-Eberhard von Lewinski wrote in the Darmstädter Tagblatt (3 September 1959) that some of the later and more radical music at Darmstadt was "acoustically absurd [if] visually amusing"; several days later, one of his articles in the Der Kurier was similarly headlined "Meager modern music—only interesting to look at." To composers in the then Communist Bloc in Central and Eastern Europe, Webern's music and its techniques promised an exciting, unique, and challenging alternative to socialist realism, with its perceived tendency to kitsch and its nationalist and traditionalist overtones. Whereas Berg's Lyric Suite may have influenced the third and fourth string quartets of Bartók in 1927 via an ISCM concert (in which Bartók himself performed his own Piano Sonata), Webern's influence on later composers from what became the Hungarian People's Republic and from other countries behind the Iron Curtain was sometimes mediated or obstructed by politics. As Ligeti explained to a student in 1970, "In countries where there exists a certain isolation, in Eastern Europe, one cannot obtain correct information. One is cut off from the circulation of blood." Nonetheless, Webern's work was a seminal influence on that of both Endre Szervánszky and György Kurtág following the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, as well as on Ligeti himself. Later still and farther east, Sofia Gubaidulina, for whom music was an escape from the socio-political atmosphere of post-Stalinist Soviet Russia, cited the influence of both J. S. Bach and Webern in particular. Recordings by Webern Webern conducts "Berg – Violin Concerto" Webern conducts his arrangement of Schubert's German Dances See also List of Austrians in music Notes References Bibliography Further reading Ahrend, Thomas, and Stefan Münnich. 2018. Anton Webern. Oxford Bibliographies in Music. Oxford University Press. .}}{{subscription Ahrend, Thomas, and Matthias Schmidt (eds.). 2015. Der junge Webern. Texte und Kontexte. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 2b. Wien: Lafite. . Ahrend, Thomas, and Matthias Schmidt (eds.). 2016. Webern-Philologien. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 3. Wien: Lafite. . Bailey, Kathryn. 1991. The Twelve-Note Music of Anton Webern: Old Forms in a New Language. Music in the Twentieth Century 2. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. (cloth) (pbk. ed., 2006). Cavallotti, Pietro, and Simon Obert, and Rainer Schmusch (eds.). 2019. Neue Perspektiven. Anton Webern und das Komponieren im 20. Jahrhundert. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 4. Wien: Lafite. . Ewen, David. 1971. "Anton Webern (1883–1945)". In Composers of Tomorrow's Music, by David Ewen, 66–77. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. . Forte, Allen. 1998. The Atonal Music of Anton Webern New Haven: Yale University Press. . Galliari, Alain. 2007. "Anton von Webern". Paris: Fayard. . Kröpfl, Monika, and Simon Obert (eds.). 2015. Der junge Webern. Künstlerische Orientierungen in Wien nach 1900. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 2a. Wien: Lafite. . Mead, Andrew. 1993. "Webern, Tradition, and 'Composing with Twelve Tones'". Music Theory Spectrum 15, no. 2:173–204. Moldenhauer, Hans. 1966. Anton von Webern Perspectives. Edited by Demar Irvine, with an introductory interview with Igor Stravinsky. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Needham, Alex. 2012. Brahms Piano Piece to Get Its Premiere 159 Years After Its Creation. The Guardian (Thursday 12 January). Noller, Joachim. 1990. "Bedeutungsstrukturen: zu Anton Weberns 'alpinen' Programmen". Neue Zeitschrift für Musik151, no. 9 (September): 12–18. Obert, Simon (ed.). 2012. Wechselnde Erscheinung. Sechs Perspektiven auf Anton Weberns sechste Bagatelle. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 1. Wien: Lafite. . Perle, George. 1991. Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. Sixth ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Peyser, Joan. 2007. To Boulez and Beyond. Scarecrow Press. . Rockwell, John. 1983. All American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century. New York: Alfred Knopf. Reprinted New York: Da Capo Press, 1997. , . Tsang, Lee. 2002. "The Atonal Music of Anton Webern (1998) by Allen Forte". Music Analysis 21, no. 3 (October): 417–427. Wildgans, Friedrich. 1966. Anton Webern. Translated by Edith Temple Roberts and Humphrey Searle. Introduction and notes by Humphrey Searle. New York: October House. External links Anton Webern biography and works on the UE website (publisher) Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe (Complete Edition) 1883 births 1945 deaths Austrian Roman Catholics 20th-century classical composers Deaths by firearm in Austria Expressionist music Twelve-tone and serial composers Second Viennese School University of Vienna alumni Composers from Vienna Accidental deaths in Austria Pupils of Arnold Schoenberg Austrian male classical composers Austrian classical composers String quartet composers 20th-century Austrian composers 20th-century Austrian male musicians Firearm accident victims
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[ "\"If You Can Do Anything Else\" is a song written by Billy Livsey and Don Schlitz, and recorded by American country music artist George Strait. It was released in February 2001 as the third and final single from his self-titled album. The song reached number 5 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart in July 2001. It also peaked at number 51 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.\n\nContent\nThe song is about man who is giving his woman the option to leave him. He gives her many different options for all the things she can do. At the end he gives her the option to stay with him if she really can’t find anything else to do. He says he will be alright if she leaves, but really it seems he wants her to stay.\n\nChart performance\n\"If You Can Do Anything Else\" debuted at number 60 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks for the week of March 3, 2001.\n\nYear-end charts\n\nReferences\n\n2001 singles\n2000 songs\nGeorge Strait songs\nSongs written by Billy Livsey\nSongs written by Don Schlitz\nSong recordings produced by Tony Brown (record producer)\nMCA Nashville Records singles", "In baseball, a fair ball is a batted ball that entitles the batter to attempt to reach first base. By contrast, a foul ball is a batted ball that does not entitle the batter to attempt to reach first base. Whether a batted ball is fair or foul is determined by the location of the ball at the appropriate reference point, as follows:\n\n if the ball leaves the playing field without touching anything, the point where the ball leaves the field;\n else, if the ball first lands past first or third base without touching anything, the point where the ball lands;\n else, if the ball rolls or bounces past first or third base without touching anything other than the ground, the point where the ball passes the base;\n else, if the ball touches anything other than the ground (such as an umpire, a player, or any equipment left on the field) before any of the above happens, the point of such touching;\n else (the ball comes to a rest before reaching first or third base), the point where the ball comes to a rest.\n\nIf any part of the ball is on or above fair territory at the appropriate reference point, it is fair; else it is foul. Fair territory or fair ground is defined as the area of the playing field between the two foul lines, and includes the foul lines themselves and the foul poles. However, certain exceptions exist:\n\n A ball that touches first, second, or third base is always fair.\n Under Rule 5.09(a)(7)-(8), if a batted ball touches the batter or his bat while the batter is in the batter's box and not intentionally interfering with the course of the ball, the ball is foul.\n A ball that hits the foul pole without first having touched anything else off the bat is fair.\n Ground rules may provide whether a ball hitting specific objects (e.g. roof, overhead speaker) is fair or foul.\n\nOn a fair ball, the batter attempts to reach first base or any subsequent base, runners attempt to advance and fielders try to record outs. A fair ball is considered a live ball until the ball becomes dead by leaving the field or any other method.\n\nReferences\n\nBaseball rules" ]
[ "Anton Webern", "Performance style", "What was Webern's style like?", "Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music;", "What was he best known for?", "extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction,", "What is his most famous recording?", "I don't know.", "Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?", "many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors", "What types of markings are in his scores?", "anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze", "Does he add anything else to his music?", "nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work." ]
C_1951dee9c9e740108b2e390bd3a0eac7_0
How many movements does his music have?
7
How many movements does the music Anton Webner performs have?
Anton Webern
Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music; this is evidenced by anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction, many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors and associations everywhere throughout his sketches. As both a composer and conductor he was one of many (e.g., Wilhelm Furtwangler, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Hermann Scherchen) in a contemporaneous tradition of conscientiously and non-literally handling notated musical figures, phrases, and even entire scores so as to maximize expressivity in performance and to cultivate audience engagement and understanding. This aspect of Webern's work had been typically missed in his immediate post-war reception, however, even as it may radically affect the music's reception. For example, Boulez's "complete" recording of Webern's music yielded more to this aesthetic the second time after largely missing it the first; but Eliahu Inbal's rendition of Webern's symphony with the hr-Sinfonieorchester is still far more within the spirit of the late Romantic performance tradition (which Webern seemingly intended for his music), nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work. Gunter Wand's 1966 recording of the Cantata No. 1 (1938-40), op. 29, with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks et al., may likewise be contrasted with both of Boulez's renditions. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), known as simply Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor. Along with his mentor Arnold Schoenberg and his colleague Alban Berg, Webern was in the core of those in the circle of the Second Viennese School, including Theodor W. Adorno, Heinrich Jalowetz, and Ernst Krenek. As an exponent of atonality and twelve-tone technique, Webern exerted influence on contemporaries Luigi Dallapiccola, Krenek, and even Schoenberg himself. As a tutor, Webern guided and variously influenced Arnold Elston, Frederick Dorian (Friederich Deutsch), , , Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Philipp Herschkowitz, René Leibowitz, Humphrey Searle, Leopold Spinner, and Stefan Wolpe. Webern's music was among the most radical of its milieu, both in its concision and in its rigorous and resolute apprehension of twelve-tone technique. His innovations in schematic organization of pitch, rhythm, register, timbre, dynamics, articulation, and melodic contour; his eagerness to redefine imitative contrapuntal techniques such as canon and fugue; and his inclination toward athematicism, abstraction, and lyricism all greatly informed and oriented intra- and post-war European, typically serial or avant-garde composers such as Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, Henri Pousseur, and György Ligeti. In the United States, meanwhile, his music attracted the interest of Elliott Carter, whose critical ambivalence was marked by a certain enthusiasm nonetheless; Milton Babbitt, who ultimately derived more inspiration from Schoenberg's twelve-tone practice than that of Webern; and Igor Stravinsky, to whom it was very fruitfully reintroduced by Robert Craft. During and shortly after the post-war period, then, Webern was posthumously received with attention first diverted from his sociocultural upbringing and surroundings and, moreover, focused in a direction apparently antithetical to his participation in German Romanticism and Expressionism. A richer understanding of Webern began to emerge in the later half of the 20th century, notably in the work of scholars Kathryn Bailey, Julian Johnson, Felix Meyer, Anne Shreffler, as archivists and biographers (most importantly Hans and Rosaleen Moldenhauer) gained access to sketches, letters, lectures, audio recordings, and other articles of or associated with Webern's estate. Biography Youth, education, and other early experiences in Austria-Hungary Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern was born in Vienna, then in Austria-Hungary. He was the only surviving son of Carl von Webern, a civil servant, and Amalie (née Geer) who was a competent pianist and accomplished singer—possibly the only obvious source of the future composer's talent. He never used his middle names and dropped the "von" in 1918 as directed by the Austrian government's reforms after World War I. He lived in Graz and Klagenfurt for much of his youth. But his distinct and lasting sense of Heimat was shaped by readings of Peter Rosegger; and moreover by frequent and extended retreats with his parents, sisters, and cousins to his family's country estate, the Preglhof, which Webern's father had inherited upon the death of Webern's grandfather in 1889. Webern memorialized the Preglhof in a diary poem "An der Preglhof" and in the tone poem Im Sommerwind (1904), both after Bruno Wille's idyll. Once Webern's father sold the estate in 1912, Webern referred to it nostalgically as a "lost paradise". He continued to revisit the Preglhof, the family cemetery in Schwabegg, and the surrounding landscape for the rest of his life; and he clearly associated the area, which he took as his home, very closely with the memory of his mother Amelie, who had died in 1906 and whose loss also profoundly affected Webern for decades. Art historian Ernst Dietz, Webern's cousin and at that time a student at Graz, may have introduced Webern to the work of the painters Arnold Böcklin and Giovanni Segantini, whom Webern came to admire. Segantini's work was a likely inspiration for Webern's 1905 single-movement string quartet. In 1902, Webern began attending classes at Vienna University. There he studied musicology with Guido Adler, writing his thesis on the Choralis Constantinus of Heinrich Isaac. This interest in early music would greatly influence his compositional technique in later years, especially in terms of his use of palindromic form on both the micro- and macro-scale and the economical use of musical materials. With the help of friends and colleagues, Webern later began working peripatetically as a conductor and musical coach in various towns and cities, among them Ischl, Teplitz (now Teplice, Czech Republic), Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland), and Prague, before finally moving back to Vienna. As might be expected, the young Webern was enthusiastic about the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert ("so genuinely Viennese"), Hugo Wolf, and Richard Wagner, visiting Bayreuth in 1902. He also enjoyed the music of Hector Berlioz and Georges Bizet. In 1904, he reportedly stormed out of a meeting with Hans Pfitzner, from whom he was seeking instruction, when the latter criticized Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. In 1908, Webern wrote rapturously to Schoenberg about Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande. He conducted some of Debussy's music in 1911. It may have been at Guido Adler's advice that he paid Schoenberg for composition lessons. Webern progressed quickly under Schoenberg's tutelage, publishing his Passacaglia, Op. 1, as his graduation piece in 1908. He also met Berg, then another of Schoenberg's pupils. These two relationships would be the most important in his life in shaping his own musical direction. Some of Webern's earlier thoughts (from 1903) are as amusing as they might be surprising: besides describing some of Alexander Scriabin's music as "languishing junk," he wrote of Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 4 that it was "boring," that Carl Maria von Weber's Konzertstück in F minor was passé, and that he found Johannes Brahms's Symphony No. 3 (which struck Eduard Hanslick as "artistically the most nearly perfect") "cold and without particular inspiration, ... badly orchestrated—grey on grey." These youthful impressions are in some, but not complete or altogether necessarily very significant, contrast to the considered opinions of Webern in the 1930s, by then a decided nationalist who, as Roland Leich described, "lectured at some length on the utter supremacy of German music, emphasizing that leading composers of other lands are but pale reflections of Germanic masters: Berlioz a French Beethoven, Tchaikovsky a Russian Schumann, Elgar an English Mendelssohn, etc." After all, even when young, Webern had described one of Alexander Glazunov's symphonies as "not particularly Russian" (in contrast to some of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's music at the same all-Russian concert) in the same passage as he praised it. Red Vienna in the First Austrian Republic From 1918 to 1921, Webern helped organize and operate the Society for Private Musical Performances, which gave concerts of then-recent or -new music by Béla Bartók, Berg, Ferruccio Busoni, Debussy, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Mahler, Maurice Ravel, Max Reger, Erik Satie, Strauss, Stravinsky, and Webern himself. After their Society performances in 1919 (and while working on his own Opp. 14–15), Webern wrote to Berg that Stravinsky's Berceuses du chat "[move] me completely beyond belief," describing them as "indescribably touching," and that Stravinsky's Pribaoutki were "something really glorious." After the dissolution of the Society amid catastrophic hyperinflation in 1921, Webern conducted the Vienna Workers' Symphony Orchestra and Chorus from 1922 to 1934. In 1926, Webern noted his voluntary resignation as chorusmaster of the Mödling Men's Choral Society, a paid position, in controversy over his hiring of a Jewish singer, Greta Wilheim, to replace a sick one. Letters document their correspondence in many subsequent years, and she (among others) would in turn provide him with facilities to teach private lessons as a convenience to Webern, his family, and his students. Civil War, Austrofascism, Nazism, and World War II Webern's music, along with that of Berg, Křenek, Schoenberg, and others, was denounced as "cultural Bolshevism" and "degenerate art" by the Nazi Party in Germany, and both publication and performances of it were banned soon after the Anschluss in 1938, although neither did it fare well under the preceding years of Austrofascism. As early as 1933, an Austrian gauleiter on Bayerischer Rundfunk mistakenly and very likely maliciously characterized both Berg and Webern as Jewish composers. As a result of official disapproval throughout the '30s, both found it harder to earn a living; Webern lost a promising conducting career which might have otherwise been more noted and recorded and had to take on work as an editor and proofreader for his publishers, Universal Edition. His family's financial situation deteriorated until, by August 1940, his personal records reflected no monthly income. It was thanks to the Swiss philanthropist Werner Reinhart that Webern was able to attend the festive premiere of his Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30, in Winterthur, Switzerland in 1943. Reinhart invested all the financial and diplomatic means at his disposal to enable Webern to travel to Switzerland. In return for this support, Webern dedicated the work to him. There are different descriptions of Webern's attitude towards Nazism; this is perhaps attributable to its complexity, his internal ambivalence, his prosperity in the preceding years (1918–1934) of post-war Red Vienna in the First Republic of Austria, the subsequently divided political factions of his homeland as represented in his friends and family (from Zionist Schoenberg to his Nazi son Peter), as well as the different contexts in which or audiences to whom his views were expressed. Further insight into Webern's attitudes comes with the realization that Nazism itself was deeply multifaceted, marked "not [by] a coherent doctrine or body of systemically interrelated ideas, but rather [by] a vaguer worldview made up of a number of prejudices with varied appeals to different audiences which could scarcely be dignified with the term 'ideology'". There is, moreover, significant political complexity to be treated, more than enough to complicate any consideration of individual culpability: it is imperative to note that some Social Democrats viewed the National Socialists as an alternative to the Christian Social Party and later Vaterländische Front in the context of reunification with Germany; for example, Karl Renner, the chancellor who served in both the First (1919–33) and Second (post-1945) Austrian Republics, favored a German Anschluss as an alternative to the then Austrofascist regime, under which Berg, Webern, and the Social Democrats suffered. And Webern's professional circle in Vienna included, besides many Jews, many Social Democrats; for example, for David Josef Bach, a close friend of Schoenberg's as well, Webern conducted many workers' and amateur ensembles. Under the Nazis, some Social Democrats expected, there might be more work and protections for workers and laborers, as well as other social reforms and political stability, if not democracy; Webern may well have hoped to again be able to conduct and to be better able to secure a future for his family. In broad terms, Webern's attitude seems to have first warmed to a degree of characteristic fervor and perhaps only much later, in conjunction with widespread German disillusionment, cooled to Hitler and the Nazis. On the one hand, notes that Webern attacked Nazi cultural policies in private lectures given in 1933, whose hypothetical publication "would have exposed Webern to serious consequences" later. On the other, some private correspondence attests to his Nazi sympathies. Webern's patriotism led him to endorse the Nazi regime in a series of letters to Joseph Hueber, who was serving in the army and himself held such views. Webern described Hitler on 2 May 1940, as "this unique man" who created "the new state" of Germany; thus Alex Ross characterizes him as "an unashamed Hitler enthusiast". Violinist Louis Krasner painted not a sentimental portrait but one imbued with a wealth of factual and personal detail for its publication in 1987, describing Webern as clearly naive and idealistic but not entirely without his wits, shame, or conscience; Krasner carefully contextualizes Webern as a member of Austrian society at the time, one departed by Schoenberg and one in which the already pro-Nazi Vienna Philharmonic had even refused to play the late Berg's Violin Concerto. As Krasner vividly recalled, he and Webern were visiting at the latter's home in Maria Enzersdorf, Mödling when the Nazis invaded Austria; Webern, uncannily seeming to anticipate the timing down to 4 o'clock in the afternoon, turned on the radio to hear this news and immediately warned Krasner, urging him to flee, whereupon he did (first to Vienna). Whether this was for Krasner's safety or to save Webern the embarrassment of Krasner's presence during a time of possible celebration in the pro-Nazi Webern family (or indeed in most of pro-Nazi Mödling, by Krasner's description as well as one even more vivid of Arnold Greissle-Schönberg), Krasner was ambivalent and uncertain, withholding judgment. Only later did Krasner himself realize how self-admittedly "foolhardy" he had been and in what danger he had placed himself, revealing an ignorance perhaps shared by Webern. Krasner had even revisited frequently, hoping to convince friends (e.g., Schoenberg's daughter Gertrude and her husband Felix Greissle) to emigrate before time ran out. Krasner eventually left more permanently, after a 1941 incident wherein he felt only his US passport saved him from both locals and police. Krasner retold from a story related to him in long discussion with Schoenberg's son Görgi, a Jew who remained in Vienna during the war, that the Weberns, much to their risk and credit, had provided Görgi and his family with food and shelter toward the end of the war at the Weberns' home in a Mödling apartment belonging to their son-in-law. Görgi and his family were left behind for their safety when Webern fled on foot with his family to Mittersill, about 75 km. away, for safety of their own in light of the coming Russian invasion; Amalie, one of Webern's daughters, wrote of '17 persons pressed together in the smallest possible space' upon their arrival. Ironically, the Russians pronounced Görgi a "Nazi spy" when he was discovered due to the Nazi munitions and propaganda in the Weberns' basement store-room. Görgi is said to have saved himself from execution by protesting and drawing attention to his clothes, sewn as specified by the Nazis with the yellow Star of David. He continued to live in this apartment with this family until 1969. Webern is also known to have aided Josef Polnauer, a Jewish friend who, as an albino, managed to largely escape the Nazis' attention and later edit a publication of Webern's correspondence from this time with Hildegard Jone, Webern's then lyricist and collaborator, and her husband, sculptor Josef Humplik. However, Krasner was particularly troubled by a 1936 conversation with Webern about the Jews, in which Webern expressed his vague but unambiguously anti-Semitic opinion that "Even Schoenberg, had he not been a Jew, would have been quite different!" Krasner remembered, perhaps with the benefit of hindsight at the time (1987), that "Jews ... were at the center of the difficulty. Those who wanted to, put the blame for all this calamity, for all this depraved condition, on the Jews who had brought it with them—along with a lot of radical ideas—from the East. People blamed the Jews for their financial worries. The Jews were, at the same time, the poverty-stricken people who came with nothing, and the capitalists who controlled everything." When once asked by Schoenberg about his feelings toward the Nazis, Webern nonetheless sought to allay Schoenberg's concerns; similarly, when in 1938 Eduard Steuermann asked Krasner about rumors of Webern's possible "interest in and devotion to the Nazis" on Schoenberg's behalf, Krasner lied by denying the rumors categorically and entirely. As a result, Schoenberg's Violin Concerto of 1934 (or 1935)–36 continued to bear a dedication to Webern, although whittled down as a result of Schoenberg's continuing suspicions or, indeed, on Webern's behalf, i.e., to protect Webern from further Nazi suspicion and persecution. Schoenberg's tone was ultimately conciliatory in remembrance of both Berg and Webern in 1947: "Let us—for the moment at least—forget all that might have at one time divided us ... even if those who tried might have succeeded in confounding us." Musicologist Richard Taruskin describes Webern accurately if vaguely as a pan-German nationalist but then goes much further in claiming specifically that Webern joyfully welcomed the Nazis with the 1938 Anschluss, at best extrapolating from the account of his cited source Krasner and at worst exaggerating or distorting it, as well as describing it sardonically as "heart-breaking". Taruskin's authority on this delicate issue must be credited, if at all, then only with the significant limitations that he has been polemical in general and hostile in particular to the Second Viennese School, of whom Webern is often considered the most extreme and difficult (i.e., the least accessible). New Complexity composer and performer Franklin Cox not only faults Taruskin as an inaccurate and unreliable historian but also critiques Taruskin as an "ideologist of tonal restoration" (musicologist Martin Kaltenecker similarly refers to the "Restoration of the 1980s," but he also describes a paradigm shift from structure to perception). Taruskin's "reactionary historicist" project, Cox argues, stands in opposition to that of the Second Viennese School, viz. the "progressivist historicist" emancipation of the dissonance. Taruskin himself admits to having acquired a "dubious reputation" on the Second Viennese School and notes that he has been described in his work on Webern as "coming, like Shakespeare's Marc Anthony, 'to bury Webern, not to praise him'". In contradistinction to Taruskin's methods and pronouncements, musicologist Pamela M. Potter advises that "[i]t is important to consider all the scholarship on musical life in the Third Reich that, taken together, reveals the complexity of the day-to-day existence of musicians and composers", as "[i]t seems inevitable that debates about the political culpability of individuals will persist, especially if the stakes remain so high for composers, for whom an up or down vote can determine inclusion in the canon". In this vein, it might be noted in relation to Taruskin's claim that Webern wrote to friends (husband and wife Josef Humplik and Hildegard Jone) on the day of Anschluss not to invite celebration or to observe developments but to be left alone: "I am totally immersed in my work [composing] and cannot, cannot be disturbed"; Krasner's presence could have been a disturbance to Webern for this reason, and musicologist Kathryn Bailey speculates that this may indeed be why he was rushed off by Webern. Webern's 1944–1945 correspondence is strewn with references to bombings, deaths, destruction, privation, and the disintegration of local order; but also noted are the births of several grandchildren. At the age of sixty (i.e., in Dec. 1943), Webern writes that he is living in a barrack away from home and working from 6 am to 5 pm, compelled by the state in a time of war to serve as an air-raid protection police officer. On 3 March 1945, news was relayed to Webern that his only son, Peter, died on 14 February of wounds suffered in a strafing attack on a military train two days earlier. Death in Allied-administered Austria On 15 September 1945, back at his home during the Allied occupation of Austria, Webern was shot and killed by an American Army soldier following the arrest of his son-in-law for black market activities. This incident occurred when, three-quarters of an hour before a curfew was to have gone into effect, he stepped outside the house so as not to disturb his sleeping grandchildren, to enjoy a few draws on a cigar given to him that evening by his son-in-law. The soldier responsible for his death was U. S. Army cook PFC Raymond Norwood Bell of North Carolina, who was overcome by remorse and died of alcoholism in 1955. Webern's wife, Wilhelmine Mörtl, died in 1949. They had three daughters and a son. Music Webern's compositions are concise, distilled, and select; just thirty-one of his compositions were published in his lifetime, and when Pierre Boulez later oversaw a project to record all of his compositions, including some of those without opus numbers, the results fit on just six CDs. Although Webern's music changed over time, as is often the case over a long career, it is typified by very spartan textures, in which every note can be clearly heard; carefully chosen timbres, often resulting in very detailed instructions to the performers and use of extended instrumental techniques (flutter tonguing, col legno, and so on); wide-ranging melodic lines, often with leaps greater than an octave; and brevity: the Six Bagatelles for string quartet (1913), for instance, last about three minutes in total. Formative juvenilia and emergence from study, Opp. 1–2, 1899–1908 Webern published little of his early work in particular; Webern was characteristically meticulous and revised extensively. Many juvenilia remained unknown until the work and findings of the Moldenhauers in the 1960s, effectively obscuring and undermining formative facets of Webern's musical identity, highly significant even more so in the case of an innovator whose music was crucially marked by rapid stylistic shifts. Thus when Boulez first oversaw a project to record "all" of Webern's music, not including the juvenilia, the results fit on three rather than six CDs. Webern's earliest works consist primarily of lieder, the genre that most testifies to his roots in Romanticism, specifically German Romanticism; one in which the music yields brief but explicit, potent, and spoken meaning manifested only latently or programmatically in purely instrumental genres; one marked by significant intimacy and lyricism; and one which often associates nature, especially landscapes, with themes of homesickness, solace, wistful yearning, distance, utopia, and belonging. Robert Schumann's "Mondnacht" is an iconic example; Eichendorff, whose lyric poetry inspired it, is not far removed from the poets (e.g., Richard Dehmel, Gustav Falke, Theodor Storm) whose work inspired Webern and his contemporaries Alban Berg, Max Reger, Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf, and Alexander Zemlinsky. Wolf's Mörike-Lieder were especially influential on Webern's efforts from this period. But well beyond these lieder alone, all of Webern's music may be said to possess such concerns and qualities, as is evident from his sketches, albeit in an increasingly symbolic, abstract, spare, introverted, and idealized manner. Webern's first piece after completing his studies with Schoenberg was the Passacaglia for orchestra (1908). Harmonically, it is a step forward into a more advanced language, and the orchestration is somewhat more distinctive than his earlier orchestral work. However, it bears little relation to the fully mature works he is best known for today. One element that is typical is the form itself: the passacaglia is a form which dates back to the 17th century, and a distinguishing feature of Webern's later work was to be the use of traditional compositional techniques (especially canons) and forms (the Symphony, the Concerto, the String Trio, and String Quartet, and the piano and orchestral Variations) in a modern harmonic and melodic language. Atonality, lieder, and aphorism, Opp. 3–16 and Tot, 1908–1924 For a number of years, Webern wrote pieces which were freely atonal, much in the style of Schoenberg's early atonal works. Indeed, so in lockstep with Schoenberg was Webern for much of his artistic development that Schoenberg in 1951 wrote that he sometimes no longer knew who he was, Webern had followed so well in his footsteps and shadow, occasionally outdoing or stepping ahead of Schoenberg in execution of Schoenberg's own or their shared ideas. There are, however, important cases where Webern may have even more profoundly influenced Schoenberg. Haimo marks the swift, radical influence in 1909 of Webern's novel and arresting Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5, on Schoenberg's subsequent piano piece Op. 11, No. 3; Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16; and monodrama Erwartung, Op. 17. This shift is distinctly pronounced in a letter Schoenberg wrote to Busoni, which describes a rather Webernian aesthetic: In 1949, Schoenberg still remembered being "intoxicated by the enthusiasm of having freed music from the shackles of tonality" and believing with his pupils "that now music could renounce motivic features and remain coherent and comprehensible nonetheless". But with Opp. 18–20, Schoenberg turned back and revived old techniques, very self-consciously returning to and transforming tradition by the concluding songs of Pierrot lunaire (1912), Op. 21, with, e.g., intricately interrelated canons in "Der Mondfleck", clear waltz rhythms in "Serenade", a barcarolle ("Heimfahrt"), triadic harmony throughout "O alter Duft". Pierrot was received by Webern as a direction for the composition of his own Opp. 14–16, most of all with respect to contrapuntal procedures (and to a lesser degree with respect to the diverse and innovative textural treatment among instruments in increasingly smaller ensembles). "How much I owe to your Pierrot", he wrote Schoenberg upon completing a setting of Georg Trakl's "Abendland III", Op. 14, No. 4, in which, rather unusually for Webern, there is no silence or rest until a pause at the concluding gesture. Indeed, a recurring theme of Webern's World War I settings is that of the wanderer, estranged or lost and seeking return to or at least retrieval from an earlier time and place; and of some fifty-six songs on which Webern worked 1914–1926, he ultimately finished and later published only thirty-two set in order as Opp. 12–19. This wartime theme of wandering in search of home ties in with two intricately involved concerns more broadly evident in Webern's work: first, the death and memory of members of Webern's family, especially his mother but also including his father and a nephew; and second, Webern's broad and complex sense of rural and spiritual Heimat. Their importance is marked by Webern's stage play, Tot (October 1913), which, over the course of six alpine scenes of reflection and self-consolation, draws on Emanuel Swedenborg's notion of correspondence to relate and to unite the two concerns, the first embodied but otherworldly and the second concrete if increasingly abstracted and idealized. The similarities between Tot and Webern's music are striking. In an often programmatic or cinematic fashion, Webern ordered his published movements, themselves dramatic or visual tableaux with melodies that frequently begin and end on weak beats or else settle into ostinati or the background. In them, tonality – useful for communicating direction and narrative in programmatic pieces – becomes more tenuous, fragmented, static, symbolic, and visual or spatial in function, thus mirroring the concerns and topics, explicit or implicit, of Webern's music and his selections for it from the poetry of Stefan George and later Georg Trakl. Webern's dynamics, orchestration, and timbre are given so as to produce a fragile, intimate, and often novel sound, despite distinctly recalling Mahler, not infrequently bordering on silence at a typical . In some cases, Webern's choice of instrument in particular functions to represent or to allude to a female voice (e.g., the use of solo violin), to inward or outward luminosity or darkness (e.g., the use of the entire range of register within the ensemble; registral compression and expansion; the use of celesta, harp, and glockenspiel; the use of harmonics and sul ponticello), or to angels and heaven (e.g., the use of harp and trumpet in the circling ostinati of Op. 6, No. 5, and winding to conclusion at the very end of Op. 15, No. 5). Technical consolidation and formal coherence and expansion, Opp. 17–31, 1924–1943 With the Drei Volkstexte (1925), Op. 17, Webern used Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique for the first time, and all his subsequent works used this technique. The String Trio (1926–1927), Op. 20, was both the first purely instrumental work using the twelve-tone technique (the other pieces were songs) and the first cast in a traditional musical form. Webern's music, like that of both Brahms and Schoenberg, is marked by its emphasis on counterpoint and formal considerations; and Webern's commitment to systematic pitch organization in the twelve-tone method is inseparable from this prior commitment. Webern's tone rows are often arranged to take advantage of internal symmetries; for example, a twelve-tone row may be divisible into four groups of three pitches which are variations, such as inversions and retrogrades, of each other, thus creating invariance. This gives Webern's work considerable motivic unity, although this is often obscured by the fragmentation of the melodic lines. This fragmentation occurs through octave displacement (using intervals greater than an octave) and by moving the line rapidly from instrument to instrument in a technique referred to as Klangfarbenmelodie. Arrangements and orchestrations In his youth (1903), Webern orchestrated at least five of Franz Schubert's various lieder, giving the piano accompaniment to an appropriately Schubertian orchestra of strings and pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horns: "Der Vollmond Strahlt auf Bergeshöhn" (the Romanze from Rosamunde), "Tränenregen" (from Die schöne Müllerin), "Der Wegweiser" (from Winterreise), "Du bist die Ruh", and "Ihr Bild"; in 1934, he did the same for Schubert's six Deutsche Tänze (German Dances) of 1824. For Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performances in 1921, Webern arranged, among other things, the 1888 Schatz-Walzer (Treasure Waltz) of Johann Strauss II's Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron) for string quartet, harmonium, and piano. In 1924, Webern arranged Franz Liszt's Arbeiterchor (Workers' Chorus, c. 1847–1848) for bass solo, mixed chorus, and large orchestra; it was premièred for the first time in any form on 13 and 14 March 1925, with Webern conducting the first full-length concert of the Austrian Association of Workers Choir. A review in the Amtliche Wiener Zeitung (28 March 1925) read "neu in jedem Sinne, frisch, unverbraucht, durch ihn zieht die Jugend, die Freude" ("new in every respect, fresh, vital, pervaded by youth and joy"). The text, in English translation, reads in part: "Let us have the adorned spades and scoops,/ Come along all, who wield a sword or pen,/ Come here ye, industrious, brave and strong/ All who create things great or small." Liszt, initially inspired by his revolutionary countrymen, had left it in manuscript at publisher 's discretion. Performance style Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music; this is evidenced by anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tänze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction, many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors and associations everywhere throughout his sketches. As both a composer and conductor, he was one of many (e.g., Wilhelm Furtwängler, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Hermann Scherchen) in a contemporaneous tradition of conscientiously and non-literally handling notated musical figures, phrases, and even entire scores so as to maximize expressivity in performance and to cultivate audience engagement and understanding. This aspect of Webern's work had been typically missed in his immediate post-war reception, however, even as it may radically affect the music's reception. For example, Boulez's "complete" recording of Webern's music yielded more to this aesthetic the second time after largely missing it the first; but Eliahu Inbal's rendition of Webern's Symphony, Op. 21 with the hr-Sinfonieorchester is still far more within the spirit of the late Romantic performance tradition (which Webern seemingly intended for his music), nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work. Legacy, influence, and posthumous reception Webern's music began to be performed more widely in the 1920s; by the mid-1940s, its effect was decisive on many composers, even as far-flung as John Cage. In part because Webern had largely remained the most obscure and arcane composer of the Second Viennese School during his own lifetime, interest in Webern's music increased after World War II as it came to represent a universally or generally valid, systematic, and compellingly logical model of new composition, with his œuvre acquiring what Alex Ross calls "a saintly, visionary aura". When Webern's Piano Variations were performed at Darmstadt in 1948, young composers listened in a quasi-religious trance. In 1955, the second issue of Eimert and Stockhausen's journal Die Reihe was devoted to Webern's œuvre, and in 1960 his lectures were published by Universal Edition. Meanwhile, Webern's characteristically passionate pan-German nationalism and censurable, sordid political sympathies (however naive or delusional and whether ever dispelled or faltered) were not widely known or went unmentioned; perhaps in some part due to his personal and political associations before the German Reich, his degradation and mistreatment under it, and his fate immediately after the war. Significantly as relates to his reception, Webern never compromised his artistic identity and values, as Stravinsky was later to note. It has been suggested that the early 1950s' serialists' fascination with Webern was concerned not with his music as such so much as enabled by its concision and some its apparent plainness in the score, thereby facilitating musical analysis; indeed, composer Gottfried Michael Koenig speculates on the basis of his personal experience that since Webern's scores represented such a highly concentrated source, they may have been considered the better for didactic purposes than those of other composers. Composer thus criticized the approach of early serialists to Webern's music as reductive and narrowly focused on some of Webern's apparent methods rather than on his music more generally, especially neglecting timbre in their typical selection of Opp. 27–28. Composer Karel Goeyvaerts recalled that at least on first impression, the sound of Webern's music reminded him of "a Mondrian canvas," explaining that "things of which I had acquired an extremely intimate knowledge, came across as crude and unfinished when seen in reality." Expressing a related opinion, noted contemporaneous German music critic and contributor to Die Reihe, Wolf-Eberhard von Lewinski wrote in the Darmstädter Tagblatt (3 September 1959) that some of the later and more radical music at Darmstadt was "acoustically absurd [if] visually amusing"; several days later, one of his articles in the Der Kurier was similarly headlined "Meager modern music—only interesting to look at." To composers in the then Communist Bloc in Central and Eastern Europe, Webern's music and its techniques promised an exciting, unique, and challenging alternative to socialist realism, with its perceived tendency to kitsch and its nationalist and traditionalist overtones. Whereas Berg's Lyric Suite may have influenced the third and fourth string quartets of Bartók in 1927 via an ISCM concert (in which Bartók himself performed his own Piano Sonata), Webern's influence on later composers from what became the Hungarian People's Republic and from other countries behind the Iron Curtain was sometimes mediated or obstructed by politics. As Ligeti explained to a student in 1970, "In countries where there exists a certain isolation, in Eastern Europe, one cannot obtain correct information. One is cut off from the circulation of blood." Nonetheless, Webern's work was a seminal influence on that of both Endre Szervánszky and György Kurtág following the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, as well as on Ligeti himself. Later still and farther east, Sofia Gubaidulina, for whom music was an escape from the socio-political atmosphere of post-Stalinist Soviet Russia, cited the influence of both J. S. Bach and Webern in particular. Recordings by Webern Webern conducts "Berg – Violin Concerto" Webern conducts his arrangement of Schubert's German Dances See also List of Austrians in music Notes References Bibliography Further reading Ahrend, Thomas, and Stefan Münnich. 2018. Anton Webern. Oxford Bibliographies in Music. Oxford University Press. .}}{{subscription Ahrend, Thomas, and Matthias Schmidt (eds.). 2015. Der junge Webern. Texte und Kontexte. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 2b. Wien: Lafite. . Ahrend, Thomas, and Matthias Schmidt (eds.). 2016. Webern-Philologien. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 3. Wien: Lafite. . Bailey, Kathryn. 1991. The Twelve-Note Music of Anton Webern: Old Forms in a New Language. Music in the Twentieth Century 2. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. (cloth) (pbk. ed., 2006). Cavallotti, Pietro, and Simon Obert, and Rainer Schmusch (eds.). 2019. Neue Perspektiven. Anton Webern und das Komponieren im 20. Jahrhundert. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 4. Wien: Lafite. . Ewen, David. 1971. "Anton Webern (1883–1945)". In Composers of Tomorrow's Music, by David Ewen, 66–77. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. . Forte, Allen. 1998. The Atonal Music of Anton Webern New Haven: Yale University Press. . Galliari, Alain. 2007. "Anton von Webern". Paris: Fayard. . Kröpfl, Monika, and Simon Obert (eds.). 2015. Der junge Webern. Künstlerische Orientierungen in Wien nach 1900. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 2a. Wien: Lafite. . Mead, Andrew. 1993. "Webern, Tradition, and 'Composing with Twelve Tones'". Music Theory Spectrum 15, no. 2:173–204. Moldenhauer, Hans. 1966. Anton von Webern Perspectives. Edited by Demar Irvine, with an introductory interview with Igor Stravinsky. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Needham, Alex. 2012. Brahms Piano Piece to Get Its Premiere 159 Years After Its Creation. The Guardian (Thursday 12 January). Noller, Joachim. 1990. "Bedeutungsstrukturen: zu Anton Weberns 'alpinen' Programmen". Neue Zeitschrift für Musik151, no. 9 (September): 12–18. Obert, Simon (ed.). 2012. Wechselnde Erscheinung. Sechs Perspektiven auf Anton Weberns sechste Bagatelle. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 1. Wien: Lafite. . Perle, George. 1991. Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. Sixth ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Peyser, Joan. 2007. To Boulez and Beyond. Scarecrow Press. . Rockwell, John. 1983. All American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century. New York: Alfred Knopf. Reprinted New York: Da Capo Press, 1997. , . Tsang, Lee. 2002. "The Atonal Music of Anton Webern (1998) by Allen Forte". Music Analysis 21, no. 3 (October): 417–427. Wildgans, Friedrich. 1966. Anton Webern. Translated by Edith Temple Roberts and Humphrey Searle. Introduction and notes by Humphrey Searle. New York: October House. External links Anton Webern biography and works on the UE website (publisher) Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe (Complete Edition) 1883 births 1945 deaths Austrian Roman Catholics 20th-century classical composers Deaths by firearm in Austria Expressionist music Twelve-tone and serial composers Second Viennese School University of Vienna alumni Composers from Vienna Accidental deaths in Austria Pupils of Arnold Schoenberg Austrian male classical composers Austrian classical composers String quartet composers 20th-century Austrian composers 20th-century Austrian male musicians Firearm accident victims
false
[ "Interpretive dance is a family of modern dance styles that began around 1900 with Isadora Duncan. It used classical concert music but marked a departure from traditional concert dance. It seeks to translate human emotions, conditions, situations or fantasies into movement and dramatic expression, or else adapts traditional ethnic movements into more modern expressions. \n\nThe effect of interpretive dance can be seen in many Broadway musicals as well as in other media. While it was—and most often, still is—thought of as a performing art, interpretive dance does not have to be performed with music. It often includes grandiloquent movements of the arms, turns and drops to the floor. It is frequently enhanced by lavish costumes, ribbons or spandex body suits.\n\nSee also\n Dance improvisation\n Free dance\n Lyrical dance\n\nReferences\n\nFree and improvised dance", "O lucenti, o sereni occhi (HWV 144) is a dramatic secular cantata for soprano written by Georg Frideric Handel in 1707. Other catalogues of Handel's music have referred to the work as HG li, 28; (there is no HHA numbering). The title of the cantata translates as \"O shining, o serene eyes\".\n\nHistory\nHandel's original manuscript for the cantata has not survived, but a copy in the Santini Collection suggests that the work originated under the patronage of Ruspoli. The work can be dated to the spring or summer of 1707, and Handel reused aspects of the first aria in his opera Rodrigo in the same year.\n\nSynopsis\nEven though the work is performed by a female voice, the text does not reveal whether the \"voice\" is male or female. The first aria relates how beautiful eyes cause the singer to languish and die. The second aria tells how blazing eyes cause the singer both pleasure and pain.\n\nStructure\nThe work is scored for solo soprano and keyboard (with figured bass markings). The cantata contains two recitative-aria pairings. The use of silence (with musical rests) is notable in the work.\n\nA typical performance of the work takes about eight minutes.\n\nMovements\nThe work consists of four movements:\n\n(Movements do not contain repeat markings unless indicated. The number of bars is the raw number in the manuscript—not including repeat markings. The above is taken from volume 51, starting at page 28, of the Händel-Gesellschaft edition.)\n\nSee also\nList of cantatas by George Frideric Handel\n\nReferences\n\n \n\nCantatas by George Frideric Handel\n1707 compositions" ]
[ "Anton Webern", "Performance style", "What was Webern's style like?", "Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music;", "What was he best known for?", "extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction,", "What is his most famous recording?", "I don't know.", "Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?", "many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors", "What types of markings are in his scores?", "anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze", "Does he add anything else to his music?", "nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work.", "How many movements does his music have?", "I don't know." ]
C_1951dee9c9e740108b2e390bd3a0eac7_0
Where did he perform?
8
Where did Anton Webern perform?
Anton Webern
Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music; this is evidenced by anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction, many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors and associations everywhere throughout his sketches. As both a composer and conductor he was one of many (e.g., Wilhelm Furtwangler, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Hermann Scherchen) in a contemporaneous tradition of conscientiously and non-literally handling notated musical figures, phrases, and even entire scores so as to maximize expressivity in performance and to cultivate audience engagement and understanding. This aspect of Webern's work had been typically missed in his immediate post-war reception, however, even as it may radically affect the music's reception. For example, Boulez's "complete" recording of Webern's music yielded more to this aesthetic the second time after largely missing it the first; but Eliahu Inbal's rendition of Webern's symphony with the hr-Sinfonieorchester is still far more within the spirit of the late Romantic performance tradition (which Webern seemingly intended for his music), nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work. Gunter Wand's 1966 recording of the Cantata No. 1 (1938-40), op. 29, with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks et al., may likewise be contrasted with both of Boulez's renditions. CANNOTANSWER
the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), known as simply Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor. Along with his mentor Arnold Schoenberg and his colleague Alban Berg, Webern was in the core of those in the circle of the Second Viennese School, including Theodor W. Adorno, Heinrich Jalowetz, and Ernst Krenek. As an exponent of atonality and twelve-tone technique, Webern exerted influence on contemporaries Luigi Dallapiccola, Krenek, and even Schoenberg himself. As a tutor, Webern guided and variously influenced Arnold Elston, Frederick Dorian (Friederich Deutsch), , , Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Philipp Herschkowitz, René Leibowitz, Humphrey Searle, Leopold Spinner, and Stefan Wolpe. Webern's music was among the most radical of its milieu, both in its concision and in its rigorous and resolute apprehension of twelve-tone technique. His innovations in schematic organization of pitch, rhythm, register, timbre, dynamics, articulation, and melodic contour; his eagerness to redefine imitative contrapuntal techniques such as canon and fugue; and his inclination toward athematicism, abstraction, and lyricism all greatly informed and oriented intra- and post-war European, typically serial or avant-garde composers such as Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, Henri Pousseur, and György Ligeti. In the United States, meanwhile, his music attracted the interest of Elliott Carter, whose critical ambivalence was marked by a certain enthusiasm nonetheless; Milton Babbitt, who ultimately derived more inspiration from Schoenberg's twelve-tone practice than that of Webern; and Igor Stravinsky, to whom it was very fruitfully reintroduced by Robert Craft. During and shortly after the post-war period, then, Webern was posthumously received with attention first diverted from his sociocultural upbringing and surroundings and, moreover, focused in a direction apparently antithetical to his participation in German Romanticism and Expressionism. A richer understanding of Webern began to emerge in the later half of the 20th century, notably in the work of scholars Kathryn Bailey, Julian Johnson, Felix Meyer, Anne Shreffler, as archivists and biographers (most importantly Hans and Rosaleen Moldenhauer) gained access to sketches, letters, lectures, audio recordings, and other articles of or associated with Webern's estate. Biography Youth, education, and other early experiences in Austria-Hungary Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern was born in Vienna, then in Austria-Hungary. He was the only surviving son of Carl von Webern, a civil servant, and Amalie (née Geer) who was a competent pianist and accomplished singer—possibly the only obvious source of the future composer's talent. He never used his middle names and dropped the "von" in 1918 as directed by the Austrian government's reforms after World War I. He lived in Graz and Klagenfurt for much of his youth. But his distinct and lasting sense of Heimat was shaped by readings of Peter Rosegger; and moreover by frequent and extended retreats with his parents, sisters, and cousins to his family's country estate, the Preglhof, which Webern's father had inherited upon the death of Webern's grandfather in 1889. Webern memorialized the Preglhof in a diary poem "An der Preglhof" and in the tone poem Im Sommerwind (1904), both after Bruno Wille's idyll. Once Webern's father sold the estate in 1912, Webern referred to it nostalgically as a "lost paradise". He continued to revisit the Preglhof, the family cemetery in Schwabegg, and the surrounding landscape for the rest of his life; and he clearly associated the area, which he took as his home, very closely with the memory of his mother Amelie, who had died in 1906 and whose loss also profoundly affected Webern for decades. Art historian Ernst Dietz, Webern's cousin and at that time a student at Graz, may have introduced Webern to the work of the painters Arnold Böcklin and Giovanni Segantini, whom Webern came to admire. Segantini's work was a likely inspiration for Webern's 1905 single-movement string quartet. In 1902, Webern began attending classes at Vienna University. There he studied musicology with Guido Adler, writing his thesis on the Choralis Constantinus of Heinrich Isaac. This interest in early music would greatly influence his compositional technique in later years, especially in terms of his use of palindromic form on both the micro- and macro-scale and the economical use of musical materials. With the help of friends and colleagues, Webern later began working peripatetically as a conductor and musical coach in various towns and cities, among them Ischl, Teplitz (now Teplice, Czech Republic), Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland), and Prague, before finally moving back to Vienna. As might be expected, the young Webern was enthusiastic about the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert ("so genuinely Viennese"), Hugo Wolf, and Richard Wagner, visiting Bayreuth in 1902. He also enjoyed the music of Hector Berlioz and Georges Bizet. In 1904, he reportedly stormed out of a meeting with Hans Pfitzner, from whom he was seeking instruction, when the latter criticized Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. In 1908, Webern wrote rapturously to Schoenberg about Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande. He conducted some of Debussy's music in 1911. It may have been at Guido Adler's advice that he paid Schoenberg for composition lessons. Webern progressed quickly under Schoenberg's tutelage, publishing his Passacaglia, Op. 1, as his graduation piece in 1908. He also met Berg, then another of Schoenberg's pupils. These two relationships would be the most important in his life in shaping his own musical direction. Some of Webern's earlier thoughts (from 1903) are as amusing as they might be surprising: besides describing some of Alexander Scriabin's music as "languishing junk," he wrote of Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 4 that it was "boring," that Carl Maria von Weber's Konzertstück in F minor was passé, and that he found Johannes Brahms's Symphony No. 3 (which struck Eduard Hanslick as "artistically the most nearly perfect") "cold and without particular inspiration, ... badly orchestrated—grey on grey." These youthful impressions are in some, but not complete or altogether necessarily very significant, contrast to the considered opinions of Webern in the 1930s, by then a decided nationalist who, as Roland Leich described, "lectured at some length on the utter supremacy of German music, emphasizing that leading composers of other lands are but pale reflections of Germanic masters: Berlioz a French Beethoven, Tchaikovsky a Russian Schumann, Elgar an English Mendelssohn, etc." After all, even when young, Webern had described one of Alexander Glazunov's symphonies as "not particularly Russian" (in contrast to some of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's music at the same all-Russian concert) in the same passage as he praised it. Red Vienna in the First Austrian Republic From 1918 to 1921, Webern helped organize and operate the Society for Private Musical Performances, which gave concerts of then-recent or -new music by Béla Bartók, Berg, Ferruccio Busoni, Debussy, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Mahler, Maurice Ravel, Max Reger, Erik Satie, Strauss, Stravinsky, and Webern himself. After their Society performances in 1919 (and while working on his own Opp. 14–15), Webern wrote to Berg that Stravinsky's Berceuses du chat "[move] me completely beyond belief," describing them as "indescribably touching," and that Stravinsky's Pribaoutki were "something really glorious." After the dissolution of the Society amid catastrophic hyperinflation in 1921, Webern conducted the Vienna Workers' Symphony Orchestra and Chorus from 1922 to 1934. In 1926, Webern noted his voluntary resignation as chorusmaster of the Mödling Men's Choral Society, a paid position, in controversy over his hiring of a Jewish singer, Greta Wilheim, to replace a sick one. Letters document their correspondence in many subsequent years, and she (among others) would in turn provide him with facilities to teach private lessons as a convenience to Webern, his family, and his students. Civil War, Austrofascism, Nazism, and World War II Webern's music, along with that of Berg, Křenek, Schoenberg, and others, was denounced as "cultural Bolshevism" and "degenerate art" by the Nazi Party in Germany, and both publication and performances of it were banned soon after the Anschluss in 1938, although neither did it fare well under the preceding years of Austrofascism. As early as 1933, an Austrian gauleiter on Bayerischer Rundfunk mistakenly and very likely maliciously characterized both Berg and Webern as Jewish composers. As a result of official disapproval throughout the '30s, both found it harder to earn a living; Webern lost a promising conducting career which might have otherwise been more noted and recorded and had to take on work as an editor and proofreader for his publishers, Universal Edition. His family's financial situation deteriorated until, by August 1940, his personal records reflected no monthly income. It was thanks to the Swiss philanthropist Werner Reinhart that Webern was able to attend the festive premiere of his Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30, in Winterthur, Switzerland in 1943. Reinhart invested all the financial and diplomatic means at his disposal to enable Webern to travel to Switzerland. In return for this support, Webern dedicated the work to him. There are different descriptions of Webern's attitude towards Nazism; this is perhaps attributable to its complexity, his internal ambivalence, his prosperity in the preceding years (1918–1934) of post-war Red Vienna in the First Republic of Austria, the subsequently divided political factions of his homeland as represented in his friends and family (from Zionist Schoenberg to his Nazi son Peter), as well as the different contexts in which or audiences to whom his views were expressed. Further insight into Webern's attitudes comes with the realization that Nazism itself was deeply multifaceted, marked "not [by] a coherent doctrine or body of systemically interrelated ideas, but rather [by] a vaguer worldview made up of a number of prejudices with varied appeals to different audiences which could scarcely be dignified with the term 'ideology'". There is, moreover, significant political complexity to be treated, more than enough to complicate any consideration of individual culpability: it is imperative to note that some Social Democrats viewed the National Socialists as an alternative to the Christian Social Party and later Vaterländische Front in the context of reunification with Germany; for example, Karl Renner, the chancellor who served in both the First (1919–33) and Second (post-1945) Austrian Republics, favored a German Anschluss as an alternative to the then Austrofascist regime, under which Berg, Webern, and the Social Democrats suffered. And Webern's professional circle in Vienna included, besides many Jews, many Social Democrats; for example, for David Josef Bach, a close friend of Schoenberg's as well, Webern conducted many workers' and amateur ensembles. Under the Nazis, some Social Democrats expected, there might be more work and protections for workers and laborers, as well as other social reforms and political stability, if not democracy; Webern may well have hoped to again be able to conduct and to be better able to secure a future for his family. In broad terms, Webern's attitude seems to have first warmed to a degree of characteristic fervor and perhaps only much later, in conjunction with widespread German disillusionment, cooled to Hitler and the Nazis. On the one hand, notes that Webern attacked Nazi cultural policies in private lectures given in 1933, whose hypothetical publication "would have exposed Webern to serious consequences" later. On the other, some private correspondence attests to his Nazi sympathies. Webern's patriotism led him to endorse the Nazi regime in a series of letters to Joseph Hueber, who was serving in the army and himself held such views. Webern described Hitler on 2 May 1940, as "this unique man" who created "the new state" of Germany; thus Alex Ross characterizes him as "an unashamed Hitler enthusiast". Violinist Louis Krasner painted not a sentimental portrait but one imbued with a wealth of factual and personal detail for its publication in 1987, describing Webern as clearly naive and idealistic but not entirely without his wits, shame, or conscience; Krasner carefully contextualizes Webern as a member of Austrian society at the time, one departed by Schoenberg and one in which the already pro-Nazi Vienna Philharmonic had even refused to play the late Berg's Violin Concerto. As Krasner vividly recalled, he and Webern were visiting at the latter's home in Maria Enzersdorf, Mödling when the Nazis invaded Austria; Webern, uncannily seeming to anticipate the timing down to 4 o'clock in the afternoon, turned on the radio to hear this news and immediately warned Krasner, urging him to flee, whereupon he did (first to Vienna). Whether this was for Krasner's safety or to save Webern the embarrassment of Krasner's presence during a time of possible celebration in the pro-Nazi Webern family (or indeed in most of pro-Nazi Mödling, by Krasner's description as well as one even more vivid of Arnold Greissle-Schönberg), Krasner was ambivalent and uncertain, withholding judgment. Only later did Krasner himself realize how self-admittedly "foolhardy" he had been and in what danger he had placed himself, revealing an ignorance perhaps shared by Webern. Krasner had even revisited frequently, hoping to convince friends (e.g., Schoenberg's daughter Gertrude and her husband Felix Greissle) to emigrate before time ran out. Krasner eventually left more permanently, after a 1941 incident wherein he felt only his US passport saved him from both locals and police. Krasner retold from a story related to him in long discussion with Schoenberg's son Görgi, a Jew who remained in Vienna during the war, that the Weberns, much to their risk and credit, had provided Görgi and his family with food and shelter toward the end of the war at the Weberns' home in a Mödling apartment belonging to their son-in-law. Görgi and his family were left behind for their safety when Webern fled on foot with his family to Mittersill, about 75 km. away, for safety of their own in light of the coming Russian invasion; Amalie, one of Webern's daughters, wrote of '17 persons pressed together in the smallest possible space' upon their arrival. Ironically, the Russians pronounced Görgi a "Nazi spy" when he was discovered due to the Nazi munitions and propaganda in the Weberns' basement store-room. Görgi is said to have saved himself from execution by protesting and drawing attention to his clothes, sewn as specified by the Nazis with the yellow Star of David. He continued to live in this apartment with this family until 1969. Webern is also known to have aided Josef Polnauer, a Jewish friend who, as an albino, managed to largely escape the Nazis' attention and later edit a publication of Webern's correspondence from this time with Hildegard Jone, Webern's then lyricist and collaborator, and her husband, sculptor Josef Humplik. However, Krasner was particularly troubled by a 1936 conversation with Webern about the Jews, in which Webern expressed his vague but unambiguously anti-Semitic opinion that "Even Schoenberg, had he not been a Jew, would have been quite different!" Krasner remembered, perhaps with the benefit of hindsight at the time (1987), that "Jews ... were at the center of the difficulty. Those who wanted to, put the blame for all this calamity, for all this depraved condition, on the Jews who had brought it with them—along with a lot of radical ideas—from the East. People blamed the Jews for their financial worries. The Jews were, at the same time, the poverty-stricken people who came with nothing, and the capitalists who controlled everything." When once asked by Schoenberg about his feelings toward the Nazis, Webern nonetheless sought to allay Schoenberg's concerns; similarly, when in 1938 Eduard Steuermann asked Krasner about rumors of Webern's possible "interest in and devotion to the Nazis" on Schoenberg's behalf, Krasner lied by denying the rumors categorically and entirely. As a result, Schoenberg's Violin Concerto of 1934 (or 1935)–36 continued to bear a dedication to Webern, although whittled down as a result of Schoenberg's continuing suspicions or, indeed, on Webern's behalf, i.e., to protect Webern from further Nazi suspicion and persecution. Schoenberg's tone was ultimately conciliatory in remembrance of both Berg and Webern in 1947: "Let us—for the moment at least—forget all that might have at one time divided us ... even if those who tried might have succeeded in confounding us." Musicologist Richard Taruskin describes Webern accurately if vaguely as a pan-German nationalist but then goes much further in claiming specifically that Webern joyfully welcomed the Nazis with the 1938 Anschluss, at best extrapolating from the account of his cited source Krasner and at worst exaggerating or distorting it, as well as describing it sardonically as "heart-breaking". Taruskin's authority on this delicate issue must be credited, if at all, then only with the significant limitations that he has been polemical in general and hostile in particular to the Second Viennese School, of whom Webern is often considered the most extreme and difficult (i.e., the least accessible). New Complexity composer and performer Franklin Cox not only faults Taruskin as an inaccurate and unreliable historian but also critiques Taruskin as an "ideologist of tonal restoration" (musicologist Martin Kaltenecker similarly refers to the "Restoration of the 1980s," but he also describes a paradigm shift from structure to perception). Taruskin's "reactionary historicist" project, Cox argues, stands in opposition to that of the Second Viennese School, viz. the "progressivist historicist" emancipation of the dissonance. Taruskin himself admits to having acquired a "dubious reputation" on the Second Viennese School and notes that he has been described in his work on Webern as "coming, like Shakespeare's Marc Anthony, 'to bury Webern, not to praise him'". In contradistinction to Taruskin's methods and pronouncements, musicologist Pamela M. Potter advises that "[i]t is important to consider all the scholarship on musical life in the Third Reich that, taken together, reveals the complexity of the day-to-day existence of musicians and composers", as "[i]t seems inevitable that debates about the political culpability of individuals will persist, especially if the stakes remain so high for composers, for whom an up or down vote can determine inclusion in the canon". In this vein, it might be noted in relation to Taruskin's claim that Webern wrote to friends (husband and wife Josef Humplik and Hildegard Jone) on the day of Anschluss not to invite celebration or to observe developments but to be left alone: "I am totally immersed in my work [composing] and cannot, cannot be disturbed"; Krasner's presence could have been a disturbance to Webern for this reason, and musicologist Kathryn Bailey speculates that this may indeed be why he was rushed off by Webern. Webern's 1944–1945 correspondence is strewn with references to bombings, deaths, destruction, privation, and the disintegration of local order; but also noted are the births of several grandchildren. At the age of sixty (i.e., in Dec. 1943), Webern writes that he is living in a barrack away from home and working from 6 am to 5 pm, compelled by the state in a time of war to serve as an air-raid protection police officer. On 3 March 1945, news was relayed to Webern that his only son, Peter, died on 14 February of wounds suffered in a strafing attack on a military train two days earlier. Death in Allied-administered Austria On 15 September 1945, back at his home during the Allied occupation of Austria, Webern was shot and killed by an American Army soldier following the arrest of his son-in-law for black market activities. This incident occurred when, three-quarters of an hour before a curfew was to have gone into effect, he stepped outside the house so as not to disturb his sleeping grandchildren, to enjoy a few draws on a cigar given to him that evening by his son-in-law. The soldier responsible for his death was U. S. Army cook PFC Raymond Norwood Bell of North Carolina, who was overcome by remorse and died of alcoholism in 1955. Webern's wife, Wilhelmine Mörtl, died in 1949. They had three daughters and a son. Music Webern's compositions are concise, distilled, and select; just thirty-one of his compositions were published in his lifetime, and when Pierre Boulez later oversaw a project to record all of his compositions, including some of those without opus numbers, the results fit on just six CDs. Although Webern's music changed over time, as is often the case over a long career, it is typified by very spartan textures, in which every note can be clearly heard; carefully chosen timbres, often resulting in very detailed instructions to the performers and use of extended instrumental techniques (flutter tonguing, col legno, and so on); wide-ranging melodic lines, often with leaps greater than an octave; and brevity: the Six Bagatelles for string quartet (1913), for instance, last about three minutes in total. Formative juvenilia and emergence from study, Opp. 1–2, 1899–1908 Webern published little of his early work in particular; Webern was characteristically meticulous and revised extensively. Many juvenilia remained unknown until the work and findings of the Moldenhauers in the 1960s, effectively obscuring and undermining formative facets of Webern's musical identity, highly significant even more so in the case of an innovator whose music was crucially marked by rapid stylistic shifts. Thus when Boulez first oversaw a project to record "all" of Webern's music, not including the juvenilia, the results fit on three rather than six CDs. Webern's earliest works consist primarily of lieder, the genre that most testifies to his roots in Romanticism, specifically German Romanticism; one in which the music yields brief but explicit, potent, and spoken meaning manifested only latently or programmatically in purely instrumental genres; one marked by significant intimacy and lyricism; and one which often associates nature, especially landscapes, with themes of homesickness, solace, wistful yearning, distance, utopia, and belonging. Robert Schumann's "Mondnacht" is an iconic example; Eichendorff, whose lyric poetry inspired it, is not far removed from the poets (e.g., Richard Dehmel, Gustav Falke, Theodor Storm) whose work inspired Webern and his contemporaries Alban Berg, Max Reger, Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf, and Alexander Zemlinsky. Wolf's Mörike-Lieder were especially influential on Webern's efforts from this period. But well beyond these lieder alone, all of Webern's music may be said to possess such concerns and qualities, as is evident from his sketches, albeit in an increasingly symbolic, abstract, spare, introverted, and idealized manner. Webern's first piece after completing his studies with Schoenberg was the Passacaglia for orchestra (1908). Harmonically, it is a step forward into a more advanced language, and the orchestration is somewhat more distinctive than his earlier orchestral work. However, it bears little relation to the fully mature works he is best known for today. One element that is typical is the form itself: the passacaglia is a form which dates back to the 17th century, and a distinguishing feature of Webern's later work was to be the use of traditional compositional techniques (especially canons) and forms (the Symphony, the Concerto, the String Trio, and String Quartet, and the piano and orchestral Variations) in a modern harmonic and melodic language. Atonality, lieder, and aphorism, Opp. 3–16 and Tot, 1908–1924 For a number of years, Webern wrote pieces which were freely atonal, much in the style of Schoenberg's early atonal works. Indeed, so in lockstep with Schoenberg was Webern for much of his artistic development that Schoenberg in 1951 wrote that he sometimes no longer knew who he was, Webern had followed so well in his footsteps and shadow, occasionally outdoing or stepping ahead of Schoenberg in execution of Schoenberg's own or their shared ideas. There are, however, important cases where Webern may have even more profoundly influenced Schoenberg. Haimo marks the swift, radical influence in 1909 of Webern's novel and arresting Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5, on Schoenberg's subsequent piano piece Op. 11, No. 3; Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16; and monodrama Erwartung, Op. 17. This shift is distinctly pronounced in a letter Schoenberg wrote to Busoni, which describes a rather Webernian aesthetic: In 1949, Schoenberg still remembered being "intoxicated by the enthusiasm of having freed music from the shackles of tonality" and believing with his pupils "that now music could renounce motivic features and remain coherent and comprehensible nonetheless". But with Opp. 18–20, Schoenberg turned back and revived old techniques, very self-consciously returning to and transforming tradition by the concluding songs of Pierrot lunaire (1912), Op. 21, with, e.g., intricately interrelated canons in "Der Mondfleck", clear waltz rhythms in "Serenade", a barcarolle ("Heimfahrt"), triadic harmony throughout "O alter Duft". Pierrot was received by Webern as a direction for the composition of his own Opp. 14–16, most of all with respect to contrapuntal procedures (and to a lesser degree with respect to the diverse and innovative textural treatment among instruments in increasingly smaller ensembles). "How much I owe to your Pierrot", he wrote Schoenberg upon completing a setting of Georg Trakl's "Abendland III", Op. 14, No. 4, in which, rather unusually for Webern, there is no silence or rest until a pause at the concluding gesture. Indeed, a recurring theme of Webern's World War I settings is that of the wanderer, estranged or lost and seeking return to or at least retrieval from an earlier time and place; and of some fifty-six songs on which Webern worked 1914–1926, he ultimately finished and later published only thirty-two set in order as Opp. 12–19. This wartime theme of wandering in search of home ties in with two intricately involved concerns more broadly evident in Webern's work: first, the death and memory of members of Webern's family, especially his mother but also including his father and a nephew; and second, Webern's broad and complex sense of rural and spiritual Heimat. Their importance is marked by Webern's stage play, Tot (October 1913), which, over the course of six alpine scenes of reflection and self-consolation, draws on Emanuel Swedenborg's notion of correspondence to relate and to unite the two concerns, the first embodied but otherworldly and the second concrete if increasingly abstracted and idealized. The similarities between Tot and Webern's music are striking. In an often programmatic or cinematic fashion, Webern ordered his published movements, themselves dramatic or visual tableaux with melodies that frequently begin and end on weak beats or else settle into ostinati or the background. In them, tonality – useful for communicating direction and narrative in programmatic pieces – becomes more tenuous, fragmented, static, symbolic, and visual or spatial in function, thus mirroring the concerns and topics, explicit or implicit, of Webern's music and his selections for it from the poetry of Stefan George and later Georg Trakl. Webern's dynamics, orchestration, and timbre are given so as to produce a fragile, intimate, and often novel sound, despite distinctly recalling Mahler, not infrequently bordering on silence at a typical . In some cases, Webern's choice of instrument in particular functions to represent or to allude to a female voice (e.g., the use of solo violin), to inward or outward luminosity or darkness (e.g., the use of the entire range of register within the ensemble; registral compression and expansion; the use of celesta, harp, and glockenspiel; the use of harmonics and sul ponticello), or to angels and heaven (e.g., the use of harp and trumpet in the circling ostinati of Op. 6, No. 5, and winding to conclusion at the very end of Op. 15, No. 5). Technical consolidation and formal coherence and expansion, Opp. 17–31, 1924–1943 With the Drei Volkstexte (1925), Op. 17, Webern used Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique for the first time, and all his subsequent works used this technique. The String Trio (1926–1927), Op. 20, was both the first purely instrumental work using the twelve-tone technique (the other pieces were songs) and the first cast in a traditional musical form. Webern's music, like that of both Brahms and Schoenberg, is marked by its emphasis on counterpoint and formal considerations; and Webern's commitment to systematic pitch organization in the twelve-tone method is inseparable from this prior commitment. Webern's tone rows are often arranged to take advantage of internal symmetries; for example, a twelve-tone row may be divisible into four groups of three pitches which are variations, such as inversions and retrogrades, of each other, thus creating invariance. This gives Webern's work considerable motivic unity, although this is often obscured by the fragmentation of the melodic lines. This fragmentation occurs through octave displacement (using intervals greater than an octave) and by moving the line rapidly from instrument to instrument in a technique referred to as Klangfarbenmelodie. Arrangements and orchestrations In his youth (1903), Webern orchestrated at least five of Franz Schubert's various lieder, giving the piano accompaniment to an appropriately Schubertian orchestra of strings and pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horns: "Der Vollmond Strahlt auf Bergeshöhn" (the Romanze from Rosamunde), "Tränenregen" (from Die schöne Müllerin), "Der Wegweiser" (from Winterreise), "Du bist die Ruh", and "Ihr Bild"; in 1934, he did the same for Schubert's six Deutsche Tänze (German Dances) of 1824. For Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performances in 1921, Webern arranged, among other things, the 1888 Schatz-Walzer (Treasure Waltz) of Johann Strauss II's Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron) for string quartet, harmonium, and piano. In 1924, Webern arranged Franz Liszt's Arbeiterchor (Workers' Chorus, c. 1847–1848) for bass solo, mixed chorus, and large orchestra; it was premièred for the first time in any form on 13 and 14 March 1925, with Webern conducting the first full-length concert of the Austrian Association of Workers Choir. A review in the Amtliche Wiener Zeitung (28 March 1925) read "neu in jedem Sinne, frisch, unverbraucht, durch ihn zieht die Jugend, die Freude" ("new in every respect, fresh, vital, pervaded by youth and joy"). The text, in English translation, reads in part: "Let us have the adorned spades and scoops,/ Come along all, who wield a sword or pen,/ Come here ye, industrious, brave and strong/ All who create things great or small." Liszt, initially inspired by his revolutionary countrymen, had left it in manuscript at publisher 's discretion. Performance style Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music; this is evidenced by anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tänze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction, many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors and associations everywhere throughout his sketches. As both a composer and conductor, he was one of many (e.g., Wilhelm Furtwängler, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Hermann Scherchen) in a contemporaneous tradition of conscientiously and non-literally handling notated musical figures, phrases, and even entire scores so as to maximize expressivity in performance and to cultivate audience engagement and understanding. This aspect of Webern's work had been typically missed in his immediate post-war reception, however, even as it may radically affect the music's reception. For example, Boulez's "complete" recording of Webern's music yielded more to this aesthetic the second time after largely missing it the first; but Eliahu Inbal's rendition of Webern's Symphony, Op. 21 with the hr-Sinfonieorchester is still far more within the spirit of the late Romantic performance tradition (which Webern seemingly intended for his music), nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work. Legacy, influence, and posthumous reception Webern's music began to be performed more widely in the 1920s; by the mid-1940s, its effect was decisive on many composers, even as far-flung as John Cage. In part because Webern had largely remained the most obscure and arcane composer of the Second Viennese School during his own lifetime, interest in Webern's music increased after World War II as it came to represent a universally or generally valid, systematic, and compellingly logical model of new composition, with his œuvre acquiring what Alex Ross calls "a saintly, visionary aura". When Webern's Piano Variations were performed at Darmstadt in 1948, young composers listened in a quasi-religious trance. In 1955, the second issue of Eimert and Stockhausen's journal Die Reihe was devoted to Webern's œuvre, and in 1960 his lectures were published by Universal Edition. Meanwhile, Webern's characteristically passionate pan-German nationalism and censurable, sordid political sympathies (however naive or delusional and whether ever dispelled or faltered) were not widely known or went unmentioned; perhaps in some part due to his personal and political associations before the German Reich, his degradation and mistreatment under it, and his fate immediately after the war. Significantly as relates to his reception, Webern never compromised his artistic identity and values, as Stravinsky was later to note. It has been suggested that the early 1950s' serialists' fascination with Webern was concerned not with his music as such so much as enabled by its concision and some its apparent plainness in the score, thereby facilitating musical analysis; indeed, composer Gottfried Michael Koenig speculates on the basis of his personal experience that since Webern's scores represented such a highly concentrated source, they may have been considered the better for didactic purposes than those of other composers. Composer thus criticized the approach of early serialists to Webern's music as reductive and narrowly focused on some of Webern's apparent methods rather than on his music more generally, especially neglecting timbre in their typical selection of Opp. 27–28. Composer Karel Goeyvaerts recalled that at least on first impression, the sound of Webern's music reminded him of "a Mondrian canvas," explaining that "things of which I had acquired an extremely intimate knowledge, came across as crude and unfinished when seen in reality." Expressing a related opinion, noted contemporaneous German music critic and contributor to Die Reihe, Wolf-Eberhard von Lewinski wrote in the Darmstädter Tagblatt (3 September 1959) that some of the later and more radical music at Darmstadt was "acoustically absurd [if] visually amusing"; several days later, one of his articles in the Der Kurier was similarly headlined "Meager modern music—only interesting to look at." To composers in the then Communist Bloc in Central and Eastern Europe, Webern's music and its techniques promised an exciting, unique, and challenging alternative to socialist realism, with its perceived tendency to kitsch and its nationalist and traditionalist overtones. Whereas Berg's Lyric Suite may have influenced the third and fourth string quartets of Bartók in 1927 via an ISCM concert (in which Bartók himself performed his own Piano Sonata), Webern's influence on later composers from what became the Hungarian People's Republic and from other countries behind the Iron Curtain was sometimes mediated or obstructed by politics. As Ligeti explained to a student in 1970, "In countries where there exists a certain isolation, in Eastern Europe, one cannot obtain correct information. One is cut off from the circulation of blood." Nonetheless, Webern's work was a seminal influence on that of both Endre Szervánszky and György Kurtág following the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, as well as on Ligeti himself. Later still and farther east, Sofia Gubaidulina, for whom music was an escape from the socio-political atmosphere of post-Stalinist Soviet Russia, cited the influence of both J. S. Bach and Webern in particular. Recordings by Webern Webern conducts "Berg – Violin Concerto" Webern conducts his arrangement of Schubert's German Dances See also List of Austrians in music Notes References Bibliography Further reading Ahrend, Thomas, and Stefan Münnich. 2018. Anton Webern. Oxford Bibliographies in Music. Oxford University Press. .}}{{subscription Ahrend, Thomas, and Matthias Schmidt (eds.). 2015. Der junge Webern. Texte und Kontexte. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 2b. Wien: Lafite. . Ahrend, Thomas, and Matthias Schmidt (eds.). 2016. Webern-Philologien. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 3. Wien: Lafite. . Bailey, Kathryn. 1991. The Twelve-Note Music of Anton Webern: Old Forms in a New Language. Music in the Twentieth Century 2. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. (cloth) (pbk. ed., 2006). Cavallotti, Pietro, and Simon Obert, and Rainer Schmusch (eds.). 2019. Neue Perspektiven. Anton Webern und das Komponieren im 20. Jahrhundert. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 4. Wien: Lafite. . Ewen, David. 1971. "Anton Webern (1883–1945)". In Composers of Tomorrow's Music, by David Ewen, 66–77. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. . Forte, Allen. 1998. The Atonal Music of Anton Webern New Haven: Yale University Press. . Galliari, Alain. 2007. "Anton von Webern". Paris: Fayard. . Kröpfl, Monika, and Simon Obert (eds.). 2015. Der junge Webern. Künstlerische Orientierungen in Wien nach 1900. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 2a. Wien: Lafite. . Mead, Andrew. 1993. "Webern, Tradition, and 'Composing with Twelve Tones'". Music Theory Spectrum 15, no. 2:173–204. Moldenhauer, Hans. 1966. Anton von Webern Perspectives. Edited by Demar Irvine, with an introductory interview with Igor Stravinsky. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Needham, Alex. 2012. Brahms Piano Piece to Get Its Premiere 159 Years After Its Creation. The Guardian (Thursday 12 January). Noller, Joachim. 1990. "Bedeutungsstrukturen: zu Anton Weberns 'alpinen' Programmen". Neue Zeitschrift für Musik151, no. 9 (September): 12–18. Obert, Simon (ed.). 2012. Wechselnde Erscheinung. Sechs Perspektiven auf Anton Weberns sechste Bagatelle. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 1. Wien: Lafite. . Perle, George. 1991. Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. Sixth ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Peyser, Joan. 2007. To Boulez and Beyond. Scarecrow Press. . Rockwell, John. 1983. All American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century. New York: Alfred Knopf. Reprinted New York: Da Capo Press, 1997. , . Tsang, Lee. 2002. "The Atonal Music of Anton Webern (1998) by Allen Forte". Music Analysis 21, no. 3 (October): 417–427. Wildgans, Friedrich. 1966. Anton Webern. Translated by Edith Temple Roberts and Humphrey Searle. Introduction and notes by Humphrey Searle. New York: October House. External links Anton Webern biography and works on the UE website (publisher) Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe (Complete Edition) 1883 births 1945 deaths Austrian Roman Catholics 20th-century classical composers Deaths by firearm in Austria Expressionist music Twelve-tone and serial composers Second Viennese School University of Vienna alumni Composers from Vienna Accidental deaths in Austria Pupils of Arnold Schoenberg Austrian male classical composers Austrian classical composers String quartet composers 20th-century Austrian composers 20th-century Austrian male musicians Firearm accident victims
false
[ "Sonic Temple Art & Music Festival is a rock festival currently held in Columbus, Ohio, United States and is produced by Danny Wimmer Presents.\n\nHistory\n\nIn 2018 it was announced that Rock on the Range would be replaced by Danny Wimmer Presents as the Sonic Temple Art & Music Festival. The inaugural festival was held in May 2019 with sold-out crowds of 120,000.\n\nIn December 2019, the full lineup for Sonic Temple 2020 was revealed. Metallica were to headline both Friday and Saturday night, with Slipknot headlining on Saturday. Other performers were to include Deftones, Bring Me the Horizon, Evanescence, Sublime with Rome, Rancid, Dropkick Murphys, Cypress Hill, Pennywise, Royal Blood, The Pretty Reckless, Alter Bridge, Anthrax, Flatbush Zombies, Pop Evil, Hellyeah, Ghostemane, Suicidal Tendencies, Testament, Dance Gavin Dance, Ice Nine Kills, Sleeping with Sirens, The Darkness, Knocked Loose, Code Orange, Power Trip, Saint Asonia, Dirty Honey, Jinjer, City Morgue, Bones UK, Airbourne, Fire from the Gods, Dinosaur Pile-Up, Des Rocs, Counterfeit, Crobot, Cherry Bomb, DED, Goodbye June, Brutus, 3Teeth, BRKN Love, Killstation, Brass Against, Crown Lands, Ego Kill Talent, Dregg, Bloodywood, and Zero 9:36, with more to have been announced.\n\nIn February 2020, it was announced that Metallica would be replaced as headliners by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Tool, following frontman James Hetfield's entrance into a rehabilitation program for substance abuse. The following month, the festival was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In February 2021, it was announced it would once again be cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with plans to return in 2022.\n\nEvents\n\n2019 \n\nMonster Energy Stadium Stage:\n System of a Down\n Ghost\n Halestorm\n Parkway Drive\n Beartooth\n Avatar\n Badflower\n\nEcho Stage:\n Meshuggah\n Black Label Society\n Bad Wolves\n Zeal & Ardor\n Wage War\n SHVPES\n The Jacks\n\nWave Stage:\n Tom Morello\n Pussy Riot\n Ho99o99\n Cleopatrick\n Hands Like Houses\n Radattack\n\nSiriusXM Comedy & Spoken Word Tent:\n Henry Rollins\n Tom Morello\n Shapel Lacy\n Nadya\n\nMonster Energy Stadium Stage:\n Disturbed\n Papa Roach\n Lamb of God\n In This Moment\n Gojira\n Fever 333\n Black Coffee\n\nEcho Stage:\n The Cult\n Killswitch Engage\n Architects\n The Black Dahlia Murder\n While She Sleeps\n Evan Konrad\n The Plot in You\n\nWave Stage:\n Action Bronson (did not perform due to an \"unforeseen knee injury\")\n Mark Lanegan Band\n Don Broco\n Movements\n Boston Manor\n No1Cares\n\nSiriusXM Comedy & Spoken Word Tent:\n Andrew Dice Clay\n Eleanor Kerrigan\n Mark Normand\n Craig Grass\n\nMonster Energy Stadium Stage:\n Foo Fighters\n Bring Me the Horizon (did not perform due to high winds)\n Chevelle (did not perform due to high winds)\n The Distillers (did not perform due to high winds)\n The Struts\n The Glorious Sons\n Amigo the Devil\n\nEcho Stage:\n Joan Jett and the Blackhearts\n The Hives (performance ended early due to high winds)\n The Interrupters\n Yungblud\n Palaye Royale\n Dirty Honey\n Teenage Wrist\n\nWave Stage:\n Scars on Broadway (did not perform due to high winds)\n Refused (did not perform due to high winds)\n Black Pistol Fire (did not perform due to high winds)\n Basement (did not perform due to high winds)\n Scarlxrd (did not perform due to high winds)\n Demob Happy (did not perform due to high winds)\n\nSiriusXM Comedy & Spoken Word Tent:\n Pauly Shore (did not perform due to high winds)\n Carmen Lynch (did not perform due to high winds)\n Joe Deuce (did not perform due to high winds)\n Bill Squire (did not perform due to high winds)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\nHeavy metal festivals in the United States\nMusic festivals established in 2019\nMusic festivals in Ohio\nRock festivals in the United States", "The No Sound Without Silence Tour is the third arena tour by Irish pop rock band The Script. Launched in support of their fourth studio album No Sound Without Silence (2014), the tour began in Tokyo on 16 January 2015 and visited Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and Oceania. The opening acts were American singer Phillip Phillips for the South African dates, and English singer Tinie Tempah for the European dates. Pharrell Williams served as a co-headliner for the Croke Park concert on 20 June 2015.\n\nOpening acts\nColton Avery (Europe, North America, Australia, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia)\nMary Lambert (North America)\nPhillip Phillips (South Africa)\nSilent Sanctuary (Philippines)\nTinie Tempah (Europe)\nPharrell Williams (Dublin)\nThe Wailers (Dublin)\nThe Sam Willows (Singapore)\nKensington (Band) (Europe)\n\nSetlist\nThis setlist is based on previous performances of the tour.\n\n \"Paint the Town Green\"\n \"Hail Rain or Sunshine\"\n \"Breakeven\"\n \"Before the Worst\"\n \"Superheroes\"\n \"We Cry\"\n \"If You Could See Me Now\"\n \"Man on a Wire\"\n \"Nothing\"\n \"Good Ol' Days\"\n \"Never Seen Anything (Quite Like You)\"\n \"The Man Who Can't Be Moved\"\n \"You Won't Feel A Thing\"\n \"It's Not Right For You\"\n \"Six Degrees of Separation\"\n \"The Energy Never Dies\"\n \"For the First Time\"\n \"No Good in Goodbye\"\n \"Hall of Fame\"\n\nAdditional information\nDuring the performance in Sheffield, The Script didn't perform \"We Cry\" due to a fan collapsing. Danny called for Paramedic to check on her, she was fine and they carried on.\n\nDuring the performance in Barcelona, The Script didn't perform \"The End Where I Begin\" or \"Nothing\". They also did not perform \"Six Degrees Of Separation\" and \"It's Not Right For You\".\n\nDuring the performance in Oakland, The Script didn't perform \"The End Where I Begin\", \"We Cry\", or \"Six Degrees of Separation\".\n\nDuring the performance in Toronto, The Script did not perform \"The End Where I Begin\" and \"Six Degrees of Separation\".\n\nDuring the performance im Hamburg, The Script did not perform \"Nothing\" and \"Never Seen Anything (Quite Like You)\".\n\nTour dates\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\n2015 concert tours\nThe Script concert tours" ]
[ "Anton Webern", "Performance style", "What was Webern's style like?", "Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music;", "What was he best known for?", "extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction,", "What is his most famous recording?", "I don't know.", "Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?", "many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors", "What types of markings are in his scores?", "anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze", "Does he add anything else to his music?", "nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work.", "How many movements does his music have?", "I don't know.", "Where did he perform?", "the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks" ]
C_1951dee9c9e740108b2e390bd3a0eac7_0
What else is he known for?
9
What else is Anton Webern known for aside from his performance style?
Anton Webern
Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music; this is evidenced by anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tanze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction, many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors and associations everywhere throughout his sketches. As both a composer and conductor he was one of many (e.g., Wilhelm Furtwangler, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Hermann Scherchen) in a contemporaneous tradition of conscientiously and non-literally handling notated musical figures, phrases, and even entire scores so as to maximize expressivity in performance and to cultivate audience engagement and understanding. This aspect of Webern's work had been typically missed in his immediate post-war reception, however, even as it may radically affect the music's reception. For example, Boulez's "complete" recording of Webern's music yielded more to this aesthetic the second time after largely missing it the first; but Eliahu Inbal's rendition of Webern's symphony with the hr-Sinfonieorchester is still far more within the spirit of the late Romantic performance tradition (which Webern seemingly intended for his music), nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work. Gunter Wand's 1966 recording of the Cantata No. 1 (1938-40), op. 29, with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks et al., may likewise be contrasted with both of Boulez's renditions. CANNOTANSWER
Webern's symphony with the hr-Sinfonieorchester is still far more within the spirit of the late Romantic performance tradition
Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), known as simply Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor. Along with his mentor Arnold Schoenberg and his colleague Alban Berg, Webern was in the core of those in the circle of the Second Viennese School, including Theodor W. Adorno, Heinrich Jalowetz, and Ernst Krenek. As an exponent of atonality and twelve-tone technique, Webern exerted influence on contemporaries Luigi Dallapiccola, Krenek, and even Schoenberg himself. As a tutor, Webern guided and variously influenced Arnold Elston, Frederick Dorian (Friederich Deutsch), , , Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Philipp Herschkowitz, René Leibowitz, Humphrey Searle, Leopold Spinner, and Stefan Wolpe. Webern's music was among the most radical of its milieu, both in its concision and in its rigorous and resolute apprehension of twelve-tone technique. His innovations in schematic organization of pitch, rhythm, register, timbre, dynamics, articulation, and melodic contour; his eagerness to redefine imitative contrapuntal techniques such as canon and fugue; and his inclination toward athematicism, abstraction, and lyricism all greatly informed and oriented intra- and post-war European, typically serial or avant-garde composers such as Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, Henri Pousseur, and György Ligeti. In the United States, meanwhile, his music attracted the interest of Elliott Carter, whose critical ambivalence was marked by a certain enthusiasm nonetheless; Milton Babbitt, who ultimately derived more inspiration from Schoenberg's twelve-tone practice than that of Webern; and Igor Stravinsky, to whom it was very fruitfully reintroduced by Robert Craft. During and shortly after the post-war period, then, Webern was posthumously received with attention first diverted from his sociocultural upbringing and surroundings and, moreover, focused in a direction apparently antithetical to his participation in German Romanticism and Expressionism. A richer understanding of Webern began to emerge in the later half of the 20th century, notably in the work of scholars Kathryn Bailey, Julian Johnson, Felix Meyer, Anne Shreffler, as archivists and biographers (most importantly Hans and Rosaleen Moldenhauer) gained access to sketches, letters, lectures, audio recordings, and other articles of or associated with Webern's estate. Biography Youth, education, and other early experiences in Austria-Hungary Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern was born in Vienna, then in Austria-Hungary. He was the only surviving son of Carl von Webern, a civil servant, and Amalie (née Geer) who was a competent pianist and accomplished singer—possibly the only obvious source of the future composer's talent. He never used his middle names and dropped the "von" in 1918 as directed by the Austrian government's reforms after World War I. He lived in Graz and Klagenfurt for much of his youth. But his distinct and lasting sense of Heimat was shaped by readings of Peter Rosegger; and moreover by frequent and extended retreats with his parents, sisters, and cousins to his family's country estate, the Preglhof, which Webern's father had inherited upon the death of Webern's grandfather in 1889. Webern memorialized the Preglhof in a diary poem "An der Preglhof" and in the tone poem Im Sommerwind (1904), both after Bruno Wille's idyll. Once Webern's father sold the estate in 1912, Webern referred to it nostalgically as a "lost paradise". He continued to revisit the Preglhof, the family cemetery in Schwabegg, and the surrounding landscape for the rest of his life; and he clearly associated the area, which he took as his home, very closely with the memory of his mother Amelie, who had died in 1906 and whose loss also profoundly affected Webern for decades. Art historian Ernst Dietz, Webern's cousin and at that time a student at Graz, may have introduced Webern to the work of the painters Arnold Böcklin and Giovanni Segantini, whom Webern came to admire. Segantini's work was a likely inspiration for Webern's 1905 single-movement string quartet. In 1902, Webern began attending classes at Vienna University. There he studied musicology with Guido Adler, writing his thesis on the Choralis Constantinus of Heinrich Isaac. This interest in early music would greatly influence his compositional technique in later years, especially in terms of his use of palindromic form on both the micro- and macro-scale and the economical use of musical materials. With the help of friends and colleagues, Webern later began working peripatetically as a conductor and musical coach in various towns and cities, among them Ischl, Teplitz (now Teplice, Czech Republic), Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland), and Prague, before finally moving back to Vienna. As might be expected, the young Webern was enthusiastic about the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert ("so genuinely Viennese"), Hugo Wolf, and Richard Wagner, visiting Bayreuth in 1902. He also enjoyed the music of Hector Berlioz and Georges Bizet. In 1904, he reportedly stormed out of a meeting with Hans Pfitzner, from whom he was seeking instruction, when the latter criticized Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. In 1908, Webern wrote rapturously to Schoenberg about Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande. He conducted some of Debussy's music in 1911. It may have been at Guido Adler's advice that he paid Schoenberg for composition lessons. Webern progressed quickly under Schoenberg's tutelage, publishing his Passacaglia, Op. 1, as his graduation piece in 1908. He also met Berg, then another of Schoenberg's pupils. These two relationships would be the most important in his life in shaping his own musical direction. Some of Webern's earlier thoughts (from 1903) are as amusing as they might be surprising: besides describing some of Alexander Scriabin's music as "languishing junk," he wrote of Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 4 that it was "boring," that Carl Maria von Weber's Konzertstück in F minor was passé, and that he found Johannes Brahms's Symphony No. 3 (which struck Eduard Hanslick as "artistically the most nearly perfect") "cold and without particular inspiration, ... badly orchestrated—grey on grey." These youthful impressions are in some, but not complete or altogether necessarily very significant, contrast to the considered opinions of Webern in the 1930s, by then a decided nationalist who, as Roland Leich described, "lectured at some length on the utter supremacy of German music, emphasizing that leading composers of other lands are but pale reflections of Germanic masters: Berlioz a French Beethoven, Tchaikovsky a Russian Schumann, Elgar an English Mendelssohn, etc." After all, even when young, Webern had described one of Alexander Glazunov's symphonies as "not particularly Russian" (in contrast to some of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's music at the same all-Russian concert) in the same passage as he praised it. Red Vienna in the First Austrian Republic From 1918 to 1921, Webern helped organize and operate the Society for Private Musical Performances, which gave concerts of then-recent or -new music by Béla Bartók, Berg, Ferruccio Busoni, Debussy, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Mahler, Maurice Ravel, Max Reger, Erik Satie, Strauss, Stravinsky, and Webern himself. After their Society performances in 1919 (and while working on his own Opp. 14–15), Webern wrote to Berg that Stravinsky's Berceuses du chat "[move] me completely beyond belief," describing them as "indescribably touching," and that Stravinsky's Pribaoutki were "something really glorious." After the dissolution of the Society amid catastrophic hyperinflation in 1921, Webern conducted the Vienna Workers' Symphony Orchestra and Chorus from 1922 to 1934. In 1926, Webern noted his voluntary resignation as chorusmaster of the Mödling Men's Choral Society, a paid position, in controversy over his hiring of a Jewish singer, Greta Wilheim, to replace a sick one. Letters document their correspondence in many subsequent years, and she (among others) would in turn provide him with facilities to teach private lessons as a convenience to Webern, his family, and his students. Civil War, Austrofascism, Nazism, and World War II Webern's music, along with that of Berg, Křenek, Schoenberg, and others, was denounced as "cultural Bolshevism" and "degenerate art" by the Nazi Party in Germany, and both publication and performances of it were banned soon after the Anschluss in 1938, although neither did it fare well under the preceding years of Austrofascism. As early as 1933, an Austrian gauleiter on Bayerischer Rundfunk mistakenly and very likely maliciously characterized both Berg and Webern as Jewish composers. As a result of official disapproval throughout the '30s, both found it harder to earn a living; Webern lost a promising conducting career which might have otherwise been more noted and recorded and had to take on work as an editor and proofreader for his publishers, Universal Edition. His family's financial situation deteriorated until, by August 1940, his personal records reflected no monthly income. It was thanks to the Swiss philanthropist Werner Reinhart that Webern was able to attend the festive premiere of his Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30, in Winterthur, Switzerland in 1943. Reinhart invested all the financial and diplomatic means at his disposal to enable Webern to travel to Switzerland. In return for this support, Webern dedicated the work to him. There are different descriptions of Webern's attitude towards Nazism; this is perhaps attributable to its complexity, his internal ambivalence, his prosperity in the preceding years (1918–1934) of post-war Red Vienna in the First Republic of Austria, the subsequently divided political factions of his homeland as represented in his friends and family (from Zionist Schoenberg to his Nazi son Peter), as well as the different contexts in which or audiences to whom his views were expressed. Further insight into Webern's attitudes comes with the realization that Nazism itself was deeply multifaceted, marked "not [by] a coherent doctrine or body of systemically interrelated ideas, but rather [by] a vaguer worldview made up of a number of prejudices with varied appeals to different audiences which could scarcely be dignified with the term 'ideology'". There is, moreover, significant political complexity to be treated, more than enough to complicate any consideration of individual culpability: it is imperative to note that some Social Democrats viewed the National Socialists as an alternative to the Christian Social Party and later Vaterländische Front in the context of reunification with Germany; for example, Karl Renner, the chancellor who served in both the First (1919–33) and Second (post-1945) Austrian Republics, favored a German Anschluss as an alternative to the then Austrofascist regime, under which Berg, Webern, and the Social Democrats suffered. And Webern's professional circle in Vienna included, besides many Jews, many Social Democrats; for example, for David Josef Bach, a close friend of Schoenberg's as well, Webern conducted many workers' and amateur ensembles. Under the Nazis, some Social Democrats expected, there might be more work and protections for workers and laborers, as well as other social reforms and political stability, if not democracy; Webern may well have hoped to again be able to conduct and to be better able to secure a future for his family. In broad terms, Webern's attitude seems to have first warmed to a degree of characteristic fervor and perhaps only much later, in conjunction with widespread German disillusionment, cooled to Hitler and the Nazis. On the one hand, notes that Webern attacked Nazi cultural policies in private lectures given in 1933, whose hypothetical publication "would have exposed Webern to serious consequences" later. On the other, some private correspondence attests to his Nazi sympathies. Webern's patriotism led him to endorse the Nazi regime in a series of letters to Joseph Hueber, who was serving in the army and himself held such views. Webern described Hitler on 2 May 1940, as "this unique man" who created "the new state" of Germany; thus Alex Ross characterizes him as "an unashamed Hitler enthusiast". Violinist Louis Krasner painted not a sentimental portrait but one imbued with a wealth of factual and personal detail for its publication in 1987, describing Webern as clearly naive and idealistic but not entirely without his wits, shame, or conscience; Krasner carefully contextualizes Webern as a member of Austrian society at the time, one departed by Schoenberg and one in which the already pro-Nazi Vienna Philharmonic had even refused to play the late Berg's Violin Concerto. As Krasner vividly recalled, he and Webern were visiting at the latter's home in Maria Enzersdorf, Mödling when the Nazis invaded Austria; Webern, uncannily seeming to anticipate the timing down to 4 o'clock in the afternoon, turned on the radio to hear this news and immediately warned Krasner, urging him to flee, whereupon he did (first to Vienna). Whether this was for Krasner's safety or to save Webern the embarrassment of Krasner's presence during a time of possible celebration in the pro-Nazi Webern family (or indeed in most of pro-Nazi Mödling, by Krasner's description as well as one even more vivid of Arnold Greissle-Schönberg), Krasner was ambivalent and uncertain, withholding judgment. Only later did Krasner himself realize how self-admittedly "foolhardy" he had been and in what danger he had placed himself, revealing an ignorance perhaps shared by Webern. Krasner had even revisited frequently, hoping to convince friends (e.g., Schoenberg's daughter Gertrude and her husband Felix Greissle) to emigrate before time ran out. Krasner eventually left more permanently, after a 1941 incident wherein he felt only his US passport saved him from both locals and police. Krasner retold from a story related to him in long discussion with Schoenberg's son Görgi, a Jew who remained in Vienna during the war, that the Weberns, much to their risk and credit, had provided Görgi and his family with food and shelter toward the end of the war at the Weberns' home in a Mödling apartment belonging to their son-in-law. Görgi and his family were left behind for their safety when Webern fled on foot with his family to Mittersill, about 75 km. away, for safety of their own in light of the coming Russian invasion; Amalie, one of Webern's daughters, wrote of '17 persons pressed together in the smallest possible space' upon their arrival. Ironically, the Russians pronounced Görgi a "Nazi spy" when he was discovered due to the Nazi munitions and propaganda in the Weberns' basement store-room. Görgi is said to have saved himself from execution by protesting and drawing attention to his clothes, sewn as specified by the Nazis with the yellow Star of David. He continued to live in this apartment with this family until 1969. Webern is also known to have aided Josef Polnauer, a Jewish friend who, as an albino, managed to largely escape the Nazis' attention and later edit a publication of Webern's correspondence from this time with Hildegard Jone, Webern's then lyricist and collaborator, and her husband, sculptor Josef Humplik. However, Krasner was particularly troubled by a 1936 conversation with Webern about the Jews, in which Webern expressed his vague but unambiguously anti-Semitic opinion that "Even Schoenberg, had he not been a Jew, would have been quite different!" Krasner remembered, perhaps with the benefit of hindsight at the time (1987), that "Jews ... were at the center of the difficulty. Those who wanted to, put the blame for all this calamity, for all this depraved condition, on the Jews who had brought it with them—along with a lot of radical ideas—from the East. People blamed the Jews for their financial worries. The Jews were, at the same time, the poverty-stricken people who came with nothing, and the capitalists who controlled everything." When once asked by Schoenberg about his feelings toward the Nazis, Webern nonetheless sought to allay Schoenberg's concerns; similarly, when in 1938 Eduard Steuermann asked Krasner about rumors of Webern's possible "interest in and devotion to the Nazis" on Schoenberg's behalf, Krasner lied by denying the rumors categorically and entirely. As a result, Schoenberg's Violin Concerto of 1934 (or 1935)–36 continued to bear a dedication to Webern, although whittled down as a result of Schoenberg's continuing suspicions or, indeed, on Webern's behalf, i.e., to protect Webern from further Nazi suspicion and persecution. Schoenberg's tone was ultimately conciliatory in remembrance of both Berg and Webern in 1947: "Let us—for the moment at least—forget all that might have at one time divided us ... even if those who tried might have succeeded in confounding us." Musicologist Richard Taruskin describes Webern accurately if vaguely as a pan-German nationalist but then goes much further in claiming specifically that Webern joyfully welcomed the Nazis with the 1938 Anschluss, at best extrapolating from the account of his cited source Krasner and at worst exaggerating or distorting it, as well as describing it sardonically as "heart-breaking". Taruskin's authority on this delicate issue must be credited, if at all, then only with the significant limitations that he has been polemical in general and hostile in particular to the Second Viennese School, of whom Webern is often considered the most extreme and difficult (i.e., the least accessible). New Complexity composer and performer Franklin Cox not only faults Taruskin as an inaccurate and unreliable historian but also critiques Taruskin as an "ideologist of tonal restoration" (musicologist Martin Kaltenecker similarly refers to the "Restoration of the 1980s," but he also describes a paradigm shift from structure to perception). Taruskin's "reactionary historicist" project, Cox argues, stands in opposition to that of the Second Viennese School, viz. the "progressivist historicist" emancipation of the dissonance. Taruskin himself admits to having acquired a "dubious reputation" on the Second Viennese School and notes that he has been described in his work on Webern as "coming, like Shakespeare's Marc Anthony, 'to bury Webern, not to praise him'". In contradistinction to Taruskin's methods and pronouncements, musicologist Pamela M. Potter advises that "[i]t is important to consider all the scholarship on musical life in the Third Reich that, taken together, reveals the complexity of the day-to-day existence of musicians and composers", as "[i]t seems inevitable that debates about the political culpability of individuals will persist, especially if the stakes remain so high for composers, for whom an up or down vote can determine inclusion in the canon". In this vein, it might be noted in relation to Taruskin's claim that Webern wrote to friends (husband and wife Josef Humplik and Hildegard Jone) on the day of Anschluss not to invite celebration or to observe developments but to be left alone: "I am totally immersed in my work [composing] and cannot, cannot be disturbed"; Krasner's presence could have been a disturbance to Webern for this reason, and musicologist Kathryn Bailey speculates that this may indeed be why he was rushed off by Webern. Webern's 1944–1945 correspondence is strewn with references to bombings, deaths, destruction, privation, and the disintegration of local order; but also noted are the births of several grandchildren. At the age of sixty (i.e., in Dec. 1943), Webern writes that he is living in a barrack away from home and working from 6 am to 5 pm, compelled by the state in a time of war to serve as an air-raid protection police officer. On 3 March 1945, news was relayed to Webern that his only son, Peter, died on 14 February of wounds suffered in a strafing attack on a military train two days earlier. Death in Allied-administered Austria On 15 September 1945, back at his home during the Allied occupation of Austria, Webern was shot and killed by an American Army soldier following the arrest of his son-in-law for black market activities. This incident occurred when, three-quarters of an hour before a curfew was to have gone into effect, he stepped outside the house so as not to disturb his sleeping grandchildren, to enjoy a few draws on a cigar given to him that evening by his son-in-law. The soldier responsible for his death was U. S. Army cook PFC Raymond Norwood Bell of North Carolina, who was overcome by remorse and died of alcoholism in 1955. Webern's wife, Wilhelmine Mörtl, died in 1949. They had three daughters and a son. Music Webern's compositions are concise, distilled, and select; just thirty-one of his compositions were published in his lifetime, and when Pierre Boulez later oversaw a project to record all of his compositions, including some of those without opus numbers, the results fit on just six CDs. Although Webern's music changed over time, as is often the case over a long career, it is typified by very spartan textures, in which every note can be clearly heard; carefully chosen timbres, often resulting in very detailed instructions to the performers and use of extended instrumental techniques (flutter tonguing, col legno, and so on); wide-ranging melodic lines, often with leaps greater than an octave; and brevity: the Six Bagatelles for string quartet (1913), for instance, last about three minutes in total. Formative juvenilia and emergence from study, Opp. 1–2, 1899–1908 Webern published little of his early work in particular; Webern was characteristically meticulous and revised extensively. Many juvenilia remained unknown until the work and findings of the Moldenhauers in the 1960s, effectively obscuring and undermining formative facets of Webern's musical identity, highly significant even more so in the case of an innovator whose music was crucially marked by rapid stylistic shifts. Thus when Boulez first oversaw a project to record "all" of Webern's music, not including the juvenilia, the results fit on three rather than six CDs. Webern's earliest works consist primarily of lieder, the genre that most testifies to his roots in Romanticism, specifically German Romanticism; one in which the music yields brief but explicit, potent, and spoken meaning manifested only latently or programmatically in purely instrumental genres; one marked by significant intimacy and lyricism; and one which often associates nature, especially landscapes, with themes of homesickness, solace, wistful yearning, distance, utopia, and belonging. Robert Schumann's "Mondnacht" is an iconic example; Eichendorff, whose lyric poetry inspired it, is not far removed from the poets (e.g., Richard Dehmel, Gustav Falke, Theodor Storm) whose work inspired Webern and his contemporaries Alban Berg, Max Reger, Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf, and Alexander Zemlinsky. Wolf's Mörike-Lieder were especially influential on Webern's efforts from this period. But well beyond these lieder alone, all of Webern's music may be said to possess such concerns and qualities, as is evident from his sketches, albeit in an increasingly symbolic, abstract, spare, introverted, and idealized manner. Webern's first piece after completing his studies with Schoenberg was the Passacaglia for orchestra (1908). Harmonically, it is a step forward into a more advanced language, and the orchestration is somewhat more distinctive than his earlier orchestral work. However, it bears little relation to the fully mature works he is best known for today. One element that is typical is the form itself: the passacaglia is a form which dates back to the 17th century, and a distinguishing feature of Webern's later work was to be the use of traditional compositional techniques (especially canons) and forms (the Symphony, the Concerto, the String Trio, and String Quartet, and the piano and orchestral Variations) in a modern harmonic and melodic language. Atonality, lieder, and aphorism, Opp. 3–16 and Tot, 1908–1924 For a number of years, Webern wrote pieces which were freely atonal, much in the style of Schoenberg's early atonal works. Indeed, so in lockstep with Schoenberg was Webern for much of his artistic development that Schoenberg in 1951 wrote that he sometimes no longer knew who he was, Webern had followed so well in his footsteps and shadow, occasionally outdoing or stepping ahead of Schoenberg in execution of Schoenberg's own or their shared ideas. There are, however, important cases where Webern may have even more profoundly influenced Schoenberg. Haimo marks the swift, radical influence in 1909 of Webern's novel and arresting Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5, on Schoenberg's subsequent piano piece Op. 11, No. 3; Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16; and monodrama Erwartung, Op. 17. This shift is distinctly pronounced in a letter Schoenberg wrote to Busoni, which describes a rather Webernian aesthetic: In 1949, Schoenberg still remembered being "intoxicated by the enthusiasm of having freed music from the shackles of tonality" and believing with his pupils "that now music could renounce motivic features and remain coherent and comprehensible nonetheless". But with Opp. 18–20, Schoenberg turned back and revived old techniques, very self-consciously returning to and transforming tradition by the concluding songs of Pierrot lunaire (1912), Op. 21, with, e.g., intricately interrelated canons in "Der Mondfleck", clear waltz rhythms in "Serenade", a barcarolle ("Heimfahrt"), triadic harmony throughout "O alter Duft". Pierrot was received by Webern as a direction for the composition of his own Opp. 14–16, most of all with respect to contrapuntal procedures (and to a lesser degree with respect to the diverse and innovative textural treatment among instruments in increasingly smaller ensembles). "How much I owe to your Pierrot", he wrote Schoenberg upon completing a setting of Georg Trakl's "Abendland III", Op. 14, No. 4, in which, rather unusually for Webern, there is no silence or rest until a pause at the concluding gesture. Indeed, a recurring theme of Webern's World War I settings is that of the wanderer, estranged or lost and seeking return to or at least retrieval from an earlier time and place; and of some fifty-six songs on which Webern worked 1914–1926, he ultimately finished and later published only thirty-two set in order as Opp. 12–19. This wartime theme of wandering in search of home ties in with two intricately involved concerns more broadly evident in Webern's work: first, the death and memory of members of Webern's family, especially his mother but also including his father and a nephew; and second, Webern's broad and complex sense of rural and spiritual Heimat. Their importance is marked by Webern's stage play, Tot (October 1913), which, over the course of six alpine scenes of reflection and self-consolation, draws on Emanuel Swedenborg's notion of correspondence to relate and to unite the two concerns, the first embodied but otherworldly and the second concrete if increasingly abstracted and idealized. The similarities between Tot and Webern's music are striking. In an often programmatic or cinematic fashion, Webern ordered his published movements, themselves dramatic or visual tableaux with melodies that frequently begin and end on weak beats or else settle into ostinati or the background. In them, tonality – useful for communicating direction and narrative in programmatic pieces – becomes more tenuous, fragmented, static, symbolic, and visual or spatial in function, thus mirroring the concerns and topics, explicit or implicit, of Webern's music and his selections for it from the poetry of Stefan George and later Georg Trakl. Webern's dynamics, orchestration, and timbre are given so as to produce a fragile, intimate, and often novel sound, despite distinctly recalling Mahler, not infrequently bordering on silence at a typical . In some cases, Webern's choice of instrument in particular functions to represent or to allude to a female voice (e.g., the use of solo violin), to inward or outward luminosity or darkness (e.g., the use of the entire range of register within the ensemble; registral compression and expansion; the use of celesta, harp, and glockenspiel; the use of harmonics and sul ponticello), or to angels and heaven (e.g., the use of harp and trumpet in the circling ostinati of Op. 6, No. 5, and winding to conclusion at the very end of Op. 15, No. 5). Technical consolidation and formal coherence and expansion, Opp. 17–31, 1924–1943 With the Drei Volkstexte (1925), Op. 17, Webern used Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique for the first time, and all his subsequent works used this technique. The String Trio (1926–1927), Op. 20, was both the first purely instrumental work using the twelve-tone technique (the other pieces were songs) and the first cast in a traditional musical form. Webern's music, like that of both Brahms and Schoenberg, is marked by its emphasis on counterpoint and formal considerations; and Webern's commitment to systematic pitch organization in the twelve-tone method is inseparable from this prior commitment. Webern's tone rows are often arranged to take advantage of internal symmetries; for example, a twelve-tone row may be divisible into four groups of three pitches which are variations, such as inversions and retrogrades, of each other, thus creating invariance. This gives Webern's work considerable motivic unity, although this is often obscured by the fragmentation of the melodic lines. This fragmentation occurs through octave displacement (using intervals greater than an octave) and by moving the line rapidly from instrument to instrument in a technique referred to as Klangfarbenmelodie. Arrangements and orchestrations In his youth (1903), Webern orchestrated at least five of Franz Schubert's various lieder, giving the piano accompaniment to an appropriately Schubertian orchestra of strings and pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horns: "Der Vollmond Strahlt auf Bergeshöhn" (the Romanze from Rosamunde), "Tränenregen" (from Die schöne Müllerin), "Der Wegweiser" (from Winterreise), "Du bist die Ruh", and "Ihr Bild"; in 1934, he did the same for Schubert's six Deutsche Tänze (German Dances) of 1824. For Schoenberg's Society for Private Musical Performances in 1921, Webern arranged, among other things, the 1888 Schatz-Walzer (Treasure Waltz) of Johann Strauss II's Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron) for string quartet, harmonium, and piano. In 1924, Webern arranged Franz Liszt's Arbeiterchor (Workers' Chorus, c. 1847–1848) for bass solo, mixed chorus, and large orchestra; it was premièred for the first time in any form on 13 and 14 March 1925, with Webern conducting the first full-length concert of the Austrian Association of Workers Choir. A review in the Amtliche Wiener Zeitung (28 March 1925) read "neu in jedem Sinne, frisch, unverbraucht, durch ihn zieht die Jugend, die Freude" ("new in every respect, fresh, vital, pervaded by youth and joy"). The text, in English translation, reads in part: "Let us have the adorned spades and scoops,/ Come along all, who wield a sword or pen,/ Come here ye, industrious, brave and strong/ All who create things great or small." Liszt, initially inspired by his revolutionary countrymen, had left it in manuscript at publisher 's discretion. Performance style Webern insisted on lyricism, nuance, rubato, sensitivity, and both emotional and intellectual understanding in performance of music; this is evidenced by anecdotes, correspondence, extant recordings of Schubert's Deutsche Tänze (arr. Webern) and Berg's Violin Concerto under his direction, many such detailed markings in his scores, and finally by his compositional process as both publicly stated and later revealed in the musical and extramusical metaphors and associations everywhere throughout his sketches. As both a composer and conductor, he was one of many (e.g., Wilhelm Furtwängler, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Hermann Scherchen) in a contemporaneous tradition of conscientiously and non-literally handling notated musical figures, phrases, and even entire scores so as to maximize expressivity in performance and to cultivate audience engagement and understanding. This aspect of Webern's work had been typically missed in his immediate post-war reception, however, even as it may radically affect the music's reception. For example, Boulez's "complete" recording of Webern's music yielded more to this aesthetic the second time after largely missing it the first; but Eliahu Inbal's rendition of Webern's Symphony, Op. 21 with the hr-Sinfonieorchester is still far more within the spirit of the late Romantic performance tradition (which Webern seemingly intended for his music), nearly slowing to half-tempo for the whole of first movement and taking care to delineate and shape each melodic strand and expressive gesture throughout the entirety of the work. Legacy, influence, and posthumous reception Webern's music began to be performed more widely in the 1920s; by the mid-1940s, its effect was decisive on many composers, even as far-flung as John Cage. In part because Webern had largely remained the most obscure and arcane composer of the Second Viennese School during his own lifetime, interest in Webern's music increased after World War II as it came to represent a universally or generally valid, systematic, and compellingly logical model of new composition, with his œuvre acquiring what Alex Ross calls "a saintly, visionary aura". When Webern's Piano Variations were performed at Darmstadt in 1948, young composers listened in a quasi-religious trance. In 1955, the second issue of Eimert and Stockhausen's journal Die Reihe was devoted to Webern's œuvre, and in 1960 his lectures were published by Universal Edition. Meanwhile, Webern's characteristically passionate pan-German nationalism and censurable, sordid political sympathies (however naive or delusional and whether ever dispelled or faltered) were not widely known or went unmentioned; perhaps in some part due to his personal and political associations before the German Reich, his degradation and mistreatment under it, and his fate immediately after the war. Significantly as relates to his reception, Webern never compromised his artistic identity and values, as Stravinsky was later to note. It has been suggested that the early 1950s' serialists' fascination with Webern was concerned not with his music as such so much as enabled by its concision and some its apparent plainness in the score, thereby facilitating musical analysis; indeed, composer Gottfried Michael Koenig speculates on the basis of his personal experience that since Webern's scores represented such a highly concentrated source, they may have been considered the better for didactic purposes than those of other composers. Composer thus criticized the approach of early serialists to Webern's music as reductive and narrowly focused on some of Webern's apparent methods rather than on his music more generally, especially neglecting timbre in their typical selection of Opp. 27–28. Composer Karel Goeyvaerts recalled that at least on first impression, the sound of Webern's music reminded him of "a Mondrian canvas," explaining that "things of which I had acquired an extremely intimate knowledge, came across as crude and unfinished when seen in reality." Expressing a related opinion, noted contemporaneous German music critic and contributor to Die Reihe, Wolf-Eberhard von Lewinski wrote in the Darmstädter Tagblatt (3 September 1959) that some of the later and more radical music at Darmstadt was "acoustically absurd [if] visually amusing"; several days later, one of his articles in the Der Kurier was similarly headlined "Meager modern music—only interesting to look at." To composers in the then Communist Bloc in Central and Eastern Europe, Webern's music and its techniques promised an exciting, unique, and challenging alternative to socialist realism, with its perceived tendency to kitsch and its nationalist and traditionalist overtones. Whereas Berg's Lyric Suite may have influenced the third and fourth string quartets of Bartók in 1927 via an ISCM concert (in which Bartók himself performed his own Piano Sonata), Webern's influence on later composers from what became the Hungarian People's Republic and from other countries behind the Iron Curtain was sometimes mediated or obstructed by politics. As Ligeti explained to a student in 1970, "In countries where there exists a certain isolation, in Eastern Europe, one cannot obtain correct information. One is cut off from the circulation of blood." Nonetheless, Webern's work was a seminal influence on that of both Endre Szervánszky and György Kurtág following the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, as well as on Ligeti himself. Later still and farther east, Sofia Gubaidulina, for whom music was an escape from the socio-political atmosphere of post-Stalinist Soviet Russia, cited the influence of both J. S. Bach and Webern in particular. Recordings by Webern Webern conducts "Berg – Violin Concerto" Webern conducts his arrangement of Schubert's German Dances See also List of Austrians in music Notes References Bibliography Further reading Ahrend, Thomas, and Stefan Münnich. 2018. Anton Webern. Oxford Bibliographies in Music. Oxford University Press. .}}{{subscription Ahrend, Thomas, and Matthias Schmidt (eds.). 2015. Der junge Webern. Texte und Kontexte. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 2b. Wien: Lafite. . Ahrend, Thomas, and Matthias Schmidt (eds.). 2016. Webern-Philologien. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 3. Wien: Lafite. . Bailey, Kathryn. 1991. The Twelve-Note Music of Anton Webern: Old Forms in a New Language. Music in the Twentieth Century 2. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. (cloth) (pbk. ed., 2006). Cavallotti, Pietro, and Simon Obert, and Rainer Schmusch (eds.). 2019. Neue Perspektiven. Anton Webern und das Komponieren im 20. Jahrhundert. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 4. Wien: Lafite. . Ewen, David. 1971. "Anton Webern (1883–1945)". In Composers of Tomorrow's Music, by David Ewen, 66–77. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. . Forte, Allen. 1998. The Atonal Music of Anton Webern New Haven: Yale University Press. . Galliari, Alain. 2007. "Anton von Webern". Paris: Fayard. . Kröpfl, Monika, and Simon Obert (eds.). 2015. Der junge Webern. Künstlerische Orientierungen in Wien nach 1900. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 2a. Wien: Lafite. . Mead, Andrew. 1993. "Webern, Tradition, and 'Composing with Twelve Tones'". Music Theory Spectrum 15, no. 2:173–204. Moldenhauer, Hans. 1966. Anton von Webern Perspectives. Edited by Demar Irvine, with an introductory interview with Igor Stravinsky. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Needham, Alex. 2012. Brahms Piano Piece to Get Its Premiere 159 Years After Its Creation. The Guardian (Thursday 12 January). Noller, Joachim. 1990. "Bedeutungsstrukturen: zu Anton Weberns 'alpinen' Programmen". Neue Zeitschrift für Musik151, no. 9 (September): 12–18. Obert, Simon (ed.). 2012. Wechselnde Erscheinung. Sechs Perspektiven auf Anton Weberns sechste Bagatelle. Webern-Studien. Beihefte der Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe 1. Wien: Lafite. . Perle, George. 1991. Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. Sixth ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Peyser, Joan. 2007. To Boulez and Beyond. Scarecrow Press. . Rockwell, John. 1983. All American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century. New York: Alfred Knopf. Reprinted New York: Da Capo Press, 1997. , . Tsang, Lee. 2002. "The Atonal Music of Anton Webern (1998) by Allen Forte". Music Analysis 21, no. 3 (October): 417–427. Wildgans, Friedrich. 1966. Anton Webern. Translated by Edith Temple Roberts and Humphrey Searle. Introduction and notes by Humphrey Searle. New York: October House. External links Anton Webern biography and works on the UE website (publisher) Anton Webern Gesamtausgabe (Complete Edition) 1883 births 1945 deaths Austrian Roman Catholics 20th-century classical composers Deaths by firearm in Austria Expressionist music Twelve-tone and serial composers Second Viennese School University of Vienna alumni Composers from Vienna Accidental deaths in Austria Pupils of Arnold Schoenberg Austrian male classical composers Austrian classical composers String quartet composers 20th-century Austrian composers 20th-century Austrian male musicians Firearm accident victims
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[ "\"What Else Is There?\" is the third single from the Norwegian duo Röyksopp's second album The Understanding. It features the vocals of Karin Dreijer from the Swedish electronica duo The Knife. The album was released in the UK with the help of Astralwerks.\n\nThe single was used in an O2 television advertisement in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia during 2008. It was also used in the 2006 film Cashback and the 2007 film, Meet Bill. Trentemøller's remix of \"What Else is There?\" was featured in an episode of the HBO show Entourage.\n\nThe song was covered by extreme metal band Enslaved as a bonus track for their album E.\n\nThe song was listed as the 375th best song of the 2000s by Pitchfork Media.\n\nOfficial versions\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Album Version) – 5:17\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Radio Edit) – 3:38\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Jacques Lu Cont Radio Mix) – 3:46\n\"What Else Is There?\" (The Emperor Machine Vocal Version) – 8:03\n\"What Else Is There?\" (The Emperor Machine Dub Version) – 7:51\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Mix) – 8:25\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Edit) – 4:50\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Remix) (Radio Edit) – 3:06\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Trentemøller Remix) – 7:42\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Vitalic Remix) – 5:14\n\nResponse\nThe single was officially released on 5 December 2005 in the UK. The single had a limited release on 21 November 2005 to promote the upcoming album. On the UK Singles Chart, it peaked at number 32, while on the UK Dance Chart, it reached number one.\n\nMusic video\nThe music video was directed by Martin de Thurah. It features Norwegian model Marianne Schröder who is shown lip-syncing Dreijer's voice. Schröder is depicted as a floating woman traveling across stormy landscapes and within empty houses. Dreijer makes a cameo appearance as a woman wearing an Elizabethan ruff while dining alone at a festive table.\n\nMovie spots\n\nThe song is also featured in the movie Meet Bill as characters played by Jessica Alba and Aaron Eckhart smoke marijuana while listening to it. It is also part of the end credits music of the film Cashback.\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n2005 singles\nRöyksopp songs\nAstralwerks singles\nSongs written by Svein Berge\nSongs written by Torbjørn Brundtland\n2004 songs\nSongs written by Roger Greenaway\nSongs written by Olof Dreijer\nSongs written by Karin Dreijer", "Léo Pons (born 4 October 1996) is a French filmmaker. He is best known as the director of Le Hobbit : Le Retour du roi du Cantal (2015) and is famous for making movies promoting his region Cantal. He directed several TV spots and short films.\n\nFilmography\n\nFilm\n 2014: Le Hobbit : Les Origines du Cantal\n 2014: Cantal, what else ?\n 2015: Le Hobbit : Le retour du roi du Cantal\n 2016: Smiling in Aurillac\n 2016: \"CHUT!\"\n\nReferences\n Léo Pons on Allocine.fr\n Léo Pons on Yahoo News\n A 17 ans, Léo Pons projette ce soir le 2e opus de sa parodie, inspirée du Seigneur des anneaux\n \"Cantal, what else ?\", un Auvergnat parodie Clooney et Dujardin\n Les coups d'éclat du réalisateur Léo Pons\n Interview de Léo Pons, réalisateur du Hobbit du Cantal\n\nExternal links\n\n \n \n\n1996 births\nLiving people\nFantasy film directors\nFrench film directors" ]
[ "Janis Joplin", "Death" ]
C_3938290d39f0420aa035060edc72696f_0
What year did Janis die?
1
What year did Janis Joplin die?
Janis Joplin
On October 4, 1970, producer Paul Rothchild became concerned when Joplin failed to show up at Sunset Sound Recorders for a recording session. Full Tilt Boogie's road manager, John Cooke, drove to the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood where Joplin was staying. He saw Joplin's psychedelically painted Porsche 356 C Cabriolet in the parking lot, and upon entering Joplin's room (#105), he found her dead on the floor beside her bed. The official cause of death was a heroin overdose, possibly compounded by alcohol. Cooke believes Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than normal, as several of her dealer's other customers also overdosed that week. Peggy Caserta and Seth Morgan had both failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death, October 2, and Joplin had been expecting both of them to keep her company that night. According to Caserta, Joplin was saddened that neither of her friends visited her at the Landmark as they had promised. During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment, Caserta did not phone her to explain why she had failed to show up. Caserta admitted to waiting until late Saturday night to dial the Landmark switchboard, only to learn that Joplin had instructed the desk clerk not to accept any incoming phone calls for her after midnight. Morgan did speak to Joplin via telephone within 24 hours of her death, but it is not known whether he admitted to her that he had broken his promise. Joplin's last will and testament funded $2,500 to throw a wake party in the event of her demise. The party took place on October 26, 1970, at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo, California, and was attended by Joplin's sister Laura, Morgan, and other close friends, including Cooke, Bob Gordon, Jack Penty, and tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle. CANNOTANSWER
1970,
Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter who sang rock, soul, and blues music. One of the most successful and widely known rock stars of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and "electric" stage presence. In 1967, Joplin rose to fame following an appearance at Monterey Pop Festival, where she was the lead singer of the then little-known San Francisco psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company. After releasing two albums with the band, she left Big Brother to continue as a solo artist with her own backing groups, first the Kozmic Blues Band and then the Full Tilt Boogie Band. She appeared at the Woodstock festival and on the Festival Express train tour. Five singles by Joplin reached the Billboard Hot 100, including a cover of the Kris Kristofferson song "Me and Bobby McGee", which reached number one in March 1971. Her most popular songs include her cover versions of "Piece of My Heart", "Cry Baby", "Down on Me", "Ball and Chain", and "Summertime"; and her original song "Mercedes Benz", her final recording. Joplin died of a heroin overdose in 1970, at the age of 27, after releasing three albums (two with Big Brother and the Holding Company and one solo album). A second solo album, Pearl, was released in January 1971, just over three months after her death. It reached number one on the Billboard charts. She was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Rolling Stone ranked Joplin number 46 on its 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. She remains one of the top-selling musicians in the United States, with Recording Industry Association of America certifications of 18.5 million albums sold. Early life Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on , to Dorothy Bonita East (1913–1998), a registrar at a business college, and her husband, Seth Ward Joplin (1910–1987), an engineer at Texaco. She had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. The family attended First Christian Church of Port Arthur, a church belonging to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) denomination. Her parents felt that Janis needed more attention than their other children. As a teenager, Joplin befriended a group of outcasts, one of whom had albums by blues artists Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Lead Belly, which Joplin later credited with influencing her decision to become a singer. She began singing blues and folk music with friends at Thomas Jefferson High School. In high school, she was a classmate of Pro Football Hall of Fame coach Jimmy Johnson. Joplin stated that she was ostracized and bullied in high school. As a teen, she became overweight and suffered from acne, leaving her with deep scars that required dermabrasion. Other kids at high school would routinely taunt her and call her names like "pig," "freak," "nigger lover," or "creep." She stated, "I was a misfit. I read, I painted, I thought. I didn't hate niggers." Joplin graduated from high school in 1960 and attended Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, Texas, during the summer and later the University of Texas at Austin (UT), though she did not complete her college studies. The campus newspaper, The Daily Texan, ran a profile of her in the issue dated July 27, 1962, headlined "She Dares to Be Different." The article began, "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levi's to class because they're more comfortable, and carries her autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break into song, it will be handy. Her name is Janis Joplin." While at UT she performed with a folk trio called the Waller Creek Boys and frequently socialized with the staff of the campus humor magazine The Texas Ranger. According to Freak Brothers cartoonist Gilbert Shelton, who befriended her, she used to sell The Texas Ranger, which contained some of Shelton's early comic books, on the campus. Career 1962–1965: Early recordings Joplin cultivated a rebellious manner and styled herself partly after her female blues heroines and partly after the Beat poets. Her first song, "What Good Can Drinkin' Do", was recorded on tape in December 1962 at the home of a fellow University of Texas student. She left Texas in January 1963 ("Just to get away," she said, "because my head was in a much different place"), hitchhiking with her friend Chet Helms to North Beach, San Francisco. Still in San Francisco in 1964, Joplin and future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen recorded a number of blues standards, which incidentally featured Kaukonen's wife Margareta using a typewriter in the background. This session included seven tracks: "Typewriter Talk", "Trouble in Mind", "Kansas City Blues", "Hesitation Blues", "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out", "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy", and "Long Black Train Blues", and was released long after Joplin's death as the bootleg album The Typewriter Tape. In 1963, Joplin was arrested in San Francisco for shoplifting. During the two years that followed, her drug use increased and she acquired a reputation as a "speed freak" and occasional heroin user. She also used other psychoactive drugs and was a heavy drinker throughout her career; her favorite alcoholic beverage was Southern Comfort. In May 1965, Joplin's friends in San Francisco, noticing the detrimental effects on her from regularly injecting methamphetamine (she was described as "skeletal" and "emaciated"), persuaded her to return to Port Arthur. During that month, her friends threw her a bus-fare party so she could return to her parents in Texas. Five years later, Joplin told Rolling Stone magazine writer David Dalton the following about her first stint in San Francisco: "I didn't have many friends and I didn't like the ones I had." Back in Port Arthur in the spring of 1965, after Joplin's parents noticed her weight of , she changed her lifestyle. She avoided drugs and alcohol, adopted a beehive hairdo, and enrolled as an anthropology major at Lamar University in nearby Beaumont, Texas. Her sister Laura said in a 2016 interview that social work was her major during her year at Lamar. During her time at Lamar University, she commuted to Austin to sing solo, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar. One of her performances was at a benefit by local musicians for Texas bluesman Mance Lipscomb, who was suffering with ill health. Joplin became engaged to Peter de Blanc in the fall of 1965. She had begun a relationship with him toward the end of her first stint in San Francisco. Now living in New York where he worked with IBM computers, he visited her to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Joplin and her mother began planning the wedding. De Blanc, who traveled frequently, ended the engagement soon afterward. In 1965 and 1966, Joplin commuted from her family's Port Arthur home to Beaumont, Texas, where she had regular sessions with a psychiatric social worker named Bernard Giarritano at a counseling agency that was funded by the United Fund, which after her death changed its name to the United Way. Interviewed by biographer Myra Friedman after his client's death, Giarritano said Joplin had been baffled by how she could pursue a professional career as a singer without relapsing into drugs, and her drug-related memories from immediately prior to returning to Port Arthur continued to frighten her. Joplin sometimes brought an acoustic guitar with her to her sessions with Giarritano, and people in other offices within the building could hear her singing. Giarritano tried to reassure her that she did not have to use narcotics in order to succeed in the music business. She also said that if she were to avoid singing professionally, she would have to become a keypunch operator (as she had done a few years earlier) or a secretary, and then a wife and mother, and she would have to become very similar to all the other women in Port Arthur. Approximately a year before Joplin joined Big Brother and the Holding Company, she recorded seven studio tracks with her acoustic guitar. Among the songs she recorded were her original composition of the song "Turtle Blues" and an alternate version of "Cod'ine" by Buffy Sainte-Marie. These tracks were later issued as a new album in 1995, titled This is Janis Joplin 1965 by James Gurley. 1966–1969: Various bands In 1966, Joplin's bluesy vocal style attracted the attention of the San Francisco-based psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, which had gained some renown among the nascent hippie community in Haight-Ashbury. She was recruited to join the group by Chet Helms, a promoter who was managing Big Brother and with whom she had hitchhiked from Texas to San Francisco a few years earlier. Helms sent his friend Travis Rivers to find her in Austin, Texas, where she had been performing with her acoustic guitar, and to accompany her to San Francisco. Aware of her previous nightmare with drug addiction in San Francisco, Rivers insisted that she inform her parents face-to-face of her plans, and he drove her from Austin to Port Arthur (he waited in his car while she talked with her startled parents) before they began their long drive to San Francisco. Joplin joined Big Brother on June 4, 1966. Her first public performance with them was at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. In June, Joplin was photographed at an outdoor concert in San Francisco that celebrated the summer solstice. The image, which was later published in two books by David Dalton, shows her before she relapsed into drugs. Due to persistent persuading by keyboardist and close friend Stephen Ryder, Joplin avoided drugs for several weeks. She made Travis Rivers, with whom she shared an apartment upon their arrival in San Francisco, promise that using needles would not be allowed there. When bandmate Dave Getz accompanied her from a rehearsal to her home, Rivers was not there, but "two or three" (according to Getz' recollection 25 years later) guests whom Rivers had invited were in the process of injecting drugs. "One of them was about to tie off," recalled Getz. "Janis went nuts! I had never seen anybody explode like that. She was screaming and crying and Travis walked in. She screamed at him: 'We had a pact! You promised me! There wouldn't be any of that in front of me!' I was over my head and I tried to calm her down. I said, 'They're just doing mescaline,' because that's what I thought it was. She said, 'You don't understand! I can't see that! I just can't stand to see that!'" A San Francisco concert from that summer (1966) was recorded and released on the 1984 album Cheaper Thrills. In July, all five bandmates and guitarist James Gurley's wife Nancy moved to a house in Lagunitas, California, where they lived communally. The band often partied with the Grateful Dead, the members of whom lived less than two miles away. She had a short relationship and longer friendship with founding member Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. The band went to Chicago for a four-week engagement in August 1966, then found itself stranded after the promoter ran out of money when its concerts did not attract the expected audience levels, and he was unable to pay them. In the circumstances the band signed with Bob Shad's record label Mainstream Records; recordings for the label took place in Chicago in September, but these were not satisfactory, and the band returned to San Francisco, continuing to perform live, including at the Love Pageant Rally. The band recorded two tracks, "Blindman" and "All Is Loneliness", in Los Angeles, and these were released by Mainstream as a single that did not sell well. After playing at a happening in Stanford in early December 1966, the band traveled back to Los Angeles to record ten tracks between December 12 and 14, 1966, produced by Bob Shad, which appeared on the band's debut album in August 1967. In late 1966, Big Brother switched managers from Chet Helms to Julius Karpen. One of Joplin's earliest major performances in 1967 was at the Mantra-Rock Dance, a musical event held on January 29 at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. Janis Joplin and Big Brother performed there along with the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami, Allen Ginsberg, Moby Grape, and the Grateful Dead, donating proceeds to the Krishna temple. In early 1967, Joplin met Country Joe McDonald of the group Country Joe and the Fish. The pair lived together as a couple for a few months. Joplin and Big Brother began playing clubs in San Francisco, at the Fillmore West, Winterland, and the Avalon Ballroom. They also played at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, as well as in Seattle, Washington; Vancouver, British Columbia; the Psychedelic Supermarket in Boston, Massachusetts; and the Golden Bear Club in Huntington Beach, California. The band's debut studio album, Big Brother & the Holding Company, was released by Mainstream Records in August 1967, shortly after the group's breakthrough appearance in June at the Monterey Pop Festival. Two tracks, "Coo Coo" and "The Last Time," were released separately as singles, while the tracks from the previous single, "Blindman" and "All Is Loneliness", were added to the remaining eight tracks. When Columbia Records took over the band's contract and re-released the album, they included "Coo Coo" and "The Last Time", and put "featuring Janis Joplin" on the cover. The debut album spawned four minor hits with the singles "Down on Me", a traditional song arranged by Joplin, "Bye Bye Baby", "Call On Me" and "Coo Coo", on all of which Joplin sang lead vocals. Two songs from the second of Big Brother's two sets at Monterey, which they played on Sunday, were filmed (their first set, which was on Saturday, was not filmed, though it was audio-recorded). Some sources, including a Joplin biography by Ellis Amburn, claim that she was dressed in thrift store hippie clothes or second-hand Victorian clothes during the band's Saturday set, but still photographs do not appear to have survived. Digitized color film of two songs in the Sunday set, "Combination of the Two" and a version of Big Mama Thornton's "Ball and Chain," appear in the DVD and Blu-ray boxed set of D. A. Pennebaker's documentary Monterey Pop released by The Criterion Collection. She is seen wearing an expensive gold tunic dress with matching pants. They were created for her by San Francisco clothing designer Colin Rose. Documentary filmmaker Pennebaker inserted two cutaway shots of Cass Elliot of the Mamas & the Papas seated in the audience during Joplin's performance of "Ball and Chain", one in the middle of the song as her eyes, covered by sunglasses, are fixed on Joplin, and also a shot during the applause as she silently mouths "Oh, wow!" and looks at the person seated next to her. Elliot and the audience are seen in sunlight, but Sunday's Big Brother performance was filmed in the evening. An explanation came from Big Brother's road manager John Byrne Cooke, who remembers that Pennebaker discreetly filmed the audience (including Elliot) during Big Brother's Saturday performance when he was not allowed to point a camera at the band. The prohibition of Pennebaker from filming on Saturday afternoon came from Big Brother's manager Julius Karpen. The band had a bitter argument with Karpen and overruled him as they prepared for their second set that the festival organizers had added on the spur of the moment. Backstage at the festival, the band became acquainted with New York-based talent manager Albert Grossman but did not sign with him until several months later, firing Karpen at that time. Only "Ball and Chain" was included in the Monterey Pop film that was released to theaters throughout the United States in 1969 and shown on television in the 1970s. Those who did not attend the Monterey Pop Festival saw the band's performance of "Combination of the Two" for the first time in 2002 when The Criterion Collection released the boxed set. For the remainder of 1967, even after Big Brother signed with Albert Grossman, the band performed mainly in California. On February 16, 1968, the group began its first East Coast tour in Philadelphia, and the following day gave their first performance in New York City at the Anderson Theater. On April 7, 1968—three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the last day of their East Coast tour—Joplin and Big Brother performed with Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens, Paul Butterfield, and Elvin Bishop at the Wake for Martin Luther King Jr. concert in New York. Live at Winterland '68, recorded at the Winterland Ballroom on April 12 and 13, 1968, features Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company at the height of their mutual career working through a selection of tracks from their albums. A recording became available to the public for the first time in 1998 when Columbia/Sony Music Entertainment released the compact disc. One month after the Winterland concert, Owsley Stanley recorded them at the Carousel Ballroom, released in 2012 as Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968. On July 31, 1968, Joplin made her first nationwide television appearance when the band performed on This Morning, an ABC daytime 90-minute variety show that was hosted by Dick Cavett. Shortly thereafter, network employees wiped the videotape, though the audio survives. (In 1969 and 1970, Joplin made three appearances on Cavett's prime-time program. Video was preserved and excerpts have been included in most documentaries about Joplin. Audio of her 1968 appearance has not been used since then.) Sometime in 1968, the band's billing was changed to "Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company," and the media coverage given to Joplin generated resentment within the band. The other members of Big Brother thought that Joplin was on a "star trip", while others were telling Joplin that Big Brother was a terrible band and that she ought to dump them. Time magazine called Joplin "probably the most powerful singer to emerge from the white rock movement", and Richard Goldstein wrote for the May 1968 issue of Vogue magazine that Joplin was "the most staggering leading woman in rock...she slinks like tar, scowls like war...clutching the knees of a final stanza, begging it not to leave.... Janis Joplin can sing the chic off any listener." For her first major studio recording, Joplin played a major role in the arrangement and production of the songs that would comprise Big Brother and the Holding Company's second album, Cheap Thrills. Producer John Simon tried recording the band in concert, to capture their energy in a live album, but several attempts showed the band was prone to mistakes. Their imprecision was not helped by moving the sessions to a recording studio. Joplin sang take after take of the same song, with her performances consistently good, and she grew frustrated with the band's sloppiness. Simon was replaced by Elliot Mazer who fixed the songs by overdubbing certain parts. The album featured a cover design by counterculture cartoonist Robert Crumb. Although Cheap Thrills sounded as if it consisted of concert recordings, like on "Combination of the Two" and "I Need a Man to Love", only "Ball and Chain" was actually recorded in front of a paying audience; the rest of the tracks were studio recordings. The album had a raw quality, including the sound of a drinking glass breaking and the broken shards being swept away during the song "Turtle Blues". Cheap Thrills produced very popular hits with "Piece of My Heart" and "Summertime". Together with the premiere of the documentary film Monterey Pop at New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on December 26, 1968, the album launched Joplin as a star. Cheap Thrills reached number one on the Billboard 200 album chart eight weeks after its release, and was number one for eight (nonconsecutive) weeks. The album was certified gold at release and sold over a million copies in the first month of its release. The lead single from the album, "Piece of My Heart", reached number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the fall of 1968. The band made another East Coast tour during July–August 1968, performing at the Columbia Records convention in Puerto Rico and the Newport Folk Festival. After returning to San Francisco for two hometown shows at the Palace of Fine Arts Festival on August 31 and September 1, Joplin announced that she would be leaving Big Brother. On September 14, 1968, culminating a three-night engagement together at Fillmore West, fans thronged to a concert that Bill Graham publicized as the last official concert of Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company. The opening acts on this night were Chicago (then still called Chicago Transit Authority) and Santana. Despite Graham's announcement that the Fillmore West gig was Big Brother's last concert with Joplin, the band—with Joplin still as lead vocalist—toured the U.S. that fall. Reflecting Joplin's crossover appeal, two October 1968 performances at a roller rink in Alexandria, Virginia, were reviewed by John Segraves of the conservative Washington Evening Star at a time when the Washington metropolitan area's hard rock scene was in its infancy. An opera buff at the time, he wrote: Later that month (October 1968), Big Brother performed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and played at the Syracuse War Memorial as part of Syracuse University's Fall Homecoming on October 11, with Janis joining openers the Butterfield Blues Band for their closing song. Aside from two 1970 reunions, Joplin's last performance with Big Brother was at a Chet Helms benefit in San Francisco on December 1, 1968. 1969–1970: Solo career After splitting from Big Brother and the Holding Company, Joplin formed a new backup group, the Kozmic Blues Band, composed of session musicians like keyboardist Stephen Ryder and saxophonist Cornelius "Snooky" Flowers, as well as former Big Brother and the Holding Company guitarist Sam Andrew and future Full Tilt Boogie Band bassist Brad Campbell. The band was influenced by the Stax-Volt rhythm and blues (R&B) and soul bands of the 1960s, as exemplified by Otis Redding and the Bar-Kays. The Stax-Volt R&B sound was typified by the use of horns and had a funky, pop-oriented sound in contrast to many of the psychedelic/hard rock bands of the period. By early 1969, Joplin was allegedly shooting at least $200 worth of heroin per day (equivalent to $1300 in 2016 dollars) although efforts were made to keep her clean during the recording of I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! Gabriel Mekler, who produced the album, told publicist-turned-biographer Myra Friedman after Joplin's death that she had lived in his Los Angeles house during the June 1969 recording sessions at his insistence so he could keep her away from drugs and her drug-using friends. Joplin's appearances with the Kozmic Blues Band in Europe were released in theaters, in multiple documentaries. Janis, which was reviewed by the Washington Post on March 21, 1975, shows Joplin arriving in Frankfurt by plane and waiting inside a bus next to the Frankfurt venue, while an American female fan who is visiting Germany expresses enthusiasm to the camera (no security was used in Frankfurt, so by the end of the concert, the stage was so packed with people the band members could not see each other). Janis also includes interviews with Joplin in Stockholm and from her visit to London, for her gig at Royal Albert Hall. The London interview was dubbed with a voiceover in the German language for broadcast on German television. John Byrne Cooke, road manager for Joplin and the Kozmic Blues Band, wrote a book published in 2014 in which he discussed her knowledge of the risks of her ongoing use of narcotics, particularly when she was outside the United States. On the episode of The Dick Cavett Show that was telecast in the United States on the night of July 18, 1969, Joplin and her band performed "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)" as well as "To Love Somebody". As Dick Cavett interviewed Joplin, she admitted that she had a terrible time touring in Europe, claiming that audiences there are very uptight and don't "get down". Released in September 1969, the Kozmic Blues album was certified gold later that year but did not match the success of Cheap Thrills. Reviews of the new group were mixed. However, the album's recording quality and engineering, as well as the musicianship (including three performances by former Bob Dylan/Paul Butterfield/Electric Flag guitarist Mike Bloomfield), were considered superior to her previous releases, and some music critics argued that the band was working in a much more constructive way to support Joplin's sensational vocal talents. Joplin wanted a horn section similar to that featured by the Chicago Transit Authority; her voice had the dynamic qualities and range not to be overpowered by the brighter horn sound. Some music critics, however, including Ralph J. Gleason of the San Francisco Chronicle, were negative. Gleason wrote that the new band was a "drag" and Joplin should "scrap" her new band and "go right back to being a member of Big Brother ... (if they'll have her)." Other reviewers, such as reporter Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, devoted entire articles to celebrating the singer's magic. Bernstein's review said that Joplin "has finally assembled a group of first-rate musicians with whom she is totally at ease and whose abilities complement the incredible range of her voice." Columbia Records released "Kozmic Blues" as a single, which peaked at number 41 on the Billboard Hot 100, and a live rendition of "Raise Your Hand" was released in Germany and became a top ten hit there. Containing other hits like "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)", "To Love Somebody", and "Little Girl Blue", I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! reached number five on the Billboard 200 soon after its release. Joplin appeared at Woodstock starting at approximately 2:00 a.m., on Sunday, August 17, 1969. Joplin informed her band that they would be performing at the concert as if it were just another gig. On Saturday afternoon, when she and the band were flown by helicopter with the pregnant Joan Baez and Baez's mother from a nearby motel to the festival site and Joplin saw the enormous crowd, she instantly became extremely nervous and giddy. Upon landing and getting off the helicopter, Joplin was approached by reporters asking her questions. She referred them to her friend and sometime lover Peggy Caserta as she was too excited to speak. Initially, Joplin was eager to get on the stage and perform but was repeatedly delayed as bands were contractually obliged to perform ahead of Joplin. Faced with a ten-hour wait after arriving at the backstage area, Joplin spent some of that time shooting heroin and drinking alcohol with Caserta in a tent. The director's cut of the Woodstock movie shows Joplin and Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick standing together near amplifiers watching the band Canned Heat's performance, which started at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, and Caserta does not appear within camera range. When Joplin finally reached the stage at approximately 2:00 a.m. Sunday, she was "three sheets to the wind", according to biographer Alice Echols. During her performance, Joplin's voice became slightly hoarse and wheezy, and she struggled to dance. Joplin pulled through, however, and engaged frequently with the crowd, asking them if they had everything they needed and if they were staying stoned. The audience cheered for an encore, to which Joplin replied and sang "Ball and Chain". Pete Townshend, who performed with the Who later in the same morning after Joplin finished, witnessed her performance and said the following in his 2012 memoir: "She had been amazing at Monterey, but tonight she wasn't at her best, due, probably, to the long delay, and probably, too, to the amount of booze and heroin she'd consumed while she waited. But even Janis on an off-night was incredible." Janis remained at Woodstock for the remainder of the festival. Starting at approximately 3:00 a.m. on Monday, August 18, Joplin was among many Woodstock performers who stood in a circle behind Crosby, Stills & Nash during their performance, which was the first time anyone at Woodstock ever had heard the group perform. This information was published by David Crosby in 1988. Later in the morning of August 18, Joplin and Joan Baez sat in Joe Cocker's van and witnessed Hendrix's close-of-show performance, according to Baez's memoir And a Voice to Sing With (1989). Still photographs in color show Joplin backstage with Grace Slick the day after Joplin's performance, wherein Joplin appears to be very happy. She was ultimately unhappy with her performance, however, and blamed Caserta. Her singing was not included (by her own insistence) in the 1970 documentary film or the soundtrack for Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More, although the 25th anniversary director's cut of Woodstock includes her performance of "Work Me, Lord". The documentary film of the festival that was released in theaters during 1970 includes, on the left side of a split screen, 37 seconds of footage of Joplin and Caserta walking toward Joplin's dressing room tent. In addition to Woodstock, Joplin also had problems at Madison Square Garden, in 1969. Biographer Myra Friedman said she had witnessed a duet Joplin sang with Tina Turner during the Rolling Stones concert at the Garden on Thanksgiving Day. Friedman said Joplin was "so drunk, so stoned, so out of control, that she could have been an institutionalized psychotic rent by mania." During another Garden concert where she had solo billing on December 19, some observers believed Joplin tried to incite the audience to riot. For part of this concert she was joined onstage by Johnny Winter and Paul Butterfield. Joplin told rock journalist David Dalton that Garden audiences watched and listened to "every note [she sang] with 'Is she gonna make it?' in their eyes." In her interview with Dalton she added that she felt most comfortable performing at small, cheap venues in San Francisco that were associated with the counterculture. At the time of the June 1970 interview with Dalton, she had already performed in the Bay Area for what turned out to be the last time. Sam Andrew, the lead guitarist who had left Big Brother with Joplin in December 1968 to form her back-up band, quit in late summer 1969 and returned to Big Brother. At the end of the year, the Kozmic Blues Band broke up. Their final gig with Joplin was the one at Madison Square Garden with Winter and Butterfield. In February 1970, Joplin traveled to Brazil, where she stopped her drug and alcohol use. She was accompanied on vacation there by her friend Linda Gravenites (wife of songwriter Nick Gravenites), who had designed Janis's stage costumes from 1967 to 1969. In Brazil, Joplin was romanced by a fellow American tourist named David (George) Niehaus, who was traveling around the world. A Joplin biography written by her sister Laura said, "David was an upper-middle-class Cincinnati kid who had studied communications at Notre Dame. ... [and] had joined the Peace Corps after college and worked in a small village in Turkey. ... He tried law school, but when he met Janis he was taking time off." Niehaus and Joplin were photographed by the press at Rio Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Gravenites also took color photographs of the two during their Brazilian vacation. According to Joplin biographer Ellis Amburn, in Gravenites' snapshots they "look like a carefree, happy, healthy young couple having a tremendously good time." Rolling Stone magazine interviewed Joplin during an international phone call, quoting her: "I'm going into the jungle with a big bear of a beatnik named David Niehaus. I finally remembered I don't have to be on stage twelve months a year. I've decided to go and dig some other jungles for a couple of weeks." Amburn added in 1992, "Janis was trying to kick heroin in Brazil, and one of the nicest things about David was that he wasn't into drugs." When Joplin returned to the U.S., she began using heroin again. Her relationship with Niehaus soon ended because he witnessed her shooting drugs at her new home in Larkspur, California. The relationship was also complicated by her ongoing romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta, who also was an intravenous addict, and Joplin's refusal to take some time off and travel the world with him. Around this time, she formed her new band, known for a short time as Main Squeeze, then renamed the Full Tilt Boogie Band. The band comprised mostly young Canadian musicians previously associated with Ronnie Hawkins and featured an organ, but no horn section. Joplin took a more active role in putting together the Full Tilt Boogie band than she had with her prior group. She was quoted as saying, "It's my band. Finally it's my band!" In May 1970, after performing under the name Main Squeeze at a Hell's Angels event, the renamed Full Tilt Boogie Band began a nationwide tour. Joplin became very happy with her new group, which eventually received mostly positive feedback from both her fans and the critics. Prior to beginning a summer tour with Full Tilt Boogie, she performed in a reunion with Big Brother at the Fillmore West, in San Francisco, on April 4, 1970. Recordings from this concert were included in an in-concert album released posthumously in 1972. She again appeared with Big Brother on April 12 at Winterland, where she and Big Brother were reported to be in excellent form. She performed with the band, billed as Main Squeeze, at a party for the Hells Angels at a venue in San Rafael, California on May 21, 1970, according to a web site maintained by Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew. Andrew's web site quotes him as saying, "This will be the first time that Janis' old band and her new band will be at the same venue, so everyone is a little on edge." According to Joplin's biographer Ellis Amburn, Big Brother with its lead singer Nick Gravenites was the opening act at the party that was attended by 2,300 people. The Hells Angels, who had known Joplin since 1966, paid her a fee of 240 dollars to perform. Gravenites and Sam Andrew (who had resumed playing guitar with Big Brother) differed in their opinions of her performance and how substance abuse affected it. Gravenites described her singing as "stupendous," according to Amburn. Amburn quoted Andrew twenty years later: "She was visibly deteriorating and she looked bloated. She was like a parody of what she was at her best. I put it down to her drinking too much and I felt a tinge of fear for her well-being. Her singing was real flabby, no edge at all." Shortly thereafter, Joplin began wearing multi-colored feather boas in her hair. (She had not worn them at the May 21 Hell's Angels party / concert in San Rafael). By the time she began touring with Full Tilt Boogie, Joplin told people she was drug-free, but her drinking increased. From June 28 to July 4, 1970, during the Festival Express tour, Joplin and Full Tilt Boogie performed alongside Buddy Guy, the Band, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Ten Years After, the Grateful Dead, Delaney & Bonnie, Eric Andersen, and Ian & Sylvia. They played concerts in Toronto, Winnipeg, and Calgary. Joplin jammed with the other performers on the train, and her performances on this tour are considered to be among her greatest. Joplin headlined the festival on all three nights. At the last stop in Calgary, she took to the stage with Jerry Garcia while her band was tuning up. Film footage shows her telling the audience how great the tour was and shows her and Garcia presenting the organizers with a case of tequila. She then burst into a two-hour set, starting with "Tell Mama". Throughout this performance, Joplin engaged in several banters about her love life. In one, she reminisced about living in a San Francisco apartment and competing with a female neighbor in flirting with men on the street. She finished the Calgary concert with long versions of "Get It While You Can" and "Ball and Chain". Footage of her performance of "Tell Mama" in Calgary became an MTV video in the early 1980s, and the audio from the same film footage was included on the Farewell Song (1982) album. The audio of other Festival Express performances was included on Joplin's In Concert (1972) album. Video of the performances was also included on the Festival Express DVD. These performances of entire songs during the Festival Express concerts in Toronto and Calgary can be purchased, although other songs remain in vaults and have yet to be released. In the "Tell Mama" video shown on MTV in the 1980s, Joplin wore a psychedelically colored, loose-fitting costume and feathers in her hair. This was her standard stage costume in the spring and summer of 1970. She chose the new costumes after her friend and designer, Linda Gravenites (whom Joplin had praised in Vogues profile of her in its May 1968 edition), cut ties with Joplin shortly after their return from Brazil, due largely to Joplin's continued use of heroin. Among Joplin's last public appearances were two broadcasts of The Dick Cavett Show. In her June 25, 1970 appearance, she announced that she would attend her ten-year high school class reunion. When asked if she had been popular in school, she admitted that when in high school, her schoolmates "laughed me out of class, out of town and out of the state" (during the year she had spent at the University of Texas at Austin, Joplin had been voted "Ugliest Man on Campus" by frat boys). In the subsequent Cavett Show broadcast, on August 3, 1970, and featuring Gloria Swanson, Joplin discussed her upcoming performance at the Festival for Peace to be held at Shea Stadium in Queens, New York, three days later. On July 11, 1970, Full Tilt Boogie and Big Brother and the Holding Company both performed at the same concert in the San Diego Sports Arena, which was decades later renamed the Valley View Casino Center. Joplin sang with Full Tilt Boogie and appeared briefly onstage with Big Brother without singing, according to a July 13 review of the concert in the San Diego Union. On August 7, 1970, a tombstone—jointly paid for by Joplin and Juanita Green, who as a child had done housework for Bessie Smith—was erected at Smith's previously unmarked grave. The following day, the Associated Press circulated this news, and the August 9 edition of The New York Times carried it. The lead paragraph of the AP story said Joplin and Green had "shared the cost of a stone for the 'Empress of the Blues,'" but, according to publicist/biographer Myra Friedman, the two women never met. Joplin had been at home in Larkspur, California when she had received a long-distance phone call with an explanation of the need to finance a gravestone for Bessie Smith, whom Joplin had frequently cited as a musical influence. Joplin immediately wrote a check and mailed it to the name and address provided by the phone caller. On August 8, 1970, as the Associated Press circulated the news about Smith's new gravestone, Joplin performed at the Capitol Theatre (Port Chester, New York). It was there that she first performed "Mercedes Benz", a song (partially inspired by a Michael McClure poem) that she had composed with fellow musician and friend Bob Neuwirth a very short time earlier. According to Myra Friedman's account, Joplin performed two shows at the Capitol Theatre, the first of which was attended by actors Geraldine Page and her husband Rip Torn. Between the shows, at a "gin mill" [Friedman's words] very close to this concert venue, Joplin and Neuwirth penned the lyrics to the song and she performed it at the second show, according to Friedman. Neuwirth was quoted by The Wall Street Journal in 2015: "Around 7 p.m., after the Capitol sound check, we had a couple of hours to kill before [acts that opened for Joplin] Seatrain and Runt finished their sets. So the four of us [Joplin, Neuwirth, Geraldine Page, Rip Torn] walked to a bar about three minutes away called Vahsen’s [at 30 Broad Street in Port Chester]." While in Vahsen's, "Janis came up with words for the first verse. I was in charge of writing them down on bar napkins with a ballpoint pen. She came up with the second verse, too, about a color TV. I suggested words here and there, and came up with the third verse—about asking the Lord to buy us a night on the town and another round." Joplin's last public performance with the Full Tilt Boogie Band took place on August 12, 1970, at the Harvard Stadium in Boston. The Harvard Crimson gave the performance a positive, front-page review, despite the fact that Full Tilt Boogie had performed with makeshift amplifiers after their regular sound equipment was stolen in Boston. Joplin attended her high school reunion on August 14, accompanied by Neuwirth, road manager John Cooke, and sister Laura, but it was reportedly an unhappy experience for her. Joplin held a press conference in Port Arthur during her reunion visit. When asked by a reporter if she ever entertained at Thomas Jefferson High School when she was a student there, Joplin replied, "Only when I walked down the aisles." Joplin denigrated Port Arthur and the classmates who had humiliated her a decade earlier. During late August, September, and early October 1970, Joplin and her band rehearsed and recorded a new album in Los Angeles with producer Paul A. Rothchild, best known for his lengthy relationship with The Doors. Although Joplin died before all the tracks were fully completed, there was enough usable material to compile an LP. The posthumous Pearl (1971) became the biggest-selling album of her career and featured her biggest hit single, a cover of Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster's "Me and Bobby McGee" (Kristofferson had previously been Joplin's lover in the spring of 1970). The opening track, "Move Over", was written by Joplin, reflecting the way that she felt men treated women in relationships. Also included was the social commentary of "Mercedes Benz", presented in an a cappella arrangement; the track on the album features the first and only take that Joplin recorded. A cover of Nick Gravenites's "Buried Alive in the Blues", to which Joplin had been scheduled to add her vocals on the day she was found dead, was included as an instrumental. Joplin checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood on August 24, 1970, near Sunset Sound Recorders, where she began rehearsing and recording her album. During the sessions, Joplin continued a relationship with Seth Morgan, a 21-year-old UC Berkeley student, cocaine dealer, and future novelist who had visited her new home in Larkspur in July and August. She and Morgan were engaged to be married in early September, although he visited Sunset Sound Recorders for just eight of Joplin's many rehearsals and sessions. Morgan later told biographer Myra Friedman that, as a non-musician, he had felt excluded whenever he had visited Sunset Sound Recorders. Instead, he stayed at Joplin's Larkspur home while she stayed alone at the Landmark, although several times she visited Larkspur to be with him and to check the progress of renovations she was having done on the house. She told her construction crew to design a carport to be shaped like a flying saucer, according to biographer Ellis Amburn, the concrete foundation for which was poured the day before she died. Peggy Caserta claimed in her book, Going Down With Janis (1973), that she and Joplin had decided mutually in April 1970 to stay away from each other to avoid enabling each other's drug use. Caserta, a former Delta Air Lines stewardess and owner of one of the first clothing boutiques in the Haight Ashbury, said in the book that by September 1970, she was smuggling cannabis throughout California and had checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel because it attracted drug users. For approximately the first two weeks of Joplin's stay at the Landmark, she did not know Caserta was in Los Angeles. Joplin learned of Caserta's presence at the Landmark from a heroin dealer who made deliveries there. Joplin begged Caserta for heroin, and when Caserta refused to provide it, Joplin reportedly admonished her by saying, "Don't think if you can get it, I can't get it." Joplin's publicist Myra Friedman was unaware during Joplin's lifetime that this had happened. Later, while Friedman was working on her book Buried Alive, she determined that the time frame of the Joplin-Caserta encounter was one week before Jimi Hendrix's death. Within a few days, Joplin became a regular customer of the same heroin dealer who had been supplying Caserta. Joplin's manager Albert Grossman and his assistant/publicist Friedman had staged an intervention with Joplin the previous winter while Joplin was in New York. In September 1970, Grossman and Friedman, who worked out of a New York office, knew Joplin was staying at a Los Angeles hotel, but were unaware it was a haven for drug users and dealers. Grossman and Friedman knew during Joplin's lifetime that her friend Caserta, whom Friedman met during the New York sessions for Cheap Thrills and on later occasions, used heroin. During the many long-distance telephone conversations that Joplin and Friedman had in September 1970 and on October 1, Joplin never mentioned Caserta, and Friedman assumed Caserta had been out of Joplin's life for a while. Friedman, who had more time than Grossman to monitor the situation, never visited California. She thought Joplin sounded on the phone like she was less depressed than she had been over the summer. When Joplin was not at Sunset Sound Recorders, she liked to drive her Porsche over the speed limit "on the winding part of Sunset Blvd.", according to a statement made by her attorney Robert Gordon in 1995 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Friedman wrote that the only Full Tilt Boogie member who rode as her passenger, Ken Pearson, often hesitated to join her, though he did on the night she died. He was not interested in using hard drugs. On September 26, 1970, Joplin recorded vocals for "Half Moon" and "Cry Baby". The session ended with Joplin, organist Ken Pearson, and drummer Clark Pierson making a special one-minute recording as a birthday gift to John Lennon. Joplin was among several singers who had been contacted by Yoko Ono with a request for a taped greeting for Lennon's 30th birthday, on October 9. Joplin, Pearson, and Pierson chose the Dale Evans composition "Happy Trails" as part of the greeting. Lennon told Dick Cavett on-camera the following year that Joplin's recorded birthday wishes arrived at his home after her death. On October 1, 1970, Joplin completed her last recording, "Mercedes Benz", which was recorded in a single take. On Saturday, October 3, Joplin visited Sunset Sound Recorders to listen to the instrumental track for Nick Gravenites's song "Buried Alive in the Blues", which the band had recorded earlier that day. She and Paul Rothchild agreed she would record the vocal the following day. At some point on Saturday, she learned by telephone, to her dismay, that Seth Morgan had met other women at a Marin County, California, restaurant, invited them to her home, and was shooting pool with them using her pool table. People at Sunset Sound Recorders overheard Joplin expressing anger about the state of her relationship with Morgan, as well as joy about the progress of the sessions. Joplin and Ken Pearson later left the studio together and she drove him in her Porsche to the West Hollywood landmark called Barney's Beanery. Friedman wrote, "At the bar, she drank vodka and orange juice, only two." Bennett Glotzer, a business partner of Joplin's manager Albert Grossman, was present at Barney's Beanery, according to what he told John Byrne Cooke immediately after he (Glotzer) learned of her death. Evidently, Joplin had a friendly conversation with a young man whom she did not know, and he expressed admiration for her music. After midnight, she drove Ken Pearson and the male fan to the Landmark where she and Pearson were staying in separate rooms. During the car ride, the fan asked Joplin questions "about her singing style," according to Friedman, and "she mostly ignored him" so she could converse with Pearson. As Joplin and Pearson prepared to part in the lobby of the Landmark, she expressed a fear, possibly in jest, that he and the other Full Tilt Boogie musicians might decide to stop making music with her. Pearson was the second-to-last person to see her alive. The last was the Landmark's night shift desk clerk. He had met her several times but did not know her. Personal life Joplin's significant relationships with men included ones with Peter de Blanc, Country Joe McDonald (who wrote the song "Janis" at Joplin's request), David (George) Niehaus, Kris Kristofferson, and Seth Morgan (from July 1970 until her death, at which time they were allegedly engaged). She also had relationships with women. During her first stint in San Francisco in 1963, Joplin met and briefly lived with Jae Whitaker, a black woman whom she had met while playing pool at the bar Gino & Carlo in North Beach. Whitaker broke off their relationship because of Joplin's hard drug use and sexual relationships with other people. Whitaker was first identified by name in connection with the singer in 1999, when Alice Echols' biography Scars of Sweet Paradise was published. Joplin also had an on-again-off-again romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta. They first met in November 1966 when Big Brother performed at a San Francisco venue called The Matrix. Caserta was one of 15 people in the audience, and at the time, she ran a successful clothing boutique in the Haight Ashbury. Approximately a month after Caserta attended the concert, Joplin visited her boutique and said she could not afford to buy a pair of jeans that was for sale, instead asking to put down the first 50 cents on the $5 item. Caserta was amazed that such a talented singer could not afford a $5 item, and gave her a pair for free. Their friendship was platonic for more than a year. Before it moved to the next level, Caserta was in love with Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, and sometime during the first half of 1968 traveled from San Francisco to New York to flirt with him. He did not want a serious relationship, and Joplin sympathized with Caserta's disappointment. The Woodstock concert film includes 37 seconds of Joplin and Caserta walking together before they reached the tent where Joplin waited for her turn to perform. By the time the festival took place in August 1969, both were intravenous heroin addicts. According to Caserta's book Going Down With Janis, which Caserta has since disowned, Joplin introduced her to her boyfriend Seth Morgan in Joplin's room at the Landmark Motor Hotel on September 29, 1970. Caserta "had seen him around" San Francisco but had not met him before. At some point, an agreement was made for a threesome to take place the following Friday, although Caserta later said that she immediately abandoned the idea once she understood that it was Morgan who would be with Joplin. Morgan made alternate plans, believing that Caserta would be with Joplin that evening. Each one, however, was unaware that the other had bowed out. The day after Joplin introduced Caserta to Morgan, Caserta saw Joplin briefly, again in Joplin's room, when Caserta accommodated her new Los Angeles friend Debbie Nuciforo, age 19, an aspiring hard rock drummer who wanted to meet Joplin. Nuciforo was stoned on heroin at the time, and the three women's encounter was brief and unpleasant. Caserta suspected that the reason for Joplin's foul mood was that Morgan had abandoned her earlier that day after having spent less than 24 hours with her. Caserta did not see nor communicate by phone with Joplin again, although she later claimed she had made several attempts to reach her by phone at the Landmark Motor Hotel and at Sunset Sound Recorders. Caserta and Morgan lost touch with each other; each had independently made alternate plans for Friday night, October 2. Joplin mentioned her disappointment (over both of her friends' bailing out of their ménage à trois) to her drug dealer on Saturday, while he was selling her the dose of heroin that killed her, as Caserta later learned from the drug dealer. Biographer Myra Friedman commented in her original version of Buried Alive (1973): Given the near-infinite potentials of infancy, it is really impossible to make generalizations about what lies behind sexual practices. This, however, is probable: to become clearly homosexual, to make the choice that one honestly prefers relations with one's own sex, no matter the origins of such preference, requires a certain integration, a stability of psychic development, a tidiness of personality organization. The ridicule and the humiliation that took place at that most delicate period in [Joplin's] early teens, her own inability to surmount the obstacles to regular growth, devastated her a great deal more than most people comprehended. Janis was not heir to an ego so cohesive as to permit her an identity one way or the other. She was, as [the psychiatric social worker she saw regularly in Beaumont, Texas in 1965 and 1966] Mr. [Bernard] Giarritano put it [in an interview with Friedman], "diffused" -- spewing, splattering, splaying all over, without a center to hold. That had as much to do with her original use of drugs [before she first met Giarritano] as did the critical component of guilt and its multiplicity of sources above and beyond the contribution made by her relationships with women. Were she so simple as the lesbians wished her to be or so free as her associates imagined! Kim France reported in her May 2, 1999 The New York Times article, "Nothin' Left to Lose" : "Once she became famous, Joplin cursed like a truck driver, did not believe in wearing undergarments, was rarely seen without her bottle of Southern Comfort and delighted in playing the role of sexual predator." On July 11, 1970, Joplin made a revealing statement about her sexuality to her friend Richard Hundgen, the Grateful Dead's San Francisco-based road manager whom she had known since 1966. When Joplin and Hundgen were offstage during a San Diego gig for both Full Tilt Boogie and Big Brother and the Holding Company, she said the following that he later repeated to Myra Friedman: I hear a rumor that somebody in San Francisco is spreading stories that I'm a dyke. You go back there and find out who it is and tell them that Janis says she's gotten it on with a couple of thousand cats in her life and a few hundred chicks and see what they can do with that! Death On Sunday evening, October 4, 1970, Joplin was found dead on the floor of her room at the Landmark Motor Hotel by her road manager and close friend John Byrne Cooke. Alcohol was present in the room. Newspapers reported that no other drugs or paraphernalia were present. According to a 1983 book authored by Joseph DiMona and Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi, evidence of narcotics was removed from the scene by a friend of Joplin and later put back after the person realized that an autopsy was going to reveal that narcotics were in her system. The book adds that prior to Joplin's death, Noguchi had investigated other fatal drug overdoses in Los Angeles where friends believed they were doing favors for decedents by removing evidence of narcotics, then they "thought things over" and returned to put back the evidence. Noguchi performed an autopsy on Joplin and determined the cause of death to be a heroin overdose, possibly compounded by alcohol. John Byrne Cooke believed Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than what she and other L.A. heroin users had received on previous occasions, as was indicated by overdoses of several of her dealer's other customers during the same weekend. Her death was ruled accidental. Both Peggy Caserta, Joplin's close friend, and Seth Morgan, Joplin's fiancé, had failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death, October 2; Joplin had been expecting both of them to keep her company that night. According to Caserta, Joplin was saddened that neither of her friends visited her at the Landmark as they had promised. During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment, Caserta did not phone her to explain why she had failed to show up. Caserta admitted to waiting until late Saturday night to dial the Landmark switchboard, only to learn that Joplin had instructed the desk clerk not to accept any incoming phone calls for her after midnight. Morgan did speak to Joplin via telephone within the 24 hours prior to her death, but little is known about that call. She used a phone at Sunset Sound Recorders where her colleagues (“there were perhaps twenty to twenty-five people pre‪sent,” wrote biographer Myra Friedman) noticed that whatever Morgan said to her made her very angry. Peggy Caserta has insisted that Joplin's death was not an accidental overdose, but rather a result of a head gash suffered after the "hourglass heel" of her slingback sandal caught in the shag carpet, causing her to lose her balance. Caserta does concede, however, that drugs and/or alcohol may have played a role in hastening her death that night. Joplin was cremated at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary in Los Angeles, and her ashes were scattered from a plane into the Pacific Ocean. Legacy Joplin's death in October 1970 at age 27 stunned her fans and shocked the music world, especially when coupled with the death just 16 days earlier of another rock icon, Jimi Hendrix, also at age 27. (This would later cause some people to attribute significance to the death of musicians at the age of 27, as celebrated in the "27 Club.") Music historian Tom Moon wrote that Joplin had "a devastatingly original voice," music columnist Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote that Joplin as an artist was "overpowering and deeply vulnerable" and author Megan Terry said that Joplin was the female version of Elvis Presley in her ability to captivate an audience. A book about Joplin by her publicist Myra Friedman titled Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin (1973) was excerpted in many newspapers. At the same time, Peggy Caserta's memoir, Going Down With Janis (1973), attracted much attention; its provocative title is a reference to Caserta's claim that she had engaged in oral sex with Joplin while they were high on heroin in September 1970. The description provided by Dan Knapp, Caserta’s co-author whom she denounced decades later, repelled many people in 1973 when few books or filmed interviews of Joplin or her loved ones were accessible to the public. Joplin's bandmate Sam Andrew described Caserta as "halfway between a groupie and a friend" in an interview with writer Ellis Amburn. Soon after the 1973 publication of Going Down With Janis, Joplin's friends learned that graphic descriptions of sexual acts and intravenous drug use were not the only portions of the book that would haunt them. According to Kim Chappell, a close friend of Caserta and Joplin, Caserta's book angered the Los Angeles heroin dealer whom she had described in detail in her book, including the make and model of his car. According to Amburn, in 1973 a "carful of dope dealers" visited a Los Angeles lesbian bar that Caserta had been frequenting. Chappell, who was in the alley behind the bar, stated: "I was stabbed because, when Peggy's book came out, her dealer, the same one who'd given Janis her last fix, didn't like it that he was referred to and was out to get Peggy. He couldn't find her, so he went for her lover. When they realized who I was, they felt that my death would also hit Peggy, and so they stabbed me." Despite being "stabbed three times in the chest, puncturing both lungs," Chappell eventually recovered. In 2018, Caserta denounced Going Down With Janis as the pornographic fantasy of Dan Knapp, her co-author, and largely unreliable. During that year, the public had its first access to her own story via a memoir she co-wrote with Maggie Falcon titled I Ran Into Some Trouble. It describes a long, friendly relationship with Joplin that only occasionally featured sexuality. According to Joplin’s biographers, Caserta was among many friends of Joplin who did not become clean and sober until a very long time after Joplin's death, while others died from overdoses. Although the wife of Big Brother guitarist James Gurley, who was Joplin's close friend, died from a heroin overdose in 1969, devastating Joplin, Gurley himself did not become clean and sober until 1984. Caserta survived "a near-fatal OD in December 1995," wrote Alice Echols. On January 13, 2000, Caserta appeared during a segment about Joplin on 20/20. Joplin's body art, with a wristlet and a small heart on her left breast by the San Francisco tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle, marked an early moment in the popular culture's acceptance of tattoos as art. Another trademark was her flamboyant hair styles, which often included colored streaks and accessories such as scarves, beads and feathers. When in New York City, Joplin frequented the Limbo boutique on St. Mark's Place, and she wore some of the vintage and unique garments that she purchased there on stage. The Mamas & the Papas' song "Pearl" (1971), from their People Like Us album, was a tribute. Leonard Cohen's song "Chelsea Hotel#2" (1974) is about Joplin. Lyricist Robert Hunter has commented that Jerry Garcia's "Birdsong" from his first solo album, Garcia (1972), is about Joplin and the end of her suffering through death. Mimi Farina's composition "In the Quiet Morning", most famously covered by Joan Baez on her Come from the Shadows (1972) album, was a tribute to Joplin. Another song by Baez, "Children of the Eighties," mentioned Joplin. A Serge Gainsbourg-penned French language song by English singer Jane Birkin, "Ex fan des sixties" (1978), references Joplin along with other disappeared "idols" such as Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones and Marc Bolan. When Joplin was alive, Country Joe McDonald released a song called "Janis" on his band's album I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die (1967). The film The Rose (1979) is loosely based on Joplin's life. Originally planned to be titled Pearl—Joplin's nickname and the title of her last album—the film was fictionalized after her family declined to allow the producers the rights to her story. Bette Midler earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the film. In 1988, on what would have been Joplin's 45th birthday, the Janis Joplin Memorial, with an original gold, multi-image sculpture of Joplin by Douglas Clark, was dedicated during a ceremony in Port Arthur, Texas. In 1992, the first major biography of Joplin in two decades, Love, Janis, authored by her younger sister Laura Joplin, was published. In an interview, Laura stated that Joplin enjoyed being on the Dick Cavett Show, that Joplin had difficulties with some, but not all, people at Thomas Jefferson High School and that Joplin enthusiastically talked about Woodstock with her parents and siblings during a visit to their Texas home a few weeks after she had performed at the festival. In 1995, Joplin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2005, she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In November 2009, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum honored her as part of its annual American Music Masters Series; among the artifacts at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum exhibition are Joplin's scarf and necklaces, her psychedelically painted 1965 Porsche 356 Cabriolet and a sheet of LSD blotting paper designed by Robert Crumb, designer of the Cheap Thrills cover. Also in 2009, Joplin was the honoree at the Rock Hall's American Music Master concert and lecture series. In the late 1990s, the musical play Love, Janis was created and directed by Randal Myler, with input from Janis' younger sister Laura and Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, with an aim to take it to Off-Broadway. Opening in the summer of 2001 and scheduled for only a few weeks of performances, the show won acclaim, played to packed houses and was held over several times. In 2013, Washington's Arena Stage featured a production of A Night with Janis Joplin, starring Mary Bridget Davies. In it, Joplin performs a concert for the audience while telling stories of her past inspirations, including those of Odetta and Aretha Franklin. The show went on tour in 2016. On November 4, 2013, Joplin was awarded with the 2,510th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the music industry. Her star is located at 6752 Hollywood Boulevard, in front of Musicians Institute. On August 8, 2014, the U.S. Postal Service revealed a commemorative stamp honoring Joplin as part of its Music Icons stamp series during a first-day-of-issue ceremony at the Outside Lands Music Festival at Golden Gate Park. Among the memorabilia Joplin left behind is a Gibson Hummingbird guitar. In 2015, the biographical documentary film Janis: Little Girl Blue, directed by Amy J. Berg and narrated by Cat Power, was released. It was a New York Times Critics' Pick. Influence Joplin had a profound influence on many singers. Pink said about Joplin: "She was so inspiring by singing blues music when it wasn't culturally acceptable for white women, and she wore her heart on her sleeve. She was so witty and charming and intelligent, but she also battled an ugly-duckling syndrome. I would love to play her in a movie." In a tribute performance on her Try This Tour, Pink called Joplin "a woman who inspired me when everyone else ... didn't!" Discography Janis Joplin recorded four albums in her four-year career. The first two albums were recorded with and credited to Big Brother and the Holding Company; the later two were recorded with different backing bands and released as solo albums. Posthumous releases have included previously unreleased studio and live material. Studio albums As lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company As solo artist Live albums Compilation albums Singles As lead of Big Brother and the Holding Company As solo artist Filmography Monterey Pop (1968) Petulia (1968) Janis Joplin Live in Frankfurt (1969) Janis (1974) Janis: The Way She Was (1974) Comin' Home (1988) Woodstock – The Lost Performances (1991) Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director's Cut) (1994) Festival Express (2003) Nine Hundred Nights (2004) The Dick Cavett Show: Rock Icons (2005) Shout Factory Rockin' at the Red Dog: The Dawn of Psychedelic Rock (2005) This is Tom Jones (2007) 1969 appearance on TV show Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director's Cut) 40th Anniversary Edition (2009) Janis Joplin with Big Brother: Ball and Chain (DVD) Charly (2009) Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015) Notes References Further reading – an encounter with Janis Joplin at the wheel. External links Janis Joplin at the Grammy Awards Janis Joplin on the Music-Map 1943 births 1970 deaths 20th-century American singers 20th-century American women singers American blues singers American child singers American mezzo-sopranos American women rock singers American women singer-songwriters American rhythm and blues singer-songwriters American rock songwriters American soul musicians Accidental deaths in California Big Brother and the Holding Company members Bisexual musicians Bisexual women Blues rock musicians Columbia Records artists Deaths by heroin overdose in California Drug-related deaths in California Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners LGBT people from Texas LGBT singers from the United States LGBT songwriters Lamar University alumni People from Beaumont, Texas People from Port Arthur, Texas Singer-songwriters from Texas University of Texas at Austin alumni 20th-century LGBT people
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[ "Miracle Row is the ninth studio album by Janis Ian, and her fourth for Columbia Records, released in 1977.\n\nIn contrast to her previous three albums, Miracle Row was recorded in New York City with her recent touring band and lacked the orchestration. Following her previous album Aftertones, Ian would spend much time in Spanish Harlem with her mother, and aimed to capture that vibe on her new album.\n\nReception\n\nThe Kingsport News gave the album \"A\" upon release, saying that Janis was \"the best realist woman poet around today\" and also one if its best vocalists. The Irving Daily News’ Jason Christopher also praised the album, saying that Janis Ian “scored another triumph” and that the album was “highly recommended for rainy-day listening”. Joe McNally writing for the San Antonio Express, said that Janis “did what she did very well” and the critic admitted that he was a sucker for what she did.\n\nMiracle Row, despite these positive reviews, was substantially ignored by most critics, many of whom, for example Robert Christgau, did not review the album at all. Miracle Row proved a major commercial flop, failing to crack the top 40 of the Billboard pop albums chart, whilst none of its three singles would chart anywhere except for \"Will You Dance?\" being a top 40 hit in Japan. It proved to be Ian's last album to dent the top 100 in the United States, for her efforts to adopt a highly commercial pop sound on her subsequent Columbia albums would gain success only in Europe and Australia, and not do so consistently even there.\n\nTrack listing\n\nPersonnel\n Janis Ian – composer, producer, vocals, guitar, keyboards\n Rubens Bassini – conductor, congas, percussion\n Claire Bay – vocals\n Phil Kraus – bass, cymbals, percussion\n Jeff Layton – guitar, guitar arrangements, horn\n Barry Lazarowitz – drums, percussion\n Stu Woods – bass\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n1977 albums\nJanis Ian albums\nColumbia Records albums", "\"What Good Can Drinkin' Do\" is a blues song by Janis Joplin, the first song she ever recorded. \n\nThe song has six verses, following the 12-bar blues pattern. Lyrics in the first and last verse are almost identical: \"What good can drinkin' do ?\" is sung twice, then answered with \"Lord, I drink all night but the next day I still feel blue.\"\n\nRecordings of this song can be heard on her 1975 album, Janis, or on the later box set Janis. Record Collector cites her intro to the song: Up steps a feisty young woman, one month short of her twentieth birthday. \"Uh, this is a song called 'What Good Can Drinkin' Do', that I wrote one night after drinkin' myself into a stupor.\" ... \n\nIn 2009, Austin musician Carolyn Wonderland began including the song in some of her live performances, after appearing at The American Music Masters tribute to Janis Joplin, \"Kozmic Blues: The Life and Music of Janis Joplin.\"\n\nReferences\n\nJanis Joplin songs\n1962 songs\nSongs about alcohol\nSong articles with missing songwriters" ]
[ "Janis Joplin", "Death", "What year did Janis die?", "1970," ]
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How old was she when she died?
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How old was Janis Joplin when she died?
Janis Joplin
On October 4, 1970, producer Paul Rothchild became concerned when Joplin failed to show up at Sunset Sound Recorders for a recording session. Full Tilt Boogie's road manager, John Cooke, drove to the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood where Joplin was staying. He saw Joplin's psychedelically painted Porsche 356 C Cabriolet in the parking lot, and upon entering Joplin's room (#105), he found her dead on the floor beside her bed. The official cause of death was a heroin overdose, possibly compounded by alcohol. Cooke believes Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than normal, as several of her dealer's other customers also overdosed that week. Peggy Caserta and Seth Morgan had both failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death, October 2, and Joplin had been expecting both of them to keep her company that night. According to Caserta, Joplin was saddened that neither of her friends visited her at the Landmark as they had promised. During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment, Caserta did not phone her to explain why she had failed to show up. Caserta admitted to waiting until late Saturday night to dial the Landmark switchboard, only to learn that Joplin had instructed the desk clerk not to accept any incoming phone calls for her after midnight. Morgan did speak to Joplin via telephone within 24 hours of her death, but it is not known whether he admitted to her that he had broken his promise. Joplin's last will and testament funded $2,500 to throw a wake party in the event of her demise. The party took place on October 26, 1970, at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo, California, and was attended by Joplin's sister Laura, Morgan, and other close friends, including Cooke, Bob Gordon, Jack Penty, and tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle. CANNOTANSWER
On October 4, 1970, producer Paul Rothchild became concerned when Joplin failed to show up at Sunset Sound Recorders for a recording
Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter who sang rock, soul, and blues music. One of the most successful and widely known rock stars of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and "electric" stage presence. In 1967, Joplin rose to fame following an appearance at Monterey Pop Festival, where she was the lead singer of the then little-known San Francisco psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company. After releasing two albums with the band, she left Big Brother to continue as a solo artist with her own backing groups, first the Kozmic Blues Band and then the Full Tilt Boogie Band. She appeared at the Woodstock festival and on the Festival Express train tour. Five singles by Joplin reached the Billboard Hot 100, including a cover of the Kris Kristofferson song "Me and Bobby McGee", which reached number one in March 1971. Her most popular songs include her cover versions of "Piece of My Heart", "Cry Baby", "Down on Me", "Ball and Chain", and "Summertime"; and her original song "Mercedes Benz", her final recording. Joplin died of a heroin overdose in 1970, at the age of 27, after releasing three albums (two with Big Brother and the Holding Company and one solo album). A second solo album, Pearl, was released in January 1971, just over three months after her death. It reached number one on the Billboard charts. She was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Rolling Stone ranked Joplin number 46 on its 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. She remains one of the top-selling musicians in the United States, with Recording Industry Association of America certifications of 18.5 million albums sold. Early life Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on , to Dorothy Bonita East (1913–1998), a registrar at a business college, and her husband, Seth Ward Joplin (1910–1987), an engineer at Texaco. She had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. The family attended First Christian Church of Port Arthur, a church belonging to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) denomination. Her parents felt that Janis needed more attention than their other children. As a teenager, Joplin befriended a group of outcasts, one of whom had albums by blues artists Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Lead Belly, which Joplin later credited with influencing her decision to become a singer. She began singing blues and folk music with friends at Thomas Jefferson High School. In high school, she was a classmate of Pro Football Hall of Fame coach Jimmy Johnson. Joplin stated that she was ostracized and bullied in high school. As a teen, she became overweight and suffered from acne, leaving her with deep scars that required dermabrasion. Other kids at high school would routinely taunt her and call her names like "pig," "freak," "nigger lover," or "creep." She stated, "I was a misfit. I read, I painted, I thought. I didn't hate niggers." Joplin graduated from high school in 1960 and attended Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, Texas, during the summer and later the University of Texas at Austin (UT), though she did not complete her college studies. The campus newspaper, The Daily Texan, ran a profile of her in the issue dated July 27, 1962, headlined "She Dares to Be Different." The article began, "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levi's to class because they're more comfortable, and carries her autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break into song, it will be handy. Her name is Janis Joplin." While at UT she performed with a folk trio called the Waller Creek Boys and frequently socialized with the staff of the campus humor magazine The Texas Ranger. According to Freak Brothers cartoonist Gilbert Shelton, who befriended her, she used to sell The Texas Ranger, which contained some of Shelton's early comic books, on the campus. Career 1962–1965: Early recordings Joplin cultivated a rebellious manner and styled herself partly after her female blues heroines and partly after the Beat poets. Her first song, "What Good Can Drinkin' Do", was recorded on tape in December 1962 at the home of a fellow University of Texas student. She left Texas in January 1963 ("Just to get away," she said, "because my head was in a much different place"), hitchhiking with her friend Chet Helms to North Beach, San Francisco. Still in San Francisco in 1964, Joplin and future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen recorded a number of blues standards, which incidentally featured Kaukonen's wife Margareta using a typewriter in the background. This session included seven tracks: "Typewriter Talk", "Trouble in Mind", "Kansas City Blues", "Hesitation Blues", "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out", "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy", and "Long Black Train Blues", and was released long after Joplin's death as the bootleg album The Typewriter Tape. In 1963, Joplin was arrested in San Francisco for shoplifting. During the two years that followed, her drug use increased and she acquired a reputation as a "speed freak" and occasional heroin user. She also used other psychoactive drugs and was a heavy drinker throughout her career; her favorite alcoholic beverage was Southern Comfort. In May 1965, Joplin's friends in San Francisco, noticing the detrimental effects on her from regularly injecting methamphetamine (she was described as "skeletal" and "emaciated"), persuaded her to return to Port Arthur. During that month, her friends threw her a bus-fare party so she could return to her parents in Texas. Five years later, Joplin told Rolling Stone magazine writer David Dalton the following about her first stint in San Francisco: "I didn't have many friends and I didn't like the ones I had." Back in Port Arthur in the spring of 1965, after Joplin's parents noticed her weight of , she changed her lifestyle. She avoided drugs and alcohol, adopted a beehive hairdo, and enrolled as an anthropology major at Lamar University in nearby Beaumont, Texas. Her sister Laura said in a 2016 interview that social work was her major during her year at Lamar. During her time at Lamar University, she commuted to Austin to sing solo, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar. One of her performances was at a benefit by local musicians for Texas bluesman Mance Lipscomb, who was suffering with ill health. Joplin became engaged to Peter de Blanc in the fall of 1965. She had begun a relationship with him toward the end of her first stint in San Francisco. Now living in New York where he worked with IBM computers, he visited her to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Joplin and her mother began planning the wedding. De Blanc, who traveled frequently, ended the engagement soon afterward. In 1965 and 1966, Joplin commuted from her family's Port Arthur home to Beaumont, Texas, where she had regular sessions with a psychiatric social worker named Bernard Giarritano at a counseling agency that was funded by the United Fund, which after her death changed its name to the United Way. Interviewed by biographer Myra Friedman after his client's death, Giarritano said Joplin had been baffled by how she could pursue a professional career as a singer without relapsing into drugs, and her drug-related memories from immediately prior to returning to Port Arthur continued to frighten her. Joplin sometimes brought an acoustic guitar with her to her sessions with Giarritano, and people in other offices within the building could hear her singing. Giarritano tried to reassure her that she did not have to use narcotics in order to succeed in the music business. She also said that if she were to avoid singing professionally, she would have to become a keypunch operator (as she had done a few years earlier) or a secretary, and then a wife and mother, and she would have to become very similar to all the other women in Port Arthur. Approximately a year before Joplin joined Big Brother and the Holding Company, she recorded seven studio tracks with her acoustic guitar. Among the songs she recorded were her original composition of the song "Turtle Blues" and an alternate version of "Cod'ine" by Buffy Sainte-Marie. These tracks were later issued as a new album in 1995, titled This is Janis Joplin 1965 by James Gurley. 1966–1969: Various bands In 1966, Joplin's bluesy vocal style attracted the attention of the San Francisco-based psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, which had gained some renown among the nascent hippie community in Haight-Ashbury. She was recruited to join the group by Chet Helms, a promoter who was managing Big Brother and with whom she had hitchhiked from Texas to San Francisco a few years earlier. Helms sent his friend Travis Rivers to find her in Austin, Texas, where she had been performing with her acoustic guitar, and to accompany her to San Francisco. Aware of her previous nightmare with drug addiction in San Francisco, Rivers insisted that she inform her parents face-to-face of her plans, and he drove her from Austin to Port Arthur (he waited in his car while she talked with her startled parents) before they began their long drive to San Francisco. Joplin joined Big Brother on June 4, 1966. Her first public performance with them was at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. In June, Joplin was photographed at an outdoor concert in San Francisco that celebrated the summer solstice. The image, which was later published in two books by David Dalton, shows her before she relapsed into drugs. Due to persistent persuading by keyboardist and close friend Stephen Ryder, Joplin avoided drugs for several weeks. She made Travis Rivers, with whom she shared an apartment upon their arrival in San Francisco, promise that using needles would not be allowed there. When bandmate Dave Getz accompanied her from a rehearsal to her home, Rivers was not there, but "two or three" (according to Getz' recollection 25 years later) guests whom Rivers had invited were in the process of injecting drugs. "One of them was about to tie off," recalled Getz. "Janis went nuts! I had never seen anybody explode like that. She was screaming and crying and Travis walked in. She screamed at him: 'We had a pact! You promised me! There wouldn't be any of that in front of me!' I was over my head and I tried to calm her down. I said, 'They're just doing mescaline,' because that's what I thought it was. She said, 'You don't understand! I can't see that! I just can't stand to see that!'" A San Francisco concert from that summer (1966) was recorded and released on the 1984 album Cheaper Thrills. In July, all five bandmates and guitarist James Gurley's wife Nancy moved to a house in Lagunitas, California, where they lived communally. The band often partied with the Grateful Dead, the members of whom lived less than two miles away. She had a short relationship and longer friendship with founding member Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. The band went to Chicago for a four-week engagement in August 1966, then found itself stranded after the promoter ran out of money when its concerts did not attract the expected audience levels, and he was unable to pay them. In the circumstances the band signed with Bob Shad's record label Mainstream Records; recordings for the label took place in Chicago in September, but these were not satisfactory, and the band returned to San Francisco, continuing to perform live, including at the Love Pageant Rally. The band recorded two tracks, "Blindman" and "All Is Loneliness", in Los Angeles, and these were released by Mainstream as a single that did not sell well. After playing at a happening in Stanford in early December 1966, the band traveled back to Los Angeles to record ten tracks between December 12 and 14, 1966, produced by Bob Shad, which appeared on the band's debut album in August 1967. In late 1966, Big Brother switched managers from Chet Helms to Julius Karpen. One of Joplin's earliest major performances in 1967 was at the Mantra-Rock Dance, a musical event held on January 29 at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. Janis Joplin and Big Brother performed there along with the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami, Allen Ginsberg, Moby Grape, and the Grateful Dead, donating proceeds to the Krishna temple. In early 1967, Joplin met Country Joe McDonald of the group Country Joe and the Fish. The pair lived together as a couple for a few months. Joplin and Big Brother began playing clubs in San Francisco, at the Fillmore West, Winterland, and the Avalon Ballroom. They also played at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, as well as in Seattle, Washington; Vancouver, British Columbia; the Psychedelic Supermarket in Boston, Massachusetts; and the Golden Bear Club in Huntington Beach, California. The band's debut studio album, Big Brother & the Holding Company, was released by Mainstream Records in August 1967, shortly after the group's breakthrough appearance in June at the Monterey Pop Festival. Two tracks, "Coo Coo" and "The Last Time," were released separately as singles, while the tracks from the previous single, "Blindman" and "All Is Loneliness", were added to the remaining eight tracks. When Columbia Records took over the band's contract and re-released the album, they included "Coo Coo" and "The Last Time", and put "featuring Janis Joplin" on the cover. The debut album spawned four minor hits with the singles "Down on Me", a traditional song arranged by Joplin, "Bye Bye Baby", "Call On Me" and "Coo Coo", on all of which Joplin sang lead vocals. Two songs from the second of Big Brother's two sets at Monterey, which they played on Sunday, were filmed (their first set, which was on Saturday, was not filmed, though it was audio-recorded). Some sources, including a Joplin biography by Ellis Amburn, claim that she was dressed in thrift store hippie clothes or second-hand Victorian clothes during the band's Saturday set, but still photographs do not appear to have survived. Digitized color film of two songs in the Sunday set, "Combination of the Two" and a version of Big Mama Thornton's "Ball and Chain," appear in the DVD and Blu-ray boxed set of D. A. Pennebaker's documentary Monterey Pop released by The Criterion Collection. She is seen wearing an expensive gold tunic dress with matching pants. They were created for her by San Francisco clothing designer Colin Rose. Documentary filmmaker Pennebaker inserted two cutaway shots of Cass Elliot of the Mamas & the Papas seated in the audience during Joplin's performance of "Ball and Chain", one in the middle of the song as her eyes, covered by sunglasses, are fixed on Joplin, and also a shot during the applause as she silently mouths "Oh, wow!" and looks at the person seated next to her. Elliot and the audience are seen in sunlight, but Sunday's Big Brother performance was filmed in the evening. An explanation came from Big Brother's road manager John Byrne Cooke, who remembers that Pennebaker discreetly filmed the audience (including Elliot) during Big Brother's Saturday performance when he was not allowed to point a camera at the band. The prohibition of Pennebaker from filming on Saturday afternoon came from Big Brother's manager Julius Karpen. The band had a bitter argument with Karpen and overruled him as they prepared for their second set that the festival organizers had added on the spur of the moment. Backstage at the festival, the band became acquainted with New York-based talent manager Albert Grossman but did not sign with him until several months later, firing Karpen at that time. Only "Ball and Chain" was included in the Monterey Pop film that was released to theaters throughout the United States in 1969 and shown on television in the 1970s. Those who did not attend the Monterey Pop Festival saw the band's performance of "Combination of the Two" for the first time in 2002 when The Criterion Collection released the boxed set. For the remainder of 1967, even after Big Brother signed with Albert Grossman, the band performed mainly in California. On February 16, 1968, the group began its first East Coast tour in Philadelphia, and the following day gave their first performance in New York City at the Anderson Theater. On April 7, 1968—three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the last day of their East Coast tour—Joplin and Big Brother performed with Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens, Paul Butterfield, and Elvin Bishop at the Wake for Martin Luther King Jr. concert in New York. Live at Winterland '68, recorded at the Winterland Ballroom on April 12 and 13, 1968, features Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company at the height of their mutual career working through a selection of tracks from their albums. A recording became available to the public for the first time in 1998 when Columbia/Sony Music Entertainment released the compact disc. One month after the Winterland concert, Owsley Stanley recorded them at the Carousel Ballroom, released in 2012 as Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968. On July 31, 1968, Joplin made her first nationwide television appearance when the band performed on This Morning, an ABC daytime 90-minute variety show that was hosted by Dick Cavett. Shortly thereafter, network employees wiped the videotape, though the audio survives. (In 1969 and 1970, Joplin made three appearances on Cavett's prime-time program. Video was preserved and excerpts have been included in most documentaries about Joplin. Audio of her 1968 appearance has not been used since then.) Sometime in 1968, the band's billing was changed to "Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company," and the media coverage given to Joplin generated resentment within the band. The other members of Big Brother thought that Joplin was on a "star trip", while others were telling Joplin that Big Brother was a terrible band and that she ought to dump them. Time magazine called Joplin "probably the most powerful singer to emerge from the white rock movement", and Richard Goldstein wrote for the May 1968 issue of Vogue magazine that Joplin was "the most staggering leading woman in rock...she slinks like tar, scowls like war...clutching the knees of a final stanza, begging it not to leave.... Janis Joplin can sing the chic off any listener." For her first major studio recording, Joplin played a major role in the arrangement and production of the songs that would comprise Big Brother and the Holding Company's second album, Cheap Thrills. Producer John Simon tried recording the band in concert, to capture their energy in a live album, but several attempts showed the band was prone to mistakes. Their imprecision was not helped by moving the sessions to a recording studio. Joplin sang take after take of the same song, with her performances consistently good, and she grew frustrated with the band's sloppiness. Simon was replaced by Elliot Mazer who fixed the songs by overdubbing certain parts. The album featured a cover design by counterculture cartoonist Robert Crumb. Although Cheap Thrills sounded as if it consisted of concert recordings, like on "Combination of the Two" and "I Need a Man to Love", only "Ball and Chain" was actually recorded in front of a paying audience; the rest of the tracks were studio recordings. The album had a raw quality, including the sound of a drinking glass breaking and the broken shards being swept away during the song "Turtle Blues". Cheap Thrills produced very popular hits with "Piece of My Heart" and "Summertime". Together with the premiere of the documentary film Monterey Pop at New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on December 26, 1968, the album launched Joplin as a star. Cheap Thrills reached number one on the Billboard 200 album chart eight weeks after its release, and was number one for eight (nonconsecutive) weeks. The album was certified gold at release and sold over a million copies in the first month of its release. The lead single from the album, "Piece of My Heart", reached number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the fall of 1968. The band made another East Coast tour during July–August 1968, performing at the Columbia Records convention in Puerto Rico and the Newport Folk Festival. After returning to San Francisco for two hometown shows at the Palace of Fine Arts Festival on August 31 and September 1, Joplin announced that she would be leaving Big Brother. On September 14, 1968, culminating a three-night engagement together at Fillmore West, fans thronged to a concert that Bill Graham publicized as the last official concert of Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company. The opening acts on this night were Chicago (then still called Chicago Transit Authority) and Santana. Despite Graham's announcement that the Fillmore West gig was Big Brother's last concert with Joplin, the band—with Joplin still as lead vocalist—toured the U.S. that fall. Reflecting Joplin's crossover appeal, two October 1968 performances at a roller rink in Alexandria, Virginia, were reviewed by John Segraves of the conservative Washington Evening Star at a time when the Washington metropolitan area's hard rock scene was in its infancy. An opera buff at the time, he wrote: Later that month (October 1968), Big Brother performed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and played at the Syracuse War Memorial as part of Syracuse University's Fall Homecoming on October 11, with Janis joining openers the Butterfield Blues Band for their closing song. Aside from two 1970 reunions, Joplin's last performance with Big Brother was at a Chet Helms benefit in San Francisco on December 1, 1968. 1969–1970: Solo career After splitting from Big Brother and the Holding Company, Joplin formed a new backup group, the Kozmic Blues Band, composed of session musicians like keyboardist Stephen Ryder and saxophonist Cornelius "Snooky" Flowers, as well as former Big Brother and the Holding Company guitarist Sam Andrew and future Full Tilt Boogie Band bassist Brad Campbell. The band was influenced by the Stax-Volt rhythm and blues (R&B) and soul bands of the 1960s, as exemplified by Otis Redding and the Bar-Kays. The Stax-Volt R&B sound was typified by the use of horns and had a funky, pop-oriented sound in contrast to many of the psychedelic/hard rock bands of the period. By early 1969, Joplin was allegedly shooting at least $200 worth of heroin per day (equivalent to $1300 in 2016 dollars) although efforts were made to keep her clean during the recording of I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! Gabriel Mekler, who produced the album, told publicist-turned-biographer Myra Friedman after Joplin's death that she had lived in his Los Angeles house during the June 1969 recording sessions at his insistence so he could keep her away from drugs and her drug-using friends. Joplin's appearances with the Kozmic Blues Band in Europe were released in theaters, in multiple documentaries. Janis, which was reviewed by the Washington Post on March 21, 1975, shows Joplin arriving in Frankfurt by plane and waiting inside a bus next to the Frankfurt venue, while an American female fan who is visiting Germany expresses enthusiasm to the camera (no security was used in Frankfurt, so by the end of the concert, the stage was so packed with people the band members could not see each other). Janis also includes interviews with Joplin in Stockholm and from her visit to London, for her gig at Royal Albert Hall. The London interview was dubbed with a voiceover in the German language for broadcast on German television. John Byrne Cooke, road manager for Joplin and the Kozmic Blues Band, wrote a book published in 2014 in which he discussed her knowledge of the risks of her ongoing use of narcotics, particularly when she was outside the United States. On the episode of The Dick Cavett Show that was telecast in the United States on the night of July 18, 1969, Joplin and her band performed "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)" as well as "To Love Somebody". As Dick Cavett interviewed Joplin, she admitted that she had a terrible time touring in Europe, claiming that audiences there are very uptight and don't "get down". Released in September 1969, the Kozmic Blues album was certified gold later that year but did not match the success of Cheap Thrills. Reviews of the new group were mixed. However, the album's recording quality and engineering, as well as the musicianship (including three performances by former Bob Dylan/Paul Butterfield/Electric Flag guitarist Mike Bloomfield), were considered superior to her previous releases, and some music critics argued that the band was working in a much more constructive way to support Joplin's sensational vocal talents. Joplin wanted a horn section similar to that featured by the Chicago Transit Authority; her voice had the dynamic qualities and range not to be overpowered by the brighter horn sound. Some music critics, however, including Ralph J. Gleason of the San Francisco Chronicle, were negative. Gleason wrote that the new band was a "drag" and Joplin should "scrap" her new band and "go right back to being a member of Big Brother ... (if they'll have her)." Other reviewers, such as reporter Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, devoted entire articles to celebrating the singer's magic. Bernstein's review said that Joplin "has finally assembled a group of first-rate musicians with whom she is totally at ease and whose abilities complement the incredible range of her voice." Columbia Records released "Kozmic Blues" as a single, which peaked at number 41 on the Billboard Hot 100, and a live rendition of "Raise Your Hand" was released in Germany and became a top ten hit there. Containing other hits like "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)", "To Love Somebody", and "Little Girl Blue", I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! reached number five on the Billboard 200 soon after its release. Joplin appeared at Woodstock starting at approximately 2:00 a.m., on Sunday, August 17, 1969. Joplin informed her band that they would be performing at the concert as if it were just another gig. On Saturday afternoon, when she and the band were flown by helicopter with the pregnant Joan Baez and Baez's mother from a nearby motel to the festival site and Joplin saw the enormous crowd, she instantly became extremely nervous and giddy. Upon landing and getting off the helicopter, Joplin was approached by reporters asking her questions. She referred them to her friend and sometime lover Peggy Caserta as she was too excited to speak. Initially, Joplin was eager to get on the stage and perform but was repeatedly delayed as bands were contractually obliged to perform ahead of Joplin. Faced with a ten-hour wait after arriving at the backstage area, Joplin spent some of that time shooting heroin and drinking alcohol with Caserta in a tent. The director's cut of the Woodstock movie shows Joplin and Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick standing together near amplifiers watching the band Canned Heat's performance, which started at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, and Caserta does not appear within camera range. When Joplin finally reached the stage at approximately 2:00 a.m. Sunday, she was "three sheets to the wind", according to biographer Alice Echols. During her performance, Joplin's voice became slightly hoarse and wheezy, and she struggled to dance. Joplin pulled through, however, and engaged frequently with the crowd, asking them if they had everything they needed and if they were staying stoned. The audience cheered for an encore, to which Joplin replied and sang "Ball and Chain". Pete Townshend, who performed with the Who later in the same morning after Joplin finished, witnessed her performance and said the following in his 2012 memoir: "She had been amazing at Monterey, but tonight she wasn't at her best, due, probably, to the long delay, and probably, too, to the amount of booze and heroin she'd consumed while she waited. But even Janis on an off-night was incredible." Janis remained at Woodstock for the remainder of the festival. Starting at approximately 3:00 a.m. on Monday, August 18, Joplin was among many Woodstock performers who stood in a circle behind Crosby, Stills & Nash during their performance, which was the first time anyone at Woodstock ever had heard the group perform. This information was published by David Crosby in 1988. Later in the morning of August 18, Joplin and Joan Baez sat in Joe Cocker's van and witnessed Hendrix's close-of-show performance, according to Baez's memoir And a Voice to Sing With (1989). Still photographs in color show Joplin backstage with Grace Slick the day after Joplin's performance, wherein Joplin appears to be very happy. She was ultimately unhappy with her performance, however, and blamed Caserta. Her singing was not included (by her own insistence) in the 1970 documentary film or the soundtrack for Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More, although the 25th anniversary director's cut of Woodstock includes her performance of "Work Me, Lord". The documentary film of the festival that was released in theaters during 1970 includes, on the left side of a split screen, 37 seconds of footage of Joplin and Caserta walking toward Joplin's dressing room tent. In addition to Woodstock, Joplin also had problems at Madison Square Garden, in 1969. Biographer Myra Friedman said she had witnessed a duet Joplin sang with Tina Turner during the Rolling Stones concert at the Garden on Thanksgiving Day. Friedman said Joplin was "so drunk, so stoned, so out of control, that she could have been an institutionalized psychotic rent by mania." During another Garden concert where she had solo billing on December 19, some observers believed Joplin tried to incite the audience to riot. For part of this concert she was joined onstage by Johnny Winter and Paul Butterfield. Joplin told rock journalist David Dalton that Garden audiences watched and listened to "every note [she sang] with 'Is she gonna make it?' in their eyes." In her interview with Dalton she added that she felt most comfortable performing at small, cheap venues in San Francisco that were associated with the counterculture. At the time of the June 1970 interview with Dalton, she had already performed in the Bay Area for what turned out to be the last time. Sam Andrew, the lead guitarist who had left Big Brother with Joplin in December 1968 to form her back-up band, quit in late summer 1969 and returned to Big Brother. At the end of the year, the Kozmic Blues Band broke up. Their final gig with Joplin was the one at Madison Square Garden with Winter and Butterfield. In February 1970, Joplin traveled to Brazil, where she stopped her drug and alcohol use. She was accompanied on vacation there by her friend Linda Gravenites (wife of songwriter Nick Gravenites), who had designed Janis's stage costumes from 1967 to 1969. In Brazil, Joplin was romanced by a fellow American tourist named David (George) Niehaus, who was traveling around the world. A Joplin biography written by her sister Laura said, "David was an upper-middle-class Cincinnati kid who had studied communications at Notre Dame. ... [and] had joined the Peace Corps after college and worked in a small village in Turkey. ... He tried law school, but when he met Janis he was taking time off." Niehaus and Joplin were photographed by the press at Rio Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Gravenites also took color photographs of the two during their Brazilian vacation. According to Joplin biographer Ellis Amburn, in Gravenites' snapshots they "look like a carefree, happy, healthy young couple having a tremendously good time." Rolling Stone magazine interviewed Joplin during an international phone call, quoting her: "I'm going into the jungle with a big bear of a beatnik named David Niehaus. I finally remembered I don't have to be on stage twelve months a year. I've decided to go and dig some other jungles for a couple of weeks." Amburn added in 1992, "Janis was trying to kick heroin in Brazil, and one of the nicest things about David was that he wasn't into drugs." When Joplin returned to the U.S., she began using heroin again. Her relationship with Niehaus soon ended because he witnessed her shooting drugs at her new home in Larkspur, California. The relationship was also complicated by her ongoing romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta, who also was an intravenous addict, and Joplin's refusal to take some time off and travel the world with him. Around this time, she formed her new band, known for a short time as Main Squeeze, then renamed the Full Tilt Boogie Band. The band comprised mostly young Canadian musicians previously associated with Ronnie Hawkins and featured an organ, but no horn section. Joplin took a more active role in putting together the Full Tilt Boogie band than she had with her prior group. She was quoted as saying, "It's my band. Finally it's my band!" In May 1970, after performing under the name Main Squeeze at a Hell's Angels event, the renamed Full Tilt Boogie Band began a nationwide tour. Joplin became very happy with her new group, which eventually received mostly positive feedback from both her fans and the critics. Prior to beginning a summer tour with Full Tilt Boogie, she performed in a reunion with Big Brother at the Fillmore West, in San Francisco, on April 4, 1970. Recordings from this concert were included in an in-concert album released posthumously in 1972. She again appeared with Big Brother on April 12 at Winterland, where she and Big Brother were reported to be in excellent form. She performed with the band, billed as Main Squeeze, at a party for the Hells Angels at a venue in San Rafael, California on May 21, 1970, according to a web site maintained by Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew. Andrew's web site quotes him as saying, "This will be the first time that Janis' old band and her new band will be at the same venue, so everyone is a little on edge." According to Joplin's biographer Ellis Amburn, Big Brother with its lead singer Nick Gravenites was the opening act at the party that was attended by 2,300 people. The Hells Angels, who had known Joplin since 1966, paid her a fee of 240 dollars to perform. Gravenites and Sam Andrew (who had resumed playing guitar with Big Brother) differed in their opinions of her performance and how substance abuse affected it. Gravenites described her singing as "stupendous," according to Amburn. Amburn quoted Andrew twenty years later: "She was visibly deteriorating and she looked bloated. She was like a parody of what she was at her best. I put it down to her drinking too much and I felt a tinge of fear for her well-being. Her singing was real flabby, no edge at all." Shortly thereafter, Joplin began wearing multi-colored feather boas in her hair. (She had not worn them at the May 21 Hell's Angels party / concert in San Rafael). By the time she began touring with Full Tilt Boogie, Joplin told people she was drug-free, but her drinking increased. From June 28 to July 4, 1970, during the Festival Express tour, Joplin and Full Tilt Boogie performed alongside Buddy Guy, the Band, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Ten Years After, the Grateful Dead, Delaney & Bonnie, Eric Andersen, and Ian & Sylvia. They played concerts in Toronto, Winnipeg, and Calgary. Joplin jammed with the other performers on the train, and her performances on this tour are considered to be among her greatest. Joplin headlined the festival on all three nights. At the last stop in Calgary, she took to the stage with Jerry Garcia while her band was tuning up. Film footage shows her telling the audience how great the tour was and shows her and Garcia presenting the organizers with a case of tequila. She then burst into a two-hour set, starting with "Tell Mama". Throughout this performance, Joplin engaged in several banters about her love life. In one, she reminisced about living in a San Francisco apartment and competing with a female neighbor in flirting with men on the street. She finished the Calgary concert with long versions of "Get It While You Can" and "Ball and Chain". Footage of her performance of "Tell Mama" in Calgary became an MTV video in the early 1980s, and the audio from the same film footage was included on the Farewell Song (1982) album. The audio of other Festival Express performances was included on Joplin's In Concert (1972) album. Video of the performances was also included on the Festival Express DVD. These performances of entire songs during the Festival Express concerts in Toronto and Calgary can be purchased, although other songs remain in vaults and have yet to be released. In the "Tell Mama" video shown on MTV in the 1980s, Joplin wore a psychedelically colored, loose-fitting costume and feathers in her hair. This was her standard stage costume in the spring and summer of 1970. She chose the new costumes after her friend and designer, Linda Gravenites (whom Joplin had praised in Vogues profile of her in its May 1968 edition), cut ties with Joplin shortly after their return from Brazil, due largely to Joplin's continued use of heroin. Among Joplin's last public appearances were two broadcasts of The Dick Cavett Show. In her June 25, 1970 appearance, she announced that she would attend her ten-year high school class reunion. When asked if she had been popular in school, she admitted that when in high school, her schoolmates "laughed me out of class, out of town and out of the state" (during the year she had spent at the University of Texas at Austin, Joplin had been voted "Ugliest Man on Campus" by frat boys). In the subsequent Cavett Show broadcast, on August 3, 1970, and featuring Gloria Swanson, Joplin discussed her upcoming performance at the Festival for Peace to be held at Shea Stadium in Queens, New York, three days later. On July 11, 1970, Full Tilt Boogie and Big Brother and the Holding Company both performed at the same concert in the San Diego Sports Arena, which was decades later renamed the Valley View Casino Center. Joplin sang with Full Tilt Boogie and appeared briefly onstage with Big Brother without singing, according to a July 13 review of the concert in the San Diego Union. On August 7, 1970, a tombstone—jointly paid for by Joplin and Juanita Green, who as a child had done housework for Bessie Smith—was erected at Smith's previously unmarked grave. The following day, the Associated Press circulated this news, and the August 9 edition of The New York Times carried it. The lead paragraph of the AP story said Joplin and Green had "shared the cost of a stone for the 'Empress of the Blues,'" but, according to publicist/biographer Myra Friedman, the two women never met. Joplin had been at home in Larkspur, California when she had received a long-distance phone call with an explanation of the need to finance a gravestone for Bessie Smith, whom Joplin had frequently cited as a musical influence. Joplin immediately wrote a check and mailed it to the name and address provided by the phone caller. On August 8, 1970, as the Associated Press circulated the news about Smith's new gravestone, Joplin performed at the Capitol Theatre (Port Chester, New York). It was there that she first performed "Mercedes Benz", a song (partially inspired by a Michael McClure poem) that she had composed with fellow musician and friend Bob Neuwirth a very short time earlier. According to Myra Friedman's account, Joplin performed two shows at the Capitol Theatre, the first of which was attended by actors Geraldine Page and her husband Rip Torn. Between the shows, at a "gin mill" [Friedman's words] very close to this concert venue, Joplin and Neuwirth penned the lyrics to the song and she performed it at the second show, according to Friedman. Neuwirth was quoted by The Wall Street Journal in 2015: "Around 7 p.m., after the Capitol sound check, we had a couple of hours to kill before [acts that opened for Joplin] Seatrain and Runt finished their sets. So the four of us [Joplin, Neuwirth, Geraldine Page, Rip Torn] walked to a bar about three minutes away called Vahsen’s [at 30 Broad Street in Port Chester]." While in Vahsen's, "Janis came up with words for the first verse. I was in charge of writing them down on bar napkins with a ballpoint pen. She came up with the second verse, too, about a color TV. I suggested words here and there, and came up with the third verse—about asking the Lord to buy us a night on the town and another round." Joplin's last public performance with the Full Tilt Boogie Band took place on August 12, 1970, at the Harvard Stadium in Boston. The Harvard Crimson gave the performance a positive, front-page review, despite the fact that Full Tilt Boogie had performed with makeshift amplifiers after their regular sound equipment was stolen in Boston. Joplin attended her high school reunion on August 14, accompanied by Neuwirth, road manager John Cooke, and sister Laura, but it was reportedly an unhappy experience for her. Joplin held a press conference in Port Arthur during her reunion visit. When asked by a reporter if she ever entertained at Thomas Jefferson High School when she was a student there, Joplin replied, "Only when I walked down the aisles." Joplin denigrated Port Arthur and the classmates who had humiliated her a decade earlier. During late August, September, and early October 1970, Joplin and her band rehearsed and recorded a new album in Los Angeles with producer Paul A. Rothchild, best known for his lengthy relationship with The Doors. Although Joplin died before all the tracks were fully completed, there was enough usable material to compile an LP. The posthumous Pearl (1971) became the biggest-selling album of her career and featured her biggest hit single, a cover of Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster's "Me and Bobby McGee" (Kristofferson had previously been Joplin's lover in the spring of 1970). The opening track, "Move Over", was written by Joplin, reflecting the way that she felt men treated women in relationships. Also included was the social commentary of "Mercedes Benz", presented in an a cappella arrangement; the track on the album features the first and only take that Joplin recorded. A cover of Nick Gravenites's "Buried Alive in the Blues", to which Joplin had been scheduled to add her vocals on the day she was found dead, was included as an instrumental. Joplin checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood on August 24, 1970, near Sunset Sound Recorders, where she began rehearsing and recording her album. During the sessions, Joplin continued a relationship with Seth Morgan, a 21-year-old UC Berkeley student, cocaine dealer, and future novelist who had visited her new home in Larkspur in July and August. She and Morgan were engaged to be married in early September, although he visited Sunset Sound Recorders for just eight of Joplin's many rehearsals and sessions. Morgan later told biographer Myra Friedman that, as a non-musician, he had felt excluded whenever he had visited Sunset Sound Recorders. Instead, he stayed at Joplin's Larkspur home while she stayed alone at the Landmark, although several times she visited Larkspur to be with him and to check the progress of renovations she was having done on the house. She told her construction crew to design a carport to be shaped like a flying saucer, according to biographer Ellis Amburn, the concrete foundation for which was poured the day before she died. Peggy Caserta claimed in her book, Going Down With Janis (1973), that she and Joplin had decided mutually in April 1970 to stay away from each other to avoid enabling each other's drug use. Caserta, a former Delta Air Lines stewardess and owner of one of the first clothing boutiques in the Haight Ashbury, said in the book that by September 1970, she was smuggling cannabis throughout California and had checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel because it attracted drug users. For approximately the first two weeks of Joplin's stay at the Landmark, she did not know Caserta was in Los Angeles. Joplin learned of Caserta's presence at the Landmark from a heroin dealer who made deliveries there. Joplin begged Caserta for heroin, and when Caserta refused to provide it, Joplin reportedly admonished her by saying, "Don't think if you can get it, I can't get it." Joplin's publicist Myra Friedman was unaware during Joplin's lifetime that this had happened. Later, while Friedman was working on her book Buried Alive, she determined that the time frame of the Joplin-Caserta encounter was one week before Jimi Hendrix's death. Within a few days, Joplin became a regular customer of the same heroin dealer who had been supplying Caserta. Joplin's manager Albert Grossman and his assistant/publicist Friedman had staged an intervention with Joplin the previous winter while Joplin was in New York. In September 1970, Grossman and Friedman, who worked out of a New York office, knew Joplin was staying at a Los Angeles hotel, but were unaware it was a haven for drug users and dealers. Grossman and Friedman knew during Joplin's lifetime that her friend Caserta, whom Friedman met during the New York sessions for Cheap Thrills and on later occasions, used heroin. During the many long-distance telephone conversations that Joplin and Friedman had in September 1970 and on October 1, Joplin never mentioned Caserta, and Friedman assumed Caserta had been out of Joplin's life for a while. Friedman, who had more time than Grossman to monitor the situation, never visited California. She thought Joplin sounded on the phone like she was less depressed than she had been over the summer. When Joplin was not at Sunset Sound Recorders, she liked to drive her Porsche over the speed limit "on the winding part of Sunset Blvd.", according to a statement made by her attorney Robert Gordon in 1995 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Friedman wrote that the only Full Tilt Boogie member who rode as her passenger, Ken Pearson, often hesitated to join her, though he did on the night she died. He was not interested in using hard drugs. On September 26, 1970, Joplin recorded vocals for "Half Moon" and "Cry Baby". The session ended with Joplin, organist Ken Pearson, and drummer Clark Pierson making a special one-minute recording as a birthday gift to John Lennon. Joplin was among several singers who had been contacted by Yoko Ono with a request for a taped greeting for Lennon's 30th birthday, on October 9. Joplin, Pearson, and Pierson chose the Dale Evans composition "Happy Trails" as part of the greeting. Lennon told Dick Cavett on-camera the following year that Joplin's recorded birthday wishes arrived at his home after her death. On October 1, 1970, Joplin completed her last recording, "Mercedes Benz", which was recorded in a single take. On Saturday, October 3, Joplin visited Sunset Sound Recorders to listen to the instrumental track for Nick Gravenites's song "Buried Alive in the Blues", which the band had recorded earlier that day. She and Paul Rothchild agreed she would record the vocal the following day. At some point on Saturday, she learned by telephone, to her dismay, that Seth Morgan had met other women at a Marin County, California, restaurant, invited them to her home, and was shooting pool with them using her pool table. People at Sunset Sound Recorders overheard Joplin expressing anger about the state of her relationship with Morgan, as well as joy about the progress of the sessions. Joplin and Ken Pearson later left the studio together and she drove him in her Porsche to the West Hollywood landmark called Barney's Beanery. Friedman wrote, "At the bar, she drank vodka and orange juice, only two." Bennett Glotzer, a business partner of Joplin's manager Albert Grossman, was present at Barney's Beanery, according to what he told John Byrne Cooke immediately after he (Glotzer) learned of her death. Evidently, Joplin had a friendly conversation with a young man whom she did not know, and he expressed admiration for her music. After midnight, she drove Ken Pearson and the male fan to the Landmark where she and Pearson were staying in separate rooms. During the car ride, the fan asked Joplin questions "about her singing style," according to Friedman, and "she mostly ignored him" so she could converse with Pearson. As Joplin and Pearson prepared to part in the lobby of the Landmark, she expressed a fear, possibly in jest, that he and the other Full Tilt Boogie musicians might decide to stop making music with her. Pearson was the second-to-last person to see her alive. The last was the Landmark's night shift desk clerk. He had met her several times but did not know her. Personal life Joplin's significant relationships with men included ones with Peter de Blanc, Country Joe McDonald (who wrote the song "Janis" at Joplin's request), David (George) Niehaus, Kris Kristofferson, and Seth Morgan (from July 1970 until her death, at which time they were allegedly engaged). She also had relationships with women. During her first stint in San Francisco in 1963, Joplin met and briefly lived with Jae Whitaker, a black woman whom she had met while playing pool at the bar Gino & Carlo in North Beach. Whitaker broke off their relationship because of Joplin's hard drug use and sexual relationships with other people. Whitaker was first identified by name in connection with the singer in 1999, when Alice Echols' biography Scars of Sweet Paradise was published. Joplin also had an on-again-off-again romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta. They first met in November 1966 when Big Brother performed at a San Francisco venue called The Matrix. Caserta was one of 15 people in the audience, and at the time, she ran a successful clothing boutique in the Haight Ashbury. Approximately a month after Caserta attended the concert, Joplin visited her boutique and said she could not afford to buy a pair of jeans that was for sale, instead asking to put down the first 50 cents on the $5 item. Caserta was amazed that such a talented singer could not afford a $5 item, and gave her a pair for free. Their friendship was platonic for more than a year. Before it moved to the next level, Caserta was in love with Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, and sometime during the first half of 1968 traveled from San Francisco to New York to flirt with him. He did not want a serious relationship, and Joplin sympathized with Caserta's disappointment. The Woodstock concert film includes 37 seconds of Joplin and Caserta walking together before they reached the tent where Joplin waited for her turn to perform. By the time the festival took place in August 1969, both were intravenous heroin addicts. According to Caserta's book Going Down With Janis, which Caserta has since disowned, Joplin introduced her to her boyfriend Seth Morgan in Joplin's room at the Landmark Motor Hotel on September 29, 1970. Caserta "had seen him around" San Francisco but had not met him before. At some point, an agreement was made for a threesome to take place the following Friday, although Caserta later said that she immediately abandoned the idea once she understood that it was Morgan who would be with Joplin. Morgan made alternate plans, believing that Caserta would be with Joplin that evening. Each one, however, was unaware that the other had bowed out. The day after Joplin introduced Caserta to Morgan, Caserta saw Joplin briefly, again in Joplin's room, when Caserta accommodated her new Los Angeles friend Debbie Nuciforo, age 19, an aspiring hard rock drummer who wanted to meet Joplin. Nuciforo was stoned on heroin at the time, and the three women's encounter was brief and unpleasant. Caserta suspected that the reason for Joplin's foul mood was that Morgan had abandoned her earlier that day after having spent less than 24 hours with her. Caserta did not see nor communicate by phone with Joplin again, although she later claimed she had made several attempts to reach her by phone at the Landmark Motor Hotel and at Sunset Sound Recorders. Caserta and Morgan lost touch with each other; each had independently made alternate plans for Friday night, October 2. Joplin mentioned her disappointment (over both of her friends' bailing out of their ménage à trois) to her drug dealer on Saturday, while he was selling her the dose of heroin that killed her, as Caserta later learned from the drug dealer. Biographer Myra Friedman commented in her original version of Buried Alive (1973): Given the near-infinite potentials of infancy, it is really impossible to make generalizations about what lies behind sexual practices. This, however, is probable: to become clearly homosexual, to make the choice that one honestly prefers relations with one's own sex, no matter the origins of such preference, requires a certain integration, a stability of psychic development, a tidiness of personality organization. The ridicule and the humiliation that took place at that most delicate period in [Joplin's] early teens, her own inability to surmount the obstacles to regular growth, devastated her a great deal more than most people comprehended. Janis was not heir to an ego so cohesive as to permit her an identity one way or the other. She was, as [the psychiatric social worker she saw regularly in Beaumont, Texas in 1965 and 1966] Mr. [Bernard] Giarritano put it [in an interview with Friedman], "diffused" -- spewing, splattering, splaying all over, without a center to hold. That had as much to do with her original use of drugs [before she first met Giarritano] as did the critical component of guilt and its multiplicity of sources above and beyond the contribution made by her relationships with women. Were she so simple as the lesbians wished her to be or so free as her associates imagined! Kim France reported in her May 2, 1999 The New York Times article, "Nothin' Left to Lose" : "Once she became famous, Joplin cursed like a truck driver, did not believe in wearing undergarments, was rarely seen without her bottle of Southern Comfort and delighted in playing the role of sexual predator." On July 11, 1970, Joplin made a revealing statement about her sexuality to her friend Richard Hundgen, the Grateful Dead's San Francisco-based road manager whom she had known since 1966. When Joplin and Hundgen were offstage during a San Diego gig for both Full Tilt Boogie and Big Brother and the Holding Company, she said the following that he later repeated to Myra Friedman: I hear a rumor that somebody in San Francisco is spreading stories that I'm a dyke. You go back there and find out who it is and tell them that Janis says she's gotten it on with a couple of thousand cats in her life and a few hundred chicks and see what they can do with that! Death On Sunday evening, October 4, 1970, Joplin was found dead on the floor of her room at the Landmark Motor Hotel by her road manager and close friend John Byrne Cooke. Alcohol was present in the room. Newspapers reported that no other drugs or paraphernalia were present. According to a 1983 book authored by Joseph DiMona and Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi, evidence of narcotics was removed from the scene by a friend of Joplin and later put back after the person realized that an autopsy was going to reveal that narcotics were in her system. The book adds that prior to Joplin's death, Noguchi had investigated other fatal drug overdoses in Los Angeles where friends believed they were doing favors for decedents by removing evidence of narcotics, then they "thought things over" and returned to put back the evidence. Noguchi performed an autopsy on Joplin and determined the cause of death to be a heroin overdose, possibly compounded by alcohol. John Byrne Cooke believed Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than what she and other L.A. heroin users had received on previous occasions, as was indicated by overdoses of several of her dealer's other customers during the same weekend. Her death was ruled accidental. Both Peggy Caserta, Joplin's close friend, and Seth Morgan, Joplin's fiancé, had failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death, October 2; Joplin had been expecting both of them to keep her company that night. According to Caserta, Joplin was saddened that neither of her friends visited her at the Landmark as they had promised. During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment, Caserta did not phone her to explain why she had failed to show up. Caserta admitted to waiting until late Saturday night to dial the Landmark switchboard, only to learn that Joplin had instructed the desk clerk not to accept any incoming phone calls for her after midnight. Morgan did speak to Joplin via telephone within the 24 hours prior to her death, but little is known about that call. She used a phone at Sunset Sound Recorders where her colleagues (“there were perhaps twenty to twenty-five people pre‪sent,” wrote biographer Myra Friedman) noticed that whatever Morgan said to her made her very angry. Peggy Caserta has insisted that Joplin's death was not an accidental overdose, but rather a result of a head gash suffered after the "hourglass heel" of her slingback sandal caught in the shag carpet, causing her to lose her balance. Caserta does concede, however, that drugs and/or alcohol may have played a role in hastening her death that night. Joplin was cremated at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary in Los Angeles, and her ashes were scattered from a plane into the Pacific Ocean. Legacy Joplin's death in October 1970 at age 27 stunned her fans and shocked the music world, especially when coupled with the death just 16 days earlier of another rock icon, Jimi Hendrix, also at age 27. (This would later cause some people to attribute significance to the death of musicians at the age of 27, as celebrated in the "27 Club.") Music historian Tom Moon wrote that Joplin had "a devastatingly original voice," music columnist Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote that Joplin as an artist was "overpowering and deeply vulnerable" and author Megan Terry said that Joplin was the female version of Elvis Presley in her ability to captivate an audience. A book about Joplin by her publicist Myra Friedman titled Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin (1973) was excerpted in many newspapers. At the same time, Peggy Caserta's memoir, Going Down With Janis (1973), attracted much attention; its provocative title is a reference to Caserta's claim that she had engaged in oral sex with Joplin while they were high on heroin in September 1970. The description provided by Dan Knapp, Caserta’s co-author whom she denounced decades later, repelled many people in 1973 when few books or filmed interviews of Joplin or her loved ones were accessible to the public. Joplin's bandmate Sam Andrew described Caserta as "halfway between a groupie and a friend" in an interview with writer Ellis Amburn. Soon after the 1973 publication of Going Down With Janis, Joplin's friends learned that graphic descriptions of sexual acts and intravenous drug use were not the only portions of the book that would haunt them. According to Kim Chappell, a close friend of Caserta and Joplin, Caserta's book angered the Los Angeles heroin dealer whom she had described in detail in her book, including the make and model of his car. According to Amburn, in 1973 a "carful of dope dealers" visited a Los Angeles lesbian bar that Caserta had been frequenting. Chappell, who was in the alley behind the bar, stated: "I was stabbed because, when Peggy's book came out, her dealer, the same one who'd given Janis her last fix, didn't like it that he was referred to and was out to get Peggy. He couldn't find her, so he went for her lover. When they realized who I was, they felt that my death would also hit Peggy, and so they stabbed me." Despite being "stabbed three times in the chest, puncturing both lungs," Chappell eventually recovered. In 2018, Caserta denounced Going Down With Janis as the pornographic fantasy of Dan Knapp, her co-author, and largely unreliable. During that year, the public had its first access to her own story via a memoir she co-wrote with Maggie Falcon titled I Ran Into Some Trouble. It describes a long, friendly relationship with Joplin that only occasionally featured sexuality. According to Joplin’s biographers, Caserta was among many friends of Joplin who did not become clean and sober until a very long time after Joplin's death, while others died from overdoses. Although the wife of Big Brother guitarist James Gurley, who was Joplin's close friend, died from a heroin overdose in 1969, devastating Joplin, Gurley himself did not become clean and sober until 1984. Caserta survived "a near-fatal OD in December 1995," wrote Alice Echols. On January 13, 2000, Caserta appeared during a segment about Joplin on 20/20. Joplin's body art, with a wristlet and a small heart on her left breast by the San Francisco tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle, marked an early moment in the popular culture's acceptance of tattoos as art. Another trademark was her flamboyant hair styles, which often included colored streaks and accessories such as scarves, beads and feathers. When in New York City, Joplin frequented the Limbo boutique on St. Mark's Place, and she wore some of the vintage and unique garments that she purchased there on stage. The Mamas & the Papas' song "Pearl" (1971), from their People Like Us album, was a tribute. Leonard Cohen's song "Chelsea Hotel#2" (1974) is about Joplin. Lyricist Robert Hunter has commented that Jerry Garcia's "Birdsong" from his first solo album, Garcia (1972), is about Joplin and the end of her suffering through death. Mimi Farina's composition "In the Quiet Morning", most famously covered by Joan Baez on her Come from the Shadows (1972) album, was a tribute to Joplin. Another song by Baez, "Children of the Eighties," mentioned Joplin. A Serge Gainsbourg-penned French language song by English singer Jane Birkin, "Ex fan des sixties" (1978), references Joplin along with other disappeared "idols" such as Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones and Marc Bolan. When Joplin was alive, Country Joe McDonald released a song called "Janis" on his band's album I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die (1967). The film The Rose (1979) is loosely based on Joplin's life. Originally planned to be titled Pearl—Joplin's nickname and the title of her last album—the film was fictionalized after her family declined to allow the producers the rights to her story. Bette Midler earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the film. In 1988, on what would have been Joplin's 45th birthday, the Janis Joplin Memorial, with an original gold, multi-image sculpture of Joplin by Douglas Clark, was dedicated during a ceremony in Port Arthur, Texas. In 1992, the first major biography of Joplin in two decades, Love, Janis, authored by her younger sister Laura Joplin, was published. In an interview, Laura stated that Joplin enjoyed being on the Dick Cavett Show, that Joplin had difficulties with some, but not all, people at Thomas Jefferson High School and that Joplin enthusiastically talked about Woodstock with her parents and siblings during a visit to their Texas home a few weeks after she had performed at the festival. In 1995, Joplin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2005, she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In November 2009, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum honored her as part of its annual American Music Masters Series; among the artifacts at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum exhibition are Joplin's scarf and necklaces, her psychedelically painted 1965 Porsche 356 Cabriolet and a sheet of LSD blotting paper designed by Robert Crumb, designer of the Cheap Thrills cover. Also in 2009, Joplin was the honoree at the Rock Hall's American Music Master concert and lecture series. In the late 1990s, the musical play Love, Janis was created and directed by Randal Myler, with input from Janis' younger sister Laura and Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, with an aim to take it to Off-Broadway. Opening in the summer of 2001 and scheduled for only a few weeks of performances, the show won acclaim, played to packed houses and was held over several times. In 2013, Washington's Arena Stage featured a production of A Night with Janis Joplin, starring Mary Bridget Davies. In it, Joplin performs a concert for the audience while telling stories of her past inspirations, including those of Odetta and Aretha Franklin. The show went on tour in 2016. On November 4, 2013, Joplin was awarded with the 2,510th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the music industry. Her star is located at 6752 Hollywood Boulevard, in front of Musicians Institute. On August 8, 2014, the U.S. Postal Service revealed a commemorative stamp honoring Joplin as part of its Music Icons stamp series during a first-day-of-issue ceremony at the Outside Lands Music Festival at Golden Gate Park. Among the memorabilia Joplin left behind is a Gibson Hummingbird guitar. In 2015, the biographical documentary film Janis: Little Girl Blue, directed by Amy J. Berg and narrated by Cat Power, was released. It was a New York Times Critics' Pick. Influence Joplin had a profound influence on many singers. Pink said about Joplin: "She was so inspiring by singing blues music when it wasn't culturally acceptable for white women, and she wore her heart on her sleeve. She was so witty and charming and intelligent, but she also battled an ugly-duckling syndrome. I would love to play her in a movie." In a tribute performance on her Try This Tour, Pink called Joplin "a woman who inspired me when everyone else ... didn't!" Discography Janis Joplin recorded four albums in her four-year career. The first two albums were recorded with and credited to Big Brother and the Holding Company; the later two were recorded with different backing bands and released as solo albums. Posthumous releases have included previously unreleased studio and live material. Studio albums As lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company As solo artist Live albums Compilation albums Singles As lead of Big Brother and the Holding Company As solo artist Filmography Monterey Pop (1968) Petulia (1968) Janis Joplin Live in Frankfurt (1969) Janis (1974) Janis: The Way She Was (1974) Comin' Home (1988) Woodstock – The Lost Performances (1991) Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director's Cut) (1994) Festival Express (2003) Nine Hundred Nights (2004) The Dick Cavett Show: Rock Icons (2005) Shout Factory Rockin' at the Red Dog: The Dawn of Psychedelic Rock (2005) This is Tom Jones (2007) 1969 appearance on TV show Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director's Cut) 40th Anniversary Edition (2009) Janis Joplin with Big Brother: Ball and Chain (DVD) Charly (2009) Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015) Notes References Further reading – an encounter with Janis Joplin at the wheel. External links Janis Joplin at the Grammy Awards Janis Joplin on the Music-Map 1943 births 1970 deaths 20th-century American singers 20th-century American women singers American blues singers American child singers American mezzo-sopranos American women rock singers American women singer-songwriters American rhythm and blues singer-songwriters American rock songwriters American soul musicians Accidental deaths in California Big Brother and the Holding Company members Bisexual musicians Bisexual women Blues rock musicians Columbia Records artists Deaths by heroin overdose in California Drug-related deaths in California Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners LGBT people from Texas LGBT singers from the United States LGBT songwriters Lamar University alumni People from Beaumont, Texas People from Port Arthur, Texas Singer-songwriters from Texas University of Texas at Austin alumni 20th-century LGBT people
false
[ "Iosif Grigor'evich Alliluyev (; 22 May 1945 – 2 November 2008) was a Russian cardiologist and a grandson of Joseph Stalin.\n\nThe son of Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva, Iosif was seven years old when Stalin, his maternal grandfather, died in March 1953. Although he kept a low profile, he did take part in a television interview on Russian Channel One. He spoke about his relationship with his mother and how she fled to the United States.\n\nIn 1967, he was living in Moscow with his wife Yelena while studying to be a doctor. During this time, he was also serving his military service.\n\nAlliluyev died on 2 November 2008.\n\nHe is portrayed briefly as a 6-year-old in HBO's 1992 film Stalin.\n\nReferences\n\n1945 births\n2008 deaths\nPeople from Moscow\nRussian cardiologists\nSoviet cardiologists\nStalin family\nRussian people of Georgian descent", "Mary East (1730s — 8 June 1780) was an English tavern owner in the East End of London in the 1700s and is best known for being born as female but openly presenting as male in the Georgian era.\n\nIn 1732, a 16-year-old Mary East began to present as a man taking on the name James How after entering a relationship with another 17-year-old female friend (unnamed).\n\nLife as a pub landlord\n\nThe two identified as a married couple and went on to purchase and run several pubs across East London before settling in Poplar to run the White Horse pub in 1745.\n\nCourt case\n\nThe couple lived peacefully but experienced incidents of blackmail from confidants and old acquaintances wanting to expose James How’s female identity. Around 1750, a person who knew of Mary East in her youth, blackmailed the couple for cash in exchange for keeping their secret. James How complied with the payments of between £5 and £10 until 1765 when Mrs. How passed away.\n\nIn 1766, unable to comply with the demands any further and after a violent assault on James How from the blackmailer, James How brought the matter to the court. The extortionist appeared before Justices of the Peace in Whitechapel and \"after the strongest proof of their extortion and assault\" was detained in Clerkenwell Bridewell prison until trial. James How outed the original identity and attended the trial hearings as Mary East. Mary was able to prove the extortion of considerable sums of money as well as assault, and won the case. The blackmailer was convicted and sentenced to stand three times in the pillory and four years of imprisonment. Mary had to resign from the roles she had held as James How, and had to retire from the White Horse.\n\nAfter the hearing, Mary East retired and lived the remaining years of her life as a woman. She died on 8 June 1780; her estate was divided between the poor of Poplar, relatives, and friends. She was buried at St Matthias Old Church in Poplar.\n\nIn popular culture\n\nThe story of James Now and his wife was told in Bram Stoker’s novel Famous Impostors in 1910.\n\nReferences \n\n18th-century English people\nTransgender and transsexual people\n\n1730s births\n1780 deaths" ]
[ "Janis Joplin", "Death", "What year did Janis die?", "1970,", "How old was she when she died?", "On October 4, 1970, producer Paul Rothchild became concerned when Joplin failed to show up at Sunset Sound Recorders for a recording" ]
C_3938290d39f0420aa035060edc72696f_0
Was Janis with anyone when she died?
3
Was Janis Joplin with anyone when Janis Joplin died?
Janis Joplin
On October 4, 1970, producer Paul Rothchild became concerned when Joplin failed to show up at Sunset Sound Recorders for a recording session. Full Tilt Boogie's road manager, John Cooke, drove to the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood where Joplin was staying. He saw Joplin's psychedelically painted Porsche 356 C Cabriolet in the parking lot, and upon entering Joplin's room (#105), he found her dead on the floor beside her bed. The official cause of death was a heroin overdose, possibly compounded by alcohol. Cooke believes Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than normal, as several of her dealer's other customers also overdosed that week. Peggy Caserta and Seth Morgan had both failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death, October 2, and Joplin had been expecting both of them to keep her company that night. According to Caserta, Joplin was saddened that neither of her friends visited her at the Landmark as they had promised. During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment, Caserta did not phone her to explain why she had failed to show up. Caserta admitted to waiting until late Saturday night to dial the Landmark switchboard, only to learn that Joplin had instructed the desk clerk not to accept any incoming phone calls for her after midnight. Morgan did speak to Joplin via telephone within 24 hours of her death, but it is not known whether he admitted to her that he had broken his promise. Joplin's last will and testament funded $2,500 to throw a wake party in the event of her demise. The party took place on October 26, 1970, at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo, California, and was attended by Joplin's sister Laura, Morgan, and other close friends, including Cooke, Bob Gordon, Jack Penty, and tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle. CANNOTANSWER
Peggy Caserta and Seth Morgan had both failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death,
Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter who sang rock, soul, and blues music. One of the most successful and widely known rock stars of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and "electric" stage presence. In 1967, Joplin rose to fame following an appearance at Monterey Pop Festival, where she was the lead singer of the then little-known San Francisco psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company. After releasing two albums with the band, she left Big Brother to continue as a solo artist with her own backing groups, first the Kozmic Blues Band and then the Full Tilt Boogie Band. She appeared at the Woodstock festival and on the Festival Express train tour. Five singles by Joplin reached the Billboard Hot 100, including a cover of the Kris Kristofferson song "Me and Bobby McGee", which reached number one in March 1971. Her most popular songs include her cover versions of "Piece of My Heart", "Cry Baby", "Down on Me", "Ball and Chain", and "Summertime"; and her original song "Mercedes Benz", her final recording. Joplin died of a heroin overdose in 1970, at the age of 27, after releasing three albums (two with Big Brother and the Holding Company and one solo album). A second solo album, Pearl, was released in January 1971, just over three months after her death. It reached number one on the Billboard charts. She was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Rolling Stone ranked Joplin number 46 on its 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. She remains one of the top-selling musicians in the United States, with Recording Industry Association of America certifications of 18.5 million albums sold. Early life Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on , to Dorothy Bonita East (1913–1998), a registrar at a business college, and her husband, Seth Ward Joplin (1910–1987), an engineer at Texaco. She had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. The family attended First Christian Church of Port Arthur, a church belonging to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) denomination. Her parents felt that Janis needed more attention than their other children. As a teenager, Joplin befriended a group of outcasts, one of whom had albums by blues artists Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Lead Belly, which Joplin later credited with influencing her decision to become a singer. She began singing blues and folk music with friends at Thomas Jefferson High School. In high school, she was a classmate of Pro Football Hall of Fame coach Jimmy Johnson. Joplin stated that she was ostracized and bullied in high school. As a teen, she became overweight and suffered from acne, leaving her with deep scars that required dermabrasion. Other kids at high school would routinely taunt her and call her names like "pig," "freak," "nigger lover," or "creep." She stated, "I was a misfit. I read, I painted, I thought. I didn't hate niggers." Joplin graduated from high school in 1960 and attended Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, Texas, during the summer and later the University of Texas at Austin (UT), though she did not complete her college studies. The campus newspaper, The Daily Texan, ran a profile of her in the issue dated July 27, 1962, headlined "She Dares to Be Different." The article began, "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levi's to class because they're more comfortable, and carries her autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break into song, it will be handy. Her name is Janis Joplin." While at UT she performed with a folk trio called the Waller Creek Boys and frequently socialized with the staff of the campus humor magazine The Texas Ranger. According to Freak Brothers cartoonist Gilbert Shelton, who befriended her, she used to sell The Texas Ranger, which contained some of Shelton's early comic books, on the campus. Career 1962–1965: Early recordings Joplin cultivated a rebellious manner and styled herself partly after her female blues heroines and partly after the Beat poets. Her first song, "What Good Can Drinkin' Do", was recorded on tape in December 1962 at the home of a fellow University of Texas student. She left Texas in January 1963 ("Just to get away," she said, "because my head was in a much different place"), hitchhiking with her friend Chet Helms to North Beach, San Francisco. Still in San Francisco in 1964, Joplin and future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen recorded a number of blues standards, which incidentally featured Kaukonen's wife Margareta using a typewriter in the background. This session included seven tracks: "Typewriter Talk", "Trouble in Mind", "Kansas City Blues", "Hesitation Blues", "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out", "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy", and "Long Black Train Blues", and was released long after Joplin's death as the bootleg album The Typewriter Tape. In 1963, Joplin was arrested in San Francisco for shoplifting. During the two years that followed, her drug use increased and she acquired a reputation as a "speed freak" and occasional heroin user. She also used other psychoactive drugs and was a heavy drinker throughout her career; her favorite alcoholic beverage was Southern Comfort. In May 1965, Joplin's friends in San Francisco, noticing the detrimental effects on her from regularly injecting methamphetamine (she was described as "skeletal" and "emaciated"), persuaded her to return to Port Arthur. During that month, her friends threw her a bus-fare party so she could return to her parents in Texas. Five years later, Joplin told Rolling Stone magazine writer David Dalton the following about her first stint in San Francisco: "I didn't have many friends and I didn't like the ones I had." Back in Port Arthur in the spring of 1965, after Joplin's parents noticed her weight of , she changed her lifestyle. She avoided drugs and alcohol, adopted a beehive hairdo, and enrolled as an anthropology major at Lamar University in nearby Beaumont, Texas. Her sister Laura said in a 2016 interview that social work was her major during her year at Lamar. During her time at Lamar University, she commuted to Austin to sing solo, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar. One of her performances was at a benefit by local musicians for Texas bluesman Mance Lipscomb, who was suffering with ill health. Joplin became engaged to Peter de Blanc in the fall of 1965. She had begun a relationship with him toward the end of her first stint in San Francisco. Now living in New York where he worked with IBM computers, he visited her to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Joplin and her mother began planning the wedding. De Blanc, who traveled frequently, ended the engagement soon afterward. In 1965 and 1966, Joplin commuted from her family's Port Arthur home to Beaumont, Texas, where she had regular sessions with a psychiatric social worker named Bernard Giarritano at a counseling agency that was funded by the United Fund, which after her death changed its name to the United Way. Interviewed by biographer Myra Friedman after his client's death, Giarritano said Joplin had been baffled by how she could pursue a professional career as a singer without relapsing into drugs, and her drug-related memories from immediately prior to returning to Port Arthur continued to frighten her. Joplin sometimes brought an acoustic guitar with her to her sessions with Giarritano, and people in other offices within the building could hear her singing. Giarritano tried to reassure her that she did not have to use narcotics in order to succeed in the music business. She also said that if she were to avoid singing professionally, she would have to become a keypunch operator (as she had done a few years earlier) or a secretary, and then a wife and mother, and she would have to become very similar to all the other women in Port Arthur. Approximately a year before Joplin joined Big Brother and the Holding Company, she recorded seven studio tracks with her acoustic guitar. Among the songs she recorded were her original composition of the song "Turtle Blues" and an alternate version of "Cod'ine" by Buffy Sainte-Marie. These tracks were later issued as a new album in 1995, titled This is Janis Joplin 1965 by James Gurley. 1966–1969: Various bands In 1966, Joplin's bluesy vocal style attracted the attention of the San Francisco-based psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, which had gained some renown among the nascent hippie community in Haight-Ashbury. She was recruited to join the group by Chet Helms, a promoter who was managing Big Brother and with whom she had hitchhiked from Texas to San Francisco a few years earlier. Helms sent his friend Travis Rivers to find her in Austin, Texas, where she had been performing with her acoustic guitar, and to accompany her to San Francisco. Aware of her previous nightmare with drug addiction in San Francisco, Rivers insisted that she inform her parents face-to-face of her plans, and he drove her from Austin to Port Arthur (he waited in his car while she talked with her startled parents) before they began their long drive to San Francisco. Joplin joined Big Brother on June 4, 1966. Her first public performance with them was at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. In June, Joplin was photographed at an outdoor concert in San Francisco that celebrated the summer solstice. The image, which was later published in two books by David Dalton, shows her before she relapsed into drugs. Due to persistent persuading by keyboardist and close friend Stephen Ryder, Joplin avoided drugs for several weeks. She made Travis Rivers, with whom she shared an apartment upon their arrival in San Francisco, promise that using needles would not be allowed there. When bandmate Dave Getz accompanied her from a rehearsal to her home, Rivers was not there, but "two or three" (according to Getz' recollection 25 years later) guests whom Rivers had invited were in the process of injecting drugs. "One of them was about to tie off," recalled Getz. "Janis went nuts! I had never seen anybody explode like that. She was screaming and crying and Travis walked in. She screamed at him: 'We had a pact! You promised me! There wouldn't be any of that in front of me!' I was over my head and I tried to calm her down. I said, 'They're just doing mescaline,' because that's what I thought it was. She said, 'You don't understand! I can't see that! I just can't stand to see that!'" A San Francisco concert from that summer (1966) was recorded and released on the 1984 album Cheaper Thrills. In July, all five bandmates and guitarist James Gurley's wife Nancy moved to a house in Lagunitas, California, where they lived communally. The band often partied with the Grateful Dead, the members of whom lived less than two miles away. She had a short relationship and longer friendship with founding member Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. The band went to Chicago for a four-week engagement in August 1966, then found itself stranded after the promoter ran out of money when its concerts did not attract the expected audience levels, and he was unable to pay them. In the circumstances the band signed with Bob Shad's record label Mainstream Records; recordings for the label took place in Chicago in September, but these were not satisfactory, and the band returned to San Francisco, continuing to perform live, including at the Love Pageant Rally. The band recorded two tracks, "Blindman" and "All Is Loneliness", in Los Angeles, and these were released by Mainstream as a single that did not sell well. After playing at a happening in Stanford in early December 1966, the band traveled back to Los Angeles to record ten tracks between December 12 and 14, 1966, produced by Bob Shad, which appeared on the band's debut album in August 1967. In late 1966, Big Brother switched managers from Chet Helms to Julius Karpen. One of Joplin's earliest major performances in 1967 was at the Mantra-Rock Dance, a musical event held on January 29 at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. Janis Joplin and Big Brother performed there along with the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami, Allen Ginsberg, Moby Grape, and the Grateful Dead, donating proceeds to the Krishna temple. In early 1967, Joplin met Country Joe McDonald of the group Country Joe and the Fish. The pair lived together as a couple for a few months. Joplin and Big Brother began playing clubs in San Francisco, at the Fillmore West, Winterland, and the Avalon Ballroom. They also played at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, as well as in Seattle, Washington; Vancouver, British Columbia; the Psychedelic Supermarket in Boston, Massachusetts; and the Golden Bear Club in Huntington Beach, California. The band's debut studio album, Big Brother & the Holding Company, was released by Mainstream Records in August 1967, shortly after the group's breakthrough appearance in June at the Monterey Pop Festival. Two tracks, "Coo Coo" and "The Last Time," were released separately as singles, while the tracks from the previous single, "Blindman" and "All Is Loneliness", were added to the remaining eight tracks. When Columbia Records took over the band's contract and re-released the album, they included "Coo Coo" and "The Last Time", and put "featuring Janis Joplin" on the cover. The debut album spawned four minor hits with the singles "Down on Me", a traditional song arranged by Joplin, "Bye Bye Baby", "Call On Me" and "Coo Coo", on all of which Joplin sang lead vocals. Two songs from the second of Big Brother's two sets at Monterey, which they played on Sunday, were filmed (their first set, which was on Saturday, was not filmed, though it was audio-recorded). Some sources, including a Joplin biography by Ellis Amburn, claim that she was dressed in thrift store hippie clothes or second-hand Victorian clothes during the band's Saturday set, but still photographs do not appear to have survived. Digitized color film of two songs in the Sunday set, "Combination of the Two" and a version of Big Mama Thornton's "Ball and Chain," appear in the DVD and Blu-ray boxed set of D. A. Pennebaker's documentary Monterey Pop released by The Criterion Collection. She is seen wearing an expensive gold tunic dress with matching pants. They were created for her by San Francisco clothing designer Colin Rose. Documentary filmmaker Pennebaker inserted two cutaway shots of Cass Elliot of the Mamas & the Papas seated in the audience during Joplin's performance of "Ball and Chain", one in the middle of the song as her eyes, covered by sunglasses, are fixed on Joplin, and also a shot during the applause as she silently mouths "Oh, wow!" and looks at the person seated next to her. Elliot and the audience are seen in sunlight, but Sunday's Big Brother performance was filmed in the evening. An explanation came from Big Brother's road manager John Byrne Cooke, who remembers that Pennebaker discreetly filmed the audience (including Elliot) during Big Brother's Saturday performance when he was not allowed to point a camera at the band. The prohibition of Pennebaker from filming on Saturday afternoon came from Big Brother's manager Julius Karpen. The band had a bitter argument with Karpen and overruled him as they prepared for their second set that the festival organizers had added on the spur of the moment. Backstage at the festival, the band became acquainted with New York-based talent manager Albert Grossman but did not sign with him until several months later, firing Karpen at that time. Only "Ball and Chain" was included in the Monterey Pop film that was released to theaters throughout the United States in 1969 and shown on television in the 1970s. Those who did not attend the Monterey Pop Festival saw the band's performance of "Combination of the Two" for the first time in 2002 when The Criterion Collection released the boxed set. For the remainder of 1967, even after Big Brother signed with Albert Grossman, the band performed mainly in California. On February 16, 1968, the group began its first East Coast tour in Philadelphia, and the following day gave their first performance in New York City at the Anderson Theater. On April 7, 1968—three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the last day of their East Coast tour—Joplin and Big Brother performed with Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens, Paul Butterfield, and Elvin Bishop at the Wake for Martin Luther King Jr. concert in New York. Live at Winterland '68, recorded at the Winterland Ballroom on April 12 and 13, 1968, features Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company at the height of their mutual career working through a selection of tracks from their albums. A recording became available to the public for the first time in 1998 when Columbia/Sony Music Entertainment released the compact disc. One month after the Winterland concert, Owsley Stanley recorded them at the Carousel Ballroom, released in 2012 as Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968. On July 31, 1968, Joplin made her first nationwide television appearance when the band performed on This Morning, an ABC daytime 90-minute variety show that was hosted by Dick Cavett. Shortly thereafter, network employees wiped the videotape, though the audio survives. (In 1969 and 1970, Joplin made three appearances on Cavett's prime-time program. Video was preserved and excerpts have been included in most documentaries about Joplin. Audio of her 1968 appearance has not been used since then.) Sometime in 1968, the band's billing was changed to "Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company," and the media coverage given to Joplin generated resentment within the band. The other members of Big Brother thought that Joplin was on a "star trip", while others were telling Joplin that Big Brother was a terrible band and that she ought to dump them. Time magazine called Joplin "probably the most powerful singer to emerge from the white rock movement", and Richard Goldstein wrote for the May 1968 issue of Vogue magazine that Joplin was "the most staggering leading woman in rock...she slinks like tar, scowls like war...clutching the knees of a final stanza, begging it not to leave.... Janis Joplin can sing the chic off any listener." For her first major studio recording, Joplin played a major role in the arrangement and production of the songs that would comprise Big Brother and the Holding Company's second album, Cheap Thrills. Producer John Simon tried recording the band in concert, to capture their energy in a live album, but several attempts showed the band was prone to mistakes. Their imprecision was not helped by moving the sessions to a recording studio. Joplin sang take after take of the same song, with her performances consistently good, and she grew frustrated with the band's sloppiness. Simon was replaced by Elliot Mazer who fixed the songs by overdubbing certain parts. The album featured a cover design by counterculture cartoonist Robert Crumb. Although Cheap Thrills sounded as if it consisted of concert recordings, like on "Combination of the Two" and "I Need a Man to Love", only "Ball and Chain" was actually recorded in front of a paying audience; the rest of the tracks were studio recordings. The album had a raw quality, including the sound of a drinking glass breaking and the broken shards being swept away during the song "Turtle Blues". Cheap Thrills produced very popular hits with "Piece of My Heart" and "Summertime". Together with the premiere of the documentary film Monterey Pop at New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on December 26, 1968, the album launched Joplin as a star. Cheap Thrills reached number one on the Billboard 200 album chart eight weeks after its release, and was number one for eight (nonconsecutive) weeks. The album was certified gold at release and sold over a million copies in the first month of its release. The lead single from the album, "Piece of My Heart", reached number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the fall of 1968. The band made another East Coast tour during July–August 1968, performing at the Columbia Records convention in Puerto Rico and the Newport Folk Festival. After returning to San Francisco for two hometown shows at the Palace of Fine Arts Festival on August 31 and September 1, Joplin announced that she would be leaving Big Brother. On September 14, 1968, culminating a three-night engagement together at Fillmore West, fans thronged to a concert that Bill Graham publicized as the last official concert of Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company. The opening acts on this night were Chicago (then still called Chicago Transit Authority) and Santana. Despite Graham's announcement that the Fillmore West gig was Big Brother's last concert with Joplin, the band—with Joplin still as lead vocalist—toured the U.S. that fall. Reflecting Joplin's crossover appeal, two October 1968 performances at a roller rink in Alexandria, Virginia, were reviewed by John Segraves of the conservative Washington Evening Star at a time when the Washington metropolitan area's hard rock scene was in its infancy. An opera buff at the time, he wrote: Later that month (October 1968), Big Brother performed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and played at the Syracuse War Memorial as part of Syracuse University's Fall Homecoming on October 11, with Janis joining openers the Butterfield Blues Band for their closing song. Aside from two 1970 reunions, Joplin's last performance with Big Brother was at a Chet Helms benefit in San Francisco on December 1, 1968. 1969–1970: Solo career After splitting from Big Brother and the Holding Company, Joplin formed a new backup group, the Kozmic Blues Band, composed of session musicians like keyboardist Stephen Ryder and saxophonist Cornelius "Snooky" Flowers, as well as former Big Brother and the Holding Company guitarist Sam Andrew and future Full Tilt Boogie Band bassist Brad Campbell. The band was influenced by the Stax-Volt rhythm and blues (R&B) and soul bands of the 1960s, as exemplified by Otis Redding and the Bar-Kays. The Stax-Volt R&B sound was typified by the use of horns and had a funky, pop-oriented sound in contrast to many of the psychedelic/hard rock bands of the period. By early 1969, Joplin was allegedly shooting at least $200 worth of heroin per day (equivalent to $1300 in 2016 dollars) although efforts were made to keep her clean during the recording of I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! Gabriel Mekler, who produced the album, told publicist-turned-biographer Myra Friedman after Joplin's death that she had lived in his Los Angeles house during the June 1969 recording sessions at his insistence so he could keep her away from drugs and her drug-using friends. Joplin's appearances with the Kozmic Blues Band in Europe were released in theaters, in multiple documentaries. Janis, which was reviewed by the Washington Post on March 21, 1975, shows Joplin arriving in Frankfurt by plane and waiting inside a bus next to the Frankfurt venue, while an American female fan who is visiting Germany expresses enthusiasm to the camera (no security was used in Frankfurt, so by the end of the concert, the stage was so packed with people the band members could not see each other). Janis also includes interviews with Joplin in Stockholm and from her visit to London, for her gig at Royal Albert Hall. The London interview was dubbed with a voiceover in the German language for broadcast on German television. John Byrne Cooke, road manager for Joplin and the Kozmic Blues Band, wrote a book published in 2014 in which he discussed her knowledge of the risks of her ongoing use of narcotics, particularly when she was outside the United States. On the episode of The Dick Cavett Show that was telecast in the United States on the night of July 18, 1969, Joplin and her band performed "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)" as well as "To Love Somebody". As Dick Cavett interviewed Joplin, she admitted that she had a terrible time touring in Europe, claiming that audiences there are very uptight and don't "get down". Released in September 1969, the Kozmic Blues album was certified gold later that year but did not match the success of Cheap Thrills. Reviews of the new group were mixed. However, the album's recording quality and engineering, as well as the musicianship (including three performances by former Bob Dylan/Paul Butterfield/Electric Flag guitarist Mike Bloomfield), were considered superior to her previous releases, and some music critics argued that the band was working in a much more constructive way to support Joplin's sensational vocal talents. Joplin wanted a horn section similar to that featured by the Chicago Transit Authority; her voice had the dynamic qualities and range not to be overpowered by the brighter horn sound. Some music critics, however, including Ralph J. Gleason of the San Francisco Chronicle, were negative. Gleason wrote that the new band was a "drag" and Joplin should "scrap" her new band and "go right back to being a member of Big Brother ... (if they'll have her)." Other reviewers, such as reporter Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, devoted entire articles to celebrating the singer's magic. Bernstein's review said that Joplin "has finally assembled a group of first-rate musicians with whom she is totally at ease and whose abilities complement the incredible range of her voice." Columbia Records released "Kozmic Blues" as a single, which peaked at number 41 on the Billboard Hot 100, and a live rendition of "Raise Your Hand" was released in Germany and became a top ten hit there. Containing other hits like "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)", "To Love Somebody", and "Little Girl Blue", I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! reached number five on the Billboard 200 soon after its release. Joplin appeared at Woodstock starting at approximately 2:00 a.m., on Sunday, August 17, 1969. Joplin informed her band that they would be performing at the concert as if it were just another gig. On Saturday afternoon, when she and the band were flown by helicopter with the pregnant Joan Baez and Baez's mother from a nearby motel to the festival site and Joplin saw the enormous crowd, she instantly became extremely nervous and giddy. Upon landing and getting off the helicopter, Joplin was approached by reporters asking her questions. She referred them to her friend and sometime lover Peggy Caserta as she was too excited to speak. Initially, Joplin was eager to get on the stage and perform but was repeatedly delayed as bands were contractually obliged to perform ahead of Joplin. Faced with a ten-hour wait after arriving at the backstage area, Joplin spent some of that time shooting heroin and drinking alcohol with Caserta in a tent. The director's cut of the Woodstock movie shows Joplin and Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick standing together near amplifiers watching the band Canned Heat's performance, which started at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, and Caserta does not appear within camera range. When Joplin finally reached the stage at approximately 2:00 a.m. Sunday, she was "three sheets to the wind", according to biographer Alice Echols. During her performance, Joplin's voice became slightly hoarse and wheezy, and she struggled to dance. Joplin pulled through, however, and engaged frequently with the crowd, asking them if they had everything they needed and if they were staying stoned. The audience cheered for an encore, to which Joplin replied and sang "Ball and Chain". Pete Townshend, who performed with the Who later in the same morning after Joplin finished, witnessed her performance and said the following in his 2012 memoir: "She had been amazing at Monterey, but tonight she wasn't at her best, due, probably, to the long delay, and probably, too, to the amount of booze and heroin she'd consumed while she waited. But even Janis on an off-night was incredible." Janis remained at Woodstock for the remainder of the festival. Starting at approximately 3:00 a.m. on Monday, August 18, Joplin was among many Woodstock performers who stood in a circle behind Crosby, Stills & Nash during their performance, which was the first time anyone at Woodstock ever had heard the group perform. This information was published by David Crosby in 1988. Later in the morning of August 18, Joplin and Joan Baez sat in Joe Cocker's van and witnessed Hendrix's close-of-show performance, according to Baez's memoir And a Voice to Sing With (1989). Still photographs in color show Joplin backstage with Grace Slick the day after Joplin's performance, wherein Joplin appears to be very happy. She was ultimately unhappy with her performance, however, and blamed Caserta. Her singing was not included (by her own insistence) in the 1970 documentary film or the soundtrack for Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More, although the 25th anniversary director's cut of Woodstock includes her performance of "Work Me, Lord". The documentary film of the festival that was released in theaters during 1970 includes, on the left side of a split screen, 37 seconds of footage of Joplin and Caserta walking toward Joplin's dressing room tent. In addition to Woodstock, Joplin also had problems at Madison Square Garden, in 1969. Biographer Myra Friedman said she had witnessed a duet Joplin sang with Tina Turner during the Rolling Stones concert at the Garden on Thanksgiving Day. Friedman said Joplin was "so drunk, so stoned, so out of control, that she could have been an institutionalized psychotic rent by mania." During another Garden concert where she had solo billing on December 19, some observers believed Joplin tried to incite the audience to riot. For part of this concert she was joined onstage by Johnny Winter and Paul Butterfield. Joplin told rock journalist David Dalton that Garden audiences watched and listened to "every note [she sang] with 'Is she gonna make it?' in their eyes." In her interview with Dalton she added that she felt most comfortable performing at small, cheap venues in San Francisco that were associated with the counterculture. At the time of the June 1970 interview with Dalton, she had already performed in the Bay Area for what turned out to be the last time. Sam Andrew, the lead guitarist who had left Big Brother with Joplin in December 1968 to form her back-up band, quit in late summer 1969 and returned to Big Brother. At the end of the year, the Kozmic Blues Band broke up. Their final gig with Joplin was the one at Madison Square Garden with Winter and Butterfield. In February 1970, Joplin traveled to Brazil, where she stopped her drug and alcohol use. She was accompanied on vacation there by her friend Linda Gravenites (wife of songwriter Nick Gravenites), who had designed Janis's stage costumes from 1967 to 1969. In Brazil, Joplin was romanced by a fellow American tourist named David (George) Niehaus, who was traveling around the world. A Joplin biography written by her sister Laura said, "David was an upper-middle-class Cincinnati kid who had studied communications at Notre Dame. ... [and] had joined the Peace Corps after college and worked in a small village in Turkey. ... He tried law school, but when he met Janis he was taking time off." Niehaus and Joplin were photographed by the press at Rio Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Gravenites also took color photographs of the two during their Brazilian vacation. According to Joplin biographer Ellis Amburn, in Gravenites' snapshots they "look like a carefree, happy, healthy young couple having a tremendously good time." Rolling Stone magazine interviewed Joplin during an international phone call, quoting her: "I'm going into the jungle with a big bear of a beatnik named David Niehaus. I finally remembered I don't have to be on stage twelve months a year. I've decided to go and dig some other jungles for a couple of weeks." Amburn added in 1992, "Janis was trying to kick heroin in Brazil, and one of the nicest things about David was that he wasn't into drugs." When Joplin returned to the U.S., she began using heroin again. Her relationship with Niehaus soon ended because he witnessed her shooting drugs at her new home in Larkspur, California. The relationship was also complicated by her ongoing romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta, who also was an intravenous addict, and Joplin's refusal to take some time off and travel the world with him. Around this time, she formed her new band, known for a short time as Main Squeeze, then renamed the Full Tilt Boogie Band. The band comprised mostly young Canadian musicians previously associated with Ronnie Hawkins and featured an organ, but no horn section. Joplin took a more active role in putting together the Full Tilt Boogie band than she had with her prior group. She was quoted as saying, "It's my band. Finally it's my band!" In May 1970, after performing under the name Main Squeeze at a Hell's Angels event, the renamed Full Tilt Boogie Band began a nationwide tour. Joplin became very happy with her new group, which eventually received mostly positive feedback from both her fans and the critics. Prior to beginning a summer tour with Full Tilt Boogie, she performed in a reunion with Big Brother at the Fillmore West, in San Francisco, on April 4, 1970. Recordings from this concert were included in an in-concert album released posthumously in 1972. She again appeared with Big Brother on April 12 at Winterland, where she and Big Brother were reported to be in excellent form. She performed with the band, billed as Main Squeeze, at a party for the Hells Angels at a venue in San Rafael, California on May 21, 1970, according to a web site maintained by Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew. Andrew's web site quotes him as saying, "This will be the first time that Janis' old band and her new band will be at the same venue, so everyone is a little on edge." According to Joplin's biographer Ellis Amburn, Big Brother with its lead singer Nick Gravenites was the opening act at the party that was attended by 2,300 people. The Hells Angels, who had known Joplin since 1966, paid her a fee of 240 dollars to perform. Gravenites and Sam Andrew (who had resumed playing guitar with Big Brother) differed in their opinions of her performance and how substance abuse affected it. Gravenites described her singing as "stupendous," according to Amburn. Amburn quoted Andrew twenty years later: "She was visibly deteriorating and she looked bloated. She was like a parody of what she was at her best. I put it down to her drinking too much and I felt a tinge of fear for her well-being. Her singing was real flabby, no edge at all." Shortly thereafter, Joplin began wearing multi-colored feather boas in her hair. (She had not worn them at the May 21 Hell's Angels party / concert in San Rafael). By the time she began touring with Full Tilt Boogie, Joplin told people she was drug-free, but her drinking increased. From June 28 to July 4, 1970, during the Festival Express tour, Joplin and Full Tilt Boogie performed alongside Buddy Guy, the Band, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Ten Years After, the Grateful Dead, Delaney & Bonnie, Eric Andersen, and Ian & Sylvia. They played concerts in Toronto, Winnipeg, and Calgary. Joplin jammed with the other performers on the train, and her performances on this tour are considered to be among her greatest. Joplin headlined the festival on all three nights. At the last stop in Calgary, she took to the stage with Jerry Garcia while her band was tuning up. Film footage shows her telling the audience how great the tour was and shows her and Garcia presenting the organizers with a case of tequila. She then burst into a two-hour set, starting with "Tell Mama". Throughout this performance, Joplin engaged in several banters about her love life. In one, she reminisced about living in a San Francisco apartment and competing with a female neighbor in flirting with men on the street. She finished the Calgary concert with long versions of "Get It While You Can" and "Ball and Chain". Footage of her performance of "Tell Mama" in Calgary became an MTV video in the early 1980s, and the audio from the same film footage was included on the Farewell Song (1982) album. The audio of other Festival Express performances was included on Joplin's In Concert (1972) album. Video of the performances was also included on the Festival Express DVD. These performances of entire songs during the Festival Express concerts in Toronto and Calgary can be purchased, although other songs remain in vaults and have yet to be released. In the "Tell Mama" video shown on MTV in the 1980s, Joplin wore a psychedelically colored, loose-fitting costume and feathers in her hair. This was her standard stage costume in the spring and summer of 1970. She chose the new costumes after her friend and designer, Linda Gravenites (whom Joplin had praised in Vogues profile of her in its May 1968 edition), cut ties with Joplin shortly after their return from Brazil, due largely to Joplin's continued use of heroin. Among Joplin's last public appearances were two broadcasts of The Dick Cavett Show. In her June 25, 1970 appearance, she announced that she would attend her ten-year high school class reunion. When asked if she had been popular in school, she admitted that when in high school, her schoolmates "laughed me out of class, out of town and out of the state" (during the year she had spent at the University of Texas at Austin, Joplin had been voted "Ugliest Man on Campus" by frat boys). In the subsequent Cavett Show broadcast, on August 3, 1970, and featuring Gloria Swanson, Joplin discussed her upcoming performance at the Festival for Peace to be held at Shea Stadium in Queens, New York, three days later. On July 11, 1970, Full Tilt Boogie and Big Brother and the Holding Company both performed at the same concert in the San Diego Sports Arena, which was decades later renamed the Valley View Casino Center. Joplin sang with Full Tilt Boogie and appeared briefly onstage with Big Brother without singing, according to a July 13 review of the concert in the San Diego Union. On August 7, 1970, a tombstone—jointly paid for by Joplin and Juanita Green, who as a child had done housework for Bessie Smith—was erected at Smith's previously unmarked grave. The following day, the Associated Press circulated this news, and the August 9 edition of The New York Times carried it. The lead paragraph of the AP story said Joplin and Green had "shared the cost of a stone for the 'Empress of the Blues,'" but, according to publicist/biographer Myra Friedman, the two women never met. Joplin had been at home in Larkspur, California when she had received a long-distance phone call with an explanation of the need to finance a gravestone for Bessie Smith, whom Joplin had frequently cited as a musical influence. Joplin immediately wrote a check and mailed it to the name and address provided by the phone caller. On August 8, 1970, as the Associated Press circulated the news about Smith's new gravestone, Joplin performed at the Capitol Theatre (Port Chester, New York). It was there that she first performed "Mercedes Benz", a song (partially inspired by a Michael McClure poem) that she had composed with fellow musician and friend Bob Neuwirth a very short time earlier. According to Myra Friedman's account, Joplin performed two shows at the Capitol Theatre, the first of which was attended by actors Geraldine Page and her husband Rip Torn. Between the shows, at a "gin mill" [Friedman's words] very close to this concert venue, Joplin and Neuwirth penned the lyrics to the song and she performed it at the second show, according to Friedman. Neuwirth was quoted by The Wall Street Journal in 2015: "Around 7 p.m., after the Capitol sound check, we had a couple of hours to kill before [acts that opened for Joplin] Seatrain and Runt finished their sets. So the four of us [Joplin, Neuwirth, Geraldine Page, Rip Torn] walked to a bar about three minutes away called Vahsen’s [at 30 Broad Street in Port Chester]." While in Vahsen's, "Janis came up with words for the first verse. I was in charge of writing them down on bar napkins with a ballpoint pen. She came up with the second verse, too, about a color TV. I suggested words here and there, and came up with the third verse—about asking the Lord to buy us a night on the town and another round." Joplin's last public performance with the Full Tilt Boogie Band took place on August 12, 1970, at the Harvard Stadium in Boston. The Harvard Crimson gave the performance a positive, front-page review, despite the fact that Full Tilt Boogie had performed with makeshift amplifiers after their regular sound equipment was stolen in Boston. Joplin attended her high school reunion on August 14, accompanied by Neuwirth, road manager John Cooke, and sister Laura, but it was reportedly an unhappy experience for her. Joplin held a press conference in Port Arthur during her reunion visit. When asked by a reporter if she ever entertained at Thomas Jefferson High School when she was a student there, Joplin replied, "Only when I walked down the aisles." Joplin denigrated Port Arthur and the classmates who had humiliated her a decade earlier. During late August, September, and early October 1970, Joplin and her band rehearsed and recorded a new album in Los Angeles with producer Paul A. Rothchild, best known for his lengthy relationship with The Doors. Although Joplin died before all the tracks were fully completed, there was enough usable material to compile an LP. The posthumous Pearl (1971) became the biggest-selling album of her career and featured her biggest hit single, a cover of Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster's "Me and Bobby McGee" (Kristofferson had previously been Joplin's lover in the spring of 1970). The opening track, "Move Over", was written by Joplin, reflecting the way that she felt men treated women in relationships. Also included was the social commentary of "Mercedes Benz", presented in an a cappella arrangement; the track on the album features the first and only take that Joplin recorded. A cover of Nick Gravenites's "Buried Alive in the Blues", to which Joplin had been scheduled to add her vocals on the day she was found dead, was included as an instrumental. Joplin checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood on August 24, 1970, near Sunset Sound Recorders, where she began rehearsing and recording her album. During the sessions, Joplin continued a relationship with Seth Morgan, a 21-year-old UC Berkeley student, cocaine dealer, and future novelist who had visited her new home in Larkspur in July and August. She and Morgan were engaged to be married in early September, although he visited Sunset Sound Recorders for just eight of Joplin's many rehearsals and sessions. Morgan later told biographer Myra Friedman that, as a non-musician, he had felt excluded whenever he had visited Sunset Sound Recorders. Instead, he stayed at Joplin's Larkspur home while she stayed alone at the Landmark, although several times she visited Larkspur to be with him and to check the progress of renovations she was having done on the house. She told her construction crew to design a carport to be shaped like a flying saucer, according to biographer Ellis Amburn, the concrete foundation for which was poured the day before she died. Peggy Caserta claimed in her book, Going Down With Janis (1973), that she and Joplin had decided mutually in April 1970 to stay away from each other to avoid enabling each other's drug use. Caserta, a former Delta Air Lines stewardess and owner of one of the first clothing boutiques in the Haight Ashbury, said in the book that by September 1970, she was smuggling cannabis throughout California and had checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel because it attracted drug users. For approximately the first two weeks of Joplin's stay at the Landmark, she did not know Caserta was in Los Angeles. Joplin learned of Caserta's presence at the Landmark from a heroin dealer who made deliveries there. Joplin begged Caserta for heroin, and when Caserta refused to provide it, Joplin reportedly admonished her by saying, "Don't think if you can get it, I can't get it." Joplin's publicist Myra Friedman was unaware during Joplin's lifetime that this had happened. Later, while Friedman was working on her book Buried Alive, she determined that the time frame of the Joplin-Caserta encounter was one week before Jimi Hendrix's death. Within a few days, Joplin became a regular customer of the same heroin dealer who had been supplying Caserta. Joplin's manager Albert Grossman and his assistant/publicist Friedman had staged an intervention with Joplin the previous winter while Joplin was in New York. In September 1970, Grossman and Friedman, who worked out of a New York office, knew Joplin was staying at a Los Angeles hotel, but were unaware it was a haven for drug users and dealers. Grossman and Friedman knew during Joplin's lifetime that her friend Caserta, whom Friedman met during the New York sessions for Cheap Thrills and on later occasions, used heroin. During the many long-distance telephone conversations that Joplin and Friedman had in September 1970 and on October 1, Joplin never mentioned Caserta, and Friedman assumed Caserta had been out of Joplin's life for a while. Friedman, who had more time than Grossman to monitor the situation, never visited California. She thought Joplin sounded on the phone like she was less depressed than she had been over the summer. When Joplin was not at Sunset Sound Recorders, she liked to drive her Porsche over the speed limit "on the winding part of Sunset Blvd.", according to a statement made by her attorney Robert Gordon in 1995 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Friedman wrote that the only Full Tilt Boogie member who rode as her passenger, Ken Pearson, often hesitated to join her, though he did on the night she died. He was not interested in using hard drugs. On September 26, 1970, Joplin recorded vocals for "Half Moon" and "Cry Baby". The session ended with Joplin, organist Ken Pearson, and drummer Clark Pierson making a special one-minute recording as a birthday gift to John Lennon. Joplin was among several singers who had been contacted by Yoko Ono with a request for a taped greeting for Lennon's 30th birthday, on October 9. Joplin, Pearson, and Pierson chose the Dale Evans composition "Happy Trails" as part of the greeting. Lennon told Dick Cavett on-camera the following year that Joplin's recorded birthday wishes arrived at his home after her death. On October 1, 1970, Joplin completed her last recording, "Mercedes Benz", which was recorded in a single take. On Saturday, October 3, Joplin visited Sunset Sound Recorders to listen to the instrumental track for Nick Gravenites's song "Buried Alive in the Blues", which the band had recorded earlier that day. She and Paul Rothchild agreed she would record the vocal the following day. At some point on Saturday, she learned by telephone, to her dismay, that Seth Morgan had met other women at a Marin County, California, restaurant, invited them to her home, and was shooting pool with them using her pool table. People at Sunset Sound Recorders overheard Joplin expressing anger about the state of her relationship with Morgan, as well as joy about the progress of the sessions. Joplin and Ken Pearson later left the studio together and she drove him in her Porsche to the West Hollywood landmark called Barney's Beanery. Friedman wrote, "At the bar, she drank vodka and orange juice, only two." Bennett Glotzer, a business partner of Joplin's manager Albert Grossman, was present at Barney's Beanery, according to what he told John Byrne Cooke immediately after he (Glotzer) learned of her death. Evidently, Joplin had a friendly conversation with a young man whom she did not know, and he expressed admiration for her music. After midnight, she drove Ken Pearson and the male fan to the Landmark where she and Pearson were staying in separate rooms. During the car ride, the fan asked Joplin questions "about her singing style," according to Friedman, and "she mostly ignored him" so she could converse with Pearson. As Joplin and Pearson prepared to part in the lobby of the Landmark, she expressed a fear, possibly in jest, that he and the other Full Tilt Boogie musicians might decide to stop making music with her. Pearson was the second-to-last person to see her alive. The last was the Landmark's night shift desk clerk. He had met her several times but did not know her. Personal life Joplin's significant relationships with men included ones with Peter de Blanc, Country Joe McDonald (who wrote the song "Janis" at Joplin's request), David (George) Niehaus, Kris Kristofferson, and Seth Morgan (from July 1970 until her death, at which time they were allegedly engaged). She also had relationships with women. During her first stint in San Francisco in 1963, Joplin met and briefly lived with Jae Whitaker, a black woman whom she had met while playing pool at the bar Gino & Carlo in North Beach. Whitaker broke off their relationship because of Joplin's hard drug use and sexual relationships with other people. Whitaker was first identified by name in connection with the singer in 1999, when Alice Echols' biography Scars of Sweet Paradise was published. Joplin also had an on-again-off-again romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta. They first met in November 1966 when Big Brother performed at a San Francisco venue called The Matrix. Caserta was one of 15 people in the audience, and at the time, she ran a successful clothing boutique in the Haight Ashbury. Approximately a month after Caserta attended the concert, Joplin visited her boutique and said she could not afford to buy a pair of jeans that was for sale, instead asking to put down the first 50 cents on the $5 item. Caserta was amazed that such a talented singer could not afford a $5 item, and gave her a pair for free. Their friendship was platonic for more than a year. Before it moved to the next level, Caserta was in love with Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, and sometime during the first half of 1968 traveled from San Francisco to New York to flirt with him. He did not want a serious relationship, and Joplin sympathized with Caserta's disappointment. The Woodstock concert film includes 37 seconds of Joplin and Caserta walking together before they reached the tent where Joplin waited for her turn to perform. By the time the festival took place in August 1969, both were intravenous heroin addicts. According to Caserta's book Going Down With Janis, which Caserta has since disowned, Joplin introduced her to her boyfriend Seth Morgan in Joplin's room at the Landmark Motor Hotel on September 29, 1970. Caserta "had seen him around" San Francisco but had not met him before. At some point, an agreement was made for a threesome to take place the following Friday, although Caserta later said that she immediately abandoned the idea once she understood that it was Morgan who would be with Joplin. Morgan made alternate plans, believing that Caserta would be with Joplin that evening. Each one, however, was unaware that the other had bowed out. The day after Joplin introduced Caserta to Morgan, Caserta saw Joplin briefly, again in Joplin's room, when Caserta accommodated her new Los Angeles friend Debbie Nuciforo, age 19, an aspiring hard rock drummer who wanted to meet Joplin. Nuciforo was stoned on heroin at the time, and the three women's encounter was brief and unpleasant. Caserta suspected that the reason for Joplin's foul mood was that Morgan had abandoned her earlier that day after having spent less than 24 hours with her. Caserta did not see nor communicate by phone with Joplin again, although she later claimed she had made several attempts to reach her by phone at the Landmark Motor Hotel and at Sunset Sound Recorders. Caserta and Morgan lost touch with each other; each had independently made alternate plans for Friday night, October 2. Joplin mentioned her disappointment (over both of her friends' bailing out of their ménage à trois) to her drug dealer on Saturday, while he was selling her the dose of heroin that killed her, as Caserta later learned from the drug dealer. Biographer Myra Friedman commented in her original version of Buried Alive (1973): Given the near-infinite potentials of infancy, it is really impossible to make generalizations about what lies behind sexual practices. This, however, is probable: to become clearly homosexual, to make the choice that one honestly prefers relations with one's own sex, no matter the origins of such preference, requires a certain integration, a stability of psychic development, a tidiness of personality organization. The ridicule and the humiliation that took place at that most delicate period in [Joplin's] early teens, her own inability to surmount the obstacles to regular growth, devastated her a great deal more than most people comprehended. Janis was not heir to an ego so cohesive as to permit her an identity one way or the other. She was, as [the psychiatric social worker she saw regularly in Beaumont, Texas in 1965 and 1966] Mr. [Bernard] Giarritano put it [in an interview with Friedman], "diffused" -- spewing, splattering, splaying all over, without a center to hold. That had as much to do with her original use of drugs [before she first met Giarritano] as did the critical component of guilt and its multiplicity of sources above and beyond the contribution made by her relationships with women. Were she so simple as the lesbians wished her to be or so free as her associates imagined! Kim France reported in her May 2, 1999 The New York Times article, "Nothin' Left to Lose" : "Once she became famous, Joplin cursed like a truck driver, did not believe in wearing undergarments, was rarely seen without her bottle of Southern Comfort and delighted in playing the role of sexual predator." On July 11, 1970, Joplin made a revealing statement about her sexuality to her friend Richard Hundgen, the Grateful Dead's San Francisco-based road manager whom she had known since 1966. When Joplin and Hundgen were offstage during a San Diego gig for both Full Tilt Boogie and Big Brother and the Holding Company, she said the following that he later repeated to Myra Friedman: I hear a rumor that somebody in San Francisco is spreading stories that I'm a dyke. You go back there and find out who it is and tell them that Janis says she's gotten it on with a couple of thousand cats in her life and a few hundred chicks and see what they can do with that! Death On Sunday evening, October 4, 1970, Joplin was found dead on the floor of her room at the Landmark Motor Hotel by her road manager and close friend John Byrne Cooke. Alcohol was present in the room. Newspapers reported that no other drugs or paraphernalia were present. According to a 1983 book authored by Joseph DiMona and Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi, evidence of narcotics was removed from the scene by a friend of Joplin and later put back after the person realized that an autopsy was going to reveal that narcotics were in her system. The book adds that prior to Joplin's death, Noguchi had investigated other fatal drug overdoses in Los Angeles where friends believed they were doing favors for decedents by removing evidence of narcotics, then they "thought things over" and returned to put back the evidence. Noguchi performed an autopsy on Joplin and determined the cause of death to be a heroin overdose, possibly compounded by alcohol. John Byrne Cooke believed Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than what she and other L.A. heroin users had received on previous occasions, as was indicated by overdoses of several of her dealer's other customers during the same weekend. Her death was ruled accidental. Both Peggy Caserta, Joplin's close friend, and Seth Morgan, Joplin's fiancé, had failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death, October 2; Joplin had been expecting both of them to keep her company that night. According to Caserta, Joplin was saddened that neither of her friends visited her at the Landmark as they had promised. During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment, Caserta did not phone her to explain why she had failed to show up. Caserta admitted to waiting until late Saturday night to dial the Landmark switchboard, only to learn that Joplin had instructed the desk clerk not to accept any incoming phone calls for her after midnight. Morgan did speak to Joplin via telephone within the 24 hours prior to her death, but little is known about that call. She used a phone at Sunset Sound Recorders where her colleagues (“there were perhaps twenty to twenty-five people pre‪sent,” wrote biographer Myra Friedman) noticed that whatever Morgan said to her made her very angry. Peggy Caserta has insisted that Joplin's death was not an accidental overdose, but rather a result of a head gash suffered after the "hourglass heel" of her slingback sandal caught in the shag carpet, causing her to lose her balance. Caserta does concede, however, that drugs and/or alcohol may have played a role in hastening her death that night. Joplin was cremated at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary in Los Angeles, and her ashes were scattered from a plane into the Pacific Ocean. Legacy Joplin's death in October 1970 at age 27 stunned her fans and shocked the music world, especially when coupled with the death just 16 days earlier of another rock icon, Jimi Hendrix, also at age 27. (This would later cause some people to attribute significance to the death of musicians at the age of 27, as celebrated in the "27 Club.") Music historian Tom Moon wrote that Joplin had "a devastatingly original voice," music columnist Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote that Joplin as an artist was "overpowering and deeply vulnerable" and author Megan Terry said that Joplin was the female version of Elvis Presley in her ability to captivate an audience. A book about Joplin by her publicist Myra Friedman titled Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin (1973) was excerpted in many newspapers. At the same time, Peggy Caserta's memoir, Going Down With Janis (1973), attracted much attention; its provocative title is a reference to Caserta's claim that she had engaged in oral sex with Joplin while they were high on heroin in September 1970. The description provided by Dan Knapp, Caserta’s co-author whom she denounced decades later, repelled many people in 1973 when few books or filmed interviews of Joplin or her loved ones were accessible to the public. Joplin's bandmate Sam Andrew described Caserta as "halfway between a groupie and a friend" in an interview with writer Ellis Amburn. Soon after the 1973 publication of Going Down With Janis, Joplin's friends learned that graphic descriptions of sexual acts and intravenous drug use were not the only portions of the book that would haunt them. According to Kim Chappell, a close friend of Caserta and Joplin, Caserta's book angered the Los Angeles heroin dealer whom she had described in detail in her book, including the make and model of his car. According to Amburn, in 1973 a "carful of dope dealers" visited a Los Angeles lesbian bar that Caserta had been frequenting. Chappell, who was in the alley behind the bar, stated: "I was stabbed because, when Peggy's book came out, her dealer, the same one who'd given Janis her last fix, didn't like it that he was referred to and was out to get Peggy. He couldn't find her, so he went for her lover. When they realized who I was, they felt that my death would also hit Peggy, and so they stabbed me." Despite being "stabbed three times in the chest, puncturing both lungs," Chappell eventually recovered. In 2018, Caserta denounced Going Down With Janis as the pornographic fantasy of Dan Knapp, her co-author, and largely unreliable. During that year, the public had its first access to her own story via a memoir she co-wrote with Maggie Falcon titled I Ran Into Some Trouble. It describes a long, friendly relationship with Joplin that only occasionally featured sexuality. According to Joplin’s biographers, Caserta was among many friends of Joplin who did not become clean and sober until a very long time after Joplin's death, while others died from overdoses. Although the wife of Big Brother guitarist James Gurley, who was Joplin's close friend, died from a heroin overdose in 1969, devastating Joplin, Gurley himself did not become clean and sober until 1984. Caserta survived "a near-fatal OD in December 1995," wrote Alice Echols. On January 13, 2000, Caserta appeared during a segment about Joplin on 20/20. Joplin's body art, with a wristlet and a small heart on her left breast by the San Francisco tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle, marked an early moment in the popular culture's acceptance of tattoos as art. Another trademark was her flamboyant hair styles, which often included colored streaks and accessories such as scarves, beads and feathers. When in New York City, Joplin frequented the Limbo boutique on St. Mark's Place, and she wore some of the vintage and unique garments that she purchased there on stage. The Mamas & the Papas' song "Pearl" (1971), from their People Like Us album, was a tribute. Leonard Cohen's song "Chelsea Hotel#2" (1974) is about Joplin. Lyricist Robert Hunter has commented that Jerry Garcia's "Birdsong" from his first solo album, Garcia (1972), is about Joplin and the end of her suffering through death. Mimi Farina's composition "In the Quiet Morning", most famously covered by Joan Baez on her Come from the Shadows (1972) album, was a tribute to Joplin. Another song by Baez, "Children of the Eighties," mentioned Joplin. A Serge Gainsbourg-penned French language song by English singer Jane Birkin, "Ex fan des sixties" (1978), references Joplin along with other disappeared "idols" such as Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones and Marc Bolan. When Joplin was alive, Country Joe McDonald released a song called "Janis" on his band's album I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die (1967). The film The Rose (1979) is loosely based on Joplin's life. Originally planned to be titled Pearl—Joplin's nickname and the title of her last album—the film was fictionalized after her family declined to allow the producers the rights to her story. Bette Midler earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the film. In 1988, on what would have been Joplin's 45th birthday, the Janis Joplin Memorial, with an original gold, multi-image sculpture of Joplin by Douglas Clark, was dedicated during a ceremony in Port Arthur, Texas. In 1992, the first major biography of Joplin in two decades, Love, Janis, authored by her younger sister Laura Joplin, was published. In an interview, Laura stated that Joplin enjoyed being on the Dick Cavett Show, that Joplin had difficulties with some, but not all, people at Thomas Jefferson High School and that Joplin enthusiastically talked about Woodstock with her parents and siblings during a visit to their Texas home a few weeks after she had performed at the festival. In 1995, Joplin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2005, she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In November 2009, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum honored her as part of its annual American Music Masters Series; among the artifacts at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum exhibition are Joplin's scarf and necklaces, her psychedelically painted 1965 Porsche 356 Cabriolet and a sheet of LSD blotting paper designed by Robert Crumb, designer of the Cheap Thrills cover. Also in 2009, Joplin was the honoree at the Rock Hall's American Music Master concert and lecture series. In the late 1990s, the musical play Love, Janis was created and directed by Randal Myler, with input from Janis' younger sister Laura and Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, with an aim to take it to Off-Broadway. Opening in the summer of 2001 and scheduled for only a few weeks of performances, the show won acclaim, played to packed houses and was held over several times. In 2013, Washington's Arena Stage featured a production of A Night with Janis Joplin, starring Mary Bridget Davies. In it, Joplin performs a concert for the audience while telling stories of her past inspirations, including those of Odetta and Aretha Franklin. The show went on tour in 2016. On November 4, 2013, Joplin was awarded with the 2,510th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the music industry. Her star is located at 6752 Hollywood Boulevard, in front of Musicians Institute. On August 8, 2014, the U.S. Postal Service revealed a commemorative stamp honoring Joplin as part of its Music Icons stamp series during a first-day-of-issue ceremony at the Outside Lands Music Festival at Golden Gate Park. Among the memorabilia Joplin left behind is a Gibson Hummingbird guitar. In 2015, the biographical documentary film Janis: Little Girl Blue, directed by Amy J. Berg and narrated by Cat Power, was released. It was a New York Times Critics' Pick. Influence Joplin had a profound influence on many singers. Pink said about Joplin: "She was so inspiring by singing blues music when it wasn't culturally acceptable for white women, and she wore her heart on her sleeve. She was so witty and charming and intelligent, but she also battled an ugly-duckling syndrome. I would love to play her in a movie." In a tribute performance on her Try This Tour, Pink called Joplin "a woman who inspired me when everyone else ... didn't!" Discography Janis Joplin recorded four albums in her four-year career. The first two albums were recorded with and credited to Big Brother and the Holding Company; the later two were recorded with different backing bands and released as solo albums. Posthumous releases have included previously unreleased studio and live material. Studio albums As lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company As solo artist Live albums Compilation albums Singles As lead of Big Brother and the Holding Company As solo artist Filmography Monterey Pop (1968) Petulia (1968) Janis Joplin Live in Frankfurt (1969) Janis (1974) Janis: The Way She Was (1974) Comin' Home (1988) Woodstock – The Lost Performances (1991) Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director's Cut) (1994) Festival Express (2003) Nine Hundred Nights (2004) The Dick Cavett Show: Rock Icons (2005) Shout Factory Rockin' at the Red Dog: The Dawn of Psychedelic Rock (2005) This is Tom Jones (2007) 1969 appearance on TV show Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director's Cut) 40th Anniversary Edition (2009) Janis Joplin with Big Brother: Ball and Chain (DVD) Charly (2009) Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015) Notes References Further reading – an encounter with Janis Joplin at the wheel. External links Janis Joplin at the Grammy Awards Janis Joplin on the Music-Map 1943 births 1970 deaths 20th-century American singers 20th-century American women singers American blues singers American child singers American mezzo-sopranos American women rock singers American women singer-songwriters American rhythm and blues singer-songwriters American rock songwriters American soul musicians Accidental deaths in California Big Brother and the Holding Company members Bisexual musicians Bisexual women Blues rock musicians Columbia Records artists Deaths by heroin overdose in California Drug-related deaths in California Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners LGBT people from Texas LGBT singers from the United States LGBT songwriters Lamar University alumni People from Beaumont, Texas People from Port Arthur, Texas Singer-songwriters from Texas University of Texas at Austin alumni 20th-century LGBT people
false
[ "Janis Anne Babson (September 9, 1950 – May 12, 1961) was a Canadian girl who received posthumous acclaim with the donation of her corneas for transplant after her death from leukemia at the age of 10. Her story was reported in a newspaper article syndicated across Canada, inspiring two books and other memorials. When Janis died of leukemia in 1961, corneal transplantation was a relatively unknown procedure. Although parents who lose young children frequently donate some of their organs to others, Janis's bequest was significant because the donation of her eyes at her death was her own idea, and it inspired many other people—across Canada and elsewhere—to become cornea donors as well.\n\nWhite Cane Week\nJanis happened to see a television program sponsored by an eye bank after watching National Velvet, a program she loved because of her passion for horses. When her youngest brother fell asleep on her lap, she did not want to wake him and remained in front of the television set when a White Cane Week special aired. The program's hosts explained how some cases of blindness could be cured with corneal donations, restoring a recipient's eyesight. After the program Janis, moved, told her mother and father that when she died she wanted to donate her eyes to the Eye Bank. Her parents—Harry Rudolphe (Rudy) Babson, a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Rita Quinn Babson—knew their daughter was serious about the gift, but it was a big decision for such a young girl.\n\nLeukemia\nIn early 1959, when Janis was eight years old, her mother noticed that she had lost her energy and appetite. Her father took her to the family pediatrician who noted a great increase in white blood cells from a sample he took. He ordered additional tests and referred her to hematologist Alexander English at the Ottawa Civic Hospital. The tests revealed that Janis was suffering from a sub-acute form of leukemia. At that time, leukemia was invariably fatal; with the chemotherapy available, Janis was expected to live about a year. She responded well to treatments which slowed the advance of the leukemia, and survived about 26 months after her diagnosis.\n\nDeath\n\nDespite a change in drugs from methotrexate to mercaptopurine, Janis's condition deteriorated in early 1961 as her leukemia worsened and she was hospitalized and released twice. In early May, she was hospitalized for the third (and final) time. Janis died in her parents' arms at 9:25 pm ET on Friday, May 12, 1961. Throughout her illness, Janis reminded her parents about her desire to donate her eyes; their original reluctance gave way when Rudy signed the consent forms for the donation of Janis's eyes a few hours before her death.\n\nJanis is buried in Notre Dame Cemetery in Ottawa. Her funeral Mass was attended by her entire school.\n\nLegacy\nJanis's best friend, Tricia Kennedy, moved from Ottawa to Chalk River, Ontario with her family. When the Kennedys were interviewed by the local paper as part of a get-to-know-your-neighbours feature, Tricia Kennedy announced that her best friend had died of leukemia and donated her eyes to the Eye Bank in Toronto. Impressed, the reporter then contacted the Ottawa Journal. Tim Burke, a reporter for the Journal, contacted the Babsons; his interview became \"Little Janis\" in his May 31, 1961 \"Below the Hill\" column. The response was immediate: from Ottawa Mayor Charlotte Whitton to retired pharmacist Abe Silver (who created an endowment to Hebrew National University in Janis's name for leukemia research) to groups and individuals who set a record for the number of pledged donations to the Eye Bank.\n\nIn 1962, the first of two books on Janis's life was published: Janis of City View (Holy Cross Press) by Rena Ray. The following year Lawrence Elliott, a correspondent for Reader's Digest, published A Little Girl's Gift (Holt, Rinehart & Winston). Six months earlier, a condensed version had appeared in the June 1963 issue of Reader's Digest entitled The Triumph of Janis Babson.\n\nTributes\nThe Internet has spawned several websites dedicated to Janis Babson's memory. In addition, her family (mother and siblings) have created a memorial Facebook page where many whose lives were touched by Janis's can leave comments and posts. A 50th-anniversary tribute, arranged by the Babson family, was held May 27, 2011, in Ottawa to commemorate a half-century since Janis's death. It featured Lawrence Elliott, a new commemorative edition of A Little Girl's Gift, and artist Caroline Langill (Custody of the Eyes). A large-cupped, broad-petalled daffodil, white with pink rims, has been named after Janis as a tribute.\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \nRetelling of A Little Girl's Gift and Janis of City View\nLenten Meditation: Character produces hope\n\nMemorial Facebook page\n\n1950 births\n1961 deaths\nCanadian children\nOrgan transplant donors\nDeaths from leukemia\nDeaths from cancer in Ontario", "Parallel Mothers () is a 2021 Spanish drama film written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar. The film stars Penélope Cruz and Milena Smit and features Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Israel Elejalde, Julieta Serrano and Rossy de Palma.\n\nIt had its premiere as the opening film of the 78th Venice International Film Festival on 1 September 2021 where Penélope Cruz was awarded the Volpi Cup for Best Actress. It was theatrically released in Spain on 8 October 2021 by Sony Pictures Releasing International. It was also scheduled to be the closing film of the 2021 New York Film Festival on the same day. The film earned two nominations at the 94th Academy Awards for Best Actress (Cruz) and Best Original Score (Iglesias).\n\nPlot\nPhotographer Janis Martínez does a photo shoot with renowned forensic archaeologist Arturo. She asks him if his foundation will help excavate a mass grave in her home village, where her great-grandfather and other men from the village were killed and buried during the Spanish Civil War. Arturo agrees to review the case with his foundation; he and Janis then sleep together. Months later, Janis becomes pregnant. She decides to keep the baby and raise it alone, against Arturo's wishes, who has a wife undergoing chemotherapy but wants to be with Janis. \n\nJanis later shares a hospital room with Ana, a teen single mother accompanied by her mother; they give birth at the same time. After both babies are held for evaluation, they are released, and Janis and Ana go their separate ways. Janis and Ana stay in touch, keeping one another updated on their babies' progress. Arturo arrives one day asking to see baby Cecilia; he reacts strangely, confessing that he does not believe the baby is his. Janis does a maternity test, which reveals that she is not Cecilia's biological mother, but she decides not to tell anyone.\n\nMonths later, Janis runs into Ana working at a cafe near her home; Ana has left her mother's home to fend for herself after her mother left to pursue acting on the road. Janis invites Ana up to her apartment, where Ana tearfully reveals that her baby Anita has suffered a crib death. Janis asks for a photo of Anita, which confirms her suspicions that her and Ana's babies were swapped in the hospital.\n\nJanis later offers Ana a job as a live-in maid, watching over the house and baby Cecilia. She collects saliva samples from Ana and Cecilia without telling her they are for a maternity test, whose results confirm that Cecilia is Ana's daughter. Ana later reveals that her pregnancy was the result of a gang rape by her classmates, and her father pressured her into staying silent to avoid negative press attention. The budding sugaring-like relationship between Janis and Ana further develops into a casual sexual relationship, but Janis is unable to commit fully to Ana who wants more from her.\n\nArturo arrives with news that his foundation has approved the excavation of the mass grave, and also that his wife has recovered from cancer and they are separating. He and Janis celebrate with a night out on the town, making Ana jealous. Ana's mother also comes by to reconnect with Ana, admitting to Janis that she feels like a terrible mother but wanted so badly to pursue her dream as an actress.\n\nJanis finally admits the truth to Ana, who reacts angrily and leaves in the night with Cecilia, to Janis' dismay. She calls Arturo and breaks the news to him as well; he spends the night with her as they console each other. The next morning Ana calls Janis, having calmed down, and says that Janis is still welcome to see Cecilia and be a part of her life.\n\nMonths later, Janis and Arturo travel to her home village, where he gathers information about the grave from surviving relatives and prepares for the excavation with his team. Ana later arrives with Cecilia, and Janis reveals to her that she is three months pregnant. When asked what she will name the baby, Janis says Ana if it is a girl and Antonio if it is a boy (after her great-grandfather). The excavation is a success, and the village gathers at the exhumed grave to mourn their lost loved ones.\n\nCast\n\nProduction\nIn February 2021 it was announced that Pedro Almodóvar was ready to direct his new film entitled Madres paralelas, with a cast headed by Penélope Cruz, Israel Elejalde, Julieta Serrano and Rossy de Palma. On 12 March 2021, it was reported that Pedro Almodóvar intended to integrate Anya Taylor-Joy into the main cast of the film.\n\nPrincipal photography began on 12 March 2021 in Madrid, Spain, and concluded on 22 April 2021. Shooting locations included Madrid, Torrelaguna and Torremocha de Jarama. Produced by El Deseo and Remotamente Films AIE with the support of RTVE and Netflix, the movie also received funding from the ICAA.\n\nRelease\nOn 4 February 2021, Pathé acquired the UK distribution rights to the film. On 23 April 2021, Sony Pictures Classics acquired the North American, Australian and New Zealand distribution rights to the film. The film had its world premiere at the 78th Venice International Film Festival on 1 September 2021. Distributed by Sony Pictures Entertainment Iberia, it was theatrically released in Spain on 8 October 2021. It was scheduled to be released in the United States on 24 December 2021. It was scheduled to be released theatrically in the United Kingdom on 28 January 2022, and was the first movie released under Pathé's new term deal with Warner Bros. Pictures along with The Duke, after their distribution agreement with Disney expired on 30 June 2021.\n\nIts theatrical release poster, featuring a lactating nipple, was removed from Instagram due to its rules regarding nudity. The decision was criticized by the \"free the nipple\" movement, leading to an apology from Instagram.\n\nNetflix acquired the exclusive distribution rights for the Latin-American region, aiming for an early 2022 release, even if theatrical openings were not ruled out at the time of the announcement. A theatrical window of 15 days prior to streaming was the choice for Argentina, with a release \"in a few theatres\" slated for 3 February 2022.\n\nReception\nAt its opening night world premiere, the movie received a nine-minute standing ovation from Venice Film Festival attendees in the Sala Grande. It was submitted to be the Spanish entry to the 94th Academy Awards alongside Mediterraneo: The Law of the Sea and The Good Boss, but the latter film was the final official selection.\n\nOn review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 97% of 191 critics have given the film a positive review, with an average rating of 8.40/10. The website's critics consensus reads: \"A brilliant forum for Penélope Cruz's talent, Parallel Mothers reaffirms the familiar pleasures of Almodóvar's filmmaking while proving he's still capable of growth.\" On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 88 out of 100, based on 46 critics, indicating \"universal acclaim.\"\n\nTop ten lists \nThe film appeared on many American critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2021.\n\nAccolades\n\nSee also\n List of Spanish films of 2021\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\n2021 films\n2021 drama films\n2020s Spanish-language films\nFilms about parenting\nFilms directed by Pedro Almodóvar\nFilms shot in Madrid\nFilms set in Madrid\nSpanish drama films\nSpanish films\nEl Deseo films" ]
[ "Janis Joplin", "Death", "What year did Janis die?", "1970,", "How old was she when she died?", "On October 4, 1970, producer Paul Rothchild became concerned when Joplin failed to show up at Sunset Sound Recorders for a recording", "Was Janis with anyone when she died?", "Peggy Caserta and Seth Morgan had both failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death," ]
C_3938290d39f0420aa035060edc72696f_0
Had anyone tried to stop Janis from using heroin?
4
Had anyone tried to stop Janis Joplin from using heroin?
Janis Joplin
On October 4, 1970, producer Paul Rothchild became concerned when Joplin failed to show up at Sunset Sound Recorders for a recording session. Full Tilt Boogie's road manager, John Cooke, drove to the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood where Joplin was staying. He saw Joplin's psychedelically painted Porsche 356 C Cabriolet in the parking lot, and upon entering Joplin's room (#105), he found her dead on the floor beside her bed. The official cause of death was a heroin overdose, possibly compounded by alcohol. Cooke believes Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than normal, as several of her dealer's other customers also overdosed that week. Peggy Caserta and Seth Morgan had both failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death, October 2, and Joplin had been expecting both of them to keep her company that night. According to Caserta, Joplin was saddened that neither of her friends visited her at the Landmark as they had promised. During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment, Caserta did not phone her to explain why she had failed to show up. Caserta admitted to waiting until late Saturday night to dial the Landmark switchboard, only to learn that Joplin had instructed the desk clerk not to accept any incoming phone calls for her after midnight. Morgan did speak to Joplin via telephone within 24 hours of her death, but it is not known whether he admitted to her that he had broken his promise. Joplin's last will and testament funded $2,500 to throw a wake party in the event of her demise. The party took place on October 26, 1970, at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo, California, and was attended by Joplin's sister Laura, Morgan, and other close friends, including Cooke, Bob Gordon, Jack Penty, and tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle. CANNOTANSWER
During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment,
Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter who sang rock, soul, and blues music. One of the most successful and widely known rock stars of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and "electric" stage presence. In 1967, Joplin rose to fame following an appearance at Monterey Pop Festival, where she was the lead singer of the then little-known San Francisco psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company. After releasing two albums with the band, she left Big Brother to continue as a solo artist with her own backing groups, first the Kozmic Blues Band and then the Full Tilt Boogie Band. She appeared at the Woodstock festival and on the Festival Express train tour. Five singles by Joplin reached the Billboard Hot 100, including a cover of the Kris Kristofferson song "Me and Bobby McGee", which reached number one in March 1971. Her most popular songs include her cover versions of "Piece of My Heart", "Cry Baby", "Down on Me", "Ball and Chain", and "Summertime"; and her original song "Mercedes Benz", her final recording. Joplin died of a heroin overdose in 1970, at the age of 27, after releasing three albums (two with Big Brother and the Holding Company and one solo album). A second solo album, Pearl, was released in January 1971, just over three months after her death. It reached number one on the Billboard charts. She was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Rolling Stone ranked Joplin number 46 on its 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. She remains one of the top-selling musicians in the United States, with Recording Industry Association of America certifications of 18.5 million albums sold. Early life Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on , to Dorothy Bonita East (1913–1998), a registrar at a business college, and her husband, Seth Ward Joplin (1910–1987), an engineer at Texaco. She had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. The family attended First Christian Church of Port Arthur, a church belonging to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) denomination. Her parents felt that Janis needed more attention than their other children. As a teenager, Joplin befriended a group of outcasts, one of whom had albums by blues artists Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Lead Belly, which Joplin later credited with influencing her decision to become a singer. She began singing blues and folk music with friends at Thomas Jefferson High School. In high school, she was a classmate of Pro Football Hall of Fame coach Jimmy Johnson. Joplin stated that she was ostracized and bullied in high school. As a teen, she became overweight and suffered from acne, leaving her with deep scars that required dermabrasion. Other kids at high school would routinely taunt her and call her names like "pig," "freak," "nigger lover," or "creep." She stated, "I was a misfit. I read, I painted, I thought. I didn't hate niggers." Joplin graduated from high school in 1960 and attended Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, Texas, during the summer and later the University of Texas at Austin (UT), though she did not complete her college studies. The campus newspaper, The Daily Texan, ran a profile of her in the issue dated July 27, 1962, headlined "She Dares to Be Different." The article began, "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levi's to class because they're more comfortable, and carries her autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break into song, it will be handy. Her name is Janis Joplin." While at UT she performed with a folk trio called the Waller Creek Boys and frequently socialized with the staff of the campus humor magazine The Texas Ranger. According to Freak Brothers cartoonist Gilbert Shelton, who befriended her, she used to sell The Texas Ranger, which contained some of Shelton's early comic books, on the campus. Career 1962–1965: Early recordings Joplin cultivated a rebellious manner and styled herself partly after her female blues heroines and partly after the Beat poets. Her first song, "What Good Can Drinkin' Do", was recorded on tape in December 1962 at the home of a fellow University of Texas student. She left Texas in January 1963 ("Just to get away," she said, "because my head was in a much different place"), hitchhiking with her friend Chet Helms to North Beach, San Francisco. Still in San Francisco in 1964, Joplin and future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen recorded a number of blues standards, which incidentally featured Kaukonen's wife Margareta using a typewriter in the background. This session included seven tracks: "Typewriter Talk", "Trouble in Mind", "Kansas City Blues", "Hesitation Blues", "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out", "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy", and "Long Black Train Blues", and was released long after Joplin's death as the bootleg album The Typewriter Tape. In 1963, Joplin was arrested in San Francisco for shoplifting. During the two years that followed, her drug use increased and she acquired a reputation as a "speed freak" and occasional heroin user. She also used other psychoactive drugs and was a heavy drinker throughout her career; her favorite alcoholic beverage was Southern Comfort. In May 1965, Joplin's friends in San Francisco, noticing the detrimental effects on her from regularly injecting methamphetamine (she was described as "skeletal" and "emaciated"), persuaded her to return to Port Arthur. During that month, her friends threw her a bus-fare party so she could return to her parents in Texas. Five years later, Joplin told Rolling Stone magazine writer David Dalton the following about her first stint in San Francisco: "I didn't have many friends and I didn't like the ones I had." Back in Port Arthur in the spring of 1965, after Joplin's parents noticed her weight of , she changed her lifestyle. She avoided drugs and alcohol, adopted a beehive hairdo, and enrolled as an anthropology major at Lamar University in nearby Beaumont, Texas. Her sister Laura said in a 2016 interview that social work was her major during her year at Lamar. During her time at Lamar University, she commuted to Austin to sing solo, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar. One of her performances was at a benefit by local musicians for Texas bluesman Mance Lipscomb, who was suffering with ill health. Joplin became engaged to Peter de Blanc in the fall of 1965. She had begun a relationship with him toward the end of her first stint in San Francisco. Now living in New York where he worked with IBM computers, he visited her to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Joplin and her mother began planning the wedding. De Blanc, who traveled frequently, ended the engagement soon afterward. In 1965 and 1966, Joplin commuted from her family's Port Arthur home to Beaumont, Texas, where she had regular sessions with a psychiatric social worker named Bernard Giarritano at a counseling agency that was funded by the United Fund, which after her death changed its name to the United Way. Interviewed by biographer Myra Friedman after his client's death, Giarritano said Joplin had been baffled by how she could pursue a professional career as a singer without relapsing into drugs, and her drug-related memories from immediately prior to returning to Port Arthur continued to frighten her. Joplin sometimes brought an acoustic guitar with her to her sessions with Giarritano, and people in other offices within the building could hear her singing. Giarritano tried to reassure her that she did not have to use narcotics in order to succeed in the music business. She also said that if she were to avoid singing professionally, she would have to become a keypunch operator (as she had done a few years earlier) or a secretary, and then a wife and mother, and she would have to become very similar to all the other women in Port Arthur. Approximately a year before Joplin joined Big Brother and the Holding Company, she recorded seven studio tracks with her acoustic guitar. Among the songs she recorded were her original composition of the song "Turtle Blues" and an alternate version of "Cod'ine" by Buffy Sainte-Marie. These tracks were later issued as a new album in 1995, titled This is Janis Joplin 1965 by James Gurley. 1966–1969: Various bands In 1966, Joplin's bluesy vocal style attracted the attention of the San Francisco-based psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, which had gained some renown among the nascent hippie community in Haight-Ashbury. She was recruited to join the group by Chet Helms, a promoter who was managing Big Brother and with whom she had hitchhiked from Texas to San Francisco a few years earlier. Helms sent his friend Travis Rivers to find her in Austin, Texas, where she had been performing with her acoustic guitar, and to accompany her to San Francisco. Aware of her previous nightmare with drug addiction in San Francisco, Rivers insisted that she inform her parents face-to-face of her plans, and he drove her from Austin to Port Arthur (he waited in his car while she talked with her startled parents) before they began their long drive to San Francisco. Joplin joined Big Brother on June 4, 1966. Her first public performance with them was at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. In June, Joplin was photographed at an outdoor concert in San Francisco that celebrated the summer solstice. The image, which was later published in two books by David Dalton, shows her before she relapsed into drugs. Due to persistent persuading by keyboardist and close friend Stephen Ryder, Joplin avoided drugs for several weeks. She made Travis Rivers, with whom she shared an apartment upon their arrival in San Francisco, promise that using needles would not be allowed there. When bandmate Dave Getz accompanied her from a rehearsal to her home, Rivers was not there, but "two or three" (according to Getz' recollection 25 years later) guests whom Rivers had invited were in the process of injecting drugs. "One of them was about to tie off," recalled Getz. "Janis went nuts! I had never seen anybody explode like that. She was screaming and crying and Travis walked in. She screamed at him: 'We had a pact! You promised me! There wouldn't be any of that in front of me!' I was over my head and I tried to calm her down. I said, 'They're just doing mescaline,' because that's what I thought it was. She said, 'You don't understand! I can't see that! I just can't stand to see that!'" A San Francisco concert from that summer (1966) was recorded and released on the 1984 album Cheaper Thrills. In July, all five bandmates and guitarist James Gurley's wife Nancy moved to a house in Lagunitas, California, where they lived communally. The band often partied with the Grateful Dead, the members of whom lived less than two miles away. She had a short relationship and longer friendship with founding member Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. The band went to Chicago for a four-week engagement in August 1966, then found itself stranded after the promoter ran out of money when its concerts did not attract the expected audience levels, and he was unable to pay them. In the circumstances the band signed with Bob Shad's record label Mainstream Records; recordings for the label took place in Chicago in September, but these were not satisfactory, and the band returned to San Francisco, continuing to perform live, including at the Love Pageant Rally. The band recorded two tracks, "Blindman" and "All Is Loneliness", in Los Angeles, and these were released by Mainstream as a single that did not sell well. After playing at a happening in Stanford in early December 1966, the band traveled back to Los Angeles to record ten tracks between December 12 and 14, 1966, produced by Bob Shad, which appeared on the band's debut album in August 1967. In late 1966, Big Brother switched managers from Chet Helms to Julius Karpen. One of Joplin's earliest major performances in 1967 was at the Mantra-Rock Dance, a musical event held on January 29 at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. Janis Joplin and Big Brother performed there along with the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami, Allen Ginsberg, Moby Grape, and the Grateful Dead, donating proceeds to the Krishna temple. In early 1967, Joplin met Country Joe McDonald of the group Country Joe and the Fish. The pair lived together as a couple for a few months. Joplin and Big Brother began playing clubs in San Francisco, at the Fillmore West, Winterland, and the Avalon Ballroom. They also played at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, as well as in Seattle, Washington; Vancouver, British Columbia; the Psychedelic Supermarket in Boston, Massachusetts; and the Golden Bear Club in Huntington Beach, California. The band's debut studio album, Big Brother & the Holding Company, was released by Mainstream Records in August 1967, shortly after the group's breakthrough appearance in June at the Monterey Pop Festival. Two tracks, "Coo Coo" and "The Last Time," were released separately as singles, while the tracks from the previous single, "Blindman" and "All Is Loneliness", were added to the remaining eight tracks. When Columbia Records took over the band's contract and re-released the album, they included "Coo Coo" and "The Last Time", and put "featuring Janis Joplin" on the cover. The debut album spawned four minor hits with the singles "Down on Me", a traditional song arranged by Joplin, "Bye Bye Baby", "Call On Me" and "Coo Coo", on all of which Joplin sang lead vocals. Two songs from the second of Big Brother's two sets at Monterey, which they played on Sunday, were filmed (their first set, which was on Saturday, was not filmed, though it was audio-recorded). Some sources, including a Joplin biography by Ellis Amburn, claim that she was dressed in thrift store hippie clothes or second-hand Victorian clothes during the band's Saturday set, but still photographs do not appear to have survived. Digitized color film of two songs in the Sunday set, "Combination of the Two" and a version of Big Mama Thornton's "Ball and Chain," appear in the DVD and Blu-ray boxed set of D. A. Pennebaker's documentary Monterey Pop released by The Criterion Collection. She is seen wearing an expensive gold tunic dress with matching pants. They were created for her by San Francisco clothing designer Colin Rose. Documentary filmmaker Pennebaker inserted two cutaway shots of Cass Elliot of the Mamas & the Papas seated in the audience during Joplin's performance of "Ball and Chain", one in the middle of the song as her eyes, covered by sunglasses, are fixed on Joplin, and also a shot during the applause as she silently mouths "Oh, wow!" and looks at the person seated next to her. Elliot and the audience are seen in sunlight, but Sunday's Big Brother performance was filmed in the evening. An explanation came from Big Brother's road manager John Byrne Cooke, who remembers that Pennebaker discreetly filmed the audience (including Elliot) during Big Brother's Saturday performance when he was not allowed to point a camera at the band. The prohibition of Pennebaker from filming on Saturday afternoon came from Big Brother's manager Julius Karpen. The band had a bitter argument with Karpen and overruled him as they prepared for their second set that the festival organizers had added on the spur of the moment. Backstage at the festival, the band became acquainted with New York-based talent manager Albert Grossman but did not sign with him until several months later, firing Karpen at that time. Only "Ball and Chain" was included in the Monterey Pop film that was released to theaters throughout the United States in 1969 and shown on television in the 1970s. Those who did not attend the Monterey Pop Festival saw the band's performance of "Combination of the Two" for the first time in 2002 when The Criterion Collection released the boxed set. For the remainder of 1967, even after Big Brother signed with Albert Grossman, the band performed mainly in California. On February 16, 1968, the group began its first East Coast tour in Philadelphia, and the following day gave their first performance in New York City at the Anderson Theater. On April 7, 1968—three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the last day of their East Coast tour—Joplin and Big Brother performed with Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens, Paul Butterfield, and Elvin Bishop at the Wake for Martin Luther King Jr. concert in New York. Live at Winterland '68, recorded at the Winterland Ballroom on April 12 and 13, 1968, features Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company at the height of their mutual career working through a selection of tracks from their albums. A recording became available to the public for the first time in 1998 when Columbia/Sony Music Entertainment released the compact disc. One month after the Winterland concert, Owsley Stanley recorded them at the Carousel Ballroom, released in 2012 as Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968. On July 31, 1968, Joplin made her first nationwide television appearance when the band performed on This Morning, an ABC daytime 90-minute variety show that was hosted by Dick Cavett. Shortly thereafter, network employees wiped the videotape, though the audio survives. (In 1969 and 1970, Joplin made three appearances on Cavett's prime-time program. Video was preserved and excerpts have been included in most documentaries about Joplin. Audio of her 1968 appearance has not been used since then.) Sometime in 1968, the band's billing was changed to "Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company," and the media coverage given to Joplin generated resentment within the band. The other members of Big Brother thought that Joplin was on a "star trip", while others were telling Joplin that Big Brother was a terrible band and that she ought to dump them. Time magazine called Joplin "probably the most powerful singer to emerge from the white rock movement", and Richard Goldstein wrote for the May 1968 issue of Vogue magazine that Joplin was "the most staggering leading woman in rock...she slinks like tar, scowls like war...clutching the knees of a final stanza, begging it not to leave.... Janis Joplin can sing the chic off any listener." For her first major studio recording, Joplin played a major role in the arrangement and production of the songs that would comprise Big Brother and the Holding Company's second album, Cheap Thrills. Producer John Simon tried recording the band in concert, to capture their energy in a live album, but several attempts showed the band was prone to mistakes. Their imprecision was not helped by moving the sessions to a recording studio. Joplin sang take after take of the same song, with her performances consistently good, and she grew frustrated with the band's sloppiness. Simon was replaced by Elliot Mazer who fixed the songs by overdubbing certain parts. The album featured a cover design by counterculture cartoonist Robert Crumb. Although Cheap Thrills sounded as if it consisted of concert recordings, like on "Combination of the Two" and "I Need a Man to Love", only "Ball and Chain" was actually recorded in front of a paying audience; the rest of the tracks were studio recordings. The album had a raw quality, including the sound of a drinking glass breaking and the broken shards being swept away during the song "Turtle Blues". Cheap Thrills produced very popular hits with "Piece of My Heart" and "Summertime". Together with the premiere of the documentary film Monterey Pop at New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on December 26, 1968, the album launched Joplin as a star. Cheap Thrills reached number one on the Billboard 200 album chart eight weeks after its release, and was number one for eight (nonconsecutive) weeks. The album was certified gold at release and sold over a million copies in the first month of its release. The lead single from the album, "Piece of My Heart", reached number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the fall of 1968. The band made another East Coast tour during July–August 1968, performing at the Columbia Records convention in Puerto Rico and the Newport Folk Festival. After returning to San Francisco for two hometown shows at the Palace of Fine Arts Festival on August 31 and September 1, Joplin announced that she would be leaving Big Brother. On September 14, 1968, culminating a three-night engagement together at Fillmore West, fans thronged to a concert that Bill Graham publicized as the last official concert of Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company. The opening acts on this night were Chicago (then still called Chicago Transit Authority) and Santana. Despite Graham's announcement that the Fillmore West gig was Big Brother's last concert with Joplin, the band—with Joplin still as lead vocalist—toured the U.S. that fall. Reflecting Joplin's crossover appeal, two October 1968 performances at a roller rink in Alexandria, Virginia, were reviewed by John Segraves of the conservative Washington Evening Star at a time when the Washington metropolitan area's hard rock scene was in its infancy. An opera buff at the time, he wrote: Later that month (October 1968), Big Brother performed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and played at the Syracuse War Memorial as part of Syracuse University's Fall Homecoming on October 11, with Janis joining openers the Butterfield Blues Band for their closing song. Aside from two 1970 reunions, Joplin's last performance with Big Brother was at a Chet Helms benefit in San Francisco on December 1, 1968. 1969–1970: Solo career After splitting from Big Brother and the Holding Company, Joplin formed a new backup group, the Kozmic Blues Band, composed of session musicians like keyboardist Stephen Ryder and saxophonist Cornelius "Snooky" Flowers, as well as former Big Brother and the Holding Company guitarist Sam Andrew and future Full Tilt Boogie Band bassist Brad Campbell. The band was influenced by the Stax-Volt rhythm and blues (R&B) and soul bands of the 1960s, as exemplified by Otis Redding and the Bar-Kays. The Stax-Volt R&B sound was typified by the use of horns and had a funky, pop-oriented sound in contrast to many of the psychedelic/hard rock bands of the period. By early 1969, Joplin was allegedly shooting at least $200 worth of heroin per day (equivalent to $1300 in 2016 dollars) although efforts were made to keep her clean during the recording of I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! Gabriel Mekler, who produced the album, told publicist-turned-biographer Myra Friedman after Joplin's death that she had lived in his Los Angeles house during the June 1969 recording sessions at his insistence so he could keep her away from drugs and her drug-using friends. Joplin's appearances with the Kozmic Blues Band in Europe were released in theaters, in multiple documentaries. Janis, which was reviewed by the Washington Post on March 21, 1975, shows Joplin arriving in Frankfurt by plane and waiting inside a bus next to the Frankfurt venue, while an American female fan who is visiting Germany expresses enthusiasm to the camera (no security was used in Frankfurt, so by the end of the concert, the stage was so packed with people the band members could not see each other). Janis also includes interviews with Joplin in Stockholm and from her visit to London, for her gig at Royal Albert Hall. The London interview was dubbed with a voiceover in the German language for broadcast on German television. John Byrne Cooke, road manager for Joplin and the Kozmic Blues Band, wrote a book published in 2014 in which he discussed her knowledge of the risks of her ongoing use of narcotics, particularly when she was outside the United States. On the episode of The Dick Cavett Show that was telecast in the United States on the night of July 18, 1969, Joplin and her band performed "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)" as well as "To Love Somebody". As Dick Cavett interviewed Joplin, she admitted that she had a terrible time touring in Europe, claiming that audiences there are very uptight and don't "get down". Released in September 1969, the Kozmic Blues album was certified gold later that year but did not match the success of Cheap Thrills. Reviews of the new group were mixed. However, the album's recording quality and engineering, as well as the musicianship (including three performances by former Bob Dylan/Paul Butterfield/Electric Flag guitarist Mike Bloomfield), were considered superior to her previous releases, and some music critics argued that the band was working in a much more constructive way to support Joplin's sensational vocal talents. Joplin wanted a horn section similar to that featured by the Chicago Transit Authority; her voice had the dynamic qualities and range not to be overpowered by the brighter horn sound. Some music critics, however, including Ralph J. Gleason of the San Francisco Chronicle, were negative. Gleason wrote that the new band was a "drag" and Joplin should "scrap" her new band and "go right back to being a member of Big Brother ... (if they'll have her)." Other reviewers, such as reporter Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, devoted entire articles to celebrating the singer's magic. Bernstein's review said that Joplin "has finally assembled a group of first-rate musicians with whom she is totally at ease and whose abilities complement the incredible range of her voice." Columbia Records released "Kozmic Blues" as a single, which peaked at number 41 on the Billboard Hot 100, and a live rendition of "Raise Your Hand" was released in Germany and became a top ten hit there. Containing other hits like "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)", "To Love Somebody", and "Little Girl Blue", I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! reached number five on the Billboard 200 soon after its release. Joplin appeared at Woodstock starting at approximately 2:00 a.m., on Sunday, August 17, 1969. Joplin informed her band that they would be performing at the concert as if it were just another gig. On Saturday afternoon, when she and the band were flown by helicopter with the pregnant Joan Baez and Baez's mother from a nearby motel to the festival site and Joplin saw the enormous crowd, she instantly became extremely nervous and giddy. Upon landing and getting off the helicopter, Joplin was approached by reporters asking her questions. She referred them to her friend and sometime lover Peggy Caserta as she was too excited to speak. Initially, Joplin was eager to get on the stage and perform but was repeatedly delayed as bands were contractually obliged to perform ahead of Joplin. Faced with a ten-hour wait after arriving at the backstage area, Joplin spent some of that time shooting heroin and drinking alcohol with Caserta in a tent. The director's cut of the Woodstock movie shows Joplin and Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick standing together near amplifiers watching the band Canned Heat's performance, which started at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, and Caserta does not appear within camera range. When Joplin finally reached the stage at approximately 2:00 a.m. Sunday, she was "three sheets to the wind", according to biographer Alice Echols. During her performance, Joplin's voice became slightly hoarse and wheezy, and she struggled to dance. Joplin pulled through, however, and engaged frequently with the crowd, asking them if they had everything they needed and if they were staying stoned. The audience cheered for an encore, to which Joplin replied and sang "Ball and Chain". Pete Townshend, who performed with the Who later in the same morning after Joplin finished, witnessed her performance and said the following in his 2012 memoir: "She had been amazing at Monterey, but tonight she wasn't at her best, due, probably, to the long delay, and probably, too, to the amount of booze and heroin she'd consumed while she waited. But even Janis on an off-night was incredible." Janis remained at Woodstock for the remainder of the festival. Starting at approximately 3:00 a.m. on Monday, August 18, Joplin was among many Woodstock performers who stood in a circle behind Crosby, Stills & Nash during their performance, which was the first time anyone at Woodstock ever had heard the group perform. This information was published by David Crosby in 1988. Later in the morning of August 18, Joplin and Joan Baez sat in Joe Cocker's van and witnessed Hendrix's close-of-show performance, according to Baez's memoir And a Voice to Sing With (1989). Still photographs in color show Joplin backstage with Grace Slick the day after Joplin's performance, wherein Joplin appears to be very happy. She was ultimately unhappy with her performance, however, and blamed Caserta. Her singing was not included (by her own insistence) in the 1970 documentary film or the soundtrack for Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More, although the 25th anniversary director's cut of Woodstock includes her performance of "Work Me, Lord". The documentary film of the festival that was released in theaters during 1970 includes, on the left side of a split screen, 37 seconds of footage of Joplin and Caserta walking toward Joplin's dressing room tent. In addition to Woodstock, Joplin also had problems at Madison Square Garden, in 1969. Biographer Myra Friedman said she had witnessed a duet Joplin sang with Tina Turner during the Rolling Stones concert at the Garden on Thanksgiving Day. Friedman said Joplin was "so drunk, so stoned, so out of control, that she could have been an institutionalized psychotic rent by mania." During another Garden concert where she had solo billing on December 19, some observers believed Joplin tried to incite the audience to riot. For part of this concert she was joined onstage by Johnny Winter and Paul Butterfield. Joplin told rock journalist David Dalton that Garden audiences watched and listened to "every note [she sang] with 'Is she gonna make it?' in their eyes." In her interview with Dalton she added that she felt most comfortable performing at small, cheap venues in San Francisco that were associated with the counterculture. At the time of the June 1970 interview with Dalton, she had already performed in the Bay Area for what turned out to be the last time. Sam Andrew, the lead guitarist who had left Big Brother with Joplin in December 1968 to form her back-up band, quit in late summer 1969 and returned to Big Brother. At the end of the year, the Kozmic Blues Band broke up. Their final gig with Joplin was the one at Madison Square Garden with Winter and Butterfield. In February 1970, Joplin traveled to Brazil, where she stopped her drug and alcohol use. She was accompanied on vacation there by her friend Linda Gravenites (wife of songwriter Nick Gravenites), who had designed Janis's stage costumes from 1967 to 1969. In Brazil, Joplin was romanced by a fellow American tourist named David (George) Niehaus, who was traveling around the world. A Joplin biography written by her sister Laura said, "David was an upper-middle-class Cincinnati kid who had studied communications at Notre Dame. ... [and] had joined the Peace Corps after college and worked in a small village in Turkey. ... He tried law school, but when he met Janis he was taking time off." Niehaus and Joplin were photographed by the press at Rio Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Gravenites also took color photographs of the two during their Brazilian vacation. According to Joplin biographer Ellis Amburn, in Gravenites' snapshots they "look like a carefree, happy, healthy young couple having a tremendously good time." Rolling Stone magazine interviewed Joplin during an international phone call, quoting her: "I'm going into the jungle with a big bear of a beatnik named David Niehaus. I finally remembered I don't have to be on stage twelve months a year. I've decided to go and dig some other jungles for a couple of weeks." Amburn added in 1992, "Janis was trying to kick heroin in Brazil, and one of the nicest things about David was that he wasn't into drugs." When Joplin returned to the U.S., she began using heroin again. Her relationship with Niehaus soon ended because he witnessed her shooting drugs at her new home in Larkspur, California. The relationship was also complicated by her ongoing romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta, who also was an intravenous addict, and Joplin's refusal to take some time off and travel the world with him. Around this time, she formed her new band, known for a short time as Main Squeeze, then renamed the Full Tilt Boogie Band. The band comprised mostly young Canadian musicians previously associated with Ronnie Hawkins and featured an organ, but no horn section. Joplin took a more active role in putting together the Full Tilt Boogie band than she had with her prior group. She was quoted as saying, "It's my band. Finally it's my band!" In May 1970, after performing under the name Main Squeeze at a Hell's Angels event, the renamed Full Tilt Boogie Band began a nationwide tour. Joplin became very happy with her new group, which eventually received mostly positive feedback from both her fans and the critics. Prior to beginning a summer tour with Full Tilt Boogie, she performed in a reunion with Big Brother at the Fillmore West, in San Francisco, on April 4, 1970. Recordings from this concert were included in an in-concert album released posthumously in 1972. She again appeared with Big Brother on April 12 at Winterland, where she and Big Brother were reported to be in excellent form. She performed with the band, billed as Main Squeeze, at a party for the Hells Angels at a venue in San Rafael, California on May 21, 1970, according to a web site maintained by Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew. Andrew's web site quotes him as saying, "This will be the first time that Janis' old band and her new band will be at the same venue, so everyone is a little on edge." According to Joplin's biographer Ellis Amburn, Big Brother with its lead singer Nick Gravenites was the opening act at the party that was attended by 2,300 people. The Hells Angels, who had known Joplin since 1966, paid her a fee of 240 dollars to perform. Gravenites and Sam Andrew (who had resumed playing guitar with Big Brother) differed in their opinions of her performance and how substance abuse affected it. Gravenites described her singing as "stupendous," according to Amburn. Amburn quoted Andrew twenty years later: "She was visibly deteriorating and she looked bloated. She was like a parody of what she was at her best. I put it down to her drinking too much and I felt a tinge of fear for her well-being. Her singing was real flabby, no edge at all." Shortly thereafter, Joplin began wearing multi-colored feather boas in her hair. (She had not worn them at the May 21 Hell's Angels party / concert in San Rafael). By the time she began touring with Full Tilt Boogie, Joplin told people she was drug-free, but her drinking increased. From June 28 to July 4, 1970, during the Festival Express tour, Joplin and Full Tilt Boogie performed alongside Buddy Guy, the Band, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Ten Years After, the Grateful Dead, Delaney & Bonnie, Eric Andersen, and Ian & Sylvia. They played concerts in Toronto, Winnipeg, and Calgary. Joplin jammed with the other performers on the train, and her performances on this tour are considered to be among her greatest. Joplin headlined the festival on all three nights. At the last stop in Calgary, she took to the stage with Jerry Garcia while her band was tuning up. Film footage shows her telling the audience how great the tour was and shows her and Garcia presenting the organizers with a case of tequila. She then burst into a two-hour set, starting with "Tell Mama". Throughout this performance, Joplin engaged in several banters about her love life. In one, she reminisced about living in a San Francisco apartment and competing with a female neighbor in flirting with men on the street. She finished the Calgary concert with long versions of "Get It While You Can" and "Ball and Chain". Footage of her performance of "Tell Mama" in Calgary became an MTV video in the early 1980s, and the audio from the same film footage was included on the Farewell Song (1982) album. The audio of other Festival Express performances was included on Joplin's In Concert (1972) album. Video of the performances was also included on the Festival Express DVD. These performances of entire songs during the Festival Express concerts in Toronto and Calgary can be purchased, although other songs remain in vaults and have yet to be released. In the "Tell Mama" video shown on MTV in the 1980s, Joplin wore a psychedelically colored, loose-fitting costume and feathers in her hair. This was her standard stage costume in the spring and summer of 1970. She chose the new costumes after her friend and designer, Linda Gravenites (whom Joplin had praised in Vogues profile of her in its May 1968 edition), cut ties with Joplin shortly after their return from Brazil, due largely to Joplin's continued use of heroin. Among Joplin's last public appearances were two broadcasts of The Dick Cavett Show. In her June 25, 1970 appearance, she announced that she would attend her ten-year high school class reunion. When asked if she had been popular in school, she admitted that when in high school, her schoolmates "laughed me out of class, out of town and out of the state" (during the year she had spent at the University of Texas at Austin, Joplin had been voted "Ugliest Man on Campus" by frat boys). In the subsequent Cavett Show broadcast, on August 3, 1970, and featuring Gloria Swanson, Joplin discussed her upcoming performance at the Festival for Peace to be held at Shea Stadium in Queens, New York, three days later. On July 11, 1970, Full Tilt Boogie and Big Brother and the Holding Company both performed at the same concert in the San Diego Sports Arena, which was decades later renamed the Valley View Casino Center. Joplin sang with Full Tilt Boogie and appeared briefly onstage with Big Brother without singing, according to a July 13 review of the concert in the San Diego Union. On August 7, 1970, a tombstone—jointly paid for by Joplin and Juanita Green, who as a child had done housework for Bessie Smith—was erected at Smith's previously unmarked grave. The following day, the Associated Press circulated this news, and the August 9 edition of The New York Times carried it. The lead paragraph of the AP story said Joplin and Green had "shared the cost of a stone for the 'Empress of the Blues,'" but, according to publicist/biographer Myra Friedman, the two women never met. Joplin had been at home in Larkspur, California when she had received a long-distance phone call with an explanation of the need to finance a gravestone for Bessie Smith, whom Joplin had frequently cited as a musical influence. Joplin immediately wrote a check and mailed it to the name and address provided by the phone caller. On August 8, 1970, as the Associated Press circulated the news about Smith's new gravestone, Joplin performed at the Capitol Theatre (Port Chester, New York). It was there that she first performed "Mercedes Benz", a song (partially inspired by a Michael McClure poem) that she had composed with fellow musician and friend Bob Neuwirth a very short time earlier. According to Myra Friedman's account, Joplin performed two shows at the Capitol Theatre, the first of which was attended by actors Geraldine Page and her husband Rip Torn. Between the shows, at a "gin mill" [Friedman's words] very close to this concert venue, Joplin and Neuwirth penned the lyrics to the song and she performed it at the second show, according to Friedman. Neuwirth was quoted by The Wall Street Journal in 2015: "Around 7 p.m., after the Capitol sound check, we had a couple of hours to kill before [acts that opened for Joplin] Seatrain and Runt finished their sets. So the four of us [Joplin, Neuwirth, Geraldine Page, Rip Torn] walked to a bar about three minutes away called Vahsen’s [at 30 Broad Street in Port Chester]." While in Vahsen's, "Janis came up with words for the first verse. I was in charge of writing them down on bar napkins with a ballpoint pen. She came up with the second verse, too, about a color TV. I suggested words here and there, and came up with the third verse—about asking the Lord to buy us a night on the town and another round." Joplin's last public performance with the Full Tilt Boogie Band took place on August 12, 1970, at the Harvard Stadium in Boston. The Harvard Crimson gave the performance a positive, front-page review, despite the fact that Full Tilt Boogie had performed with makeshift amplifiers after their regular sound equipment was stolen in Boston. Joplin attended her high school reunion on August 14, accompanied by Neuwirth, road manager John Cooke, and sister Laura, but it was reportedly an unhappy experience for her. Joplin held a press conference in Port Arthur during her reunion visit. When asked by a reporter if she ever entertained at Thomas Jefferson High School when she was a student there, Joplin replied, "Only when I walked down the aisles." Joplin denigrated Port Arthur and the classmates who had humiliated her a decade earlier. During late August, September, and early October 1970, Joplin and her band rehearsed and recorded a new album in Los Angeles with producer Paul A. Rothchild, best known for his lengthy relationship with The Doors. Although Joplin died before all the tracks were fully completed, there was enough usable material to compile an LP. The posthumous Pearl (1971) became the biggest-selling album of her career and featured her biggest hit single, a cover of Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster's "Me and Bobby McGee" (Kristofferson had previously been Joplin's lover in the spring of 1970). The opening track, "Move Over", was written by Joplin, reflecting the way that she felt men treated women in relationships. Also included was the social commentary of "Mercedes Benz", presented in an a cappella arrangement; the track on the album features the first and only take that Joplin recorded. A cover of Nick Gravenites's "Buried Alive in the Blues", to which Joplin had been scheduled to add her vocals on the day she was found dead, was included as an instrumental. Joplin checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood on August 24, 1970, near Sunset Sound Recorders, where she began rehearsing and recording her album. During the sessions, Joplin continued a relationship with Seth Morgan, a 21-year-old UC Berkeley student, cocaine dealer, and future novelist who had visited her new home in Larkspur in July and August. She and Morgan were engaged to be married in early September, although he visited Sunset Sound Recorders for just eight of Joplin's many rehearsals and sessions. Morgan later told biographer Myra Friedman that, as a non-musician, he had felt excluded whenever he had visited Sunset Sound Recorders. Instead, he stayed at Joplin's Larkspur home while she stayed alone at the Landmark, although several times she visited Larkspur to be with him and to check the progress of renovations she was having done on the house. She told her construction crew to design a carport to be shaped like a flying saucer, according to biographer Ellis Amburn, the concrete foundation for which was poured the day before she died. Peggy Caserta claimed in her book, Going Down With Janis (1973), that she and Joplin had decided mutually in April 1970 to stay away from each other to avoid enabling each other's drug use. Caserta, a former Delta Air Lines stewardess and owner of one of the first clothing boutiques in the Haight Ashbury, said in the book that by September 1970, she was smuggling cannabis throughout California and had checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel because it attracted drug users. For approximately the first two weeks of Joplin's stay at the Landmark, she did not know Caserta was in Los Angeles. Joplin learned of Caserta's presence at the Landmark from a heroin dealer who made deliveries there. Joplin begged Caserta for heroin, and when Caserta refused to provide it, Joplin reportedly admonished her by saying, "Don't think if you can get it, I can't get it." Joplin's publicist Myra Friedman was unaware during Joplin's lifetime that this had happened. Later, while Friedman was working on her book Buried Alive, she determined that the time frame of the Joplin-Caserta encounter was one week before Jimi Hendrix's death. Within a few days, Joplin became a regular customer of the same heroin dealer who had been supplying Caserta. Joplin's manager Albert Grossman and his assistant/publicist Friedman had staged an intervention with Joplin the previous winter while Joplin was in New York. In September 1970, Grossman and Friedman, who worked out of a New York office, knew Joplin was staying at a Los Angeles hotel, but were unaware it was a haven for drug users and dealers. Grossman and Friedman knew during Joplin's lifetime that her friend Caserta, whom Friedman met during the New York sessions for Cheap Thrills and on later occasions, used heroin. During the many long-distance telephone conversations that Joplin and Friedman had in September 1970 and on October 1, Joplin never mentioned Caserta, and Friedman assumed Caserta had been out of Joplin's life for a while. Friedman, who had more time than Grossman to monitor the situation, never visited California. She thought Joplin sounded on the phone like she was less depressed than she had been over the summer. When Joplin was not at Sunset Sound Recorders, she liked to drive her Porsche over the speed limit "on the winding part of Sunset Blvd.", according to a statement made by her attorney Robert Gordon in 1995 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Friedman wrote that the only Full Tilt Boogie member who rode as her passenger, Ken Pearson, often hesitated to join her, though he did on the night she died. He was not interested in using hard drugs. On September 26, 1970, Joplin recorded vocals for "Half Moon" and "Cry Baby". The session ended with Joplin, organist Ken Pearson, and drummer Clark Pierson making a special one-minute recording as a birthday gift to John Lennon. Joplin was among several singers who had been contacted by Yoko Ono with a request for a taped greeting for Lennon's 30th birthday, on October 9. Joplin, Pearson, and Pierson chose the Dale Evans composition "Happy Trails" as part of the greeting. Lennon told Dick Cavett on-camera the following year that Joplin's recorded birthday wishes arrived at his home after her death. On October 1, 1970, Joplin completed her last recording, "Mercedes Benz", which was recorded in a single take. On Saturday, October 3, Joplin visited Sunset Sound Recorders to listen to the instrumental track for Nick Gravenites's song "Buried Alive in the Blues", which the band had recorded earlier that day. She and Paul Rothchild agreed she would record the vocal the following day. At some point on Saturday, she learned by telephone, to her dismay, that Seth Morgan had met other women at a Marin County, California, restaurant, invited them to her home, and was shooting pool with them using her pool table. People at Sunset Sound Recorders overheard Joplin expressing anger about the state of her relationship with Morgan, as well as joy about the progress of the sessions. Joplin and Ken Pearson later left the studio together and she drove him in her Porsche to the West Hollywood landmark called Barney's Beanery. Friedman wrote, "At the bar, she drank vodka and orange juice, only two." Bennett Glotzer, a business partner of Joplin's manager Albert Grossman, was present at Barney's Beanery, according to what he told John Byrne Cooke immediately after he (Glotzer) learned of her death. Evidently, Joplin had a friendly conversation with a young man whom she did not know, and he expressed admiration for her music. After midnight, she drove Ken Pearson and the male fan to the Landmark where she and Pearson were staying in separate rooms. During the car ride, the fan asked Joplin questions "about her singing style," according to Friedman, and "she mostly ignored him" so she could converse with Pearson. As Joplin and Pearson prepared to part in the lobby of the Landmark, she expressed a fear, possibly in jest, that he and the other Full Tilt Boogie musicians might decide to stop making music with her. Pearson was the second-to-last person to see her alive. The last was the Landmark's night shift desk clerk. He had met her several times but did not know her. Personal life Joplin's significant relationships with men included ones with Peter de Blanc, Country Joe McDonald (who wrote the song "Janis" at Joplin's request), David (George) Niehaus, Kris Kristofferson, and Seth Morgan (from July 1970 until her death, at which time they were allegedly engaged). She also had relationships with women. During her first stint in San Francisco in 1963, Joplin met and briefly lived with Jae Whitaker, a black woman whom she had met while playing pool at the bar Gino & Carlo in North Beach. Whitaker broke off their relationship because of Joplin's hard drug use and sexual relationships with other people. Whitaker was first identified by name in connection with the singer in 1999, when Alice Echols' biography Scars of Sweet Paradise was published. Joplin also had an on-again-off-again romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta. They first met in November 1966 when Big Brother performed at a San Francisco venue called The Matrix. Caserta was one of 15 people in the audience, and at the time, she ran a successful clothing boutique in the Haight Ashbury. Approximately a month after Caserta attended the concert, Joplin visited her boutique and said she could not afford to buy a pair of jeans that was for sale, instead asking to put down the first 50 cents on the $5 item. Caserta was amazed that such a talented singer could not afford a $5 item, and gave her a pair for free. Their friendship was platonic for more than a year. Before it moved to the next level, Caserta was in love with Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, and sometime during the first half of 1968 traveled from San Francisco to New York to flirt with him. He did not want a serious relationship, and Joplin sympathized with Caserta's disappointment. The Woodstock concert film includes 37 seconds of Joplin and Caserta walking together before they reached the tent where Joplin waited for her turn to perform. By the time the festival took place in August 1969, both were intravenous heroin addicts. According to Caserta's book Going Down With Janis, which Caserta has since disowned, Joplin introduced her to her boyfriend Seth Morgan in Joplin's room at the Landmark Motor Hotel on September 29, 1970. Caserta "had seen him around" San Francisco but had not met him before. At some point, an agreement was made for a threesome to take place the following Friday, although Caserta later said that she immediately abandoned the idea once she understood that it was Morgan who would be with Joplin. Morgan made alternate plans, believing that Caserta would be with Joplin that evening. Each one, however, was unaware that the other had bowed out. The day after Joplin introduced Caserta to Morgan, Caserta saw Joplin briefly, again in Joplin's room, when Caserta accommodated her new Los Angeles friend Debbie Nuciforo, age 19, an aspiring hard rock drummer who wanted to meet Joplin. Nuciforo was stoned on heroin at the time, and the three women's encounter was brief and unpleasant. Caserta suspected that the reason for Joplin's foul mood was that Morgan had abandoned her earlier that day after having spent less than 24 hours with her. Caserta did not see nor communicate by phone with Joplin again, although she later claimed she had made several attempts to reach her by phone at the Landmark Motor Hotel and at Sunset Sound Recorders. Caserta and Morgan lost touch with each other; each had independently made alternate plans for Friday night, October 2. Joplin mentioned her disappointment (over both of her friends' bailing out of their ménage à trois) to her drug dealer on Saturday, while he was selling her the dose of heroin that killed her, as Caserta later learned from the drug dealer. Biographer Myra Friedman commented in her original version of Buried Alive (1973): Given the near-infinite potentials of infancy, it is really impossible to make generalizations about what lies behind sexual practices. This, however, is probable: to become clearly homosexual, to make the choice that one honestly prefers relations with one's own sex, no matter the origins of such preference, requires a certain integration, a stability of psychic development, a tidiness of personality organization. The ridicule and the humiliation that took place at that most delicate period in [Joplin's] early teens, her own inability to surmount the obstacles to regular growth, devastated her a great deal more than most people comprehended. Janis was not heir to an ego so cohesive as to permit her an identity one way or the other. She was, as [the psychiatric social worker she saw regularly in Beaumont, Texas in 1965 and 1966] Mr. [Bernard] Giarritano put it [in an interview with Friedman], "diffused" -- spewing, splattering, splaying all over, without a center to hold. That had as much to do with her original use of drugs [before she first met Giarritano] as did the critical component of guilt and its multiplicity of sources above and beyond the contribution made by her relationships with women. Were she so simple as the lesbians wished her to be or so free as her associates imagined! Kim France reported in her May 2, 1999 The New York Times article, "Nothin' Left to Lose" : "Once she became famous, Joplin cursed like a truck driver, did not believe in wearing undergarments, was rarely seen without her bottle of Southern Comfort and delighted in playing the role of sexual predator." On July 11, 1970, Joplin made a revealing statement about her sexuality to her friend Richard Hundgen, the Grateful Dead's San Francisco-based road manager whom she had known since 1966. When Joplin and Hundgen were offstage during a San Diego gig for both Full Tilt Boogie and Big Brother and the Holding Company, she said the following that he later repeated to Myra Friedman: I hear a rumor that somebody in San Francisco is spreading stories that I'm a dyke. You go back there and find out who it is and tell them that Janis says she's gotten it on with a couple of thousand cats in her life and a few hundred chicks and see what they can do with that! Death On Sunday evening, October 4, 1970, Joplin was found dead on the floor of her room at the Landmark Motor Hotel by her road manager and close friend John Byrne Cooke. Alcohol was present in the room. Newspapers reported that no other drugs or paraphernalia were present. According to a 1983 book authored by Joseph DiMona and Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi, evidence of narcotics was removed from the scene by a friend of Joplin and later put back after the person realized that an autopsy was going to reveal that narcotics were in her system. The book adds that prior to Joplin's death, Noguchi had investigated other fatal drug overdoses in Los Angeles where friends believed they were doing favors for decedents by removing evidence of narcotics, then they "thought things over" and returned to put back the evidence. Noguchi performed an autopsy on Joplin and determined the cause of death to be a heroin overdose, possibly compounded by alcohol. John Byrne Cooke believed Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than what she and other L.A. heroin users had received on previous occasions, as was indicated by overdoses of several of her dealer's other customers during the same weekend. Her death was ruled accidental. Both Peggy Caserta, Joplin's close friend, and Seth Morgan, Joplin's fiancé, had failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death, October 2; Joplin had been expecting both of them to keep her company that night. According to Caserta, Joplin was saddened that neither of her friends visited her at the Landmark as they had promised. During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment, Caserta did not phone her to explain why she had failed to show up. Caserta admitted to waiting until late Saturday night to dial the Landmark switchboard, only to learn that Joplin had instructed the desk clerk not to accept any incoming phone calls for her after midnight. Morgan did speak to Joplin via telephone within the 24 hours prior to her death, but little is known about that call. She used a phone at Sunset Sound Recorders where her colleagues (“there were perhaps twenty to twenty-five people pre‪sent,” wrote biographer Myra Friedman) noticed that whatever Morgan said to her made her very angry. Peggy Caserta has insisted that Joplin's death was not an accidental overdose, but rather a result of a head gash suffered after the "hourglass heel" of her slingback sandal caught in the shag carpet, causing her to lose her balance. Caserta does concede, however, that drugs and/or alcohol may have played a role in hastening her death that night. Joplin was cremated at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary in Los Angeles, and her ashes were scattered from a plane into the Pacific Ocean. Legacy Joplin's death in October 1970 at age 27 stunned her fans and shocked the music world, especially when coupled with the death just 16 days earlier of another rock icon, Jimi Hendrix, also at age 27. (This would later cause some people to attribute significance to the death of musicians at the age of 27, as celebrated in the "27 Club.") Music historian Tom Moon wrote that Joplin had "a devastatingly original voice," music columnist Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote that Joplin as an artist was "overpowering and deeply vulnerable" and author Megan Terry said that Joplin was the female version of Elvis Presley in her ability to captivate an audience. A book about Joplin by her publicist Myra Friedman titled Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin (1973) was excerpted in many newspapers. At the same time, Peggy Caserta's memoir, Going Down With Janis (1973), attracted much attention; its provocative title is a reference to Caserta's claim that she had engaged in oral sex with Joplin while they were high on heroin in September 1970. The description provided by Dan Knapp, Caserta’s co-author whom she denounced decades later, repelled many people in 1973 when few books or filmed interviews of Joplin or her loved ones were accessible to the public. Joplin's bandmate Sam Andrew described Caserta as "halfway between a groupie and a friend" in an interview with writer Ellis Amburn. Soon after the 1973 publication of Going Down With Janis, Joplin's friends learned that graphic descriptions of sexual acts and intravenous drug use were not the only portions of the book that would haunt them. According to Kim Chappell, a close friend of Caserta and Joplin, Caserta's book angered the Los Angeles heroin dealer whom she had described in detail in her book, including the make and model of his car. According to Amburn, in 1973 a "carful of dope dealers" visited a Los Angeles lesbian bar that Caserta had been frequenting. Chappell, who was in the alley behind the bar, stated: "I was stabbed because, when Peggy's book came out, her dealer, the same one who'd given Janis her last fix, didn't like it that he was referred to and was out to get Peggy. He couldn't find her, so he went for her lover. When they realized who I was, they felt that my death would also hit Peggy, and so they stabbed me." Despite being "stabbed three times in the chest, puncturing both lungs," Chappell eventually recovered. In 2018, Caserta denounced Going Down With Janis as the pornographic fantasy of Dan Knapp, her co-author, and largely unreliable. During that year, the public had its first access to her own story via a memoir she co-wrote with Maggie Falcon titled I Ran Into Some Trouble. It describes a long, friendly relationship with Joplin that only occasionally featured sexuality. According to Joplin’s biographers, Caserta was among many friends of Joplin who did not become clean and sober until a very long time after Joplin's death, while others died from overdoses. Although the wife of Big Brother guitarist James Gurley, who was Joplin's close friend, died from a heroin overdose in 1969, devastating Joplin, Gurley himself did not become clean and sober until 1984. Caserta survived "a near-fatal OD in December 1995," wrote Alice Echols. On January 13, 2000, Caserta appeared during a segment about Joplin on 20/20. Joplin's body art, with a wristlet and a small heart on her left breast by the San Francisco tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle, marked an early moment in the popular culture's acceptance of tattoos as art. Another trademark was her flamboyant hair styles, which often included colored streaks and accessories such as scarves, beads and feathers. When in New York City, Joplin frequented the Limbo boutique on St. Mark's Place, and she wore some of the vintage and unique garments that she purchased there on stage. The Mamas & the Papas' song "Pearl" (1971), from their People Like Us album, was a tribute. Leonard Cohen's song "Chelsea Hotel#2" (1974) is about Joplin. Lyricist Robert Hunter has commented that Jerry Garcia's "Birdsong" from his first solo album, Garcia (1972), is about Joplin and the end of her suffering through death. Mimi Farina's composition "In the Quiet Morning", most famously covered by Joan Baez on her Come from the Shadows (1972) album, was a tribute to Joplin. Another song by Baez, "Children of the Eighties," mentioned Joplin. A Serge Gainsbourg-penned French language song by English singer Jane Birkin, "Ex fan des sixties" (1978), references Joplin along with other disappeared "idols" such as Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones and Marc Bolan. When Joplin was alive, Country Joe McDonald released a song called "Janis" on his band's album I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die (1967). The film The Rose (1979) is loosely based on Joplin's life. Originally planned to be titled Pearl—Joplin's nickname and the title of her last album—the film was fictionalized after her family declined to allow the producers the rights to her story. Bette Midler earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the film. In 1988, on what would have been Joplin's 45th birthday, the Janis Joplin Memorial, with an original gold, multi-image sculpture of Joplin by Douglas Clark, was dedicated during a ceremony in Port Arthur, Texas. In 1992, the first major biography of Joplin in two decades, Love, Janis, authored by her younger sister Laura Joplin, was published. In an interview, Laura stated that Joplin enjoyed being on the Dick Cavett Show, that Joplin had difficulties with some, but not all, people at Thomas Jefferson High School and that Joplin enthusiastically talked about Woodstock with her parents and siblings during a visit to their Texas home a few weeks after she had performed at the festival. In 1995, Joplin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2005, she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In November 2009, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum honored her as part of its annual American Music Masters Series; among the artifacts at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum exhibition are Joplin's scarf and necklaces, her psychedelically painted 1965 Porsche 356 Cabriolet and a sheet of LSD blotting paper designed by Robert Crumb, designer of the Cheap Thrills cover. Also in 2009, Joplin was the honoree at the Rock Hall's American Music Master concert and lecture series. In the late 1990s, the musical play Love, Janis was created and directed by Randal Myler, with input from Janis' younger sister Laura and Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, with an aim to take it to Off-Broadway. Opening in the summer of 2001 and scheduled for only a few weeks of performances, the show won acclaim, played to packed houses and was held over several times. In 2013, Washington's Arena Stage featured a production of A Night with Janis Joplin, starring Mary Bridget Davies. In it, Joplin performs a concert for the audience while telling stories of her past inspirations, including those of Odetta and Aretha Franklin. The show went on tour in 2016. On November 4, 2013, Joplin was awarded with the 2,510th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the music industry. Her star is located at 6752 Hollywood Boulevard, in front of Musicians Institute. On August 8, 2014, the U.S. Postal Service revealed a commemorative stamp honoring Joplin as part of its Music Icons stamp series during a first-day-of-issue ceremony at the Outside Lands Music Festival at Golden Gate Park. Among the memorabilia Joplin left behind is a Gibson Hummingbird guitar. In 2015, the biographical documentary film Janis: Little Girl Blue, directed by Amy J. Berg and narrated by Cat Power, was released. It was a New York Times Critics' Pick. Influence Joplin had a profound influence on many singers. Pink said about Joplin: "She was so inspiring by singing blues music when it wasn't culturally acceptable for white women, and she wore her heart on her sleeve. She was so witty and charming and intelligent, but she also battled an ugly-duckling syndrome. I would love to play her in a movie." In a tribute performance on her Try This Tour, Pink called Joplin "a woman who inspired me when everyone else ... didn't!" Discography Janis Joplin recorded four albums in her four-year career. The first two albums were recorded with and credited to Big Brother and the Holding Company; the later two were recorded with different backing bands and released as solo albums. Posthumous releases have included previously unreleased studio and live material. Studio albums As lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company As solo artist Live albums Compilation albums Singles As lead of Big Brother and the Holding Company As solo artist Filmography Monterey Pop (1968) Petulia (1968) Janis Joplin Live in Frankfurt (1969) Janis (1974) Janis: The Way She Was (1974) Comin' Home (1988) Woodstock – The Lost Performances (1991) Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director's Cut) (1994) Festival Express (2003) Nine Hundred Nights (2004) The Dick Cavett Show: Rock Icons (2005) Shout Factory Rockin' at the Red Dog: The Dawn of Psychedelic Rock (2005) This is Tom Jones (2007) 1969 appearance on TV show Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director's Cut) 40th Anniversary Edition (2009) Janis Joplin with Big Brother: Ball and Chain (DVD) Charly (2009) Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015) Notes References Further reading – an encounter with Janis Joplin at the wheel. External links Janis Joplin at the Grammy Awards Janis Joplin on the Music-Map 1943 births 1970 deaths 20th-century American singers 20th-century American women singers American blues singers American child singers American mezzo-sopranos American women rock singers American women singer-songwriters American rhythm and blues singer-songwriters American rock songwriters American soul musicians Accidental deaths in California Big Brother and the Holding Company members Bisexual musicians Bisexual women Blues rock musicians Columbia Records artists Deaths by heroin overdose in California Drug-related deaths in California Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners LGBT people from Texas LGBT singers from the United States LGBT songwriters Lamar University alumni People from Beaumont, Texas People from Port Arthur, Texas Singer-songwriters from Texas University of Texas at Austin alumni 20th-century LGBT people
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[ "\"Falling in Love Again\" is a 1977 song recorded by singer Marvin Gaye and issued on his 1978 album, Here, My Dear album. The song was another track on the personal album that did not discuss the demise of his first marriage. Instead of Anna Gaye, the song talked of the other woman in Marvin's life. Described in \"You Can Leave, but It's Going to Cost You\" as \"that young girl\", she was Janis Hunter, whom Gaye had married. In a solemn but still certain tone, he wanted to be sure that this time his love for Janis will be what he had always wanted. But as irony would have it, by the time of the album's release, Marvin and Janis' relationship was failing. By the end of the album's promotion, Janis had split from the singer after nearly two years as a married couple. They eventually divorced in February 1981. This song was the last song on Here, My Dear with a reprise from the album's \"theme song\", \"When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You\", playing soon afterwards putting the album to a close for good.\n\nPersonnel\nAll vocals, keyboards and synthesizers by Marvin Gaye\nDrums by Bugsy Wilcox\nTenor saxophones by Charles Owens and Fernando Harkness\nBass by Frank Blair\nGuitar by Gordon Banks\nPercussion by Gary Jones and Elmira Collins\n\n1978 songs\nMarvin Gaye songs\nSongs written by Marvin Gaye\nSong recordings produced by Marvin Gaye", "Janis Anne Babson (September 9, 1950 – May 12, 1961) was a Canadian girl who received posthumous acclaim with the donation of her corneas for transplant after her death from leukemia at the age of 10. Her story was reported in a newspaper article syndicated across Canada, inspiring two books and other memorials. When Janis died of leukemia in 1961, corneal transplantation was a relatively unknown procedure. Although parents who lose young children frequently donate some of their organs to others, Janis's bequest was significant because the donation of her eyes at her death was her own idea, and it inspired many other people—across Canada and elsewhere—to become cornea donors as well.\n\nWhite Cane Week\nJanis happened to see a television program sponsored by an eye bank after watching National Velvet, a program she loved because of her passion for horses. When her youngest brother fell asleep on her lap, she did not want to wake him and remained in front of the television set when a White Cane Week special aired. The program's hosts explained how some cases of blindness could be cured with corneal donations, restoring a recipient's eyesight. After the program Janis, moved, told her mother and father that when she died she wanted to donate her eyes to the Eye Bank. Her parents—Harry Rudolphe (Rudy) Babson, a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Rita Quinn Babson—knew their daughter was serious about the gift, but it was a big decision for such a young girl.\n\nLeukemia\nIn early 1959, when Janis was eight years old, her mother noticed that she had lost her energy and appetite. Her father took her to the family pediatrician who noted a great increase in white blood cells from a sample he took. He ordered additional tests and referred her to hematologist Alexander English at the Ottawa Civic Hospital. The tests revealed that Janis was suffering from a sub-acute form of leukemia. At that time, leukemia was invariably fatal; with the chemotherapy available, Janis was expected to live about a year. She responded well to treatments which slowed the advance of the leukemia, and survived about 26 months after her diagnosis.\n\nDeath\n\nDespite a change in drugs from methotrexate to mercaptopurine, Janis's condition deteriorated in early 1961 as her leukemia worsened and she was hospitalized and released twice. In early May, she was hospitalized for the third (and final) time. Janis died in her parents' arms at 9:25 pm ET on Friday, May 12, 1961. Throughout her illness, Janis reminded her parents about her desire to donate her eyes; their original reluctance gave way when Rudy signed the consent forms for the donation of Janis's eyes a few hours before her death.\n\nJanis is buried in Notre Dame Cemetery in Ottawa. Her funeral Mass was attended by her entire school.\n\nLegacy\nJanis's best friend, Tricia Kennedy, moved from Ottawa to Chalk River, Ontario with her family. When the Kennedys were interviewed by the local paper as part of a get-to-know-your-neighbours feature, Tricia Kennedy announced that her best friend had died of leukemia and donated her eyes to the Eye Bank in Toronto. Impressed, the reporter then contacted the Ottawa Journal. Tim Burke, a reporter for the Journal, contacted the Babsons; his interview became \"Little Janis\" in his May 31, 1961 \"Below the Hill\" column. The response was immediate: from Ottawa Mayor Charlotte Whitton to retired pharmacist Abe Silver (who created an endowment to Hebrew National University in Janis's name for leukemia research) to groups and individuals who set a record for the number of pledged donations to the Eye Bank.\n\nIn 1962, the first of two books on Janis's life was published: Janis of City View (Holy Cross Press) by Rena Ray. The following year Lawrence Elliott, a correspondent for Reader's Digest, published A Little Girl's Gift (Holt, Rinehart & Winston). Six months earlier, a condensed version had appeared in the June 1963 issue of Reader's Digest entitled The Triumph of Janis Babson.\n\nTributes\nThe Internet has spawned several websites dedicated to Janis Babson's memory. In addition, her family (mother and siblings) have created a memorial Facebook page where many whose lives were touched by Janis's can leave comments and posts. A 50th-anniversary tribute, arranged by the Babson family, was held May 27, 2011, in Ottawa to commemorate a half-century since Janis's death. It featured Lawrence Elliott, a new commemorative edition of A Little Girl's Gift, and artist Caroline Langill (Custody of the Eyes). A large-cupped, broad-petalled daffodil, white with pink rims, has been named after Janis as a tribute.\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \nRetelling of A Little Girl's Gift and Janis of City View\nLenten Meditation: Character produces hope\n\nMemorial Facebook page\n\n1950 births\n1961 deaths\nCanadian children\nOrgan transplant donors\nDeaths from leukemia\nDeaths from cancer in Ontario" ]
[ "Janis Joplin", "Death", "What year did Janis die?", "1970,", "How old was she when she died?", "On October 4, 1970, producer Paul Rothchild became concerned when Joplin failed to show up at Sunset Sound Recorders for a recording", "Was Janis with anyone when she died?", "Peggy Caserta and Seth Morgan had both failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death,", "Had anyone tried to stop Janis from using heroin?", "During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment," ]
C_3938290d39f0420aa035060edc72696f_0
Was Janis Joplin suicidal?
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Was Janis Joplin suicidal?
Janis Joplin
On October 4, 1970, producer Paul Rothchild became concerned when Joplin failed to show up at Sunset Sound Recorders for a recording session. Full Tilt Boogie's road manager, John Cooke, drove to the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood where Joplin was staying. He saw Joplin's psychedelically painted Porsche 356 C Cabriolet in the parking lot, and upon entering Joplin's room (#105), he found her dead on the floor beside her bed. The official cause of death was a heroin overdose, possibly compounded by alcohol. Cooke believes Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than normal, as several of her dealer's other customers also overdosed that week. Peggy Caserta and Seth Morgan had both failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death, October 2, and Joplin had been expecting both of them to keep her company that night. According to Caserta, Joplin was saddened that neither of her friends visited her at the Landmark as they had promised. During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment, Caserta did not phone her to explain why she had failed to show up. Caserta admitted to waiting until late Saturday night to dial the Landmark switchboard, only to learn that Joplin had instructed the desk clerk not to accept any incoming phone calls for her after midnight. Morgan did speak to Joplin via telephone within 24 hours of her death, but it is not known whether he admitted to her that he had broken his promise. Joplin's last will and testament funded $2,500 to throw a wake party in the event of her demise. The party took place on October 26, 1970, at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo, California, and was attended by Joplin's sister Laura, Morgan, and other close friends, including Cooke, Bob Gordon, Jack Penty, and tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle. CANNOTANSWER
Cooke believes Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than normal, as several of her dealer's other customers also overdosed that week.
Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter who sang rock, soul, and blues music. One of the most successful and widely known rock stars of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and "electric" stage presence. In 1967, Joplin rose to fame following an appearance at Monterey Pop Festival, where she was the lead singer of the then little-known San Francisco psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company. After releasing two albums with the band, she left Big Brother to continue as a solo artist with her own backing groups, first the Kozmic Blues Band and then the Full Tilt Boogie Band. She appeared at the Woodstock festival and on the Festival Express train tour. Five singles by Joplin reached the Billboard Hot 100, including a cover of the Kris Kristofferson song "Me and Bobby McGee", which reached number one in March 1971. Her most popular songs include her cover versions of "Piece of My Heart", "Cry Baby", "Down on Me", "Ball and Chain", and "Summertime"; and her original song "Mercedes Benz", her final recording. Joplin died of a heroin overdose in 1970, at the age of 27, after releasing three albums (two with Big Brother and the Holding Company and one solo album). A second solo album, Pearl, was released in January 1971, just over three months after her death. It reached number one on the Billboard charts. She was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Rolling Stone ranked Joplin number 46 on its 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. She remains one of the top-selling musicians in the United States, with Recording Industry Association of America certifications of 18.5 million albums sold. Early life Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on , to Dorothy Bonita East (1913–1998), a registrar at a business college, and her husband, Seth Ward Joplin (1910–1987), an engineer at Texaco. She had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. The family attended First Christian Church of Port Arthur, a church belonging to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) denomination. Her parents felt that Janis needed more attention than their other children. As a teenager, Joplin befriended a group of outcasts, one of whom had albums by blues artists Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Lead Belly, which Joplin later credited with influencing her decision to become a singer. She began singing blues and folk music with friends at Thomas Jefferson High School. In high school, she was a classmate of Pro Football Hall of Fame coach Jimmy Johnson. Joplin stated that she was ostracized and bullied in high school. As a teen, she became overweight and suffered from acne, leaving her with deep scars that required dermabrasion. Other kids at high school would routinely taunt her and call her names like "pig," "freak," "nigger lover," or "creep." She stated, "I was a misfit. I read, I painted, I thought. I didn't hate niggers." Joplin graduated from high school in 1960 and attended Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, Texas, during the summer and later the University of Texas at Austin (UT), though she did not complete her college studies. The campus newspaper, The Daily Texan, ran a profile of her in the issue dated July 27, 1962, headlined "She Dares to Be Different." The article began, "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levi's to class because they're more comfortable, and carries her autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break into song, it will be handy. Her name is Janis Joplin." While at UT she performed with a folk trio called the Waller Creek Boys and frequently socialized with the staff of the campus humor magazine The Texas Ranger. According to Freak Brothers cartoonist Gilbert Shelton, who befriended her, she used to sell The Texas Ranger, which contained some of Shelton's early comic books, on the campus. Career 1962–1965: Early recordings Joplin cultivated a rebellious manner and styled herself partly after her female blues heroines and partly after the Beat poets. Her first song, "What Good Can Drinkin' Do", was recorded on tape in December 1962 at the home of a fellow University of Texas student. She left Texas in January 1963 ("Just to get away," she said, "because my head was in a much different place"), hitchhiking with her friend Chet Helms to North Beach, San Francisco. Still in San Francisco in 1964, Joplin and future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen recorded a number of blues standards, which incidentally featured Kaukonen's wife Margareta using a typewriter in the background. This session included seven tracks: "Typewriter Talk", "Trouble in Mind", "Kansas City Blues", "Hesitation Blues", "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out", "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy", and "Long Black Train Blues", and was released long after Joplin's death as the bootleg album The Typewriter Tape. In 1963, Joplin was arrested in San Francisco for shoplifting. During the two years that followed, her drug use increased and she acquired a reputation as a "speed freak" and occasional heroin user. She also used other psychoactive drugs and was a heavy drinker throughout her career; her favorite alcoholic beverage was Southern Comfort. In May 1965, Joplin's friends in San Francisco, noticing the detrimental effects on her from regularly injecting methamphetamine (she was described as "skeletal" and "emaciated"), persuaded her to return to Port Arthur. During that month, her friends threw her a bus-fare party so she could return to her parents in Texas. Five years later, Joplin told Rolling Stone magazine writer David Dalton the following about her first stint in San Francisco: "I didn't have many friends and I didn't like the ones I had." Back in Port Arthur in the spring of 1965, after Joplin's parents noticed her weight of , she changed her lifestyle. She avoided drugs and alcohol, adopted a beehive hairdo, and enrolled as an anthropology major at Lamar University in nearby Beaumont, Texas. Her sister Laura said in a 2016 interview that social work was her major during her year at Lamar. During her time at Lamar University, she commuted to Austin to sing solo, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar. One of her performances was at a benefit by local musicians for Texas bluesman Mance Lipscomb, who was suffering with ill health. Joplin became engaged to Peter de Blanc in the fall of 1965. She had begun a relationship with him toward the end of her first stint in San Francisco. Now living in New York where he worked with IBM computers, he visited her to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Joplin and her mother began planning the wedding. De Blanc, who traveled frequently, ended the engagement soon afterward. In 1965 and 1966, Joplin commuted from her family's Port Arthur home to Beaumont, Texas, where she had regular sessions with a psychiatric social worker named Bernard Giarritano at a counseling agency that was funded by the United Fund, which after her death changed its name to the United Way. Interviewed by biographer Myra Friedman after his client's death, Giarritano said Joplin had been baffled by how she could pursue a professional career as a singer without relapsing into drugs, and her drug-related memories from immediately prior to returning to Port Arthur continued to frighten her. Joplin sometimes brought an acoustic guitar with her to her sessions with Giarritano, and people in other offices within the building could hear her singing. Giarritano tried to reassure her that she did not have to use narcotics in order to succeed in the music business. She also said that if she were to avoid singing professionally, she would have to become a keypunch operator (as she had done a few years earlier) or a secretary, and then a wife and mother, and she would have to become very similar to all the other women in Port Arthur. Approximately a year before Joplin joined Big Brother and the Holding Company, she recorded seven studio tracks with her acoustic guitar. Among the songs she recorded were her original composition of the song "Turtle Blues" and an alternate version of "Cod'ine" by Buffy Sainte-Marie. These tracks were later issued as a new album in 1995, titled This is Janis Joplin 1965 by James Gurley. 1966–1969: Various bands In 1966, Joplin's bluesy vocal style attracted the attention of the San Francisco-based psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, which had gained some renown among the nascent hippie community in Haight-Ashbury. She was recruited to join the group by Chet Helms, a promoter who was managing Big Brother and with whom she had hitchhiked from Texas to San Francisco a few years earlier. Helms sent his friend Travis Rivers to find her in Austin, Texas, where she had been performing with her acoustic guitar, and to accompany her to San Francisco. Aware of her previous nightmare with drug addiction in San Francisco, Rivers insisted that she inform her parents face-to-face of her plans, and he drove her from Austin to Port Arthur (he waited in his car while she talked with her startled parents) before they began their long drive to San Francisco. Joplin joined Big Brother on June 4, 1966. Her first public performance with them was at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. In June, Joplin was photographed at an outdoor concert in San Francisco that celebrated the summer solstice. The image, which was later published in two books by David Dalton, shows her before she relapsed into drugs. Due to persistent persuading by keyboardist and close friend Stephen Ryder, Joplin avoided drugs for several weeks. She made Travis Rivers, with whom she shared an apartment upon their arrival in San Francisco, promise that using needles would not be allowed there. When bandmate Dave Getz accompanied her from a rehearsal to her home, Rivers was not there, but "two or three" (according to Getz' recollection 25 years later) guests whom Rivers had invited were in the process of injecting drugs. "One of them was about to tie off," recalled Getz. "Janis went nuts! I had never seen anybody explode like that. She was screaming and crying and Travis walked in. She screamed at him: 'We had a pact! You promised me! There wouldn't be any of that in front of me!' I was over my head and I tried to calm her down. I said, 'They're just doing mescaline,' because that's what I thought it was. She said, 'You don't understand! I can't see that! I just can't stand to see that!'" A San Francisco concert from that summer (1966) was recorded and released on the 1984 album Cheaper Thrills. In July, all five bandmates and guitarist James Gurley's wife Nancy moved to a house in Lagunitas, California, where they lived communally. The band often partied with the Grateful Dead, the members of whom lived less than two miles away. She had a short relationship and longer friendship with founding member Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. The band went to Chicago for a four-week engagement in August 1966, then found itself stranded after the promoter ran out of money when its concerts did not attract the expected audience levels, and he was unable to pay them. In the circumstances the band signed with Bob Shad's record label Mainstream Records; recordings for the label took place in Chicago in September, but these were not satisfactory, and the band returned to San Francisco, continuing to perform live, including at the Love Pageant Rally. The band recorded two tracks, "Blindman" and "All Is Loneliness", in Los Angeles, and these were released by Mainstream as a single that did not sell well. After playing at a happening in Stanford in early December 1966, the band traveled back to Los Angeles to record ten tracks between December 12 and 14, 1966, produced by Bob Shad, which appeared on the band's debut album in August 1967. In late 1966, Big Brother switched managers from Chet Helms to Julius Karpen. One of Joplin's earliest major performances in 1967 was at the Mantra-Rock Dance, a musical event held on January 29 at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. Janis Joplin and Big Brother performed there along with the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami, Allen Ginsberg, Moby Grape, and the Grateful Dead, donating proceeds to the Krishna temple. In early 1967, Joplin met Country Joe McDonald of the group Country Joe and the Fish. The pair lived together as a couple for a few months. Joplin and Big Brother began playing clubs in San Francisco, at the Fillmore West, Winterland, and the Avalon Ballroom. They also played at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, as well as in Seattle, Washington; Vancouver, British Columbia; the Psychedelic Supermarket in Boston, Massachusetts; and the Golden Bear Club in Huntington Beach, California. The band's debut studio album, Big Brother & the Holding Company, was released by Mainstream Records in August 1967, shortly after the group's breakthrough appearance in June at the Monterey Pop Festival. Two tracks, "Coo Coo" and "The Last Time," were released separately as singles, while the tracks from the previous single, "Blindman" and "All Is Loneliness", were added to the remaining eight tracks. When Columbia Records took over the band's contract and re-released the album, they included "Coo Coo" and "The Last Time", and put "featuring Janis Joplin" on the cover. The debut album spawned four minor hits with the singles "Down on Me", a traditional song arranged by Joplin, "Bye Bye Baby", "Call On Me" and "Coo Coo", on all of which Joplin sang lead vocals. Two songs from the second of Big Brother's two sets at Monterey, which they played on Sunday, were filmed (their first set, which was on Saturday, was not filmed, though it was audio-recorded). Some sources, including a Joplin biography by Ellis Amburn, claim that she was dressed in thrift store hippie clothes or second-hand Victorian clothes during the band's Saturday set, but still photographs do not appear to have survived. Digitized color film of two songs in the Sunday set, "Combination of the Two" and a version of Big Mama Thornton's "Ball and Chain," appear in the DVD and Blu-ray boxed set of D. A. Pennebaker's documentary Monterey Pop released by The Criterion Collection. She is seen wearing an expensive gold tunic dress with matching pants. They were created for her by San Francisco clothing designer Colin Rose. Documentary filmmaker Pennebaker inserted two cutaway shots of Cass Elliot of the Mamas & the Papas seated in the audience during Joplin's performance of "Ball and Chain", one in the middle of the song as her eyes, covered by sunglasses, are fixed on Joplin, and also a shot during the applause as she silently mouths "Oh, wow!" and looks at the person seated next to her. Elliot and the audience are seen in sunlight, but Sunday's Big Brother performance was filmed in the evening. An explanation came from Big Brother's road manager John Byrne Cooke, who remembers that Pennebaker discreetly filmed the audience (including Elliot) during Big Brother's Saturday performance when he was not allowed to point a camera at the band. The prohibition of Pennebaker from filming on Saturday afternoon came from Big Brother's manager Julius Karpen. The band had a bitter argument with Karpen and overruled him as they prepared for their second set that the festival organizers had added on the spur of the moment. Backstage at the festival, the band became acquainted with New York-based talent manager Albert Grossman but did not sign with him until several months later, firing Karpen at that time. Only "Ball and Chain" was included in the Monterey Pop film that was released to theaters throughout the United States in 1969 and shown on television in the 1970s. Those who did not attend the Monterey Pop Festival saw the band's performance of "Combination of the Two" for the first time in 2002 when The Criterion Collection released the boxed set. For the remainder of 1967, even after Big Brother signed with Albert Grossman, the band performed mainly in California. On February 16, 1968, the group began its first East Coast tour in Philadelphia, and the following day gave their first performance in New York City at the Anderson Theater. On April 7, 1968—three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the last day of their East Coast tour—Joplin and Big Brother performed with Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens, Paul Butterfield, and Elvin Bishop at the Wake for Martin Luther King Jr. concert in New York. Live at Winterland '68, recorded at the Winterland Ballroom on April 12 and 13, 1968, features Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company at the height of their mutual career working through a selection of tracks from their albums. A recording became available to the public for the first time in 1998 when Columbia/Sony Music Entertainment released the compact disc. One month after the Winterland concert, Owsley Stanley recorded them at the Carousel Ballroom, released in 2012 as Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968. On July 31, 1968, Joplin made her first nationwide television appearance when the band performed on This Morning, an ABC daytime 90-minute variety show that was hosted by Dick Cavett. Shortly thereafter, network employees wiped the videotape, though the audio survives. (In 1969 and 1970, Joplin made three appearances on Cavett's prime-time program. Video was preserved and excerpts have been included in most documentaries about Joplin. Audio of her 1968 appearance has not been used since then.) Sometime in 1968, the band's billing was changed to "Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company," and the media coverage given to Joplin generated resentment within the band. The other members of Big Brother thought that Joplin was on a "star trip", while others were telling Joplin that Big Brother was a terrible band and that she ought to dump them. Time magazine called Joplin "probably the most powerful singer to emerge from the white rock movement", and Richard Goldstein wrote for the May 1968 issue of Vogue magazine that Joplin was "the most staggering leading woman in rock...she slinks like tar, scowls like war...clutching the knees of a final stanza, begging it not to leave.... Janis Joplin can sing the chic off any listener." For her first major studio recording, Joplin played a major role in the arrangement and production of the songs that would comprise Big Brother and the Holding Company's second album, Cheap Thrills. Producer John Simon tried recording the band in concert, to capture their energy in a live album, but several attempts showed the band was prone to mistakes. Their imprecision was not helped by moving the sessions to a recording studio. Joplin sang take after take of the same song, with her performances consistently good, and she grew frustrated with the band's sloppiness. Simon was replaced by Elliot Mazer who fixed the songs by overdubbing certain parts. The album featured a cover design by counterculture cartoonist Robert Crumb. Although Cheap Thrills sounded as if it consisted of concert recordings, like on "Combination of the Two" and "I Need a Man to Love", only "Ball and Chain" was actually recorded in front of a paying audience; the rest of the tracks were studio recordings. The album had a raw quality, including the sound of a drinking glass breaking and the broken shards being swept away during the song "Turtle Blues". Cheap Thrills produced very popular hits with "Piece of My Heart" and "Summertime". Together with the premiere of the documentary film Monterey Pop at New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on December 26, 1968, the album launched Joplin as a star. Cheap Thrills reached number one on the Billboard 200 album chart eight weeks after its release, and was number one for eight (nonconsecutive) weeks. The album was certified gold at release and sold over a million copies in the first month of its release. The lead single from the album, "Piece of My Heart", reached number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the fall of 1968. The band made another East Coast tour during July–August 1968, performing at the Columbia Records convention in Puerto Rico and the Newport Folk Festival. After returning to San Francisco for two hometown shows at the Palace of Fine Arts Festival on August 31 and September 1, Joplin announced that she would be leaving Big Brother. On September 14, 1968, culminating a three-night engagement together at Fillmore West, fans thronged to a concert that Bill Graham publicized as the last official concert of Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company. The opening acts on this night were Chicago (then still called Chicago Transit Authority) and Santana. Despite Graham's announcement that the Fillmore West gig was Big Brother's last concert with Joplin, the band—with Joplin still as lead vocalist—toured the U.S. that fall. Reflecting Joplin's crossover appeal, two October 1968 performances at a roller rink in Alexandria, Virginia, were reviewed by John Segraves of the conservative Washington Evening Star at a time when the Washington metropolitan area's hard rock scene was in its infancy. An opera buff at the time, he wrote: Later that month (October 1968), Big Brother performed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and played at the Syracuse War Memorial as part of Syracuse University's Fall Homecoming on October 11, with Janis joining openers the Butterfield Blues Band for their closing song. Aside from two 1970 reunions, Joplin's last performance with Big Brother was at a Chet Helms benefit in San Francisco on December 1, 1968. 1969–1970: Solo career After splitting from Big Brother and the Holding Company, Joplin formed a new backup group, the Kozmic Blues Band, composed of session musicians like keyboardist Stephen Ryder and saxophonist Cornelius "Snooky" Flowers, as well as former Big Brother and the Holding Company guitarist Sam Andrew and future Full Tilt Boogie Band bassist Brad Campbell. The band was influenced by the Stax-Volt rhythm and blues (R&B) and soul bands of the 1960s, as exemplified by Otis Redding and the Bar-Kays. The Stax-Volt R&B sound was typified by the use of horns and had a funky, pop-oriented sound in contrast to many of the psychedelic/hard rock bands of the period. By early 1969, Joplin was allegedly shooting at least $200 worth of heroin per day (equivalent to $1300 in 2016 dollars) although efforts were made to keep her clean during the recording of I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! Gabriel Mekler, who produced the album, told publicist-turned-biographer Myra Friedman after Joplin's death that she had lived in his Los Angeles house during the June 1969 recording sessions at his insistence so he could keep her away from drugs and her drug-using friends. Joplin's appearances with the Kozmic Blues Band in Europe were released in theaters, in multiple documentaries. Janis, which was reviewed by the Washington Post on March 21, 1975, shows Joplin arriving in Frankfurt by plane and waiting inside a bus next to the Frankfurt venue, while an American female fan who is visiting Germany expresses enthusiasm to the camera (no security was used in Frankfurt, so by the end of the concert, the stage was so packed with people the band members could not see each other). Janis also includes interviews with Joplin in Stockholm and from her visit to London, for her gig at Royal Albert Hall. The London interview was dubbed with a voiceover in the German language for broadcast on German television. John Byrne Cooke, road manager for Joplin and the Kozmic Blues Band, wrote a book published in 2014 in which he discussed her knowledge of the risks of her ongoing use of narcotics, particularly when she was outside the United States. On the episode of The Dick Cavett Show that was telecast in the United States on the night of July 18, 1969, Joplin and her band performed "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)" as well as "To Love Somebody". As Dick Cavett interviewed Joplin, she admitted that she had a terrible time touring in Europe, claiming that audiences there are very uptight and don't "get down". Released in September 1969, the Kozmic Blues album was certified gold later that year but did not match the success of Cheap Thrills. Reviews of the new group were mixed. However, the album's recording quality and engineering, as well as the musicianship (including three performances by former Bob Dylan/Paul Butterfield/Electric Flag guitarist Mike Bloomfield), were considered superior to her previous releases, and some music critics argued that the band was working in a much more constructive way to support Joplin's sensational vocal talents. Joplin wanted a horn section similar to that featured by the Chicago Transit Authority; her voice had the dynamic qualities and range not to be overpowered by the brighter horn sound. Some music critics, however, including Ralph J. Gleason of the San Francisco Chronicle, were negative. Gleason wrote that the new band was a "drag" and Joplin should "scrap" her new band and "go right back to being a member of Big Brother ... (if they'll have her)." Other reviewers, such as reporter Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, devoted entire articles to celebrating the singer's magic. Bernstein's review said that Joplin "has finally assembled a group of first-rate musicians with whom she is totally at ease and whose abilities complement the incredible range of her voice." Columbia Records released "Kozmic Blues" as a single, which peaked at number 41 on the Billboard Hot 100, and a live rendition of "Raise Your Hand" was released in Germany and became a top ten hit there. Containing other hits like "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)", "To Love Somebody", and "Little Girl Blue", I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! reached number five on the Billboard 200 soon after its release. Joplin appeared at Woodstock starting at approximately 2:00 a.m., on Sunday, August 17, 1969. Joplin informed her band that they would be performing at the concert as if it were just another gig. On Saturday afternoon, when she and the band were flown by helicopter with the pregnant Joan Baez and Baez's mother from a nearby motel to the festival site and Joplin saw the enormous crowd, she instantly became extremely nervous and giddy. Upon landing and getting off the helicopter, Joplin was approached by reporters asking her questions. She referred them to her friend and sometime lover Peggy Caserta as she was too excited to speak. Initially, Joplin was eager to get on the stage and perform but was repeatedly delayed as bands were contractually obliged to perform ahead of Joplin. Faced with a ten-hour wait after arriving at the backstage area, Joplin spent some of that time shooting heroin and drinking alcohol with Caserta in a tent. The director's cut of the Woodstock movie shows Joplin and Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick standing together near amplifiers watching the band Canned Heat's performance, which started at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, and Caserta does not appear within camera range. When Joplin finally reached the stage at approximately 2:00 a.m. Sunday, she was "three sheets to the wind", according to biographer Alice Echols. During her performance, Joplin's voice became slightly hoarse and wheezy, and she struggled to dance. Joplin pulled through, however, and engaged frequently with the crowd, asking them if they had everything they needed and if they were staying stoned. The audience cheered for an encore, to which Joplin replied and sang "Ball and Chain". Pete Townshend, who performed with the Who later in the same morning after Joplin finished, witnessed her performance and said the following in his 2012 memoir: "She had been amazing at Monterey, but tonight she wasn't at her best, due, probably, to the long delay, and probably, too, to the amount of booze and heroin she'd consumed while she waited. But even Janis on an off-night was incredible." Janis remained at Woodstock for the remainder of the festival. Starting at approximately 3:00 a.m. on Monday, August 18, Joplin was among many Woodstock performers who stood in a circle behind Crosby, Stills & Nash during their performance, which was the first time anyone at Woodstock ever had heard the group perform. This information was published by David Crosby in 1988. Later in the morning of August 18, Joplin and Joan Baez sat in Joe Cocker's van and witnessed Hendrix's close-of-show performance, according to Baez's memoir And a Voice to Sing With (1989). Still photographs in color show Joplin backstage with Grace Slick the day after Joplin's performance, wherein Joplin appears to be very happy. She was ultimately unhappy with her performance, however, and blamed Caserta. Her singing was not included (by her own insistence) in the 1970 documentary film or the soundtrack for Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More, although the 25th anniversary director's cut of Woodstock includes her performance of "Work Me, Lord". The documentary film of the festival that was released in theaters during 1970 includes, on the left side of a split screen, 37 seconds of footage of Joplin and Caserta walking toward Joplin's dressing room tent. In addition to Woodstock, Joplin also had problems at Madison Square Garden, in 1969. Biographer Myra Friedman said she had witnessed a duet Joplin sang with Tina Turner during the Rolling Stones concert at the Garden on Thanksgiving Day. Friedman said Joplin was "so drunk, so stoned, so out of control, that she could have been an institutionalized psychotic rent by mania." During another Garden concert where she had solo billing on December 19, some observers believed Joplin tried to incite the audience to riot. For part of this concert she was joined onstage by Johnny Winter and Paul Butterfield. Joplin told rock journalist David Dalton that Garden audiences watched and listened to "every note [she sang] with 'Is she gonna make it?' in their eyes." In her interview with Dalton she added that she felt most comfortable performing at small, cheap venues in San Francisco that were associated with the counterculture. At the time of the June 1970 interview with Dalton, she had already performed in the Bay Area for what turned out to be the last time. Sam Andrew, the lead guitarist who had left Big Brother with Joplin in December 1968 to form her back-up band, quit in late summer 1969 and returned to Big Brother. At the end of the year, the Kozmic Blues Band broke up. Their final gig with Joplin was the one at Madison Square Garden with Winter and Butterfield. In February 1970, Joplin traveled to Brazil, where she stopped her drug and alcohol use. She was accompanied on vacation there by her friend Linda Gravenites (wife of songwriter Nick Gravenites), who had designed Janis's stage costumes from 1967 to 1969. In Brazil, Joplin was romanced by a fellow American tourist named David (George) Niehaus, who was traveling around the world. A Joplin biography written by her sister Laura said, "David was an upper-middle-class Cincinnati kid who had studied communications at Notre Dame. ... [and] had joined the Peace Corps after college and worked in a small village in Turkey. ... He tried law school, but when he met Janis he was taking time off." Niehaus and Joplin were photographed by the press at Rio Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Gravenites also took color photographs of the two during their Brazilian vacation. According to Joplin biographer Ellis Amburn, in Gravenites' snapshots they "look like a carefree, happy, healthy young couple having a tremendously good time." Rolling Stone magazine interviewed Joplin during an international phone call, quoting her: "I'm going into the jungle with a big bear of a beatnik named David Niehaus. I finally remembered I don't have to be on stage twelve months a year. I've decided to go and dig some other jungles for a couple of weeks." Amburn added in 1992, "Janis was trying to kick heroin in Brazil, and one of the nicest things about David was that he wasn't into drugs." When Joplin returned to the U.S., she began using heroin again. Her relationship with Niehaus soon ended because he witnessed her shooting drugs at her new home in Larkspur, California. The relationship was also complicated by her ongoing romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta, who also was an intravenous addict, and Joplin's refusal to take some time off and travel the world with him. Around this time, she formed her new band, known for a short time as Main Squeeze, then renamed the Full Tilt Boogie Band. The band comprised mostly young Canadian musicians previously associated with Ronnie Hawkins and featured an organ, but no horn section. Joplin took a more active role in putting together the Full Tilt Boogie band than she had with her prior group. She was quoted as saying, "It's my band. Finally it's my band!" In May 1970, after performing under the name Main Squeeze at a Hell's Angels event, the renamed Full Tilt Boogie Band began a nationwide tour. Joplin became very happy with her new group, which eventually received mostly positive feedback from both her fans and the critics. Prior to beginning a summer tour with Full Tilt Boogie, she performed in a reunion with Big Brother at the Fillmore West, in San Francisco, on April 4, 1970. Recordings from this concert were included in an in-concert album released posthumously in 1972. She again appeared with Big Brother on April 12 at Winterland, where she and Big Brother were reported to be in excellent form. She performed with the band, billed as Main Squeeze, at a party for the Hells Angels at a venue in San Rafael, California on May 21, 1970, according to a web site maintained by Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew. Andrew's web site quotes him as saying, "This will be the first time that Janis' old band and her new band will be at the same venue, so everyone is a little on edge." According to Joplin's biographer Ellis Amburn, Big Brother with its lead singer Nick Gravenites was the opening act at the party that was attended by 2,300 people. The Hells Angels, who had known Joplin since 1966, paid her a fee of 240 dollars to perform. Gravenites and Sam Andrew (who had resumed playing guitar with Big Brother) differed in their opinions of her performance and how substance abuse affected it. Gravenites described her singing as "stupendous," according to Amburn. Amburn quoted Andrew twenty years later: "She was visibly deteriorating and she looked bloated. She was like a parody of what she was at her best. I put it down to her drinking too much and I felt a tinge of fear for her well-being. Her singing was real flabby, no edge at all." Shortly thereafter, Joplin began wearing multi-colored feather boas in her hair. (She had not worn them at the May 21 Hell's Angels party / concert in San Rafael). By the time she began touring with Full Tilt Boogie, Joplin told people she was drug-free, but her drinking increased. From June 28 to July 4, 1970, during the Festival Express tour, Joplin and Full Tilt Boogie performed alongside Buddy Guy, the Band, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Ten Years After, the Grateful Dead, Delaney & Bonnie, Eric Andersen, and Ian & Sylvia. They played concerts in Toronto, Winnipeg, and Calgary. Joplin jammed with the other performers on the train, and her performances on this tour are considered to be among her greatest. Joplin headlined the festival on all three nights. At the last stop in Calgary, she took to the stage with Jerry Garcia while her band was tuning up. Film footage shows her telling the audience how great the tour was and shows her and Garcia presenting the organizers with a case of tequila. She then burst into a two-hour set, starting with "Tell Mama". Throughout this performance, Joplin engaged in several banters about her love life. In one, she reminisced about living in a San Francisco apartment and competing with a female neighbor in flirting with men on the street. She finished the Calgary concert with long versions of "Get It While You Can" and "Ball and Chain". Footage of her performance of "Tell Mama" in Calgary became an MTV video in the early 1980s, and the audio from the same film footage was included on the Farewell Song (1982) album. The audio of other Festival Express performances was included on Joplin's In Concert (1972) album. Video of the performances was also included on the Festival Express DVD. These performances of entire songs during the Festival Express concerts in Toronto and Calgary can be purchased, although other songs remain in vaults and have yet to be released. In the "Tell Mama" video shown on MTV in the 1980s, Joplin wore a psychedelically colored, loose-fitting costume and feathers in her hair. This was her standard stage costume in the spring and summer of 1970. She chose the new costumes after her friend and designer, Linda Gravenites (whom Joplin had praised in Vogues profile of her in its May 1968 edition), cut ties with Joplin shortly after their return from Brazil, due largely to Joplin's continued use of heroin. Among Joplin's last public appearances were two broadcasts of The Dick Cavett Show. In her June 25, 1970 appearance, she announced that she would attend her ten-year high school class reunion. When asked if she had been popular in school, she admitted that when in high school, her schoolmates "laughed me out of class, out of town and out of the state" (during the year she had spent at the University of Texas at Austin, Joplin had been voted "Ugliest Man on Campus" by frat boys). In the subsequent Cavett Show broadcast, on August 3, 1970, and featuring Gloria Swanson, Joplin discussed her upcoming performance at the Festival for Peace to be held at Shea Stadium in Queens, New York, three days later. On July 11, 1970, Full Tilt Boogie and Big Brother and the Holding Company both performed at the same concert in the San Diego Sports Arena, which was decades later renamed the Valley View Casino Center. Joplin sang with Full Tilt Boogie and appeared briefly onstage with Big Brother without singing, according to a July 13 review of the concert in the San Diego Union. On August 7, 1970, a tombstone—jointly paid for by Joplin and Juanita Green, who as a child had done housework for Bessie Smith—was erected at Smith's previously unmarked grave. The following day, the Associated Press circulated this news, and the August 9 edition of The New York Times carried it. The lead paragraph of the AP story said Joplin and Green had "shared the cost of a stone for the 'Empress of the Blues,'" but, according to publicist/biographer Myra Friedman, the two women never met. Joplin had been at home in Larkspur, California when she had received a long-distance phone call with an explanation of the need to finance a gravestone for Bessie Smith, whom Joplin had frequently cited as a musical influence. Joplin immediately wrote a check and mailed it to the name and address provided by the phone caller. On August 8, 1970, as the Associated Press circulated the news about Smith's new gravestone, Joplin performed at the Capitol Theatre (Port Chester, New York). It was there that she first performed "Mercedes Benz", a song (partially inspired by a Michael McClure poem) that she had composed with fellow musician and friend Bob Neuwirth a very short time earlier. According to Myra Friedman's account, Joplin performed two shows at the Capitol Theatre, the first of which was attended by actors Geraldine Page and her husband Rip Torn. Between the shows, at a "gin mill" [Friedman's words] very close to this concert venue, Joplin and Neuwirth penned the lyrics to the song and she performed it at the second show, according to Friedman. Neuwirth was quoted by The Wall Street Journal in 2015: "Around 7 p.m., after the Capitol sound check, we had a couple of hours to kill before [acts that opened for Joplin] Seatrain and Runt finished their sets. So the four of us [Joplin, Neuwirth, Geraldine Page, Rip Torn] walked to a bar about three minutes away called Vahsen’s [at 30 Broad Street in Port Chester]." While in Vahsen's, "Janis came up with words for the first verse. I was in charge of writing them down on bar napkins with a ballpoint pen. She came up with the second verse, too, about a color TV. I suggested words here and there, and came up with the third verse—about asking the Lord to buy us a night on the town and another round." Joplin's last public performance with the Full Tilt Boogie Band took place on August 12, 1970, at the Harvard Stadium in Boston. The Harvard Crimson gave the performance a positive, front-page review, despite the fact that Full Tilt Boogie had performed with makeshift amplifiers after their regular sound equipment was stolen in Boston. Joplin attended her high school reunion on August 14, accompanied by Neuwirth, road manager John Cooke, and sister Laura, but it was reportedly an unhappy experience for her. Joplin held a press conference in Port Arthur during her reunion visit. When asked by a reporter if she ever entertained at Thomas Jefferson High School when she was a student there, Joplin replied, "Only when I walked down the aisles." Joplin denigrated Port Arthur and the classmates who had humiliated her a decade earlier. During late August, September, and early October 1970, Joplin and her band rehearsed and recorded a new album in Los Angeles with producer Paul A. Rothchild, best known for his lengthy relationship with The Doors. Although Joplin died before all the tracks were fully completed, there was enough usable material to compile an LP. The posthumous Pearl (1971) became the biggest-selling album of her career and featured her biggest hit single, a cover of Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster's "Me and Bobby McGee" (Kristofferson had previously been Joplin's lover in the spring of 1970). The opening track, "Move Over", was written by Joplin, reflecting the way that she felt men treated women in relationships. Also included was the social commentary of "Mercedes Benz", presented in an a cappella arrangement; the track on the album features the first and only take that Joplin recorded. A cover of Nick Gravenites's "Buried Alive in the Blues", to which Joplin had been scheduled to add her vocals on the day she was found dead, was included as an instrumental. Joplin checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood on August 24, 1970, near Sunset Sound Recorders, where she began rehearsing and recording her album. During the sessions, Joplin continued a relationship with Seth Morgan, a 21-year-old UC Berkeley student, cocaine dealer, and future novelist who had visited her new home in Larkspur in July and August. She and Morgan were engaged to be married in early September, although he visited Sunset Sound Recorders for just eight of Joplin's many rehearsals and sessions. Morgan later told biographer Myra Friedman that, as a non-musician, he had felt excluded whenever he had visited Sunset Sound Recorders. Instead, he stayed at Joplin's Larkspur home while she stayed alone at the Landmark, although several times she visited Larkspur to be with him and to check the progress of renovations she was having done on the house. She told her construction crew to design a carport to be shaped like a flying saucer, according to biographer Ellis Amburn, the concrete foundation for which was poured the day before she died. Peggy Caserta claimed in her book, Going Down With Janis (1973), that she and Joplin had decided mutually in April 1970 to stay away from each other to avoid enabling each other's drug use. Caserta, a former Delta Air Lines stewardess and owner of one of the first clothing boutiques in the Haight Ashbury, said in the book that by September 1970, she was smuggling cannabis throughout California and had checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel because it attracted drug users. For approximately the first two weeks of Joplin's stay at the Landmark, she did not know Caserta was in Los Angeles. Joplin learned of Caserta's presence at the Landmark from a heroin dealer who made deliveries there. Joplin begged Caserta for heroin, and when Caserta refused to provide it, Joplin reportedly admonished her by saying, "Don't think if you can get it, I can't get it." Joplin's publicist Myra Friedman was unaware during Joplin's lifetime that this had happened. Later, while Friedman was working on her book Buried Alive, she determined that the time frame of the Joplin-Caserta encounter was one week before Jimi Hendrix's death. Within a few days, Joplin became a regular customer of the same heroin dealer who had been supplying Caserta. Joplin's manager Albert Grossman and his assistant/publicist Friedman had staged an intervention with Joplin the previous winter while Joplin was in New York. In September 1970, Grossman and Friedman, who worked out of a New York office, knew Joplin was staying at a Los Angeles hotel, but were unaware it was a haven for drug users and dealers. Grossman and Friedman knew during Joplin's lifetime that her friend Caserta, whom Friedman met during the New York sessions for Cheap Thrills and on later occasions, used heroin. During the many long-distance telephone conversations that Joplin and Friedman had in September 1970 and on October 1, Joplin never mentioned Caserta, and Friedman assumed Caserta had been out of Joplin's life for a while. Friedman, who had more time than Grossman to monitor the situation, never visited California. She thought Joplin sounded on the phone like she was less depressed than she had been over the summer. When Joplin was not at Sunset Sound Recorders, she liked to drive her Porsche over the speed limit "on the winding part of Sunset Blvd.", according to a statement made by her attorney Robert Gordon in 1995 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Friedman wrote that the only Full Tilt Boogie member who rode as her passenger, Ken Pearson, often hesitated to join her, though he did on the night she died. He was not interested in using hard drugs. On September 26, 1970, Joplin recorded vocals for "Half Moon" and "Cry Baby". The session ended with Joplin, organist Ken Pearson, and drummer Clark Pierson making a special one-minute recording as a birthday gift to John Lennon. Joplin was among several singers who had been contacted by Yoko Ono with a request for a taped greeting for Lennon's 30th birthday, on October 9. Joplin, Pearson, and Pierson chose the Dale Evans composition "Happy Trails" as part of the greeting. Lennon told Dick Cavett on-camera the following year that Joplin's recorded birthday wishes arrived at his home after her death. On October 1, 1970, Joplin completed her last recording, "Mercedes Benz", which was recorded in a single take. On Saturday, October 3, Joplin visited Sunset Sound Recorders to listen to the instrumental track for Nick Gravenites's song "Buried Alive in the Blues", which the band had recorded earlier that day. She and Paul Rothchild agreed she would record the vocal the following day. At some point on Saturday, she learned by telephone, to her dismay, that Seth Morgan had met other women at a Marin County, California, restaurant, invited them to her home, and was shooting pool with them using her pool table. People at Sunset Sound Recorders overheard Joplin expressing anger about the state of her relationship with Morgan, as well as joy about the progress of the sessions. Joplin and Ken Pearson later left the studio together and she drove him in her Porsche to the West Hollywood landmark called Barney's Beanery. Friedman wrote, "At the bar, she drank vodka and orange juice, only two." Bennett Glotzer, a business partner of Joplin's manager Albert Grossman, was present at Barney's Beanery, according to what he told John Byrne Cooke immediately after he (Glotzer) learned of her death. Evidently, Joplin had a friendly conversation with a young man whom she did not know, and he expressed admiration for her music. After midnight, she drove Ken Pearson and the male fan to the Landmark where she and Pearson were staying in separate rooms. During the car ride, the fan asked Joplin questions "about her singing style," according to Friedman, and "she mostly ignored him" so she could converse with Pearson. As Joplin and Pearson prepared to part in the lobby of the Landmark, she expressed a fear, possibly in jest, that he and the other Full Tilt Boogie musicians might decide to stop making music with her. Pearson was the second-to-last person to see her alive. The last was the Landmark's night shift desk clerk. He had met her several times but did not know her. Personal life Joplin's significant relationships with men included ones with Peter de Blanc, Country Joe McDonald (who wrote the song "Janis" at Joplin's request), David (George) Niehaus, Kris Kristofferson, and Seth Morgan (from July 1970 until her death, at which time they were allegedly engaged). She also had relationships with women. During her first stint in San Francisco in 1963, Joplin met and briefly lived with Jae Whitaker, a black woman whom she had met while playing pool at the bar Gino & Carlo in North Beach. Whitaker broke off their relationship because of Joplin's hard drug use and sexual relationships with other people. Whitaker was first identified by name in connection with the singer in 1999, when Alice Echols' biography Scars of Sweet Paradise was published. Joplin also had an on-again-off-again romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta. They first met in November 1966 when Big Brother performed at a San Francisco venue called The Matrix. Caserta was one of 15 people in the audience, and at the time, she ran a successful clothing boutique in the Haight Ashbury. Approximately a month after Caserta attended the concert, Joplin visited her boutique and said she could not afford to buy a pair of jeans that was for sale, instead asking to put down the first 50 cents on the $5 item. Caserta was amazed that such a talented singer could not afford a $5 item, and gave her a pair for free. Their friendship was platonic for more than a year. Before it moved to the next level, Caserta was in love with Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, and sometime during the first half of 1968 traveled from San Francisco to New York to flirt with him. He did not want a serious relationship, and Joplin sympathized with Caserta's disappointment. The Woodstock concert film includes 37 seconds of Joplin and Caserta walking together before they reached the tent where Joplin waited for her turn to perform. By the time the festival took place in August 1969, both were intravenous heroin addicts. According to Caserta's book Going Down With Janis, which Caserta has since disowned, Joplin introduced her to her boyfriend Seth Morgan in Joplin's room at the Landmark Motor Hotel on September 29, 1970. Caserta "had seen him around" San Francisco but had not met him before. At some point, an agreement was made for a threesome to take place the following Friday, although Caserta later said that she immediately abandoned the idea once she understood that it was Morgan who would be with Joplin. Morgan made alternate plans, believing that Caserta would be with Joplin that evening. Each one, however, was unaware that the other had bowed out. The day after Joplin introduced Caserta to Morgan, Caserta saw Joplin briefly, again in Joplin's room, when Caserta accommodated her new Los Angeles friend Debbie Nuciforo, age 19, an aspiring hard rock drummer who wanted to meet Joplin. Nuciforo was stoned on heroin at the time, and the three women's encounter was brief and unpleasant. Caserta suspected that the reason for Joplin's foul mood was that Morgan had abandoned her earlier that day after having spent less than 24 hours with her. Caserta did not see nor communicate by phone with Joplin again, although she later claimed she had made several attempts to reach her by phone at the Landmark Motor Hotel and at Sunset Sound Recorders. Caserta and Morgan lost touch with each other; each had independently made alternate plans for Friday night, October 2. Joplin mentioned her disappointment (over both of her friends' bailing out of their ménage à trois) to her drug dealer on Saturday, while he was selling her the dose of heroin that killed her, as Caserta later learned from the drug dealer. Biographer Myra Friedman commented in her original version of Buried Alive (1973): Given the near-infinite potentials of infancy, it is really impossible to make generalizations about what lies behind sexual practices. This, however, is probable: to become clearly homosexual, to make the choice that one honestly prefers relations with one's own sex, no matter the origins of such preference, requires a certain integration, a stability of psychic development, a tidiness of personality organization. The ridicule and the humiliation that took place at that most delicate period in [Joplin's] early teens, her own inability to surmount the obstacles to regular growth, devastated her a great deal more than most people comprehended. Janis was not heir to an ego so cohesive as to permit her an identity one way or the other. She was, as [the psychiatric social worker she saw regularly in Beaumont, Texas in 1965 and 1966] Mr. [Bernard] Giarritano put it [in an interview with Friedman], "diffused" -- spewing, splattering, splaying all over, without a center to hold. That had as much to do with her original use of drugs [before she first met Giarritano] as did the critical component of guilt and its multiplicity of sources above and beyond the contribution made by her relationships with women. Were she so simple as the lesbians wished her to be or so free as her associates imagined! Kim France reported in her May 2, 1999 The New York Times article, "Nothin' Left to Lose" : "Once she became famous, Joplin cursed like a truck driver, did not believe in wearing undergarments, was rarely seen without her bottle of Southern Comfort and delighted in playing the role of sexual predator." On July 11, 1970, Joplin made a revealing statement about her sexuality to her friend Richard Hundgen, the Grateful Dead's San Francisco-based road manager whom she had known since 1966. When Joplin and Hundgen were offstage during a San Diego gig for both Full Tilt Boogie and Big Brother and the Holding Company, she said the following that he later repeated to Myra Friedman: I hear a rumor that somebody in San Francisco is spreading stories that I'm a dyke. You go back there and find out who it is and tell them that Janis says she's gotten it on with a couple of thousand cats in her life and a few hundred chicks and see what they can do with that! Death On Sunday evening, October 4, 1970, Joplin was found dead on the floor of her room at the Landmark Motor Hotel by her road manager and close friend John Byrne Cooke. Alcohol was present in the room. Newspapers reported that no other drugs or paraphernalia were present. According to a 1983 book authored by Joseph DiMona and Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi, evidence of narcotics was removed from the scene by a friend of Joplin and later put back after the person realized that an autopsy was going to reveal that narcotics were in her system. The book adds that prior to Joplin's death, Noguchi had investigated other fatal drug overdoses in Los Angeles where friends believed they were doing favors for decedents by removing evidence of narcotics, then they "thought things over" and returned to put back the evidence. Noguchi performed an autopsy on Joplin and determined the cause of death to be a heroin overdose, possibly compounded by alcohol. John Byrne Cooke believed Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than what she and other L.A. heroin users had received on previous occasions, as was indicated by overdoses of several of her dealer's other customers during the same weekend. Her death was ruled accidental. Both Peggy Caserta, Joplin's close friend, and Seth Morgan, Joplin's fiancé, had failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death, October 2; Joplin had been expecting both of them to keep her company that night. According to Caserta, Joplin was saddened that neither of her friends visited her at the Landmark as they had promised. During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment, Caserta did not phone her to explain why she had failed to show up. Caserta admitted to waiting until late Saturday night to dial the Landmark switchboard, only to learn that Joplin had instructed the desk clerk not to accept any incoming phone calls for her after midnight. Morgan did speak to Joplin via telephone within the 24 hours prior to her death, but little is known about that call. She used a phone at Sunset Sound Recorders where her colleagues (“there were perhaps twenty to twenty-five people pre‪sent,” wrote biographer Myra Friedman) noticed that whatever Morgan said to her made her very angry. Peggy Caserta has insisted that Joplin's death was not an accidental overdose, but rather a result of a head gash suffered after the "hourglass heel" of her slingback sandal caught in the shag carpet, causing her to lose her balance. Caserta does concede, however, that drugs and/or alcohol may have played a role in hastening her death that night. Joplin was cremated at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary in Los Angeles, and her ashes were scattered from a plane into the Pacific Ocean. Legacy Joplin's death in October 1970 at age 27 stunned her fans and shocked the music world, especially when coupled with the death just 16 days earlier of another rock icon, Jimi Hendrix, also at age 27. (This would later cause some people to attribute significance to the death of musicians at the age of 27, as celebrated in the "27 Club.") Music historian Tom Moon wrote that Joplin had "a devastatingly original voice," music columnist Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote that Joplin as an artist was "overpowering and deeply vulnerable" and author Megan Terry said that Joplin was the female version of Elvis Presley in her ability to captivate an audience. A book about Joplin by her publicist Myra Friedman titled Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin (1973) was excerpted in many newspapers. At the same time, Peggy Caserta's memoir, Going Down With Janis (1973), attracted much attention; its provocative title is a reference to Caserta's claim that she had engaged in oral sex with Joplin while they were high on heroin in September 1970. The description provided by Dan Knapp, Caserta’s co-author whom she denounced decades later, repelled many people in 1973 when few books or filmed interviews of Joplin or her loved ones were accessible to the public. Joplin's bandmate Sam Andrew described Caserta as "halfway between a groupie and a friend" in an interview with writer Ellis Amburn. Soon after the 1973 publication of Going Down With Janis, Joplin's friends learned that graphic descriptions of sexual acts and intravenous drug use were not the only portions of the book that would haunt them. According to Kim Chappell, a close friend of Caserta and Joplin, Caserta's book angered the Los Angeles heroin dealer whom she had described in detail in her book, including the make and model of his car. According to Amburn, in 1973 a "carful of dope dealers" visited a Los Angeles lesbian bar that Caserta had been frequenting. Chappell, who was in the alley behind the bar, stated: "I was stabbed because, when Peggy's book came out, her dealer, the same one who'd given Janis her last fix, didn't like it that he was referred to and was out to get Peggy. He couldn't find her, so he went for her lover. When they realized who I was, they felt that my death would also hit Peggy, and so they stabbed me." Despite being "stabbed three times in the chest, puncturing both lungs," Chappell eventually recovered. In 2018, Caserta denounced Going Down With Janis as the pornographic fantasy of Dan Knapp, her co-author, and largely unreliable. During that year, the public had its first access to her own story via a memoir she co-wrote with Maggie Falcon titled I Ran Into Some Trouble. It describes a long, friendly relationship with Joplin that only occasionally featured sexuality. According to Joplin’s biographers, Caserta was among many friends of Joplin who did not become clean and sober until a very long time after Joplin's death, while others died from overdoses. Although the wife of Big Brother guitarist James Gurley, who was Joplin's close friend, died from a heroin overdose in 1969, devastating Joplin, Gurley himself did not become clean and sober until 1984. Caserta survived "a near-fatal OD in December 1995," wrote Alice Echols. On January 13, 2000, Caserta appeared during a segment about Joplin on 20/20. Joplin's body art, with a wristlet and a small heart on her left breast by the San Francisco tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle, marked an early moment in the popular culture's acceptance of tattoos as art. Another trademark was her flamboyant hair styles, which often included colored streaks and accessories such as scarves, beads and feathers. When in New York City, Joplin frequented the Limbo boutique on St. Mark's Place, and she wore some of the vintage and unique garments that she purchased there on stage. The Mamas & the Papas' song "Pearl" (1971), from their People Like Us album, was a tribute. Leonard Cohen's song "Chelsea Hotel#2" (1974) is about Joplin. Lyricist Robert Hunter has commented that Jerry Garcia's "Birdsong" from his first solo album, Garcia (1972), is about Joplin and the end of her suffering through death. Mimi Farina's composition "In the Quiet Morning", most famously covered by Joan Baez on her Come from the Shadows (1972) album, was a tribute to Joplin. Another song by Baez, "Children of the Eighties," mentioned Joplin. A Serge Gainsbourg-penned French language song by English singer Jane Birkin, "Ex fan des sixties" (1978), references Joplin along with other disappeared "idols" such as Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones and Marc Bolan. When Joplin was alive, Country Joe McDonald released a song called "Janis" on his band's album I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die (1967). The film The Rose (1979) is loosely based on Joplin's life. Originally planned to be titled Pearl—Joplin's nickname and the title of her last album—the film was fictionalized after her family declined to allow the producers the rights to her story. Bette Midler earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the film. In 1988, on what would have been Joplin's 45th birthday, the Janis Joplin Memorial, with an original gold, multi-image sculpture of Joplin by Douglas Clark, was dedicated during a ceremony in Port Arthur, Texas. In 1992, the first major biography of Joplin in two decades, Love, Janis, authored by her younger sister Laura Joplin, was published. In an interview, Laura stated that Joplin enjoyed being on the Dick Cavett Show, that Joplin had difficulties with some, but not all, people at Thomas Jefferson High School and that Joplin enthusiastically talked about Woodstock with her parents and siblings during a visit to their Texas home a few weeks after she had performed at the festival. In 1995, Joplin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2005, she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In November 2009, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum honored her as part of its annual American Music Masters Series; among the artifacts at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum exhibition are Joplin's scarf and necklaces, her psychedelically painted 1965 Porsche 356 Cabriolet and a sheet of LSD blotting paper designed by Robert Crumb, designer of the Cheap Thrills cover. Also in 2009, Joplin was the honoree at the Rock Hall's American Music Master concert and lecture series. In the late 1990s, the musical play Love, Janis was created and directed by Randal Myler, with input from Janis' younger sister Laura and Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, with an aim to take it to Off-Broadway. Opening in the summer of 2001 and scheduled for only a few weeks of performances, the show won acclaim, played to packed houses and was held over several times. In 2013, Washington's Arena Stage featured a production of A Night with Janis Joplin, starring Mary Bridget Davies. In it, Joplin performs a concert for the audience while telling stories of her past inspirations, including those of Odetta and Aretha Franklin. The show went on tour in 2016. On November 4, 2013, Joplin was awarded with the 2,510th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the music industry. Her star is located at 6752 Hollywood Boulevard, in front of Musicians Institute. On August 8, 2014, the U.S. Postal Service revealed a commemorative stamp honoring Joplin as part of its Music Icons stamp series during a first-day-of-issue ceremony at the Outside Lands Music Festival at Golden Gate Park. Among the memorabilia Joplin left behind is a Gibson Hummingbird guitar. In 2015, the biographical documentary film Janis: Little Girl Blue, directed by Amy J. Berg and narrated by Cat Power, was released. It was a New York Times Critics' Pick. Influence Joplin had a profound influence on many singers. Pink said about Joplin: "She was so inspiring by singing blues music when it wasn't culturally acceptable for white women, and she wore her heart on her sleeve. She was so witty and charming and intelligent, but she also battled an ugly-duckling syndrome. I would love to play her in a movie." In a tribute performance on her Try This Tour, Pink called Joplin "a woman who inspired me when everyone else ... didn't!" Discography Janis Joplin recorded four albums in her four-year career. The first two albums were recorded with and credited to Big Brother and the Holding Company; the later two were recorded with different backing bands and released as solo albums. Posthumous releases have included previously unreleased studio and live material. Studio albums As lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company As solo artist Live albums Compilation albums Singles As lead of Big Brother and the Holding Company As solo artist Filmography Monterey Pop (1968) Petulia (1968) Janis Joplin Live in Frankfurt (1969) Janis (1974) Janis: The Way She Was (1974) Comin' Home (1988) Woodstock – The Lost Performances (1991) Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director's Cut) (1994) Festival Express (2003) Nine Hundred Nights (2004) The Dick Cavett Show: Rock Icons (2005) Shout Factory Rockin' at the Red Dog: The Dawn of Psychedelic Rock (2005) This is Tom Jones (2007) 1969 appearance on TV show Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director's Cut) 40th Anniversary Edition (2009) Janis Joplin with Big Brother: Ball and Chain (DVD) Charly (2009) Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015) Notes References Further reading – an encounter with Janis Joplin at the wheel. External links Janis Joplin at the Grammy Awards Janis Joplin on the Music-Map 1943 births 1970 deaths 20th-century American singers 20th-century American women singers American blues singers American child singers American mezzo-sopranos American women rock singers American women singer-songwriters American rhythm and blues singer-songwriters American rock songwriters American soul musicians Accidental deaths in California Big Brother and the Holding Company members Bisexual musicians Bisexual women Blues rock musicians Columbia Records artists Deaths by heroin overdose in California Drug-related deaths in California Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners LGBT people from Texas LGBT singers from the United States LGBT songwriters Lamar University alumni People from Beaumont, Texas People from Port Arthur, Texas Singer-songwriters from Texas University of Texas at Austin alumni 20th-century LGBT people
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[ "\"Kozmic Blues\" is a song from American singer-songwriter Janis Joplin's I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! album, her first after departing Big Brother and the Holding Company. It was a part of Joplin's set at the Woodstock Festival in 1969.\n\nBackground\nAlthough the concert as a whole is not regarded as Joplin at her best, that specific performance became very popular and was released on The Essential Janis Joplin.\n\nChart performance\n\nReferences \n\nJanis Joplin songs", "\"Down on Me\" is a traditional freedom song from the 1920s or earlier that became popular following its remake by Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company.\n\nOriginal version\nSeveral early recordings and field recordings exist:\nEddie Head and His Family, (1930) on American Primitive Vol 1: Raw Pre-war Gospel (Revenant 206)\nMary Pickney and Janie Hunter, on Been in the Storm So Long: A Collection of Spirituals, Folk Tales and Children's Games from Johns Island, SC (Smithsonian Folkways 40031)\nDoc Reed, Livingston, Alabama in 1940. on Negro Religious Songs and Services (Rounder CD 1514).\nThe Golden Harps, on compilation Soul of Chicago \nEdna G. Cooke\nThe lyrics of the freedom song are darker than the later Joplin lyrics. For example, the second stanza of jazz versions and Dock Reed's version run:\n\nJanis Joplin version\nJanis Joplin rearranged the song and created new lyrics. The song was originally released in the summer of 1967 and was featured on the band's debut album Big Brother & the Holding Company. The song would reach #42 on the charts, barely missing the Top 40 mark. A live, more aggressive version is featured on the posthumously released live album In Concert and the 1973 collection Janis Joplin's Greatest Hits. This version was also released as a single, reaching #91 on the charts in 1972.\n\nThe third and final stanza of Joplin's version ends with a positive message:\n\nJoplin's version was covered by Jeany Reynolds in 1970.\n\nReferences\n\n1920s songs\n1967 singles\nYear of song unknown\nProtest songs\nJanis Joplin songs\nSongwriter unknown" ]
[ "Janis Joplin", "Death", "What year did Janis die?", "1970,", "How old was she when she died?", "On October 4, 1970, producer Paul Rothchild became concerned when Joplin failed to show up at Sunset Sound Recorders for a recording", "Was Janis with anyone when she died?", "Peggy Caserta and Seth Morgan had both failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death,", "Had anyone tried to stop Janis from using heroin?", "During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment,", "Was Janis Joplin suicidal?", "Cooke believes Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than normal, as several of her dealer's other customers also overdosed that week." ]
C_3938290d39f0420aa035060edc72696f_0
Did anyone else from her band overdose?
6
Other than Janis Joplin did anyone else from Janis Joplin's band overdose?
Janis Joplin
On October 4, 1970, producer Paul Rothchild became concerned when Joplin failed to show up at Sunset Sound Recorders for a recording session. Full Tilt Boogie's road manager, John Cooke, drove to the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood where Joplin was staying. He saw Joplin's psychedelically painted Porsche 356 C Cabriolet in the parking lot, and upon entering Joplin's room (#105), he found her dead on the floor beside her bed. The official cause of death was a heroin overdose, possibly compounded by alcohol. Cooke believes Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than normal, as several of her dealer's other customers also overdosed that week. Peggy Caserta and Seth Morgan had both failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death, October 2, and Joplin had been expecting both of them to keep her company that night. According to Caserta, Joplin was saddened that neither of her friends visited her at the Landmark as they had promised. During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment, Caserta did not phone her to explain why she had failed to show up. Caserta admitted to waiting until late Saturday night to dial the Landmark switchboard, only to learn that Joplin had instructed the desk clerk not to accept any incoming phone calls for her after midnight. Morgan did speak to Joplin via telephone within 24 hours of her death, but it is not known whether he admitted to her that he had broken his promise. Joplin's last will and testament funded $2,500 to throw a wake party in the event of her demise. The party took place on October 26, 1970, at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo, California, and was attended by Joplin's sister Laura, Morgan, and other close friends, including Cooke, Bob Gordon, Jack Penty, and tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle. CANNOTANSWER
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Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter who sang rock, soul, and blues music. One of the most successful and widely known rock stars of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and "electric" stage presence. In 1967, Joplin rose to fame following an appearance at Monterey Pop Festival, where she was the lead singer of the then little-known San Francisco psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company. After releasing two albums with the band, she left Big Brother to continue as a solo artist with her own backing groups, first the Kozmic Blues Band and then the Full Tilt Boogie Band. She appeared at the Woodstock festival and on the Festival Express train tour. Five singles by Joplin reached the Billboard Hot 100, including a cover of the Kris Kristofferson song "Me and Bobby McGee", which reached number one in March 1971. Her most popular songs include her cover versions of "Piece of My Heart", "Cry Baby", "Down on Me", "Ball and Chain", and "Summertime"; and her original song "Mercedes Benz", her final recording. Joplin died of a heroin overdose in 1970, at the age of 27, after releasing three albums (two with Big Brother and the Holding Company and one solo album). A second solo album, Pearl, was released in January 1971, just over three months after her death. It reached number one on the Billboard charts. She was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Rolling Stone ranked Joplin number 46 on its 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. She remains one of the top-selling musicians in the United States, with Recording Industry Association of America certifications of 18.5 million albums sold. Early life Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on , to Dorothy Bonita East (1913–1998), a registrar at a business college, and her husband, Seth Ward Joplin (1910–1987), an engineer at Texaco. She had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. The family attended First Christian Church of Port Arthur, a church belonging to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) denomination. Her parents felt that Janis needed more attention than their other children. As a teenager, Joplin befriended a group of outcasts, one of whom had albums by blues artists Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Lead Belly, which Joplin later credited with influencing her decision to become a singer. She began singing blues and folk music with friends at Thomas Jefferson High School. In high school, she was a classmate of Pro Football Hall of Fame coach Jimmy Johnson. Joplin stated that she was ostracized and bullied in high school. As a teen, she became overweight and suffered from acne, leaving her with deep scars that required dermabrasion. Other kids at high school would routinely taunt her and call her names like "pig," "freak," "nigger lover," or "creep." She stated, "I was a misfit. I read, I painted, I thought. I didn't hate niggers." Joplin graduated from high school in 1960 and attended Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, Texas, during the summer and later the University of Texas at Austin (UT), though she did not complete her college studies. The campus newspaper, The Daily Texan, ran a profile of her in the issue dated July 27, 1962, headlined "She Dares to Be Different." The article began, "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levi's to class because they're more comfortable, and carries her autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break into song, it will be handy. Her name is Janis Joplin." While at UT she performed with a folk trio called the Waller Creek Boys and frequently socialized with the staff of the campus humor magazine The Texas Ranger. According to Freak Brothers cartoonist Gilbert Shelton, who befriended her, she used to sell The Texas Ranger, which contained some of Shelton's early comic books, on the campus. Career 1962–1965: Early recordings Joplin cultivated a rebellious manner and styled herself partly after her female blues heroines and partly after the Beat poets. Her first song, "What Good Can Drinkin' Do", was recorded on tape in December 1962 at the home of a fellow University of Texas student. She left Texas in January 1963 ("Just to get away," she said, "because my head was in a much different place"), hitchhiking with her friend Chet Helms to North Beach, San Francisco. Still in San Francisco in 1964, Joplin and future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen recorded a number of blues standards, which incidentally featured Kaukonen's wife Margareta using a typewriter in the background. This session included seven tracks: "Typewriter Talk", "Trouble in Mind", "Kansas City Blues", "Hesitation Blues", "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out", "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy", and "Long Black Train Blues", and was released long after Joplin's death as the bootleg album The Typewriter Tape. In 1963, Joplin was arrested in San Francisco for shoplifting. During the two years that followed, her drug use increased and she acquired a reputation as a "speed freak" and occasional heroin user. She also used other psychoactive drugs and was a heavy drinker throughout her career; her favorite alcoholic beverage was Southern Comfort. In May 1965, Joplin's friends in San Francisco, noticing the detrimental effects on her from regularly injecting methamphetamine (she was described as "skeletal" and "emaciated"), persuaded her to return to Port Arthur. During that month, her friends threw her a bus-fare party so she could return to her parents in Texas. Five years later, Joplin told Rolling Stone magazine writer David Dalton the following about her first stint in San Francisco: "I didn't have many friends and I didn't like the ones I had." Back in Port Arthur in the spring of 1965, after Joplin's parents noticed her weight of , she changed her lifestyle. She avoided drugs and alcohol, adopted a beehive hairdo, and enrolled as an anthropology major at Lamar University in nearby Beaumont, Texas. Her sister Laura said in a 2016 interview that social work was her major during her year at Lamar. During her time at Lamar University, she commuted to Austin to sing solo, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar. One of her performances was at a benefit by local musicians for Texas bluesman Mance Lipscomb, who was suffering with ill health. Joplin became engaged to Peter de Blanc in the fall of 1965. She had begun a relationship with him toward the end of her first stint in San Francisco. Now living in New York where he worked with IBM computers, he visited her to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Joplin and her mother began planning the wedding. De Blanc, who traveled frequently, ended the engagement soon afterward. In 1965 and 1966, Joplin commuted from her family's Port Arthur home to Beaumont, Texas, where she had regular sessions with a psychiatric social worker named Bernard Giarritano at a counseling agency that was funded by the United Fund, which after her death changed its name to the United Way. Interviewed by biographer Myra Friedman after his client's death, Giarritano said Joplin had been baffled by how she could pursue a professional career as a singer without relapsing into drugs, and her drug-related memories from immediately prior to returning to Port Arthur continued to frighten her. Joplin sometimes brought an acoustic guitar with her to her sessions with Giarritano, and people in other offices within the building could hear her singing. Giarritano tried to reassure her that she did not have to use narcotics in order to succeed in the music business. She also said that if she were to avoid singing professionally, she would have to become a keypunch operator (as she had done a few years earlier) or a secretary, and then a wife and mother, and she would have to become very similar to all the other women in Port Arthur. Approximately a year before Joplin joined Big Brother and the Holding Company, she recorded seven studio tracks with her acoustic guitar. Among the songs she recorded were her original composition of the song "Turtle Blues" and an alternate version of "Cod'ine" by Buffy Sainte-Marie. These tracks were later issued as a new album in 1995, titled This is Janis Joplin 1965 by James Gurley. 1966–1969: Various bands In 1966, Joplin's bluesy vocal style attracted the attention of the San Francisco-based psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, which had gained some renown among the nascent hippie community in Haight-Ashbury. She was recruited to join the group by Chet Helms, a promoter who was managing Big Brother and with whom she had hitchhiked from Texas to San Francisco a few years earlier. Helms sent his friend Travis Rivers to find her in Austin, Texas, where she had been performing with her acoustic guitar, and to accompany her to San Francisco. Aware of her previous nightmare with drug addiction in San Francisco, Rivers insisted that she inform her parents face-to-face of her plans, and he drove her from Austin to Port Arthur (he waited in his car while she talked with her startled parents) before they began their long drive to San Francisco. Joplin joined Big Brother on June 4, 1966. Her first public performance with them was at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. In June, Joplin was photographed at an outdoor concert in San Francisco that celebrated the summer solstice. The image, which was later published in two books by David Dalton, shows her before she relapsed into drugs. Due to persistent persuading by keyboardist and close friend Stephen Ryder, Joplin avoided drugs for several weeks. She made Travis Rivers, with whom she shared an apartment upon their arrival in San Francisco, promise that using needles would not be allowed there. When bandmate Dave Getz accompanied her from a rehearsal to her home, Rivers was not there, but "two or three" (according to Getz' recollection 25 years later) guests whom Rivers had invited were in the process of injecting drugs. "One of them was about to tie off," recalled Getz. "Janis went nuts! I had never seen anybody explode like that. She was screaming and crying and Travis walked in. She screamed at him: 'We had a pact! You promised me! There wouldn't be any of that in front of me!' I was over my head and I tried to calm her down. I said, 'They're just doing mescaline,' because that's what I thought it was. She said, 'You don't understand! I can't see that! I just can't stand to see that!'" A San Francisco concert from that summer (1966) was recorded and released on the 1984 album Cheaper Thrills. In July, all five bandmates and guitarist James Gurley's wife Nancy moved to a house in Lagunitas, California, where they lived communally. The band often partied with the Grateful Dead, the members of whom lived less than two miles away. She had a short relationship and longer friendship with founding member Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. The band went to Chicago for a four-week engagement in August 1966, then found itself stranded after the promoter ran out of money when its concerts did not attract the expected audience levels, and he was unable to pay them. In the circumstances the band signed with Bob Shad's record label Mainstream Records; recordings for the label took place in Chicago in September, but these were not satisfactory, and the band returned to San Francisco, continuing to perform live, including at the Love Pageant Rally. The band recorded two tracks, "Blindman" and "All Is Loneliness", in Los Angeles, and these were released by Mainstream as a single that did not sell well. After playing at a happening in Stanford in early December 1966, the band traveled back to Los Angeles to record ten tracks between December 12 and 14, 1966, produced by Bob Shad, which appeared on the band's debut album in August 1967. In late 1966, Big Brother switched managers from Chet Helms to Julius Karpen. One of Joplin's earliest major performances in 1967 was at the Mantra-Rock Dance, a musical event held on January 29 at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. Janis Joplin and Big Brother performed there along with the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami, Allen Ginsberg, Moby Grape, and the Grateful Dead, donating proceeds to the Krishna temple. In early 1967, Joplin met Country Joe McDonald of the group Country Joe and the Fish. The pair lived together as a couple for a few months. Joplin and Big Brother began playing clubs in San Francisco, at the Fillmore West, Winterland, and the Avalon Ballroom. They also played at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, as well as in Seattle, Washington; Vancouver, British Columbia; the Psychedelic Supermarket in Boston, Massachusetts; and the Golden Bear Club in Huntington Beach, California. The band's debut studio album, Big Brother & the Holding Company, was released by Mainstream Records in August 1967, shortly after the group's breakthrough appearance in June at the Monterey Pop Festival. Two tracks, "Coo Coo" and "The Last Time," were released separately as singles, while the tracks from the previous single, "Blindman" and "All Is Loneliness", were added to the remaining eight tracks. When Columbia Records took over the band's contract and re-released the album, they included "Coo Coo" and "The Last Time", and put "featuring Janis Joplin" on the cover. The debut album spawned four minor hits with the singles "Down on Me", a traditional song arranged by Joplin, "Bye Bye Baby", "Call On Me" and "Coo Coo", on all of which Joplin sang lead vocals. Two songs from the second of Big Brother's two sets at Monterey, which they played on Sunday, were filmed (their first set, which was on Saturday, was not filmed, though it was audio-recorded). Some sources, including a Joplin biography by Ellis Amburn, claim that she was dressed in thrift store hippie clothes or second-hand Victorian clothes during the band's Saturday set, but still photographs do not appear to have survived. Digitized color film of two songs in the Sunday set, "Combination of the Two" and a version of Big Mama Thornton's "Ball and Chain," appear in the DVD and Blu-ray boxed set of D. A. Pennebaker's documentary Monterey Pop released by The Criterion Collection. She is seen wearing an expensive gold tunic dress with matching pants. They were created for her by San Francisco clothing designer Colin Rose. Documentary filmmaker Pennebaker inserted two cutaway shots of Cass Elliot of the Mamas & the Papas seated in the audience during Joplin's performance of "Ball and Chain", one in the middle of the song as her eyes, covered by sunglasses, are fixed on Joplin, and also a shot during the applause as she silently mouths "Oh, wow!" and looks at the person seated next to her. Elliot and the audience are seen in sunlight, but Sunday's Big Brother performance was filmed in the evening. An explanation came from Big Brother's road manager John Byrne Cooke, who remembers that Pennebaker discreetly filmed the audience (including Elliot) during Big Brother's Saturday performance when he was not allowed to point a camera at the band. The prohibition of Pennebaker from filming on Saturday afternoon came from Big Brother's manager Julius Karpen. The band had a bitter argument with Karpen and overruled him as they prepared for their second set that the festival organizers had added on the spur of the moment. Backstage at the festival, the band became acquainted with New York-based talent manager Albert Grossman but did not sign with him until several months later, firing Karpen at that time. Only "Ball and Chain" was included in the Monterey Pop film that was released to theaters throughout the United States in 1969 and shown on television in the 1970s. Those who did not attend the Monterey Pop Festival saw the band's performance of "Combination of the Two" for the first time in 2002 when The Criterion Collection released the boxed set. For the remainder of 1967, even after Big Brother signed with Albert Grossman, the band performed mainly in California. On February 16, 1968, the group began its first East Coast tour in Philadelphia, and the following day gave their first performance in New York City at the Anderson Theater. On April 7, 1968—three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the last day of their East Coast tour—Joplin and Big Brother performed with Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens, Paul Butterfield, and Elvin Bishop at the Wake for Martin Luther King Jr. concert in New York. Live at Winterland '68, recorded at the Winterland Ballroom on April 12 and 13, 1968, features Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company at the height of their mutual career working through a selection of tracks from their albums. A recording became available to the public for the first time in 1998 when Columbia/Sony Music Entertainment released the compact disc. One month after the Winterland concert, Owsley Stanley recorded them at the Carousel Ballroom, released in 2012 as Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968. On July 31, 1968, Joplin made her first nationwide television appearance when the band performed on This Morning, an ABC daytime 90-minute variety show that was hosted by Dick Cavett. Shortly thereafter, network employees wiped the videotape, though the audio survives. (In 1969 and 1970, Joplin made three appearances on Cavett's prime-time program. Video was preserved and excerpts have been included in most documentaries about Joplin. Audio of her 1968 appearance has not been used since then.) Sometime in 1968, the band's billing was changed to "Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company," and the media coverage given to Joplin generated resentment within the band. The other members of Big Brother thought that Joplin was on a "star trip", while others were telling Joplin that Big Brother was a terrible band and that she ought to dump them. Time magazine called Joplin "probably the most powerful singer to emerge from the white rock movement", and Richard Goldstein wrote for the May 1968 issue of Vogue magazine that Joplin was "the most staggering leading woman in rock...she slinks like tar, scowls like war...clutching the knees of a final stanza, begging it not to leave.... Janis Joplin can sing the chic off any listener." For her first major studio recording, Joplin played a major role in the arrangement and production of the songs that would comprise Big Brother and the Holding Company's second album, Cheap Thrills. Producer John Simon tried recording the band in concert, to capture their energy in a live album, but several attempts showed the band was prone to mistakes. Their imprecision was not helped by moving the sessions to a recording studio. Joplin sang take after take of the same song, with her performances consistently good, and she grew frustrated with the band's sloppiness. Simon was replaced by Elliot Mazer who fixed the songs by overdubbing certain parts. The album featured a cover design by counterculture cartoonist Robert Crumb. Although Cheap Thrills sounded as if it consisted of concert recordings, like on "Combination of the Two" and "I Need a Man to Love", only "Ball and Chain" was actually recorded in front of a paying audience; the rest of the tracks were studio recordings. The album had a raw quality, including the sound of a drinking glass breaking and the broken shards being swept away during the song "Turtle Blues". Cheap Thrills produced very popular hits with "Piece of My Heart" and "Summertime". Together with the premiere of the documentary film Monterey Pop at New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on December 26, 1968, the album launched Joplin as a star. Cheap Thrills reached number one on the Billboard 200 album chart eight weeks after its release, and was number one for eight (nonconsecutive) weeks. The album was certified gold at release and sold over a million copies in the first month of its release. The lead single from the album, "Piece of My Heart", reached number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the fall of 1968. The band made another East Coast tour during July–August 1968, performing at the Columbia Records convention in Puerto Rico and the Newport Folk Festival. After returning to San Francisco for two hometown shows at the Palace of Fine Arts Festival on August 31 and September 1, Joplin announced that she would be leaving Big Brother. On September 14, 1968, culminating a three-night engagement together at Fillmore West, fans thronged to a concert that Bill Graham publicized as the last official concert of Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company. The opening acts on this night were Chicago (then still called Chicago Transit Authority) and Santana. Despite Graham's announcement that the Fillmore West gig was Big Brother's last concert with Joplin, the band—with Joplin still as lead vocalist—toured the U.S. that fall. Reflecting Joplin's crossover appeal, two October 1968 performances at a roller rink in Alexandria, Virginia, were reviewed by John Segraves of the conservative Washington Evening Star at a time when the Washington metropolitan area's hard rock scene was in its infancy. An opera buff at the time, he wrote: Later that month (October 1968), Big Brother performed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and played at the Syracuse War Memorial as part of Syracuse University's Fall Homecoming on October 11, with Janis joining openers the Butterfield Blues Band for their closing song. Aside from two 1970 reunions, Joplin's last performance with Big Brother was at a Chet Helms benefit in San Francisco on December 1, 1968. 1969–1970: Solo career After splitting from Big Brother and the Holding Company, Joplin formed a new backup group, the Kozmic Blues Band, composed of session musicians like keyboardist Stephen Ryder and saxophonist Cornelius "Snooky" Flowers, as well as former Big Brother and the Holding Company guitarist Sam Andrew and future Full Tilt Boogie Band bassist Brad Campbell. The band was influenced by the Stax-Volt rhythm and blues (R&B) and soul bands of the 1960s, as exemplified by Otis Redding and the Bar-Kays. The Stax-Volt R&B sound was typified by the use of horns and had a funky, pop-oriented sound in contrast to many of the psychedelic/hard rock bands of the period. By early 1969, Joplin was allegedly shooting at least $200 worth of heroin per day (equivalent to $1300 in 2016 dollars) although efforts were made to keep her clean during the recording of I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! Gabriel Mekler, who produced the album, told publicist-turned-biographer Myra Friedman after Joplin's death that she had lived in his Los Angeles house during the June 1969 recording sessions at his insistence so he could keep her away from drugs and her drug-using friends. Joplin's appearances with the Kozmic Blues Band in Europe were released in theaters, in multiple documentaries. Janis, which was reviewed by the Washington Post on March 21, 1975, shows Joplin arriving in Frankfurt by plane and waiting inside a bus next to the Frankfurt venue, while an American female fan who is visiting Germany expresses enthusiasm to the camera (no security was used in Frankfurt, so by the end of the concert, the stage was so packed with people the band members could not see each other). Janis also includes interviews with Joplin in Stockholm and from her visit to London, for her gig at Royal Albert Hall. The London interview was dubbed with a voiceover in the German language for broadcast on German television. John Byrne Cooke, road manager for Joplin and the Kozmic Blues Band, wrote a book published in 2014 in which he discussed her knowledge of the risks of her ongoing use of narcotics, particularly when she was outside the United States. On the episode of The Dick Cavett Show that was telecast in the United States on the night of July 18, 1969, Joplin and her band performed "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)" as well as "To Love Somebody". As Dick Cavett interviewed Joplin, she admitted that she had a terrible time touring in Europe, claiming that audiences there are very uptight and don't "get down". Released in September 1969, the Kozmic Blues album was certified gold later that year but did not match the success of Cheap Thrills. Reviews of the new group were mixed. However, the album's recording quality and engineering, as well as the musicianship (including three performances by former Bob Dylan/Paul Butterfield/Electric Flag guitarist Mike Bloomfield), were considered superior to her previous releases, and some music critics argued that the band was working in a much more constructive way to support Joplin's sensational vocal talents. Joplin wanted a horn section similar to that featured by the Chicago Transit Authority; her voice had the dynamic qualities and range not to be overpowered by the brighter horn sound. Some music critics, however, including Ralph J. Gleason of the San Francisco Chronicle, were negative. Gleason wrote that the new band was a "drag" and Joplin should "scrap" her new band and "go right back to being a member of Big Brother ... (if they'll have her)." Other reviewers, such as reporter Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, devoted entire articles to celebrating the singer's magic. Bernstein's review said that Joplin "has finally assembled a group of first-rate musicians with whom she is totally at ease and whose abilities complement the incredible range of her voice." Columbia Records released "Kozmic Blues" as a single, which peaked at number 41 on the Billboard Hot 100, and a live rendition of "Raise Your Hand" was released in Germany and became a top ten hit there. Containing other hits like "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)", "To Love Somebody", and "Little Girl Blue", I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! reached number five on the Billboard 200 soon after its release. Joplin appeared at Woodstock starting at approximately 2:00 a.m., on Sunday, August 17, 1969. Joplin informed her band that they would be performing at the concert as if it were just another gig. On Saturday afternoon, when she and the band were flown by helicopter with the pregnant Joan Baez and Baez's mother from a nearby motel to the festival site and Joplin saw the enormous crowd, she instantly became extremely nervous and giddy. Upon landing and getting off the helicopter, Joplin was approached by reporters asking her questions. She referred them to her friend and sometime lover Peggy Caserta as she was too excited to speak. Initially, Joplin was eager to get on the stage and perform but was repeatedly delayed as bands were contractually obliged to perform ahead of Joplin. Faced with a ten-hour wait after arriving at the backstage area, Joplin spent some of that time shooting heroin and drinking alcohol with Caserta in a tent. The director's cut of the Woodstock movie shows Joplin and Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick standing together near amplifiers watching the band Canned Heat's performance, which started at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, and Caserta does not appear within camera range. When Joplin finally reached the stage at approximately 2:00 a.m. Sunday, she was "three sheets to the wind", according to biographer Alice Echols. During her performance, Joplin's voice became slightly hoarse and wheezy, and she struggled to dance. Joplin pulled through, however, and engaged frequently with the crowd, asking them if they had everything they needed and if they were staying stoned. The audience cheered for an encore, to which Joplin replied and sang "Ball and Chain". Pete Townshend, who performed with the Who later in the same morning after Joplin finished, witnessed her performance and said the following in his 2012 memoir: "She had been amazing at Monterey, but tonight she wasn't at her best, due, probably, to the long delay, and probably, too, to the amount of booze and heroin she'd consumed while she waited. But even Janis on an off-night was incredible." Janis remained at Woodstock for the remainder of the festival. Starting at approximately 3:00 a.m. on Monday, August 18, Joplin was among many Woodstock performers who stood in a circle behind Crosby, Stills & Nash during their performance, which was the first time anyone at Woodstock ever had heard the group perform. This information was published by David Crosby in 1988. Later in the morning of August 18, Joplin and Joan Baez sat in Joe Cocker's van and witnessed Hendrix's close-of-show performance, according to Baez's memoir And a Voice to Sing With (1989). Still photographs in color show Joplin backstage with Grace Slick the day after Joplin's performance, wherein Joplin appears to be very happy. She was ultimately unhappy with her performance, however, and blamed Caserta. Her singing was not included (by her own insistence) in the 1970 documentary film or the soundtrack for Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More, although the 25th anniversary director's cut of Woodstock includes her performance of "Work Me, Lord". The documentary film of the festival that was released in theaters during 1970 includes, on the left side of a split screen, 37 seconds of footage of Joplin and Caserta walking toward Joplin's dressing room tent. In addition to Woodstock, Joplin also had problems at Madison Square Garden, in 1969. Biographer Myra Friedman said she had witnessed a duet Joplin sang with Tina Turner during the Rolling Stones concert at the Garden on Thanksgiving Day. Friedman said Joplin was "so drunk, so stoned, so out of control, that she could have been an institutionalized psychotic rent by mania." During another Garden concert where she had solo billing on December 19, some observers believed Joplin tried to incite the audience to riot. For part of this concert she was joined onstage by Johnny Winter and Paul Butterfield. Joplin told rock journalist David Dalton that Garden audiences watched and listened to "every note [she sang] with 'Is she gonna make it?' in their eyes." In her interview with Dalton she added that she felt most comfortable performing at small, cheap venues in San Francisco that were associated with the counterculture. At the time of the June 1970 interview with Dalton, she had already performed in the Bay Area for what turned out to be the last time. Sam Andrew, the lead guitarist who had left Big Brother with Joplin in December 1968 to form her back-up band, quit in late summer 1969 and returned to Big Brother. At the end of the year, the Kozmic Blues Band broke up. Their final gig with Joplin was the one at Madison Square Garden with Winter and Butterfield. In February 1970, Joplin traveled to Brazil, where she stopped her drug and alcohol use. She was accompanied on vacation there by her friend Linda Gravenites (wife of songwriter Nick Gravenites), who had designed Janis's stage costumes from 1967 to 1969. In Brazil, Joplin was romanced by a fellow American tourist named David (George) Niehaus, who was traveling around the world. A Joplin biography written by her sister Laura said, "David was an upper-middle-class Cincinnati kid who had studied communications at Notre Dame. ... [and] had joined the Peace Corps after college and worked in a small village in Turkey. ... He tried law school, but when he met Janis he was taking time off." Niehaus and Joplin were photographed by the press at Rio Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Gravenites also took color photographs of the two during their Brazilian vacation. According to Joplin biographer Ellis Amburn, in Gravenites' snapshots they "look like a carefree, happy, healthy young couple having a tremendously good time." Rolling Stone magazine interviewed Joplin during an international phone call, quoting her: "I'm going into the jungle with a big bear of a beatnik named David Niehaus. I finally remembered I don't have to be on stage twelve months a year. I've decided to go and dig some other jungles for a couple of weeks." Amburn added in 1992, "Janis was trying to kick heroin in Brazil, and one of the nicest things about David was that he wasn't into drugs." When Joplin returned to the U.S., she began using heroin again. Her relationship with Niehaus soon ended because he witnessed her shooting drugs at her new home in Larkspur, California. The relationship was also complicated by her ongoing romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta, who also was an intravenous addict, and Joplin's refusal to take some time off and travel the world with him. Around this time, she formed her new band, known for a short time as Main Squeeze, then renamed the Full Tilt Boogie Band. The band comprised mostly young Canadian musicians previously associated with Ronnie Hawkins and featured an organ, but no horn section. Joplin took a more active role in putting together the Full Tilt Boogie band than she had with her prior group. She was quoted as saying, "It's my band. Finally it's my band!" In May 1970, after performing under the name Main Squeeze at a Hell's Angels event, the renamed Full Tilt Boogie Band began a nationwide tour. Joplin became very happy with her new group, which eventually received mostly positive feedback from both her fans and the critics. Prior to beginning a summer tour with Full Tilt Boogie, she performed in a reunion with Big Brother at the Fillmore West, in San Francisco, on April 4, 1970. Recordings from this concert were included in an in-concert album released posthumously in 1972. She again appeared with Big Brother on April 12 at Winterland, where she and Big Brother were reported to be in excellent form. She performed with the band, billed as Main Squeeze, at a party for the Hells Angels at a venue in San Rafael, California on May 21, 1970, according to a web site maintained by Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew. Andrew's web site quotes him as saying, "This will be the first time that Janis' old band and her new band will be at the same venue, so everyone is a little on edge." According to Joplin's biographer Ellis Amburn, Big Brother with its lead singer Nick Gravenites was the opening act at the party that was attended by 2,300 people. The Hells Angels, who had known Joplin since 1966, paid her a fee of 240 dollars to perform. Gravenites and Sam Andrew (who had resumed playing guitar with Big Brother) differed in their opinions of her performance and how substance abuse affected it. Gravenites described her singing as "stupendous," according to Amburn. Amburn quoted Andrew twenty years later: "She was visibly deteriorating and she looked bloated. She was like a parody of what she was at her best. I put it down to her drinking too much and I felt a tinge of fear for her well-being. Her singing was real flabby, no edge at all." Shortly thereafter, Joplin began wearing multi-colored feather boas in her hair. (She had not worn them at the May 21 Hell's Angels party / concert in San Rafael). By the time she began touring with Full Tilt Boogie, Joplin told people she was drug-free, but her drinking increased. From June 28 to July 4, 1970, during the Festival Express tour, Joplin and Full Tilt Boogie performed alongside Buddy Guy, the Band, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Ten Years After, the Grateful Dead, Delaney & Bonnie, Eric Andersen, and Ian & Sylvia. They played concerts in Toronto, Winnipeg, and Calgary. Joplin jammed with the other performers on the train, and her performances on this tour are considered to be among her greatest. Joplin headlined the festival on all three nights. At the last stop in Calgary, she took to the stage with Jerry Garcia while her band was tuning up. Film footage shows her telling the audience how great the tour was and shows her and Garcia presenting the organizers with a case of tequila. She then burst into a two-hour set, starting with "Tell Mama". Throughout this performance, Joplin engaged in several banters about her love life. In one, she reminisced about living in a San Francisco apartment and competing with a female neighbor in flirting with men on the street. She finished the Calgary concert with long versions of "Get It While You Can" and "Ball and Chain". Footage of her performance of "Tell Mama" in Calgary became an MTV video in the early 1980s, and the audio from the same film footage was included on the Farewell Song (1982) album. The audio of other Festival Express performances was included on Joplin's In Concert (1972) album. Video of the performances was also included on the Festival Express DVD. These performances of entire songs during the Festival Express concerts in Toronto and Calgary can be purchased, although other songs remain in vaults and have yet to be released. In the "Tell Mama" video shown on MTV in the 1980s, Joplin wore a psychedelically colored, loose-fitting costume and feathers in her hair. This was her standard stage costume in the spring and summer of 1970. She chose the new costumes after her friend and designer, Linda Gravenites (whom Joplin had praised in Vogues profile of her in its May 1968 edition), cut ties with Joplin shortly after their return from Brazil, due largely to Joplin's continued use of heroin. Among Joplin's last public appearances were two broadcasts of The Dick Cavett Show. In her June 25, 1970 appearance, she announced that she would attend her ten-year high school class reunion. When asked if she had been popular in school, she admitted that when in high school, her schoolmates "laughed me out of class, out of town and out of the state" (during the year she had spent at the University of Texas at Austin, Joplin had been voted "Ugliest Man on Campus" by frat boys). In the subsequent Cavett Show broadcast, on August 3, 1970, and featuring Gloria Swanson, Joplin discussed her upcoming performance at the Festival for Peace to be held at Shea Stadium in Queens, New York, three days later. On July 11, 1970, Full Tilt Boogie and Big Brother and the Holding Company both performed at the same concert in the San Diego Sports Arena, which was decades later renamed the Valley View Casino Center. Joplin sang with Full Tilt Boogie and appeared briefly onstage with Big Brother without singing, according to a July 13 review of the concert in the San Diego Union. On August 7, 1970, a tombstone—jointly paid for by Joplin and Juanita Green, who as a child had done housework for Bessie Smith—was erected at Smith's previously unmarked grave. The following day, the Associated Press circulated this news, and the August 9 edition of The New York Times carried it. The lead paragraph of the AP story said Joplin and Green had "shared the cost of a stone for the 'Empress of the Blues,'" but, according to publicist/biographer Myra Friedman, the two women never met. Joplin had been at home in Larkspur, California when she had received a long-distance phone call with an explanation of the need to finance a gravestone for Bessie Smith, whom Joplin had frequently cited as a musical influence. Joplin immediately wrote a check and mailed it to the name and address provided by the phone caller. On August 8, 1970, as the Associated Press circulated the news about Smith's new gravestone, Joplin performed at the Capitol Theatre (Port Chester, New York). It was there that she first performed "Mercedes Benz", a song (partially inspired by a Michael McClure poem) that she had composed with fellow musician and friend Bob Neuwirth a very short time earlier. According to Myra Friedman's account, Joplin performed two shows at the Capitol Theatre, the first of which was attended by actors Geraldine Page and her husband Rip Torn. Between the shows, at a "gin mill" [Friedman's words] very close to this concert venue, Joplin and Neuwirth penned the lyrics to the song and she performed it at the second show, according to Friedman. Neuwirth was quoted by The Wall Street Journal in 2015: "Around 7 p.m., after the Capitol sound check, we had a couple of hours to kill before [acts that opened for Joplin] Seatrain and Runt finished their sets. So the four of us [Joplin, Neuwirth, Geraldine Page, Rip Torn] walked to a bar about three minutes away called Vahsen’s [at 30 Broad Street in Port Chester]." While in Vahsen's, "Janis came up with words for the first verse. I was in charge of writing them down on bar napkins with a ballpoint pen. She came up with the second verse, too, about a color TV. I suggested words here and there, and came up with the third verse—about asking the Lord to buy us a night on the town and another round." Joplin's last public performance with the Full Tilt Boogie Band took place on August 12, 1970, at the Harvard Stadium in Boston. The Harvard Crimson gave the performance a positive, front-page review, despite the fact that Full Tilt Boogie had performed with makeshift amplifiers after their regular sound equipment was stolen in Boston. Joplin attended her high school reunion on August 14, accompanied by Neuwirth, road manager John Cooke, and sister Laura, but it was reportedly an unhappy experience for her. Joplin held a press conference in Port Arthur during her reunion visit. When asked by a reporter if she ever entertained at Thomas Jefferson High School when she was a student there, Joplin replied, "Only when I walked down the aisles." Joplin denigrated Port Arthur and the classmates who had humiliated her a decade earlier. During late August, September, and early October 1970, Joplin and her band rehearsed and recorded a new album in Los Angeles with producer Paul A. Rothchild, best known for his lengthy relationship with The Doors. Although Joplin died before all the tracks were fully completed, there was enough usable material to compile an LP. The posthumous Pearl (1971) became the biggest-selling album of her career and featured her biggest hit single, a cover of Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster's "Me and Bobby McGee" (Kristofferson had previously been Joplin's lover in the spring of 1970). The opening track, "Move Over", was written by Joplin, reflecting the way that she felt men treated women in relationships. Also included was the social commentary of "Mercedes Benz", presented in an a cappella arrangement; the track on the album features the first and only take that Joplin recorded. A cover of Nick Gravenites's "Buried Alive in the Blues", to which Joplin had been scheduled to add her vocals on the day she was found dead, was included as an instrumental. Joplin checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood on August 24, 1970, near Sunset Sound Recorders, where she began rehearsing and recording her album. During the sessions, Joplin continued a relationship with Seth Morgan, a 21-year-old UC Berkeley student, cocaine dealer, and future novelist who had visited her new home in Larkspur in July and August. She and Morgan were engaged to be married in early September, although he visited Sunset Sound Recorders for just eight of Joplin's many rehearsals and sessions. Morgan later told biographer Myra Friedman that, as a non-musician, he had felt excluded whenever he had visited Sunset Sound Recorders. Instead, he stayed at Joplin's Larkspur home while she stayed alone at the Landmark, although several times she visited Larkspur to be with him and to check the progress of renovations she was having done on the house. She told her construction crew to design a carport to be shaped like a flying saucer, according to biographer Ellis Amburn, the concrete foundation for which was poured the day before she died. Peggy Caserta claimed in her book, Going Down With Janis (1973), that she and Joplin had decided mutually in April 1970 to stay away from each other to avoid enabling each other's drug use. Caserta, a former Delta Air Lines stewardess and owner of one of the first clothing boutiques in the Haight Ashbury, said in the book that by September 1970, she was smuggling cannabis throughout California and had checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel because it attracted drug users. For approximately the first two weeks of Joplin's stay at the Landmark, she did not know Caserta was in Los Angeles. Joplin learned of Caserta's presence at the Landmark from a heroin dealer who made deliveries there. Joplin begged Caserta for heroin, and when Caserta refused to provide it, Joplin reportedly admonished her by saying, "Don't think if you can get it, I can't get it." Joplin's publicist Myra Friedman was unaware during Joplin's lifetime that this had happened. Later, while Friedman was working on her book Buried Alive, she determined that the time frame of the Joplin-Caserta encounter was one week before Jimi Hendrix's death. Within a few days, Joplin became a regular customer of the same heroin dealer who had been supplying Caserta. Joplin's manager Albert Grossman and his assistant/publicist Friedman had staged an intervention with Joplin the previous winter while Joplin was in New York. In September 1970, Grossman and Friedman, who worked out of a New York office, knew Joplin was staying at a Los Angeles hotel, but were unaware it was a haven for drug users and dealers. Grossman and Friedman knew during Joplin's lifetime that her friend Caserta, whom Friedman met during the New York sessions for Cheap Thrills and on later occasions, used heroin. During the many long-distance telephone conversations that Joplin and Friedman had in September 1970 and on October 1, Joplin never mentioned Caserta, and Friedman assumed Caserta had been out of Joplin's life for a while. Friedman, who had more time than Grossman to monitor the situation, never visited California. She thought Joplin sounded on the phone like she was less depressed than she had been over the summer. When Joplin was not at Sunset Sound Recorders, she liked to drive her Porsche over the speed limit "on the winding part of Sunset Blvd.", according to a statement made by her attorney Robert Gordon in 1995 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Friedman wrote that the only Full Tilt Boogie member who rode as her passenger, Ken Pearson, often hesitated to join her, though he did on the night she died. He was not interested in using hard drugs. On September 26, 1970, Joplin recorded vocals for "Half Moon" and "Cry Baby". The session ended with Joplin, organist Ken Pearson, and drummer Clark Pierson making a special one-minute recording as a birthday gift to John Lennon. Joplin was among several singers who had been contacted by Yoko Ono with a request for a taped greeting for Lennon's 30th birthday, on October 9. Joplin, Pearson, and Pierson chose the Dale Evans composition "Happy Trails" as part of the greeting. Lennon told Dick Cavett on-camera the following year that Joplin's recorded birthday wishes arrived at his home after her death. On October 1, 1970, Joplin completed her last recording, "Mercedes Benz", which was recorded in a single take. On Saturday, October 3, Joplin visited Sunset Sound Recorders to listen to the instrumental track for Nick Gravenites's song "Buried Alive in the Blues", which the band had recorded earlier that day. She and Paul Rothchild agreed she would record the vocal the following day. At some point on Saturday, she learned by telephone, to her dismay, that Seth Morgan had met other women at a Marin County, California, restaurant, invited them to her home, and was shooting pool with them using her pool table. People at Sunset Sound Recorders overheard Joplin expressing anger about the state of her relationship with Morgan, as well as joy about the progress of the sessions. Joplin and Ken Pearson later left the studio together and she drove him in her Porsche to the West Hollywood landmark called Barney's Beanery. Friedman wrote, "At the bar, she drank vodka and orange juice, only two." Bennett Glotzer, a business partner of Joplin's manager Albert Grossman, was present at Barney's Beanery, according to what he told John Byrne Cooke immediately after he (Glotzer) learned of her death. Evidently, Joplin had a friendly conversation with a young man whom she did not know, and he expressed admiration for her music. After midnight, she drove Ken Pearson and the male fan to the Landmark where she and Pearson were staying in separate rooms. During the car ride, the fan asked Joplin questions "about her singing style," according to Friedman, and "she mostly ignored him" so she could converse with Pearson. As Joplin and Pearson prepared to part in the lobby of the Landmark, she expressed a fear, possibly in jest, that he and the other Full Tilt Boogie musicians might decide to stop making music with her. Pearson was the second-to-last person to see her alive. The last was the Landmark's night shift desk clerk. He had met her several times but did not know her. Personal life Joplin's significant relationships with men included ones with Peter de Blanc, Country Joe McDonald (who wrote the song "Janis" at Joplin's request), David (George) Niehaus, Kris Kristofferson, and Seth Morgan (from July 1970 until her death, at which time they were allegedly engaged). She also had relationships with women. During her first stint in San Francisco in 1963, Joplin met and briefly lived with Jae Whitaker, a black woman whom she had met while playing pool at the bar Gino & Carlo in North Beach. Whitaker broke off their relationship because of Joplin's hard drug use and sexual relationships with other people. Whitaker was first identified by name in connection with the singer in 1999, when Alice Echols' biography Scars of Sweet Paradise was published. Joplin also had an on-again-off-again romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta. They first met in November 1966 when Big Brother performed at a San Francisco venue called The Matrix. Caserta was one of 15 people in the audience, and at the time, she ran a successful clothing boutique in the Haight Ashbury. Approximately a month after Caserta attended the concert, Joplin visited her boutique and said she could not afford to buy a pair of jeans that was for sale, instead asking to put down the first 50 cents on the $5 item. Caserta was amazed that such a talented singer could not afford a $5 item, and gave her a pair for free. Their friendship was platonic for more than a year. Before it moved to the next level, Caserta was in love with Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, and sometime during the first half of 1968 traveled from San Francisco to New York to flirt with him. He did not want a serious relationship, and Joplin sympathized with Caserta's disappointment. The Woodstock concert film includes 37 seconds of Joplin and Caserta walking together before they reached the tent where Joplin waited for her turn to perform. By the time the festival took place in August 1969, both were intravenous heroin addicts. According to Caserta's book Going Down With Janis, which Caserta has since disowned, Joplin introduced her to her boyfriend Seth Morgan in Joplin's room at the Landmark Motor Hotel on September 29, 1970. Caserta "had seen him around" San Francisco but had not met him before. At some point, an agreement was made for a threesome to take place the following Friday, although Caserta later said that she immediately abandoned the idea once she understood that it was Morgan who would be with Joplin. Morgan made alternate plans, believing that Caserta would be with Joplin that evening. Each one, however, was unaware that the other had bowed out. The day after Joplin introduced Caserta to Morgan, Caserta saw Joplin briefly, again in Joplin's room, when Caserta accommodated her new Los Angeles friend Debbie Nuciforo, age 19, an aspiring hard rock drummer who wanted to meet Joplin. Nuciforo was stoned on heroin at the time, and the three women's encounter was brief and unpleasant. Caserta suspected that the reason for Joplin's foul mood was that Morgan had abandoned her earlier that day after having spent less than 24 hours with her. Caserta did not see nor communicate by phone with Joplin again, although she later claimed she had made several attempts to reach her by phone at the Landmark Motor Hotel and at Sunset Sound Recorders. Caserta and Morgan lost touch with each other; each had independently made alternate plans for Friday night, October 2. Joplin mentioned her disappointment (over both of her friends' bailing out of their ménage à trois) to her drug dealer on Saturday, while he was selling her the dose of heroin that killed her, as Caserta later learned from the drug dealer. Biographer Myra Friedman commented in her original version of Buried Alive (1973): Given the near-infinite potentials of infancy, it is really impossible to make generalizations about what lies behind sexual practices. This, however, is probable: to become clearly homosexual, to make the choice that one honestly prefers relations with one's own sex, no matter the origins of such preference, requires a certain integration, a stability of psychic development, a tidiness of personality organization. The ridicule and the humiliation that took place at that most delicate period in [Joplin's] early teens, her own inability to surmount the obstacles to regular growth, devastated her a great deal more than most people comprehended. Janis was not heir to an ego so cohesive as to permit her an identity one way or the other. She was, as [the psychiatric social worker she saw regularly in Beaumont, Texas in 1965 and 1966] Mr. [Bernard] Giarritano put it [in an interview with Friedman], "diffused" -- spewing, splattering, splaying all over, without a center to hold. That had as much to do with her original use of drugs [before she first met Giarritano] as did the critical component of guilt and its multiplicity of sources above and beyond the contribution made by her relationships with women. Were she so simple as the lesbians wished her to be or so free as her associates imagined! Kim France reported in her May 2, 1999 The New York Times article, "Nothin' Left to Lose" : "Once she became famous, Joplin cursed like a truck driver, did not believe in wearing undergarments, was rarely seen without her bottle of Southern Comfort and delighted in playing the role of sexual predator." On July 11, 1970, Joplin made a revealing statement about her sexuality to her friend Richard Hundgen, the Grateful Dead's San Francisco-based road manager whom she had known since 1966. When Joplin and Hundgen were offstage during a San Diego gig for both Full Tilt Boogie and Big Brother and the Holding Company, she said the following that he later repeated to Myra Friedman: I hear a rumor that somebody in San Francisco is spreading stories that I'm a dyke. You go back there and find out who it is and tell them that Janis says she's gotten it on with a couple of thousand cats in her life and a few hundred chicks and see what they can do with that! Death On Sunday evening, October 4, 1970, Joplin was found dead on the floor of her room at the Landmark Motor Hotel by her road manager and close friend John Byrne Cooke. Alcohol was present in the room. Newspapers reported that no other drugs or paraphernalia were present. According to a 1983 book authored by Joseph DiMona and Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi, evidence of narcotics was removed from the scene by a friend of Joplin and later put back after the person realized that an autopsy was going to reveal that narcotics were in her system. The book adds that prior to Joplin's death, Noguchi had investigated other fatal drug overdoses in Los Angeles where friends believed they were doing favors for decedents by removing evidence of narcotics, then they "thought things over" and returned to put back the evidence. Noguchi performed an autopsy on Joplin and determined the cause of death to be a heroin overdose, possibly compounded by alcohol. John Byrne Cooke believed Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than what she and other L.A. heroin users had received on previous occasions, as was indicated by overdoses of several of her dealer's other customers during the same weekend. Her death was ruled accidental. Both Peggy Caserta, Joplin's close friend, and Seth Morgan, Joplin's fiancé, had failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death, October 2; Joplin had been expecting both of them to keep her company that night. According to Caserta, Joplin was saddened that neither of her friends visited her at the Landmark as they had promised. During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment, Caserta did not phone her to explain why she had failed to show up. Caserta admitted to waiting until late Saturday night to dial the Landmark switchboard, only to learn that Joplin had instructed the desk clerk not to accept any incoming phone calls for her after midnight. Morgan did speak to Joplin via telephone within the 24 hours prior to her death, but little is known about that call. She used a phone at Sunset Sound Recorders where her colleagues (“there were perhaps twenty to twenty-five people pre‪sent,” wrote biographer Myra Friedman) noticed that whatever Morgan said to her made her very angry. Peggy Caserta has insisted that Joplin's death was not an accidental overdose, but rather a result of a head gash suffered after the "hourglass heel" of her slingback sandal caught in the shag carpet, causing her to lose her balance. Caserta does concede, however, that drugs and/or alcohol may have played a role in hastening her death that night. Joplin was cremated at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary in Los Angeles, and her ashes were scattered from a plane into the Pacific Ocean. Legacy Joplin's death in October 1970 at age 27 stunned her fans and shocked the music world, especially when coupled with the death just 16 days earlier of another rock icon, Jimi Hendrix, also at age 27. (This would later cause some people to attribute significance to the death of musicians at the age of 27, as celebrated in the "27 Club.") Music historian Tom Moon wrote that Joplin had "a devastatingly original voice," music columnist Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote that Joplin as an artist was "overpowering and deeply vulnerable" and author Megan Terry said that Joplin was the female version of Elvis Presley in her ability to captivate an audience. A book about Joplin by her publicist Myra Friedman titled Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin (1973) was excerpted in many newspapers. At the same time, Peggy Caserta's memoir, Going Down With Janis (1973), attracted much attention; its provocative title is a reference to Caserta's claim that she had engaged in oral sex with Joplin while they were high on heroin in September 1970. The description provided by Dan Knapp, Caserta’s co-author whom she denounced decades later, repelled many people in 1973 when few books or filmed interviews of Joplin or her loved ones were accessible to the public. Joplin's bandmate Sam Andrew described Caserta as "halfway between a groupie and a friend" in an interview with writer Ellis Amburn. Soon after the 1973 publication of Going Down With Janis, Joplin's friends learned that graphic descriptions of sexual acts and intravenous drug use were not the only portions of the book that would haunt them. According to Kim Chappell, a close friend of Caserta and Joplin, Caserta's book angered the Los Angeles heroin dealer whom she had described in detail in her book, including the make and model of his car. According to Amburn, in 1973 a "carful of dope dealers" visited a Los Angeles lesbian bar that Caserta had been frequenting. Chappell, who was in the alley behind the bar, stated: "I was stabbed because, when Peggy's book came out, her dealer, the same one who'd given Janis her last fix, didn't like it that he was referred to and was out to get Peggy. He couldn't find her, so he went for her lover. When they realized who I was, they felt that my death would also hit Peggy, and so they stabbed me." Despite being "stabbed three times in the chest, puncturing both lungs," Chappell eventually recovered. In 2018, Caserta denounced Going Down With Janis as the pornographic fantasy of Dan Knapp, her co-author, and largely unreliable. During that year, the public had its first access to her own story via a memoir she co-wrote with Maggie Falcon titled I Ran Into Some Trouble. It describes a long, friendly relationship with Joplin that only occasionally featured sexuality. According to Joplin’s biographers, Caserta was among many friends of Joplin who did not become clean and sober until a very long time after Joplin's death, while others died from overdoses. Although the wife of Big Brother guitarist James Gurley, who was Joplin's close friend, died from a heroin overdose in 1969, devastating Joplin, Gurley himself did not become clean and sober until 1984. Caserta survived "a near-fatal OD in December 1995," wrote Alice Echols. On January 13, 2000, Caserta appeared during a segment about Joplin on 20/20. Joplin's body art, with a wristlet and a small heart on her left breast by the San Francisco tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle, marked an early moment in the popular culture's acceptance of tattoos as art. Another trademark was her flamboyant hair styles, which often included colored streaks and accessories such as scarves, beads and feathers. When in New York City, Joplin frequented the Limbo boutique on St. Mark's Place, and she wore some of the vintage and unique garments that she purchased there on stage. The Mamas & the Papas' song "Pearl" (1971), from their People Like Us album, was a tribute. Leonard Cohen's song "Chelsea Hotel#2" (1974) is about Joplin. Lyricist Robert Hunter has commented that Jerry Garcia's "Birdsong" from his first solo album, Garcia (1972), is about Joplin and the end of her suffering through death. Mimi Farina's composition "In the Quiet Morning", most famously covered by Joan Baez on her Come from the Shadows (1972) album, was a tribute to Joplin. Another song by Baez, "Children of the Eighties," mentioned Joplin. A Serge Gainsbourg-penned French language song by English singer Jane Birkin, "Ex fan des sixties" (1978), references Joplin along with other disappeared "idols" such as Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones and Marc Bolan. When Joplin was alive, Country Joe McDonald released a song called "Janis" on his band's album I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die (1967). The film The Rose (1979) is loosely based on Joplin's life. Originally planned to be titled Pearl—Joplin's nickname and the title of her last album—the film was fictionalized after her family declined to allow the producers the rights to her story. Bette Midler earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the film. In 1988, on what would have been Joplin's 45th birthday, the Janis Joplin Memorial, with an original gold, multi-image sculpture of Joplin by Douglas Clark, was dedicated during a ceremony in Port Arthur, Texas. In 1992, the first major biography of Joplin in two decades, Love, Janis, authored by her younger sister Laura Joplin, was published. In an interview, Laura stated that Joplin enjoyed being on the Dick Cavett Show, that Joplin had difficulties with some, but not all, people at Thomas Jefferson High School and that Joplin enthusiastically talked about Woodstock with her parents and siblings during a visit to their Texas home a few weeks after she had performed at the festival. In 1995, Joplin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2005, she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In November 2009, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum honored her as part of its annual American Music Masters Series; among the artifacts at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum exhibition are Joplin's scarf and necklaces, her psychedelically painted 1965 Porsche 356 Cabriolet and a sheet of LSD blotting paper designed by Robert Crumb, designer of the Cheap Thrills cover. Also in 2009, Joplin was the honoree at the Rock Hall's American Music Master concert and lecture series. In the late 1990s, the musical play Love, Janis was created and directed by Randal Myler, with input from Janis' younger sister Laura and Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, with an aim to take it to Off-Broadway. Opening in the summer of 2001 and scheduled for only a few weeks of performances, the show won acclaim, played to packed houses and was held over several times. In 2013, Washington's Arena Stage featured a production of A Night with Janis Joplin, starring Mary Bridget Davies. In it, Joplin performs a concert for the audience while telling stories of her past inspirations, including those of Odetta and Aretha Franklin. The show went on tour in 2016. On November 4, 2013, Joplin was awarded with the 2,510th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the music industry. Her star is located at 6752 Hollywood Boulevard, in front of Musicians Institute. On August 8, 2014, the U.S. Postal Service revealed a commemorative stamp honoring Joplin as part of its Music Icons stamp series during a first-day-of-issue ceremony at the Outside Lands Music Festival at Golden Gate Park. Among the memorabilia Joplin left behind is a Gibson Hummingbird guitar. In 2015, the biographical documentary film Janis: Little Girl Blue, directed by Amy J. Berg and narrated by Cat Power, was released. It was a New York Times Critics' Pick. Influence Joplin had a profound influence on many singers. Pink said about Joplin: "She was so inspiring by singing blues music when it wasn't culturally acceptable for white women, and she wore her heart on her sleeve. She was so witty and charming and intelligent, but she also battled an ugly-duckling syndrome. I would love to play her in a movie." In a tribute performance on her Try This Tour, Pink called Joplin "a woman who inspired me when everyone else ... didn't!" Discography Janis Joplin recorded four albums in her four-year career. The first two albums were recorded with and credited to Big Brother and the Holding Company; the later two were recorded with different backing bands and released as solo albums. Posthumous releases have included previously unreleased studio and live material. Studio albums As lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company As solo artist Live albums Compilation albums Singles As lead of Big Brother and the Holding Company As solo artist Filmography Monterey Pop (1968) Petulia (1968) Janis Joplin Live in Frankfurt (1969) Janis (1974) Janis: The Way She Was (1974) Comin' Home (1988) Woodstock – The Lost Performances (1991) Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director's Cut) (1994) Festival Express (2003) Nine Hundred Nights (2004) The Dick Cavett Show: Rock Icons (2005) Shout Factory Rockin' at the Red Dog: The Dawn of Psychedelic Rock (2005) This is Tom Jones (2007) 1969 appearance on TV show Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director's Cut) 40th Anniversary Edition (2009) Janis Joplin with Big Brother: Ball and Chain (DVD) Charly (2009) Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015) Notes References Further reading – an encounter with Janis Joplin at the wheel. External links Janis Joplin at the Grammy Awards Janis Joplin on the Music-Map 1943 births 1970 deaths 20th-century American singers 20th-century American women singers American blues singers American child singers American mezzo-sopranos American women rock singers American women singer-songwriters American rhythm and blues singer-songwriters American rock songwriters American soul musicians Accidental deaths in California Big Brother and the Holding Company members Bisexual musicians Bisexual women Blues rock musicians Columbia Records artists Deaths by heroin overdose in California Drug-related deaths in California Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners LGBT people from Texas LGBT singers from the United States LGBT songwriters Lamar University alumni People from Beaumont, Texas People from Port Arthur, Texas Singer-songwriters from Texas University of Texas at Austin alumni 20th-century LGBT people
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[ "The Moldy Peaches were an American indie group founded by Adam Green and Kimya Dawson. Leading proponents of the anti-folk scene, the band has been on hiatus since 2004. The appearance of their song \"Anyone Else but You\" in the film Juno significantly raised their profile; Dawson and Green made a handful of reunion appearances together in December 2007.\n\nHistory\nGreen and Dawson met at Exile on Main Street Records in Mount Kisco, New York, and began working together. Green put out a 7\" Ep called \"X-Ray Vision\" under the name The Moldy Peaches, featuring recordings he made from 1994–96 with Dawson and various other friends, notably Jules Sheridan, a songwriter based in Scotland. Green and Dawson recorded a CDR album in 1998 under the name Moldy Peaches 2000 called FER THE KIDS before Dawson moved to Port Townsend, Washington. In early 1999 Green joined her there, and more home and live recordings transpired. The band returned to NYC as a 4 piece later in the year (including Jest Commons, guitar, and Justin Campbell, drums). They became active on the NYC anti-folk scene, playing at the SideWalk Cafe before the band broke up. Dawson and Green both recorded solo albums. The band reformed in August 2000 with Chris Barron of the Spin Doctors on lead guitar, Brian Piltin on bass guitar, and Strictly Beats (Brent Cole) on drums. (The \"2000\" was dropped from their name around this time). A new 11 song album was recorded, which led to a deal with Rough Trade in the UK. They gained recognition after their initial 7\" 'Who's Got the Crack\" was named 'Single of the Week' in NME. Rough Trade released the album The Moldy Peaches in 2001. Released in the U.S. on September 11, 2001, it contained the song \"NYC Is Like a Graveyard\". The band expanded to a six-piece, with guitarists Jack Dishel and Aaron Wilkinson, bass player Steven Mertens, and drummer Strictly Beats, augmenting the original duo of Dawson and Green. They toured internationally with The Strokes with whom they shared record label and management.\n\nAaron Wilkinson left the band and was replaced by Toby Goodshank. Wilkinson died from an overdose in July 2003. The Strokes dedicated their album Room on Fire to his memory.\n\nIn 2003 a second album Moldy Peaches 2000 was released, a double-CD compilation of various scraps and live recordings.\n\nAfter an extensive US headlining tour in the winter of 2003, the band went into hiatus in early 2004. However, the band reunited in late 2004 for a one-off show to benefit Accidental CDs, Records and Tapes, a hole-in-the-wall record store on Ave A in NYC. That store was an early supporter of the band and helped hook them up with the gig that ultimately got them their record deal. Both central members embarked on solo careers.\n\nOn December 2, 2007, Dawson and Green played an impromptu set together at Los Angeles' The Smell to end a show where Dawson was headlining. They changed the lyrics of the song \"Who's Got The Crack\" to \"Who's Got The Blues\". On December 3, 2007, the Moldy Peaches played at the Juno film premiere.\n\nThe band was booked to appear on the Conan O'Brien television show on January 14, 2008, but they canceled because of the writer's strike. Dawson has said that she is not keen to reform the band at present. However, Dawson and Green did appear together on the NPR radio show Bryant Park Project on January 16, 2008. and appeared on television show The View on January 21, 2008.\n\nSubsequent to the success of the Juno soundtrack, which hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 on its third week of physical release, the song \"Anyone Else but You\" was released as a UK single on February 25, 2008.\n\nOn November 13, 2011, The Moldy Peaches played a short set at the Knitting Factory in New York.\n\nSolo projects\nGreen released his seventh solo album and accompanying film, Aladdin, in 2016 via Fat Possum. His initial band included a 3-piece string section.\n\nDawson has continued to tour playing small clubs and house parties. Her album Remember That I Love You on K Records has been well received. Dawson collaborated with Aesop Rock on the album Hokey Fright under the name The Uncluded.\n\nDishel's former outfit Stipplicon having broken up, he formed a new band, Only Son, who have toured with Regina Spektor. Dishel also plays in Spektor's band.\n\nMertens has his own group SpaceCamp and plays in Green's backing band.\n\nCole is in the boyband Candy Boys and has performed with numerous acts including Dufus, Jeffrey Lewis, Only Son, Sandra Bernhard, and Toby Goodshank.\n\nGoodshank plays solo shows and is also in a duo, Double Deuce, with his sister Angela.\n\nNotable appearances\n The song \"Anyone Else but You\" was used in the Academy Award-nominated documentary film Murderball (film).\n The song \"Anyone Else but You\" was used in a mobile phone TV-ad in France during World Cup 2006, featuring French star Zinedine Zidane.\n The song \"Anyone Else but You\" is central to the 2007 Academy Award-winning film Juno and a version is also performed by the two main characters (Elliot Page and Michael Cera).\n A re-written version of \"Anyone Else but You\" was featured in a commercial for Atlantis Resorts in the Bahamas.\n The song \"Jorge Regula\" was used in a Pepsodent commercial in Hispanic America, without the group's permission.\n A version of the song \"Jorge Regula\" also appears in the 2006 indie film The Guatemalan Handshake.\n\nPersonnel\nKimya Dawson – vocals, guitars (1994–2004, 2007–2008)\nAdam Green – vocals, guitars (1994–2004, 2007–2008)\nJustice Campbell – drums (1999)\nJest Commons – guitars (1999)\nBrent Cole – drums (2000–2004)\nChris Barron – guitars (2000–2001)\nBrian Piltin – bass (2000–2001)\nJack Dishel – guitars (2001–2004)\nSteven Mertens – bass (2001–2004)\nAaron Wilkinson – guitars (2001–2002; died 2003)\nToby Goodshank – guitars (2002–2004)\n\nTimeline\n\nDiscography\nAfter releasing their first few records themselves, The Moldy Peaches have released music internationally through Rough Trade. In the United States records were originally released under the Sanctuary Records banner but, since the demise of Sanctuary and the takeover of Rough Trade by the Beggars Group, U.S. releases are now also on Rough Trade.\n\n X-Ray Vision (EP) – Average Cabbage Records – 1996\n Moldy Peaches 2000: Fer the Kids/ Live 1999 (Cassette/CD) – Average Cabbage Records – 1999\n\"The Love Boat\" - Live!!! (Cassette) – Average Cabbage Records – 1999\n The Moldy Peaches (CD-R) – Pro-Anti Records – 2000 (11-song CD, similar cover to next release, all songs included on later albums or singles).\n The Moldy Peaches (CD/LP) – Sanctuary Records/Rough Trade – 2001 (compilation from previous self-releases plus 1 re-recording of \"Nothing Came Out\")\n \"County Fair/Rainbows\" (CD single) – Sanctuary Records/Rough Trade – 2002\n Moldy Peaches 2000: Unreleased Cutz and Live Jamz 1994-2002 (CD) – Sanctuary Records/Rough Trade – 2003\n \"Anyone Else but You\" (single) – Rough Trade – 2008\n Origin Story: 1994–1999 (CD/LP/Cassette) – Org Music – 2022\n\nCompilation appearances\n Music from the Film Garage Days (\"Lucky Number Nine\") – Festival Mushroom Records 2002\nMusic from the Film Murderball (\"Anyone Else but You\") – Commotion 2005\nMusic from the Motion Picture Juno (\"Anyone Else but You\") – Rhino Records 2007\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n www.moldypeaches.com Official site.\n MP2K The original official site (archive.org)\nThe Moldy Peaches Beggars Group USA page\n\nAnti-folk groups\nMusical groups established in 1994\nMusical groups disestablished in 2008\nIndie rock musical groups from New York (state)\nPsychedelic folk groups\nRough Trade Records artists\nMusical groups from Washington (state)", "Ruwida El-Hubti (born 16 April 1989) is an Olympic athlete from Libya. At the 2004 Summer Olympics, she competed in the Women's 400 metres. She finished last in her heat with a time of 1:03.57, almost 11 seconds slower than anyone else in the heat, and the slowest of anyone in the competition. However, she did set a national record.\n\nReferences\n\n1989 births\nLiving people\nOlympic athletes of Libya\nAthletes (track and field) at the 2004 Summer Olympics" ]
[ "Janis Joplin", "Death", "What year did Janis die?", "1970,", "How old was she when she died?", "On October 4, 1970, producer Paul Rothchild became concerned when Joplin failed to show up at Sunset Sound Recorders for a recording", "Was Janis with anyone when she died?", "Peggy Caserta and Seth Morgan had both failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death,", "Had anyone tried to stop Janis from using heroin?", "During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment,", "Was Janis Joplin suicidal?", "Cooke believes Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than normal, as several of her dealer's other customers also overdosed that week.", "Did anyone else from her band overdose?", "I don't know." ]
C_3938290d39f0420aa035060edc72696f_0
After her death, did Janis Joplin's popularity go up or down?
7
After Janis Joplin's death, did Janis Joplin's popularity go up or down?
Janis Joplin
On October 4, 1970, producer Paul Rothchild became concerned when Joplin failed to show up at Sunset Sound Recorders for a recording session. Full Tilt Boogie's road manager, John Cooke, drove to the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood where Joplin was staying. He saw Joplin's psychedelically painted Porsche 356 C Cabriolet in the parking lot, and upon entering Joplin's room (#105), he found her dead on the floor beside her bed. The official cause of death was a heroin overdose, possibly compounded by alcohol. Cooke believes Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than normal, as several of her dealer's other customers also overdosed that week. Peggy Caserta and Seth Morgan had both failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death, October 2, and Joplin had been expecting both of them to keep her company that night. According to Caserta, Joplin was saddened that neither of her friends visited her at the Landmark as they had promised. During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment, Caserta did not phone her to explain why she had failed to show up. Caserta admitted to waiting until late Saturday night to dial the Landmark switchboard, only to learn that Joplin had instructed the desk clerk not to accept any incoming phone calls for her after midnight. Morgan did speak to Joplin via telephone within 24 hours of her death, but it is not known whether he admitted to her that he had broken his promise. Joplin's last will and testament funded $2,500 to throw a wake party in the event of her demise. The party took place on October 26, 1970, at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo, California, and was attended by Joplin's sister Laura, Morgan, and other close friends, including Cooke, Bob Gordon, Jack Penty, and tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle. CANNOTANSWER
Joplin's last will and testament funded $2,500 to throw a wake party in the event of her demise.
Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter who sang rock, soul, and blues music. One of the most successful and widely known rock stars of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and "electric" stage presence. In 1967, Joplin rose to fame following an appearance at Monterey Pop Festival, where she was the lead singer of the then little-known San Francisco psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company. After releasing two albums with the band, she left Big Brother to continue as a solo artist with her own backing groups, first the Kozmic Blues Band and then the Full Tilt Boogie Band. She appeared at the Woodstock festival and on the Festival Express train tour. Five singles by Joplin reached the Billboard Hot 100, including a cover of the Kris Kristofferson song "Me and Bobby McGee", which reached number one in March 1971. Her most popular songs include her cover versions of "Piece of My Heart", "Cry Baby", "Down on Me", "Ball and Chain", and "Summertime"; and her original song "Mercedes Benz", her final recording. Joplin died of a heroin overdose in 1970, at the age of 27, after releasing three albums (two with Big Brother and the Holding Company and one solo album). A second solo album, Pearl, was released in January 1971, just over three months after her death. It reached number one on the Billboard charts. She was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Rolling Stone ranked Joplin number 46 on its 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. She remains one of the top-selling musicians in the United States, with Recording Industry Association of America certifications of 18.5 million albums sold. Early life Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on , to Dorothy Bonita East (1913–1998), a registrar at a business college, and her husband, Seth Ward Joplin (1910–1987), an engineer at Texaco. She had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. The family attended First Christian Church of Port Arthur, a church belonging to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) denomination. Her parents felt that Janis needed more attention than their other children. As a teenager, Joplin befriended a group of outcasts, one of whom had albums by blues artists Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Lead Belly, which Joplin later credited with influencing her decision to become a singer. She began singing blues and folk music with friends at Thomas Jefferson High School. In high school, she was a classmate of Pro Football Hall of Fame coach Jimmy Johnson. Joplin stated that she was ostracized and bullied in high school. As a teen, she became overweight and suffered from acne, leaving her with deep scars that required dermabrasion. Other kids at high school would routinely taunt her and call her names like "pig," "freak," "nigger lover," or "creep." She stated, "I was a misfit. I read, I painted, I thought. I didn't hate niggers." Joplin graduated from high school in 1960 and attended Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, Texas, during the summer and later the University of Texas at Austin (UT), though she did not complete her college studies. The campus newspaper, The Daily Texan, ran a profile of her in the issue dated July 27, 1962, headlined "She Dares to Be Different." The article began, "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levi's to class because they're more comfortable, and carries her autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break into song, it will be handy. Her name is Janis Joplin." While at UT she performed with a folk trio called the Waller Creek Boys and frequently socialized with the staff of the campus humor magazine The Texas Ranger. According to Freak Brothers cartoonist Gilbert Shelton, who befriended her, she used to sell The Texas Ranger, which contained some of Shelton's early comic books, on the campus. Career 1962–1965: Early recordings Joplin cultivated a rebellious manner and styled herself partly after her female blues heroines and partly after the Beat poets. Her first song, "What Good Can Drinkin' Do", was recorded on tape in December 1962 at the home of a fellow University of Texas student. She left Texas in January 1963 ("Just to get away," she said, "because my head was in a much different place"), hitchhiking with her friend Chet Helms to North Beach, San Francisco. Still in San Francisco in 1964, Joplin and future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen recorded a number of blues standards, which incidentally featured Kaukonen's wife Margareta using a typewriter in the background. This session included seven tracks: "Typewriter Talk", "Trouble in Mind", "Kansas City Blues", "Hesitation Blues", "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out", "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy", and "Long Black Train Blues", and was released long after Joplin's death as the bootleg album The Typewriter Tape. In 1963, Joplin was arrested in San Francisco for shoplifting. During the two years that followed, her drug use increased and she acquired a reputation as a "speed freak" and occasional heroin user. She also used other psychoactive drugs and was a heavy drinker throughout her career; her favorite alcoholic beverage was Southern Comfort. In May 1965, Joplin's friends in San Francisco, noticing the detrimental effects on her from regularly injecting methamphetamine (she was described as "skeletal" and "emaciated"), persuaded her to return to Port Arthur. During that month, her friends threw her a bus-fare party so she could return to her parents in Texas. Five years later, Joplin told Rolling Stone magazine writer David Dalton the following about her first stint in San Francisco: "I didn't have many friends and I didn't like the ones I had." Back in Port Arthur in the spring of 1965, after Joplin's parents noticed her weight of , she changed her lifestyle. She avoided drugs and alcohol, adopted a beehive hairdo, and enrolled as an anthropology major at Lamar University in nearby Beaumont, Texas. Her sister Laura said in a 2016 interview that social work was her major during her year at Lamar. During her time at Lamar University, she commuted to Austin to sing solo, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar. One of her performances was at a benefit by local musicians for Texas bluesman Mance Lipscomb, who was suffering with ill health. Joplin became engaged to Peter de Blanc in the fall of 1965. She had begun a relationship with him toward the end of her first stint in San Francisco. Now living in New York where he worked with IBM computers, he visited her to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Joplin and her mother began planning the wedding. De Blanc, who traveled frequently, ended the engagement soon afterward. In 1965 and 1966, Joplin commuted from her family's Port Arthur home to Beaumont, Texas, where she had regular sessions with a psychiatric social worker named Bernard Giarritano at a counseling agency that was funded by the United Fund, which after her death changed its name to the United Way. Interviewed by biographer Myra Friedman after his client's death, Giarritano said Joplin had been baffled by how she could pursue a professional career as a singer without relapsing into drugs, and her drug-related memories from immediately prior to returning to Port Arthur continued to frighten her. Joplin sometimes brought an acoustic guitar with her to her sessions with Giarritano, and people in other offices within the building could hear her singing. Giarritano tried to reassure her that she did not have to use narcotics in order to succeed in the music business. She also said that if she were to avoid singing professionally, she would have to become a keypunch operator (as she had done a few years earlier) or a secretary, and then a wife and mother, and she would have to become very similar to all the other women in Port Arthur. Approximately a year before Joplin joined Big Brother and the Holding Company, she recorded seven studio tracks with her acoustic guitar. Among the songs she recorded were her original composition of the song "Turtle Blues" and an alternate version of "Cod'ine" by Buffy Sainte-Marie. These tracks were later issued as a new album in 1995, titled This is Janis Joplin 1965 by James Gurley. 1966–1969: Various bands In 1966, Joplin's bluesy vocal style attracted the attention of the San Francisco-based psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, which had gained some renown among the nascent hippie community in Haight-Ashbury. She was recruited to join the group by Chet Helms, a promoter who was managing Big Brother and with whom she had hitchhiked from Texas to San Francisco a few years earlier. Helms sent his friend Travis Rivers to find her in Austin, Texas, where she had been performing with her acoustic guitar, and to accompany her to San Francisco. Aware of her previous nightmare with drug addiction in San Francisco, Rivers insisted that she inform her parents face-to-face of her plans, and he drove her from Austin to Port Arthur (he waited in his car while she talked with her startled parents) before they began their long drive to San Francisco. Joplin joined Big Brother on June 4, 1966. Her first public performance with them was at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. In June, Joplin was photographed at an outdoor concert in San Francisco that celebrated the summer solstice. The image, which was later published in two books by David Dalton, shows her before she relapsed into drugs. Due to persistent persuading by keyboardist and close friend Stephen Ryder, Joplin avoided drugs for several weeks. She made Travis Rivers, with whom she shared an apartment upon their arrival in San Francisco, promise that using needles would not be allowed there. When bandmate Dave Getz accompanied her from a rehearsal to her home, Rivers was not there, but "two or three" (according to Getz' recollection 25 years later) guests whom Rivers had invited were in the process of injecting drugs. "One of them was about to tie off," recalled Getz. "Janis went nuts! I had never seen anybody explode like that. She was screaming and crying and Travis walked in. She screamed at him: 'We had a pact! You promised me! There wouldn't be any of that in front of me!' I was over my head and I tried to calm her down. I said, 'They're just doing mescaline,' because that's what I thought it was. She said, 'You don't understand! I can't see that! I just can't stand to see that!'" A San Francisco concert from that summer (1966) was recorded and released on the 1984 album Cheaper Thrills. In July, all five bandmates and guitarist James Gurley's wife Nancy moved to a house in Lagunitas, California, where they lived communally. The band often partied with the Grateful Dead, the members of whom lived less than two miles away. She had a short relationship and longer friendship with founding member Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. The band went to Chicago for a four-week engagement in August 1966, then found itself stranded after the promoter ran out of money when its concerts did not attract the expected audience levels, and he was unable to pay them. In the circumstances the band signed with Bob Shad's record label Mainstream Records; recordings for the label took place in Chicago in September, but these were not satisfactory, and the band returned to San Francisco, continuing to perform live, including at the Love Pageant Rally. The band recorded two tracks, "Blindman" and "All Is Loneliness", in Los Angeles, and these were released by Mainstream as a single that did not sell well. After playing at a happening in Stanford in early December 1966, the band traveled back to Los Angeles to record ten tracks between December 12 and 14, 1966, produced by Bob Shad, which appeared on the band's debut album in August 1967. In late 1966, Big Brother switched managers from Chet Helms to Julius Karpen. One of Joplin's earliest major performances in 1967 was at the Mantra-Rock Dance, a musical event held on January 29 at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. Janis Joplin and Big Brother performed there along with the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami, Allen Ginsberg, Moby Grape, and the Grateful Dead, donating proceeds to the Krishna temple. In early 1967, Joplin met Country Joe McDonald of the group Country Joe and the Fish. The pair lived together as a couple for a few months. Joplin and Big Brother began playing clubs in San Francisco, at the Fillmore West, Winterland, and the Avalon Ballroom. They also played at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, as well as in Seattle, Washington; Vancouver, British Columbia; the Psychedelic Supermarket in Boston, Massachusetts; and the Golden Bear Club in Huntington Beach, California. The band's debut studio album, Big Brother & the Holding Company, was released by Mainstream Records in August 1967, shortly after the group's breakthrough appearance in June at the Monterey Pop Festival. Two tracks, "Coo Coo" and "The Last Time," were released separately as singles, while the tracks from the previous single, "Blindman" and "All Is Loneliness", were added to the remaining eight tracks. When Columbia Records took over the band's contract and re-released the album, they included "Coo Coo" and "The Last Time", and put "featuring Janis Joplin" on the cover. The debut album spawned four minor hits with the singles "Down on Me", a traditional song arranged by Joplin, "Bye Bye Baby", "Call On Me" and "Coo Coo", on all of which Joplin sang lead vocals. Two songs from the second of Big Brother's two sets at Monterey, which they played on Sunday, were filmed (their first set, which was on Saturday, was not filmed, though it was audio-recorded). Some sources, including a Joplin biography by Ellis Amburn, claim that she was dressed in thrift store hippie clothes or second-hand Victorian clothes during the band's Saturday set, but still photographs do not appear to have survived. Digitized color film of two songs in the Sunday set, "Combination of the Two" and a version of Big Mama Thornton's "Ball and Chain," appear in the DVD and Blu-ray boxed set of D. A. Pennebaker's documentary Monterey Pop released by The Criterion Collection. She is seen wearing an expensive gold tunic dress with matching pants. They were created for her by San Francisco clothing designer Colin Rose. Documentary filmmaker Pennebaker inserted two cutaway shots of Cass Elliot of the Mamas & the Papas seated in the audience during Joplin's performance of "Ball and Chain", one in the middle of the song as her eyes, covered by sunglasses, are fixed on Joplin, and also a shot during the applause as she silently mouths "Oh, wow!" and looks at the person seated next to her. Elliot and the audience are seen in sunlight, but Sunday's Big Brother performance was filmed in the evening. An explanation came from Big Brother's road manager John Byrne Cooke, who remembers that Pennebaker discreetly filmed the audience (including Elliot) during Big Brother's Saturday performance when he was not allowed to point a camera at the band. The prohibition of Pennebaker from filming on Saturday afternoon came from Big Brother's manager Julius Karpen. The band had a bitter argument with Karpen and overruled him as they prepared for their second set that the festival organizers had added on the spur of the moment. Backstage at the festival, the band became acquainted with New York-based talent manager Albert Grossman but did not sign with him until several months later, firing Karpen at that time. Only "Ball and Chain" was included in the Monterey Pop film that was released to theaters throughout the United States in 1969 and shown on television in the 1970s. Those who did not attend the Monterey Pop Festival saw the band's performance of "Combination of the Two" for the first time in 2002 when The Criterion Collection released the boxed set. For the remainder of 1967, even after Big Brother signed with Albert Grossman, the band performed mainly in California. On February 16, 1968, the group began its first East Coast tour in Philadelphia, and the following day gave their first performance in New York City at the Anderson Theater. On April 7, 1968—three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the last day of their East Coast tour—Joplin and Big Brother performed with Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens, Paul Butterfield, and Elvin Bishop at the Wake for Martin Luther King Jr. concert in New York. Live at Winterland '68, recorded at the Winterland Ballroom on April 12 and 13, 1968, features Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company at the height of their mutual career working through a selection of tracks from their albums. A recording became available to the public for the first time in 1998 when Columbia/Sony Music Entertainment released the compact disc. One month after the Winterland concert, Owsley Stanley recorded them at the Carousel Ballroom, released in 2012 as Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968. On July 31, 1968, Joplin made her first nationwide television appearance when the band performed on This Morning, an ABC daytime 90-minute variety show that was hosted by Dick Cavett. Shortly thereafter, network employees wiped the videotape, though the audio survives. (In 1969 and 1970, Joplin made three appearances on Cavett's prime-time program. Video was preserved and excerpts have been included in most documentaries about Joplin. Audio of her 1968 appearance has not been used since then.) Sometime in 1968, the band's billing was changed to "Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company," and the media coverage given to Joplin generated resentment within the band. The other members of Big Brother thought that Joplin was on a "star trip", while others were telling Joplin that Big Brother was a terrible band and that she ought to dump them. Time magazine called Joplin "probably the most powerful singer to emerge from the white rock movement", and Richard Goldstein wrote for the May 1968 issue of Vogue magazine that Joplin was "the most staggering leading woman in rock...she slinks like tar, scowls like war...clutching the knees of a final stanza, begging it not to leave.... Janis Joplin can sing the chic off any listener." For her first major studio recording, Joplin played a major role in the arrangement and production of the songs that would comprise Big Brother and the Holding Company's second album, Cheap Thrills. Producer John Simon tried recording the band in concert, to capture their energy in a live album, but several attempts showed the band was prone to mistakes. Their imprecision was not helped by moving the sessions to a recording studio. Joplin sang take after take of the same song, with her performances consistently good, and she grew frustrated with the band's sloppiness. Simon was replaced by Elliot Mazer who fixed the songs by overdubbing certain parts. The album featured a cover design by counterculture cartoonist Robert Crumb. Although Cheap Thrills sounded as if it consisted of concert recordings, like on "Combination of the Two" and "I Need a Man to Love", only "Ball and Chain" was actually recorded in front of a paying audience; the rest of the tracks were studio recordings. The album had a raw quality, including the sound of a drinking glass breaking and the broken shards being swept away during the song "Turtle Blues". Cheap Thrills produced very popular hits with "Piece of My Heart" and "Summertime". Together with the premiere of the documentary film Monterey Pop at New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on December 26, 1968, the album launched Joplin as a star. Cheap Thrills reached number one on the Billboard 200 album chart eight weeks after its release, and was number one for eight (nonconsecutive) weeks. The album was certified gold at release and sold over a million copies in the first month of its release. The lead single from the album, "Piece of My Heart", reached number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the fall of 1968. The band made another East Coast tour during July–August 1968, performing at the Columbia Records convention in Puerto Rico and the Newport Folk Festival. After returning to San Francisco for two hometown shows at the Palace of Fine Arts Festival on August 31 and September 1, Joplin announced that she would be leaving Big Brother. On September 14, 1968, culminating a three-night engagement together at Fillmore West, fans thronged to a concert that Bill Graham publicized as the last official concert of Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company. The opening acts on this night were Chicago (then still called Chicago Transit Authority) and Santana. Despite Graham's announcement that the Fillmore West gig was Big Brother's last concert with Joplin, the band—with Joplin still as lead vocalist—toured the U.S. that fall. Reflecting Joplin's crossover appeal, two October 1968 performances at a roller rink in Alexandria, Virginia, were reviewed by John Segraves of the conservative Washington Evening Star at a time when the Washington metropolitan area's hard rock scene was in its infancy. An opera buff at the time, he wrote: Later that month (October 1968), Big Brother performed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and played at the Syracuse War Memorial as part of Syracuse University's Fall Homecoming on October 11, with Janis joining openers the Butterfield Blues Band for their closing song. Aside from two 1970 reunions, Joplin's last performance with Big Brother was at a Chet Helms benefit in San Francisco on December 1, 1968. 1969–1970: Solo career After splitting from Big Brother and the Holding Company, Joplin formed a new backup group, the Kozmic Blues Band, composed of session musicians like keyboardist Stephen Ryder and saxophonist Cornelius "Snooky" Flowers, as well as former Big Brother and the Holding Company guitarist Sam Andrew and future Full Tilt Boogie Band bassist Brad Campbell. The band was influenced by the Stax-Volt rhythm and blues (R&B) and soul bands of the 1960s, as exemplified by Otis Redding and the Bar-Kays. The Stax-Volt R&B sound was typified by the use of horns and had a funky, pop-oriented sound in contrast to many of the psychedelic/hard rock bands of the period. By early 1969, Joplin was allegedly shooting at least $200 worth of heroin per day (equivalent to $1300 in 2016 dollars) although efforts were made to keep her clean during the recording of I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! Gabriel Mekler, who produced the album, told publicist-turned-biographer Myra Friedman after Joplin's death that she had lived in his Los Angeles house during the June 1969 recording sessions at his insistence so he could keep her away from drugs and her drug-using friends. Joplin's appearances with the Kozmic Blues Band in Europe were released in theaters, in multiple documentaries. Janis, which was reviewed by the Washington Post on March 21, 1975, shows Joplin arriving in Frankfurt by plane and waiting inside a bus next to the Frankfurt venue, while an American female fan who is visiting Germany expresses enthusiasm to the camera (no security was used in Frankfurt, so by the end of the concert, the stage was so packed with people the band members could not see each other). Janis also includes interviews with Joplin in Stockholm and from her visit to London, for her gig at Royal Albert Hall. The London interview was dubbed with a voiceover in the German language for broadcast on German television. John Byrne Cooke, road manager for Joplin and the Kozmic Blues Band, wrote a book published in 2014 in which he discussed her knowledge of the risks of her ongoing use of narcotics, particularly when she was outside the United States. On the episode of The Dick Cavett Show that was telecast in the United States on the night of July 18, 1969, Joplin and her band performed "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)" as well as "To Love Somebody". As Dick Cavett interviewed Joplin, she admitted that she had a terrible time touring in Europe, claiming that audiences there are very uptight and don't "get down". Released in September 1969, the Kozmic Blues album was certified gold later that year but did not match the success of Cheap Thrills. Reviews of the new group were mixed. However, the album's recording quality and engineering, as well as the musicianship (including three performances by former Bob Dylan/Paul Butterfield/Electric Flag guitarist Mike Bloomfield), were considered superior to her previous releases, and some music critics argued that the band was working in a much more constructive way to support Joplin's sensational vocal talents. Joplin wanted a horn section similar to that featured by the Chicago Transit Authority; her voice had the dynamic qualities and range not to be overpowered by the brighter horn sound. Some music critics, however, including Ralph J. Gleason of the San Francisco Chronicle, were negative. Gleason wrote that the new band was a "drag" and Joplin should "scrap" her new band and "go right back to being a member of Big Brother ... (if they'll have her)." Other reviewers, such as reporter Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, devoted entire articles to celebrating the singer's magic. Bernstein's review said that Joplin "has finally assembled a group of first-rate musicians with whom she is totally at ease and whose abilities complement the incredible range of her voice." Columbia Records released "Kozmic Blues" as a single, which peaked at number 41 on the Billboard Hot 100, and a live rendition of "Raise Your Hand" was released in Germany and became a top ten hit there. Containing other hits like "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)", "To Love Somebody", and "Little Girl Blue", I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! reached number five on the Billboard 200 soon after its release. Joplin appeared at Woodstock starting at approximately 2:00 a.m., on Sunday, August 17, 1969. Joplin informed her band that they would be performing at the concert as if it were just another gig. On Saturday afternoon, when she and the band were flown by helicopter with the pregnant Joan Baez and Baez's mother from a nearby motel to the festival site and Joplin saw the enormous crowd, she instantly became extremely nervous and giddy. Upon landing and getting off the helicopter, Joplin was approached by reporters asking her questions. She referred them to her friend and sometime lover Peggy Caserta as she was too excited to speak. Initially, Joplin was eager to get on the stage and perform but was repeatedly delayed as bands were contractually obliged to perform ahead of Joplin. Faced with a ten-hour wait after arriving at the backstage area, Joplin spent some of that time shooting heroin and drinking alcohol with Caserta in a tent. The director's cut of the Woodstock movie shows Joplin and Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick standing together near amplifiers watching the band Canned Heat's performance, which started at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, and Caserta does not appear within camera range. When Joplin finally reached the stage at approximately 2:00 a.m. Sunday, she was "three sheets to the wind", according to biographer Alice Echols. During her performance, Joplin's voice became slightly hoarse and wheezy, and she struggled to dance. Joplin pulled through, however, and engaged frequently with the crowd, asking them if they had everything they needed and if they were staying stoned. The audience cheered for an encore, to which Joplin replied and sang "Ball and Chain". Pete Townshend, who performed with the Who later in the same morning after Joplin finished, witnessed her performance and said the following in his 2012 memoir: "She had been amazing at Monterey, but tonight she wasn't at her best, due, probably, to the long delay, and probably, too, to the amount of booze and heroin she'd consumed while she waited. But even Janis on an off-night was incredible." Janis remained at Woodstock for the remainder of the festival. Starting at approximately 3:00 a.m. on Monday, August 18, Joplin was among many Woodstock performers who stood in a circle behind Crosby, Stills & Nash during their performance, which was the first time anyone at Woodstock ever had heard the group perform. This information was published by David Crosby in 1988. Later in the morning of August 18, Joplin and Joan Baez sat in Joe Cocker's van and witnessed Hendrix's close-of-show performance, according to Baez's memoir And a Voice to Sing With (1989). Still photographs in color show Joplin backstage with Grace Slick the day after Joplin's performance, wherein Joplin appears to be very happy. She was ultimately unhappy with her performance, however, and blamed Caserta. Her singing was not included (by her own insistence) in the 1970 documentary film or the soundtrack for Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More, although the 25th anniversary director's cut of Woodstock includes her performance of "Work Me, Lord". The documentary film of the festival that was released in theaters during 1970 includes, on the left side of a split screen, 37 seconds of footage of Joplin and Caserta walking toward Joplin's dressing room tent. In addition to Woodstock, Joplin also had problems at Madison Square Garden, in 1969. Biographer Myra Friedman said she had witnessed a duet Joplin sang with Tina Turner during the Rolling Stones concert at the Garden on Thanksgiving Day. Friedman said Joplin was "so drunk, so stoned, so out of control, that she could have been an institutionalized psychotic rent by mania." During another Garden concert where she had solo billing on December 19, some observers believed Joplin tried to incite the audience to riot. For part of this concert she was joined onstage by Johnny Winter and Paul Butterfield. Joplin told rock journalist David Dalton that Garden audiences watched and listened to "every note [she sang] with 'Is she gonna make it?' in their eyes." In her interview with Dalton she added that she felt most comfortable performing at small, cheap venues in San Francisco that were associated with the counterculture. At the time of the June 1970 interview with Dalton, she had already performed in the Bay Area for what turned out to be the last time. Sam Andrew, the lead guitarist who had left Big Brother with Joplin in December 1968 to form her back-up band, quit in late summer 1969 and returned to Big Brother. At the end of the year, the Kozmic Blues Band broke up. Their final gig with Joplin was the one at Madison Square Garden with Winter and Butterfield. In February 1970, Joplin traveled to Brazil, where she stopped her drug and alcohol use. She was accompanied on vacation there by her friend Linda Gravenites (wife of songwriter Nick Gravenites), who had designed Janis's stage costumes from 1967 to 1969. In Brazil, Joplin was romanced by a fellow American tourist named David (George) Niehaus, who was traveling around the world. A Joplin biography written by her sister Laura said, "David was an upper-middle-class Cincinnati kid who had studied communications at Notre Dame. ... [and] had joined the Peace Corps after college and worked in a small village in Turkey. ... He tried law school, but when he met Janis he was taking time off." Niehaus and Joplin were photographed by the press at Rio Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Gravenites also took color photographs of the two during their Brazilian vacation. According to Joplin biographer Ellis Amburn, in Gravenites' snapshots they "look like a carefree, happy, healthy young couple having a tremendously good time." Rolling Stone magazine interviewed Joplin during an international phone call, quoting her: "I'm going into the jungle with a big bear of a beatnik named David Niehaus. I finally remembered I don't have to be on stage twelve months a year. I've decided to go and dig some other jungles for a couple of weeks." Amburn added in 1992, "Janis was trying to kick heroin in Brazil, and one of the nicest things about David was that he wasn't into drugs." When Joplin returned to the U.S., she began using heroin again. Her relationship with Niehaus soon ended because he witnessed her shooting drugs at her new home in Larkspur, California. The relationship was also complicated by her ongoing romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta, who also was an intravenous addict, and Joplin's refusal to take some time off and travel the world with him. Around this time, she formed her new band, known for a short time as Main Squeeze, then renamed the Full Tilt Boogie Band. The band comprised mostly young Canadian musicians previously associated with Ronnie Hawkins and featured an organ, but no horn section. Joplin took a more active role in putting together the Full Tilt Boogie band than she had with her prior group. She was quoted as saying, "It's my band. Finally it's my band!" In May 1970, after performing under the name Main Squeeze at a Hell's Angels event, the renamed Full Tilt Boogie Band began a nationwide tour. Joplin became very happy with her new group, which eventually received mostly positive feedback from both her fans and the critics. Prior to beginning a summer tour with Full Tilt Boogie, she performed in a reunion with Big Brother at the Fillmore West, in San Francisco, on April 4, 1970. Recordings from this concert were included in an in-concert album released posthumously in 1972. She again appeared with Big Brother on April 12 at Winterland, where she and Big Brother were reported to be in excellent form. She performed with the band, billed as Main Squeeze, at a party for the Hells Angels at a venue in San Rafael, California on May 21, 1970, according to a web site maintained by Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew. Andrew's web site quotes him as saying, "This will be the first time that Janis' old band and her new band will be at the same venue, so everyone is a little on edge." According to Joplin's biographer Ellis Amburn, Big Brother with its lead singer Nick Gravenites was the opening act at the party that was attended by 2,300 people. The Hells Angels, who had known Joplin since 1966, paid her a fee of 240 dollars to perform. Gravenites and Sam Andrew (who had resumed playing guitar with Big Brother) differed in their opinions of her performance and how substance abuse affected it. Gravenites described her singing as "stupendous," according to Amburn. Amburn quoted Andrew twenty years later: "She was visibly deteriorating and she looked bloated. She was like a parody of what she was at her best. I put it down to her drinking too much and I felt a tinge of fear for her well-being. Her singing was real flabby, no edge at all." Shortly thereafter, Joplin began wearing multi-colored feather boas in her hair. (She had not worn them at the May 21 Hell's Angels party / concert in San Rafael). By the time she began touring with Full Tilt Boogie, Joplin told people she was drug-free, but her drinking increased. From June 28 to July 4, 1970, during the Festival Express tour, Joplin and Full Tilt Boogie performed alongside Buddy Guy, the Band, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Ten Years After, the Grateful Dead, Delaney & Bonnie, Eric Andersen, and Ian & Sylvia. They played concerts in Toronto, Winnipeg, and Calgary. Joplin jammed with the other performers on the train, and her performances on this tour are considered to be among her greatest. Joplin headlined the festival on all three nights. At the last stop in Calgary, she took to the stage with Jerry Garcia while her band was tuning up. Film footage shows her telling the audience how great the tour was and shows her and Garcia presenting the organizers with a case of tequila. She then burst into a two-hour set, starting with "Tell Mama". Throughout this performance, Joplin engaged in several banters about her love life. In one, she reminisced about living in a San Francisco apartment and competing with a female neighbor in flirting with men on the street. She finished the Calgary concert with long versions of "Get It While You Can" and "Ball and Chain". Footage of her performance of "Tell Mama" in Calgary became an MTV video in the early 1980s, and the audio from the same film footage was included on the Farewell Song (1982) album. The audio of other Festival Express performances was included on Joplin's In Concert (1972) album. Video of the performances was also included on the Festival Express DVD. These performances of entire songs during the Festival Express concerts in Toronto and Calgary can be purchased, although other songs remain in vaults and have yet to be released. In the "Tell Mama" video shown on MTV in the 1980s, Joplin wore a psychedelically colored, loose-fitting costume and feathers in her hair. This was her standard stage costume in the spring and summer of 1970. She chose the new costumes after her friend and designer, Linda Gravenites (whom Joplin had praised in Vogues profile of her in its May 1968 edition), cut ties with Joplin shortly after their return from Brazil, due largely to Joplin's continued use of heroin. Among Joplin's last public appearances were two broadcasts of The Dick Cavett Show. In her June 25, 1970 appearance, she announced that she would attend her ten-year high school class reunion. When asked if she had been popular in school, she admitted that when in high school, her schoolmates "laughed me out of class, out of town and out of the state" (during the year she had spent at the University of Texas at Austin, Joplin had been voted "Ugliest Man on Campus" by frat boys). In the subsequent Cavett Show broadcast, on August 3, 1970, and featuring Gloria Swanson, Joplin discussed her upcoming performance at the Festival for Peace to be held at Shea Stadium in Queens, New York, three days later. On July 11, 1970, Full Tilt Boogie and Big Brother and the Holding Company both performed at the same concert in the San Diego Sports Arena, which was decades later renamed the Valley View Casino Center. Joplin sang with Full Tilt Boogie and appeared briefly onstage with Big Brother without singing, according to a July 13 review of the concert in the San Diego Union. On August 7, 1970, a tombstone—jointly paid for by Joplin and Juanita Green, who as a child had done housework for Bessie Smith—was erected at Smith's previously unmarked grave. The following day, the Associated Press circulated this news, and the August 9 edition of The New York Times carried it. The lead paragraph of the AP story said Joplin and Green had "shared the cost of a stone for the 'Empress of the Blues,'" but, according to publicist/biographer Myra Friedman, the two women never met. Joplin had been at home in Larkspur, California when she had received a long-distance phone call with an explanation of the need to finance a gravestone for Bessie Smith, whom Joplin had frequently cited as a musical influence. Joplin immediately wrote a check and mailed it to the name and address provided by the phone caller. On August 8, 1970, as the Associated Press circulated the news about Smith's new gravestone, Joplin performed at the Capitol Theatre (Port Chester, New York). It was there that she first performed "Mercedes Benz", a song (partially inspired by a Michael McClure poem) that she had composed with fellow musician and friend Bob Neuwirth a very short time earlier. According to Myra Friedman's account, Joplin performed two shows at the Capitol Theatre, the first of which was attended by actors Geraldine Page and her husband Rip Torn. Between the shows, at a "gin mill" [Friedman's words] very close to this concert venue, Joplin and Neuwirth penned the lyrics to the song and she performed it at the second show, according to Friedman. Neuwirth was quoted by The Wall Street Journal in 2015: "Around 7 p.m., after the Capitol sound check, we had a couple of hours to kill before [acts that opened for Joplin] Seatrain and Runt finished their sets. So the four of us [Joplin, Neuwirth, Geraldine Page, Rip Torn] walked to a bar about three minutes away called Vahsen’s [at 30 Broad Street in Port Chester]." While in Vahsen's, "Janis came up with words for the first verse. I was in charge of writing them down on bar napkins with a ballpoint pen. She came up with the second verse, too, about a color TV. I suggested words here and there, and came up with the third verse—about asking the Lord to buy us a night on the town and another round." Joplin's last public performance with the Full Tilt Boogie Band took place on August 12, 1970, at the Harvard Stadium in Boston. The Harvard Crimson gave the performance a positive, front-page review, despite the fact that Full Tilt Boogie had performed with makeshift amplifiers after their regular sound equipment was stolen in Boston. Joplin attended her high school reunion on August 14, accompanied by Neuwirth, road manager John Cooke, and sister Laura, but it was reportedly an unhappy experience for her. Joplin held a press conference in Port Arthur during her reunion visit. When asked by a reporter if she ever entertained at Thomas Jefferson High School when she was a student there, Joplin replied, "Only when I walked down the aisles." Joplin denigrated Port Arthur and the classmates who had humiliated her a decade earlier. During late August, September, and early October 1970, Joplin and her band rehearsed and recorded a new album in Los Angeles with producer Paul A. Rothchild, best known for his lengthy relationship with The Doors. Although Joplin died before all the tracks were fully completed, there was enough usable material to compile an LP. The posthumous Pearl (1971) became the biggest-selling album of her career and featured her biggest hit single, a cover of Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster's "Me and Bobby McGee" (Kristofferson had previously been Joplin's lover in the spring of 1970). The opening track, "Move Over", was written by Joplin, reflecting the way that she felt men treated women in relationships. Also included was the social commentary of "Mercedes Benz", presented in an a cappella arrangement; the track on the album features the first and only take that Joplin recorded. A cover of Nick Gravenites's "Buried Alive in the Blues", to which Joplin had been scheduled to add her vocals on the day she was found dead, was included as an instrumental. Joplin checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood on August 24, 1970, near Sunset Sound Recorders, where she began rehearsing and recording her album. During the sessions, Joplin continued a relationship with Seth Morgan, a 21-year-old UC Berkeley student, cocaine dealer, and future novelist who had visited her new home in Larkspur in July and August. She and Morgan were engaged to be married in early September, although he visited Sunset Sound Recorders for just eight of Joplin's many rehearsals and sessions. Morgan later told biographer Myra Friedman that, as a non-musician, he had felt excluded whenever he had visited Sunset Sound Recorders. Instead, he stayed at Joplin's Larkspur home while she stayed alone at the Landmark, although several times she visited Larkspur to be with him and to check the progress of renovations she was having done on the house. She told her construction crew to design a carport to be shaped like a flying saucer, according to biographer Ellis Amburn, the concrete foundation for which was poured the day before she died. Peggy Caserta claimed in her book, Going Down With Janis (1973), that she and Joplin had decided mutually in April 1970 to stay away from each other to avoid enabling each other's drug use. Caserta, a former Delta Air Lines stewardess and owner of one of the first clothing boutiques in the Haight Ashbury, said in the book that by September 1970, she was smuggling cannabis throughout California and had checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel because it attracted drug users. For approximately the first two weeks of Joplin's stay at the Landmark, she did not know Caserta was in Los Angeles. Joplin learned of Caserta's presence at the Landmark from a heroin dealer who made deliveries there. Joplin begged Caserta for heroin, and when Caserta refused to provide it, Joplin reportedly admonished her by saying, "Don't think if you can get it, I can't get it." Joplin's publicist Myra Friedman was unaware during Joplin's lifetime that this had happened. Later, while Friedman was working on her book Buried Alive, she determined that the time frame of the Joplin-Caserta encounter was one week before Jimi Hendrix's death. Within a few days, Joplin became a regular customer of the same heroin dealer who had been supplying Caserta. Joplin's manager Albert Grossman and his assistant/publicist Friedman had staged an intervention with Joplin the previous winter while Joplin was in New York. In September 1970, Grossman and Friedman, who worked out of a New York office, knew Joplin was staying at a Los Angeles hotel, but were unaware it was a haven for drug users and dealers. Grossman and Friedman knew during Joplin's lifetime that her friend Caserta, whom Friedman met during the New York sessions for Cheap Thrills and on later occasions, used heroin. During the many long-distance telephone conversations that Joplin and Friedman had in September 1970 and on October 1, Joplin never mentioned Caserta, and Friedman assumed Caserta had been out of Joplin's life for a while. Friedman, who had more time than Grossman to monitor the situation, never visited California. She thought Joplin sounded on the phone like she was less depressed than she had been over the summer. When Joplin was not at Sunset Sound Recorders, she liked to drive her Porsche over the speed limit "on the winding part of Sunset Blvd.", according to a statement made by her attorney Robert Gordon in 1995 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Friedman wrote that the only Full Tilt Boogie member who rode as her passenger, Ken Pearson, often hesitated to join her, though he did on the night she died. He was not interested in using hard drugs. On September 26, 1970, Joplin recorded vocals for "Half Moon" and "Cry Baby". The session ended with Joplin, organist Ken Pearson, and drummer Clark Pierson making a special one-minute recording as a birthday gift to John Lennon. Joplin was among several singers who had been contacted by Yoko Ono with a request for a taped greeting for Lennon's 30th birthday, on October 9. Joplin, Pearson, and Pierson chose the Dale Evans composition "Happy Trails" as part of the greeting. Lennon told Dick Cavett on-camera the following year that Joplin's recorded birthday wishes arrived at his home after her death. On October 1, 1970, Joplin completed her last recording, "Mercedes Benz", which was recorded in a single take. On Saturday, October 3, Joplin visited Sunset Sound Recorders to listen to the instrumental track for Nick Gravenites's song "Buried Alive in the Blues", which the band had recorded earlier that day. She and Paul Rothchild agreed she would record the vocal the following day. At some point on Saturday, she learned by telephone, to her dismay, that Seth Morgan had met other women at a Marin County, California, restaurant, invited them to her home, and was shooting pool with them using her pool table. People at Sunset Sound Recorders overheard Joplin expressing anger about the state of her relationship with Morgan, as well as joy about the progress of the sessions. Joplin and Ken Pearson later left the studio together and she drove him in her Porsche to the West Hollywood landmark called Barney's Beanery. Friedman wrote, "At the bar, she drank vodka and orange juice, only two." Bennett Glotzer, a business partner of Joplin's manager Albert Grossman, was present at Barney's Beanery, according to what he told John Byrne Cooke immediately after he (Glotzer) learned of her death. Evidently, Joplin had a friendly conversation with a young man whom she did not know, and he expressed admiration for her music. After midnight, she drove Ken Pearson and the male fan to the Landmark where she and Pearson were staying in separate rooms. During the car ride, the fan asked Joplin questions "about her singing style," according to Friedman, and "she mostly ignored him" so she could converse with Pearson. As Joplin and Pearson prepared to part in the lobby of the Landmark, she expressed a fear, possibly in jest, that he and the other Full Tilt Boogie musicians might decide to stop making music with her. Pearson was the second-to-last person to see her alive. The last was the Landmark's night shift desk clerk. He had met her several times but did not know her. Personal life Joplin's significant relationships with men included ones with Peter de Blanc, Country Joe McDonald (who wrote the song "Janis" at Joplin's request), David (George) Niehaus, Kris Kristofferson, and Seth Morgan (from July 1970 until her death, at which time they were allegedly engaged). She also had relationships with women. During her first stint in San Francisco in 1963, Joplin met and briefly lived with Jae Whitaker, a black woman whom she had met while playing pool at the bar Gino & Carlo in North Beach. Whitaker broke off their relationship because of Joplin's hard drug use and sexual relationships with other people. Whitaker was first identified by name in connection with the singer in 1999, when Alice Echols' biography Scars of Sweet Paradise was published. Joplin also had an on-again-off-again romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta. They first met in November 1966 when Big Brother performed at a San Francisco venue called The Matrix. Caserta was one of 15 people in the audience, and at the time, she ran a successful clothing boutique in the Haight Ashbury. Approximately a month after Caserta attended the concert, Joplin visited her boutique and said she could not afford to buy a pair of jeans that was for sale, instead asking to put down the first 50 cents on the $5 item. Caserta was amazed that such a talented singer could not afford a $5 item, and gave her a pair for free. Their friendship was platonic for more than a year. Before it moved to the next level, Caserta was in love with Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, and sometime during the first half of 1968 traveled from San Francisco to New York to flirt with him. He did not want a serious relationship, and Joplin sympathized with Caserta's disappointment. The Woodstock concert film includes 37 seconds of Joplin and Caserta walking together before they reached the tent where Joplin waited for her turn to perform. By the time the festival took place in August 1969, both were intravenous heroin addicts. According to Caserta's book Going Down With Janis, which Caserta has since disowned, Joplin introduced her to her boyfriend Seth Morgan in Joplin's room at the Landmark Motor Hotel on September 29, 1970. Caserta "had seen him around" San Francisco but had not met him before. At some point, an agreement was made for a threesome to take place the following Friday, although Caserta later said that she immediately abandoned the idea once she understood that it was Morgan who would be with Joplin. Morgan made alternate plans, believing that Caserta would be with Joplin that evening. Each one, however, was unaware that the other had bowed out. The day after Joplin introduced Caserta to Morgan, Caserta saw Joplin briefly, again in Joplin's room, when Caserta accommodated her new Los Angeles friend Debbie Nuciforo, age 19, an aspiring hard rock drummer who wanted to meet Joplin. Nuciforo was stoned on heroin at the time, and the three women's encounter was brief and unpleasant. Caserta suspected that the reason for Joplin's foul mood was that Morgan had abandoned her earlier that day after having spent less than 24 hours with her. Caserta did not see nor communicate by phone with Joplin again, although she later claimed she had made several attempts to reach her by phone at the Landmark Motor Hotel and at Sunset Sound Recorders. Caserta and Morgan lost touch with each other; each had independently made alternate plans for Friday night, October 2. Joplin mentioned her disappointment (over both of her friends' bailing out of their ménage à trois) to her drug dealer on Saturday, while he was selling her the dose of heroin that killed her, as Caserta later learned from the drug dealer. Biographer Myra Friedman commented in her original version of Buried Alive (1973): Given the near-infinite potentials of infancy, it is really impossible to make generalizations about what lies behind sexual practices. This, however, is probable: to become clearly homosexual, to make the choice that one honestly prefers relations with one's own sex, no matter the origins of such preference, requires a certain integration, a stability of psychic development, a tidiness of personality organization. The ridicule and the humiliation that took place at that most delicate period in [Joplin's] early teens, her own inability to surmount the obstacles to regular growth, devastated her a great deal more than most people comprehended. Janis was not heir to an ego so cohesive as to permit her an identity one way or the other. She was, as [the psychiatric social worker she saw regularly in Beaumont, Texas in 1965 and 1966] Mr. [Bernard] Giarritano put it [in an interview with Friedman], "diffused" -- spewing, splattering, splaying all over, without a center to hold. That had as much to do with her original use of drugs [before she first met Giarritano] as did the critical component of guilt and its multiplicity of sources above and beyond the contribution made by her relationships with women. Were she so simple as the lesbians wished her to be or so free as her associates imagined! Kim France reported in her May 2, 1999 The New York Times article, "Nothin' Left to Lose" : "Once she became famous, Joplin cursed like a truck driver, did not believe in wearing undergarments, was rarely seen without her bottle of Southern Comfort and delighted in playing the role of sexual predator." On July 11, 1970, Joplin made a revealing statement about her sexuality to her friend Richard Hundgen, the Grateful Dead's San Francisco-based road manager whom she had known since 1966. When Joplin and Hundgen were offstage during a San Diego gig for both Full Tilt Boogie and Big Brother and the Holding Company, she said the following that he later repeated to Myra Friedman: I hear a rumor that somebody in San Francisco is spreading stories that I'm a dyke. You go back there and find out who it is and tell them that Janis says she's gotten it on with a couple of thousand cats in her life and a few hundred chicks and see what they can do with that! Death On Sunday evening, October 4, 1970, Joplin was found dead on the floor of her room at the Landmark Motor Hotel by her road manager and close friend John Byrne Cooke. Alcohol was present in the room. Newspapers reported that no other drugs or paraphernalia were present. According to a 1983 book authored by Joseph DiMona and Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi, evidence of narcotics was removed from the scene by a friend of Joplin and later put back after the person realized that an autopsy was going to reveal that narcotics were in her system. The book adds that prior to Joplin's death, Noguchi had investigated other fatal drug overdoses in Los Angeles where friends believed they were doing favors for decedents by removing evidence of narcotics, then they "thought things over" and returned to put back the evidence. Noguchi performed an autopsy on Joplin and determined the cause of death to be a heroin overdose, possibly compounded by alcohol. John Byrne Cooke believed Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than what she and other L.A. heroin users had received on previous occasions, as was indicated by overdoses of several of her dealer's other customers during the same weekend. Her death was ruled accidental. Both Peggy Caserta, Joplin's close friend, and Seth Morgan, Joplin's fiancé, had failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death, October 2; Joplin had been expecting both of them to keep her company that night. According to Caserta, Joplin was saddened that neither of her friends visited her at the Landmark as they had promised. During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment, Caserta did not phone her to explain why she had failed to show up. Caserta admitted to waiting until late Saturday night to dial the Landmark switchboard, only to learn that Joplin had instructed the desk clerk not to accept any incoming phone calls for her after midnight. Morgan did speak to Joplin via telephone within the 24 hours prior to her death, but little is known about that call. She used a phone at Sunset Sound Recorders where her colleagues (“there were perhaps twenty to twenty-five people pre‪sent,” wrote biographer Myra Friedman) noticed that whatever Morgan said to her made her very angry. Peggy Caserta has insisted that Joplin's death was not an accidental overdose, but rather a result of a head gash suffered after the "hourglass heel" of her slingback sandal caught in the shag carpet, causing her to lose her balance. Caserta does concede, however, that drugs and/or alcohol may have played a role in hastening her death that night. Joplin was cremated at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary in Los Angeles, and her ashes were scattered from a plane into the Pacific Ocean. Legacy Joplin's death in October 1970 at age 27 stunned her fans and shocked the music world, especially when coupled with the death just 16 days earlier of another rock icon, Jimi Hendrix, also at age 27. (This would later cause some people to attribute significance to the death of musicians at the age of 27, as celebrated in the "27 Club.") Music historian Tom Moon wrote that Joplin had "a devastatingly original voice," music columnist Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote that Joplin as an artist was "overpowering and deeply vulnerable" and author Megan Terry said that Joplin was the female version of Elvis Presley in her ability to captivate an audience. A book about Joplin by her publicist Myra Friedman titled Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin (1973) was excerpted in many newspapers. At the same time, Peggy Caserta's memoir, Going Down With Janis (1973), attracted much attention; its provocative title is a reference to Caserta's claim that she had engaged in oral sex with Joplin while they were high on heroin in September 1970. The description provided by Dan Knapp, Caserta’s co-author whom she denounced decades later, repelled many people in 1973 when few books or filmed interviews of Joplin or her loved ones were accessible to the public. Joplin's bandmate Sam Andrew described Caserta as "halfway between a groupie and a friend" in an interview with writer Ellis Amburn. Soon after the 1973 publication of Going Down With Janis, Joplin's friends learned that graphic descriptions of sexual acts and intravenous drug use were not the only portions of the book that would haunt them. According to Kim Chappell, a close friend of Caserta and Joplin, Caserta's book angered the Los Angeles heroin dealer whom she had described in detail in her book, including the make and model of his car. According to Amburn, in 1973 a "carful of dope dealers" visited a Los Angeles lesbian bar that Caserta had been frequenting. Chappell, who was in the alley behind the bar, stated: "I was stabbed because, when Peggy's book came out, her dealer, the same one who'd given Janis her last fix, didn't like it that he was referred to and was out to get Peggy. He couldn't find her, so he went for her lover. When they realized who I was, they felt that my death would also hit Peggy, and so they stabbed me." Despite being "stabbed three times in the chest, puncturing both lungs," Chappell eventually recovered. In 2018, Caserta denounced Going Down With Janis as the pornographic fantasy of Dan Knapp, her co-author, and largely unreliable. During that year, the public had its first access to her own story via a memoir she co-wrote with Maggie Falcon titled I Ran Into Some Trouble. It describes a long, friendly relationship with Joplin that only occasionally featured sexuality. According to Joplin’s biographers, Caserta was among many friends of Joplin who did not become clean and sober until a very long time after Joplin's death, while others died from overdoses. Although the wife of Big Brother guitarist James Gurley, who was Joplin's close friend, died from a heroin overdose in 1969, devastating Joplin, Gurley himself did not become clean and sober until 1984. Caserta survived "a near-fatal OD in December 1995," wrote Alice Echols. On January 13, 2000, Caserta appeared during a segment about Joplin on 20/20. Joplin's body art, with a wristlet and a small heart on her left breast by the San Francisco tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle, marked an early moment in the popular culture's acceptance of tattoos as art. Another trademark was her flamboyant hair styles, which often included colored streaks and accessories such as scarves, beads and feathers. When in New York City, Joplin frequented the Limbo boutique on St. Mark's Place, and she wore some of the vintage and unique garments that she purchased there on stage. The Mamas & the Papas' song "Pearl" (1971), from their People Like Us album, was a tribute. Leonard Cohen's song "Chelsea Hotel#2" (1974) is about Joplin. Lyricist Robert Hunter has commented that Jerry Garcia's "Birdsong" from his first solo album, Garcia (1972), is about Joplin and the end of her suffering through death. Mimi Farina's composition "In the Quiet Morning", most famously covered by Joan Baez on her Come from the Shadows (1972) album, was a tribute to Joplin. Another song by Baez, "Children of the Eighties," mentioned Joplin. A Serge Gainsbourg-penned French language song by English singer Jane Birkin, "Ex fan des sixties" (1978), references Joplin along with other disappeared "idols" such as Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones and Marc Bolan. When Joplin was alive, Country Joe McDonald released a song called "Janis" on his band's album I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die (1967). The film The Rose (1979) is loosely based on Joplin's life. Originally planned to be titled Pearl—Joplin's nickname and the title of her last album—the film was fictionalized after her family declined to allow the producers the rights to her story. Bette Midler earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the film. In 1988, on what would have been Joplin's 45th birthday, the Janis Joplin Memorial, with an original gold, multi-image sculpture of Joplin by Douglas Clark, was dedicated during a ceremony in Port Arthur, Texas. In 1992, the first major biography of Joplin in two decades, Love, Janis, authored by her younger sister Laura Joplin, was published. In an interview, Laura stated that Joplin enjoyed being on the Dick Cavett Show, that Joplin had difficulties with some, but not all, people at Thomas Jefferson High School and that Joplin enthusiastically talked about Woodstock with her parents and siblings during a visit to their Texas home a few weeks after she had performed at the festival. In 1995, Joplin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2005, she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In November 2009, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum honored her as part of its annual American Music Masters Series; among the artifacts at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum exhibition are Joplin's scarf and necklaces, her psychedelically painted 1965 Porsche 356 Cabriolet and a sheet of LSD blotting paper designed by Robert Crumb, designer of the Cheap Thrills cover. Also in 2009, Joplin was the honoree at the Rock Hall's American Music Master concert and lecture series. In the late 1990s, the musical play Love, Janis was created and directed by Randal Myler, with input from Janis' younger sister Laura and Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, with an aim to take it to Off-Broadway. Opening in the summer of 2001 and scheduled for only a few weeks of performances, the show won acclaim, played to packed houses and was held over several times. In 2013, Washington's Arena Stage featured a production of A Night with Janis Joplin, starring Mary Bridget Davies. In it, Joplin performs a concert for the audience while telling stories of her past inspirations, including those of Odetta and Aretha Franklin. The show went on tour in 2016. On November 4, 2013, Joplin was awarded with the 2,510th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the music industry. Her star is located at 6752 Hollywood Boulevard, in front of Musicians Institute. On August 8, 2014, the U.S. Postal Service revealed a commemorative stamp honoring Joplin as part of its Music Icons stamp series during a first-day-of-issue ceremony at the Outside Lands Music Festival at Golden Gate Park. Among the memorabilia Joplin left behind is a Gibson Hummingbird guitar. In 2015, the biographical documentary film Janis: Little Girl Blue, directed by Amy J. Berg and narrated by Cat Power, was released. It was a New York Times Critics' Pick. Influence Joplin had a profound influence on many singers. Pink said about Joplin: "She was so inspiring by singing blues music when it wasn't culturally acceptable for white women, and she wore her heart on her sleeve. She was so witty and charming and intelligent, but she also battled an ugly-duckling syndrome. I would love to play her in a movie." In a tribute performance on her Try This Tour, Pink called Joplin "a woman who inspired me when everyone else ... didn't!" Discography Janis Joplin recorded four albums in her four-year career. The first two albums were recorded with and credited to Big Brother and the Holding Company; the later two were recorded with different backing bands and released as solo albums. Posthumous releases have included previously unreleased studio and live material. Studio albums As lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company As solo artist Live albums Compilation albums Singles As lead of Big Brother and the Holding Company As solo artist Filmography Monterey Pop (1968) Petulia (1968) Janis Joplin Live in Frankfurt (1969) Janis (1974) Janis: The Way She Was (1974) Comin' Home (1988) Woodstock – The Lost Performances (1991) Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director's Cut) (1994) Festival Express (2003) Nine Hundred Nights (2004) The Dick Cavett Show: Rock Icons (2005) Shout Factory Rockin' at the Red Dog: The Dawn of Psychedelic Rock (2005) This is Tom Jones (2007) 1969 appearance on TV show Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director's Cut) 40th Anniversary Edition (2009) Janis Joplin with Big Brother: Ball and Chain (DVD) Charly (2009) Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015) Notes References Further reading – an encounter with Janis Joplin at the wheel. External links Janis Joplin at the Grammy Awards Janis Joplin on the Music-Map 1943 births 1970 deaths 20th-century American singers 20th-century American women singers American blues singers American child singers American mezzo-sopranos American women rock singers American women singer-songwriters American rhythm and blues singer-songwriters American rock songwriters American soul musicians Accidental deaths in California Big Brother and the Holding Company members Bisexual musicians Bisexual women Blues rock musicians Columbia Records artists Deaths by heroin overdose in California Drug-related deaths in California Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners LGBT people from Texas LGBT singers from the United States LGBT songwriters Lamar University alumni People from Beaumont, Texas People from Port Arthur, Texas Singer-songwriters from Texas University of Texas at Austin alumni 20th-century LGBT people
false
[ "This Is Janis Joplin 1965 is an album by Janis Joplin released by James Gurley in 1995.\n\nRecord history\nRecorded originally in 1965, the seven tracks that appear here are all previously unreleased, including Joplin's original version of her song \"Turtle Blues\" and an alternate version of \"Cod'ine\" by Buffy Sainte-Marie. Originally just Joplin and her guitar, a full band has been added to these tracks. The original takes of these songs have been released on the 9 disc compilation Blow All My Blues Away , with the exception of \"Cod'ine\", which is also the enhanced version featured on this collection.\n\nTrack listing\n\"Apple of My Eye\"\n\"Zip Train [219 Train]\"\n\"Cod'ine\" (Buffy Sainte-Marie, Janis Joplin)\n\"Down and Out\"\n\"Turtle Blues\" (Janis Joplin)\n\"I Ain't Got a Worry\"\n\"Brownsville\"\n\n1995 compilation albums\nJanis Joplin compilation albums\nCompilation albums published posthumously", "\"What Good Can Drinkin' Do\" is a blues song by Janis Joplin, the first song she ever recorded. \n\nThe song has six verses, following the 12-bar blues pattern. Lyrics in the first and last verse are almost identical: \"What good can drinkin' do ?\" is sung twice, then answered with \"Lord, I drink all night but the next day I still feel blue.\"\n\nRecordings of this song can be heard on her 1975 album, Janis, or on the later box set Janis. Record Collector cites her intro to the song: Up steps a feisty young woman, one month short of her twentieth birthday. \"Uh, this is a song called 'What Good Can Drinkin' Do', that I wrote one night after drinkin' myself into a stupor.\" ... \n\nIn 2009, Austin musician Carolyn Wonderland began including the song in some of her live performances, after appearing at The American Music Masters tribute to Janis Joplin, \"Kozmic Blues: The Life and Music of Janis Joplin.\"\n\nReferences\n\nJanis Joplin songs\n1962 songs\nSongs about alcohol\nSong articles with missing songwriters" ]
[ "Janis Joplin", "Death", "What year did Janis die?", "1970,", "How old was she when she died?", "On October 4, 1970, producer Paul Rothchild became concerned when Joplin failed to show up at Sunset Sound Recorders for a recording", "Was Janis with anyone when she died?", "Peggy Caserta and Seth Morgan had both failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death,", "Had anyone tried to stop Janis from using heroin?", "During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment,", "Was Janis Joplin suicidal?", "Cooke believes Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than normal, as several of her dealer's other customers also overdosed that week.", "Did anyone else from her band overdose?", "I don't know.", "After her death, did Janis Joplin's popularity go up or down?", "Joplin's last will and testament funded $2,500 to throw a wake party in the event of her demise." ]
C_3938290d39f0420aa035060edc72696f_0
What other bequests did Janis make in her will?
8
Other than wake party fund of $2500, what other bequests did Janis Joplin make in her own will?
Janis Joplin
On October 4, 1970, producer Paul Rothchild became concerned when Joplin failed to show up at Sunset Sound Recorders for a recording session. Full Tilt Boogie's road manager, John Cooke, drove to the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood where Joplin was staying. He saw Joplin's psychedelically painted Porsche 356 C Cabriolet in the parking lot, and upon entering Joplin's room (#105), he found her dead on the floor beside her bed. The official cause of death was a heroin overdose, possibly compounded by alcohol. Cooke believes Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than normal, as several of her dealer's other customers also overdosed that week. Peggy Caserta and Seth Morgan had both failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death, October 2, and Joplin had been expecting both of them to keep her company that night. According to Caserta, Joplin was saddened that neither of her friends visited her at the Landmark as they had promised. During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment, Caserta did not phone her to explain why she had failed to show up. Caserta admitted to waiting until late Saturday night to dial the Landmark switchboard, only to learn that Joplin had instructed the desk clerk not to accept any incoming phone calls for her after midnight. Morgan did speak to Joplin via telephone within 24 hours of her death, but it is not known whether he admitted to her that he had broken his promise. Joplin's last will and testament funded $2,500 to throw a wake party in the event of her demise. The party took place on October 26, 1970, at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo, California, and was attended by Joplin's sister Laura, Morgan, and other close friends, including Cooke, Bob Gordon, Jack Penty, and tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter who sang rock, soul, and blues music. One of the most successful and widely known rock stars of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and "electric" stage presence. In 1967, Joplin rose to fame following an appearance at Monterey Pop Festival, where she was the lead singer of the then little-known San Francisco psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company. After releasing two albums with the band, she left Big Brother to continue as a solo artist with her own backing groups, first the Kozmic Blues Band and then the Full Tilt Boogie Band. She appeared at the Woodstock festival and on the Festival Express train tour. Five singles by Joplin reached the Billboard Hot 100, including a cover of the Kris Kristofferson song "Me and Bobby McGee", which reached number one in March 1971. Her most popular songs include her cover versions of "Piece of My Heart", "Cry Baby", "Down on Me", "Ball and Chain", and "Summertime"; and her original song "Mercedes Benz", her final recording. Joplin died of a heroin overdose in 1970, at the age of 27, after releasing three albums (two with Big Brother and the Holding Company and one solo album). A second solo album, Pearl, was released in January 1971, just over three months after her death. It reached number one on the Billboard charts. She was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Rolling Stone ranked Joplin number 46 on its 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. She remains one of the top-selling musicians in the United States, with Recording Industry Association of America certifications of 18.5 million albums sold. Early life Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on , to Dorothy Bonita East (1913–1998), a registrar at a business college, and her husband, Seth Ward Joplin (1910–1987), an engineer at Texaco. She had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. The family attended First Christian Church of Port Arthur, a church belonging to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) denomination. Her parents felt that Janis needed more attention than their other children. As a teenager, Joplin befriended a group of outcasts, one of whom had albums by blues artists Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Lead Belly, which Joplin later credited with influencing her decision to become a singer. She began singing blues and folk music with friends at Thomas Jefferson High School. In high school, she was a classmate of Pro Football Hall of Fame coach Jimmy Johnson. Joplin stated that she was ostracized and bullied in high school. As a teen, she became overweight and suffered from acne, leaving her with deep scars that required dermabrasion. Other kids at high school would routinely taunt her and call her names like "pig," "freak," "nigger lover," or "creep." She stated, "I was a misfit. I read, I painted, I thought. I didn't hate niggers." Joplin graduated from high school in 1960 and attended Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, Texas, during the summer and later the University of Texas at Austin (UT), though she did not complete her college studies. The campus newspaper, The Daily Texan, ran a profile of her in the issue dated July 27, 1962, headlined "She Dares to Be Different." The article began, "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levi's to class because they're more comfortable, and carries her autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break into song, it will be handy. Her name is Janis Joplin." While at UT she performed with a folk trio called the Waller Creek Boys and frequently socialized with the staff of the campus humor magazine The Texas Ranger. According to Freak Brothers cartoonist Gilbert Shelton, who befriended her, she used to sell The Texas Ranger, which contained some of Shelton's early comic books, on the campus. Career 1962–1965: Early recordings Joplin cultivated a rebellious manner and styled herself partly after her female blues heroines and partly after the Beat poets. Her first song, "What Good Can Drinkin' Do", was recorded on tape in December 1962 at the home of a fellow University of Texas student. She left Texas in January 1963 ("Just to get away," she said, "because my head was in a much different place"), hitchhiking with her friend Chet Helms to North Beach, San Francisco. Still in San Francisco in 1964, Joplin and future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen recorded a number of blues standards, which incidentally featured Kaukonen's wife Margareta using a typewriter in the background. This session included seven tracks: "Typewriter Talk", "Trouble in Mind", "Kansas City Blues", "Hesitation Blues", "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out", "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy", and "Long Black Train Blues", and was released long after Joplin's death as the bootleg album The Typewriter Tape. In 1963, Joplin was arrested in San Francisco for shoplifting. During the two years that followed, her drug use increased and she acquired a reputation as a "speed freak" and occasional heroin user. She also used other psychoactive drugs and was a heavy drinker throughout her career; her favorite alcoholic beverage was Southern Comfort. In May 1965, Joplin's friends in San Francisco, noticing the detrimental effects on her from regularly injecting methamphetamine (she was described as "skeletal" and "emaciated"), persuaded her to return to Port Arthur. During that month, her friends threw her a bus-fare party so she could return to her parents in Texas. Five years later, Joplin told Rolling Stone magazine writer David Dalton the following about her first stint in San Francisco: "I didn't have many friends and I didn't like the ones I had." Back in Port Arthur in the spring of 1965, after Joplin's parents noticed her weight of , she changed her lifestyle. She avoided drugs and alcohol, adopted a beehive hairdo, and enrolled as an anthropology major at Lamar University in nearby Beaumont, Texas. Her sister Laura said in a 2016 interview that social work was her major during her year at Lamar. During her time at Lamar University, she commuted to Austin to sing solo, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar. One of her performances was at a benefit by local musicians for Texas bluesman Mance Lipscomb, who was suffering with ill health. Joplin became engaged to Peter de Blanc in the fall of 1965. She had begun a relationship with him toward the end of her first stint in San Francisco. Now living in New York where he worked with IBM computers, he visited her to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Joplin and her mother began planning the wedding. De Blanc, who traveled frequently, ended the engagement soon afterward. In 1965 and 1966, Joplin commuted from her family's Port Arthur home to Beaumont, Texas, where she had regular sessions with a psychiatric social worker named Bernard Giarritano at a counseling agency that was funded by the United Fund, which after her death changed its name to the United Way. Interviewed by biographer Myra Friedman after his client's death, Giarritano said Joplin had been baffled by how she could pursue a professional career as a singer without relapsing into drugs, and her drug-related memories from immediately prior to returning to Port Arthur continued to frighten her. Joplin sometimes brought an acoustic guitar with her to her sessions with Giarritano, and people in other offices within the building could hear her singing. Giarritano tried to reassure her that she did not have to use narcotics in order to succeed in the music business. She also said that if she were to avoid singing professionally, she would have to become a keypunch operator (as she had done a few years earlier) or a secretary, and then a wife and mother, and she would have to become very similar to all the other women in Port Arthur. Approximately a year before Joplin joined Big Brother and the Holding Company, she recorded seven studio tracks with her acoustic guitar. Among the songs she recorded were her original composition of the song "Turtle Blues" and an alternate version of "Cod'ine" by Buffy Sainte-Marie. These tracks were later issued as a new album in 1995, titled This is Janis Joplin 1965 by James Gurley. 1966–1969: Various bands In 1966, Joplin's bluesy vocal style attracted the attention of the San Francisco-based psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, which had gained some renown among the nascent hippie community in Haight-Ashbury. She was recruited to join the group by Chet Helms, a promoter who was managing Big Brother and with whom she had hitchhiked from Texas to San Francisco a few years earlier. Helms sent his friend Travis Rivers to find her in Austin, Texas, where she had been performing with her acoustic guitar, and to accompany her to San Francisco. Aware of her previous nightmare with drug addiction in San Francisco, Rivers insisted that she inform her parents face-to-face of her plans, and he drove her from Austin to Port Arthur (he waited in his car while she talked with her startled parents) before they began their long drive to San Francisco. Joplin joined Big Brother on June 4, 1966. Her first public performance with them was at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. In June, Joplin was photographed at an outdoor concert in San Francisco that celebrated the summer solstice. The image, which was later published in two books by David Dalton, shows her before she relapsed into drugs. Due to persistent persuading by keyboardist and close friend Stephen Ryder, Joplin avoided drugs for several weeks. She made Travis Rivers, with whom she shared an apartment upon their arrival in San Francisco, promise that using needles would not be allowed there. When bandmate Dave Getz accompanied her from a rehearsal to her home, Rivers was not there, but "two or three" (according to Getz' recollection 25 years later) guests whom Rivers had invited were in the process of injecting drugs. "One of them was about to tie off," recalled Getz. "Janis went nuts! I had never seen anybody explode like that. She was screaming and crying and Travis walked in. She screamed at him: 'We had a pact! You promised me! There wouldn't be any of that in front of me!' I was over my head and I tried to calm her down. I said, 'They're just doing mescaline,' because that's what I thought it was. She said, 'You don't understand! I can't see that! I just can't stand to see that!'" A San Francisco concert from that summer (1966) was recorded and released on the 1984 album Cheaper Thrills. In July, all five bandmates and guitarist James Gurley's wife Nancy moved to a house in Lagunitas, California, where they lived communally. The band often partied with the Grateful Dead, the members of whom lived less than two miles away. She had a short relationship and longer friendship with founding member Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. The band went to Chicago for a four-week engagement in August 1966, then found itself stranded after the promoter ran out of money when its concerts did not attract the expected audience levels, and he was unable to pay them. In the circumstances the band signed with Bob Shad's record label Mainstream Records; recordings for the label took place in Chicago in September, but these were not satisfactory, and the band returned to San Francisco, continuing to perform live, including at the Love Pageant Rally. The band recorded two tracks, "Blindman" and "All Is Loneliness", in Los Angeles, and these were released by Mainstream as a single that did not sell well. After playing at a happening in Stanford in early December 1966, the band traveled back to Los Angeles to record ten tracks between December 12 and 14, 1966, produced by Bob Shad, which appeared on the band's debut album in August 1967. In late 1966, Big Brother switched managers from Chet Helms to Julius Karpen. One of Joplin's earliest major performances in 1967 was at the Mantra-Rock Dance, a musical event held on January 29 at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. Janis Joplin and Big Brother performed there along with the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami, Allen Ginsberg, Moby Grape, and the Grateful Dead, donating proceeds to the Krishna temple. In early 1967, Joplin met Country Joe McDonald of the group Country Joe and the Fish. The pair lived together as a couple for a few months. Joplin and Big Brother began playing clubs in San Francisco, at the Fillmore West, Winterland, and the Avalon Ballroom. They also played at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, as well as in Seattle, Washington; Vancouver, British Columbia; the Psychedelic Supermarket in Boston, Massachusetts; and the Golden Bear Club in Huntington Beach, California. The band's debut studio album, Big Brother & the Holding Company, was released by Mainstream Records in August 1967, shortly after the group's breakthrough appearance in June at the Monterey Pop Festival. Two tracks, "Coo Coo" and "The Last Time," were released separately as singles, while the tracks from the previous single, "Blindman" and "All Is Loneliness", were added to the remaining eight tracks. When Columbia Records took over the band's contract and re-released the album, they included "Coo Coo" and "The Last Time", and put "featuring Janis Joplin" on the cover. The debut album spawned four minor hits with the singles "Down on Me", a traditional song arranged by Joplin, "Bye Bye Baby", "Call On Me" and "Coo Coo", on all of which Joplin sang lead vocals. Two songs from the second of Big Brother's two sets at Monterey, which they played on Sunday, were filmed (their first set, which was on Saturday, was not filmed, though it was audio-recorded). Some sources, including a Joplin biography by Ellis Amburn, claim that she was dressed in thrift store hippie clothes or second-hand Victorian clothes during the band's Saturday set, but still photographs do not appear to have survived. Digitized color film of two songs in the Sunday set, "Combination of the Two" and a version of Big Mama Thornton's "Ball and Chain," appear in the DVD and Blu-ray boxed set of D. A. Pennebaker's documentary Monterey Pop released by The Criterion Collection. She is seen wearing an expensive gold tunic dress with matching pants. They were created for her by San Francisco clothing designer Colin Rose. Documentary filmmaker Pennebaker inserted two cutaway shots of Cass Elliot of the Mamas & the Papas seated in the audience during Joplin's performance of "Ball and Chain", one in the middle of the song as her eyes, covered by sunglasses, are fixed on Joplin, and also a shot during the applause as she silently mouths "Oh, wow!" and looks at the person seated next to her. Elliot and the audience are seen in sunlight, but Sunday's Big Brother performance was filmed in the evening. An explanation came from Big Brother's road manager John Byrne Cooke, who remembers that Pennebaker discreetly filmed the audience (including Elliot) during Big Brother's Saturday performance when he was not allowed to point a camera at the band. The prohibition of Pennebaker from filming on Saturday afternoon came from Big Brother's manager Julius Karpen. The band had a bitter argument with Karpen and overruled him as they prepared for their second set that the festival organizers had added on the spur of the moment. Backstage at the festival, the band became acquainted with New York-based talent manager Albert Grossman but did not sign with him until several months later, firing Karpen at that time. Only "Ball and Chain" was included in the Monterey Pop film that was released to theaters throughout the United States in 1969 and shown on television in the 1970s. Those who did not attend the Monterey Pop Festival saw the band's performance of "Combination of the Two" for the first time in 2002 when The Criterion Collection released the boxed set. For the remainder of 1967, even after Big Brother signed with Albert Grossman, the band performed mainly in California. On February 16, 1968, the group began its first East Coast tour in Philadelphia, and the following day gave their first performance in New York City at the Anderson Theater. On April 7, 1968—three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the last day of their East Coast tour—Joplin and Big Brother performed with Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens, Paul Butterfield, and Elvin Bishop at the Wake for Martin Luther King Jr. concert in New York. Live at Winterland '68, recorded at the Winterland Ballroom on April 12 and 13, 1968, features Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company at the height of their mutual career working through a selection of tracks from their albums. A recording became available to the public for the first time in 1998 when Columbia/Sony Music Entertainment released the compact disc. One month after the Winterland concert, Owsley Stanley recorded them at the Carousel Ballroom, released in 2012 as Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968. On July 31, 1968, Joplin made her first nationwide television appearance when the band performed on This Morning, an ABC daytime 90-minute variety show that was hosted by Dick Cavett. Shortly thereafter, network employees wiped the videotape, though the audio survives. (In 1969 and 1970, Joplin made three appearances on Cavett's prime-time program. Video was preserved and excerpts have been included in most documentaries about Joplin. Audio of her 1968 appearance has not been used since then.) Sometime in 1968, the band's billing was changed to "Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company," and the media coverage given to Joplin generated resentment within the band. The other members of Big Brother thought that Joplin was on a "star trip", while others were telling Joplin that Big Brother was a terrible band and that she ought to dump them. Time magazine called Joplin "probably the most powerful singer to emerge from the white rock movement", and Richard Goldstein wrote for the May 1968 issue of Vogue magazine that Joplin was "the most staggering leading woman in rock...she slinks like tar, scowls like war...clutching the knees of a final stanza, begging it not to leave.... Janis Joplin can sing the chic off any listener." For her first major studio recording, Joplin played a major role in the arrangement and production of the songs that would comprise Big Brother and the Holding Company's second album, Cheap Thrills. Producer John Simon tried recording the band in concert, to capture their energy in a live album, but several attempts showed the band was prone to mistakes. Their imprecision was not helped by moving the sessions to a recording studio. Joplin sang take after take of the same song, with her performances consistently good, and she grew frustrated with the band's sloppiness. Simon was replaced by Elliot Mazer who fixed the songs by overdubbing certain parts. The album featured a cover design by counterculture cartoonist Robert Crumb. Although Cheap Thrills sounded as if it consisted of concert recordings, like on "Combination of the Two" and "I Need a Man to Love", only "Ball and Chain" was actually recorded in front of a paying audience; the rest of the tracks were studio recordings. The album had a raw quality, including the sound of a drinking glass breaking and the broken shards being swept away during the song "Turtle Blues". Cheap Thrills produced very popular hits with "Piece of My Heart" and "Summertime". Together with the premiere of the documentary film Monterey Pop at New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on December 26, 1968, the album launched Joplin as a star. Cheap Thrills reached number one on the Billboard 200 album chart eight weeks after its release, and was number one for eight (nonconsecutive) weeks. The album was certified gold at release and sold over a million copies in the first month of its release. The lead single from the album, "Piece of My Heart", reached number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the fall of 1968. The band made another East Coast tour during July–August 1968, performing at the Columbia Records convention in Puerto Rico and the Newport Folk Festival. After returning to San Francisco for two hometown shows at the Palace of Fine Arts Festival on August 31 and September 1, Joplin announced that she would be leaving Big Brother. On September 14, 1968, culminating a three-night engagement together at Fillmore West, fans thronged to a concert that Bill Graham publicized as the last official concert of Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company. The opening acts on this night were Chicago (then still called Chicago Transit Authority) and Santana. Despite Graham's announcement that the Fillmore West gig was Big Brother's last concert with Joplin, the band—with Joplin still as lead vocalist—toured the U.S. that fall. Reflecting Joplin's crossover appeal, two October 1968 performances at a roller rink in Alexandria, Virginia, were reviewed by John Segraves of the conservative Washington Evening Star at a time when the Washington metropolitan area's hard rock scene was in its infancy. An opera buff at the time, he wrote: Later that month (October 1968), Big Brother performed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and played at the Syracuse War Memorial as part of Syracuse University's Fall Homecoming on October 11, with Janis joining openers the Butterfield Blues Band for their closing song. Aside from two 1970 reunions, Joplin's last performance with Big Brother was at a Chet Helms benefit in San Francisco on December 1, 1968. 1969–1970: Solo career After splitting from Big Brother and the Holding Company, Joplin formed a new backup group, the Kozmic Blues Band, composed of session musicians like keyboardist Stephen Ryder and saxophonist Cornelius "Snooky" Flowers, as well as former Big Brother and the Holding Company guitarist Sam Andrew and future Full Tilt Boogie Band bassist Brad Campbell. The band was influenced by the Stax-Volt rhythm and blues (R&B) and soul bands of the 1960s, as exemplified by Otis Redding and the Bar-Kays. The Stax-Volt R&B sound was typified by the use of horns and had a funky, pop-oriented sound in contrast to many of the psychedelic/hard rock bands of the period. By early 1969, Joplin was allegedly shooting at least $200 worth of heroin per day (equivalent to $1300 in 2016 dollars) although efforts were made to keep her clean during the recording of I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! Gabriel Mekler, who produced the album, told publicist-turned-biographer Myra Friedman after Joplin's death that she had lived in his Los Angeles house during the June 1969 recording sessions at his insistence so he could keep her away from drugs and her drug-using friends. Joplin's appearances with the Kozmic Blues Band in Europe were released in theaters, in multiple documentaries. Janis, which was reviewed by the Washington Post on March 21, 1975, shows Joplin arriving in Frankfurt by plane and waiting inside a bus next to the Frankfurt venue, while an American female fan who is visiting Germany expresses enthusiasm to the camera (no security was used in Frankfurt, so by the end of the concert, the stage was so packed with people the band members could not see each other). Janis also includes interviews with Joplin in Stockholm and from her visit to London, for her gig at Royal Albert Hall. The London interview was dubbed with a voiceover in the German language for broadcast on German television. John Byrne Cooke, road manager for Joplin and the Kozmic Blues Band, wrote a book published in 2014 in which he discussed her knowledge of the risks of her ongoing use of narcotics, particularly when she was outside the United States. On the episode of The Dick Cavett Show that was telecast in the United States on the night of July 18, 1969, Joplin and her band performed "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)" as well as "To Love Somebody". As Dick Cavett interviewed Joplin, she admitted that she had a terrible time touring in Europe, claiming that audiences there are very uptight and don't "get down". Released in September 1969, the Kozmic Blues album was certified gold later that year but did not match the success of Cheap Thrills. Reviews of the new group were mixed. However, the album's recording quality and engineering, as well as the musicianship (including three performances by former Bob Dylan/Paul Butterfield/Electric Flag guitarist Mike Bloomfield), were considered superior to her previous releases, and some music critics argued that the band was working in a much more constructive way to support Joplin's sensational vocal talents. Joplin wanted a horn section similar to that featured by the Chicago Transit Authority; her voice had the dynamic qualities and range not to be overpowered by the brighter horn sound. Some music critics, however, including Ralph J. Gleason of the San Francisco Chronicle, were negative. Gleason wrote that the new band was a "drag" and Joplin should "scrap" her new band and "go right back to being a member of Big Brother ... (if they'll have her)." Other reviewers, such as reporter Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, devoted entire articles to celebrating the singer's magic. Bernstein's review said that Joplin "has finally assembled a group of first-rate musicians with whom she is totally at ease and whose abilities complement the incredible range of her voice." Columbia Records released "Kozmic Blues" as a single, which peaked at number 41 on the Billboard Hot 100, and a live rendition of "Raise Your Hand" was released in Germany and became a top ten hit there. Containing other hits like "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)", "To Love Somebody", and "Little Girl Blue", I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! reached number five on the Billboard 200 soon after its release. Joplin appeared at Woodstock starting at approximately 2:00 a.m., on Sunday, August 17, 1969. Joplin informed her band that they would be performing at the concert as if it were just another gig. On Saturday afternoon, when she and the band were flown by helicopter with the pregnant Joan Baez and Baez's mother from a nearby motel to the festival site and Joplin saw the enormous crowd, she instantly became extremely nervous and giddy. Upon landing and getting off the helicopter, Joplin was approached by reporters asking her questions. She referred them to her friend and sometime lover Peggy Caserta as she was too excited to speak. Initially, Joplin was eager to get on the stage and perform but was repeatedly delayed as bands were contractually obliged to perform ahead of Joplin. Faced with a ten-hour wait after arriving at the backstage area, Joplin spent some of that time shooting heroin and drinking alcohol with Caserta in a tent. The director's cut of the Woodstock movie shows Joplin and Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick standing together near amplifiers watching the band Canned Heat's performance, which started at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, and Caserta does not appear within camera range. When Joplin finally reached the stage at approximately 2:00 a.m. Sunday, she was "three sheets to the wind", according to biographer Alice Echols. During her performance, Joplin's voice became slightly hoarse and wheezy, and she struggled to dance. Joplin pulled through, however, and engaged frequently with the crowd, asking them if they had everything they needed and if they were staying stoned. The audience cheered for an encore, to which Joplin replied and sang "Ball and Chain". Pete Townshend, who performed with the Who later in the same morning after Joplin finished, witnessed her performance and said the following in his 2012 memoir: "She had been amazing at Monterey, but tonight she wasn't at her best, due, probably, to the long delay, and probably, too, to the amount of booze and heroin she'd consumed while she waited. But even Janis on an off-night was incredible." Janis remained at Woodstock for the remainder of the festival. Starting at approximately 3:00 a.m. on Monday, August 18, Joplin was among many Woodstock performers who stood in a circle behind Crosby, Stills & Nash during their performance, which was the first time anyone at Woodstock ever had heard the group perform. This information was published by David Crosby in 1988. Later in the morning of August 18, Joplin and Joan Baez sat in Joe Cocker's van and witnessed Hendrix's close-of-show performance, according to Baez's memoir And a Voice to Sing With (1989). Still photographs in color show Joplin backstage with Grace Slick the day after Joplin's performance, wherein Joplin appears to be very happy. She was ultimately unhappy with her performance, however, and blamed Caserta. Her singing was not included (by her own insistence) in the 1970 documentary film or the soundtrack for Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More, although the 25th anniversary director's cut of Woodstock includes her performance of "Work Me, Lord". The documentary film of the festival that was released in theaters during 1970 includes, on the left side of a split screen, 37 seconds of footage of Joplin and Caserta walking toward Joplin's dressing room tent. In addition to Woodstock, Joplin also had problems at Madison Square Garden, in 1969. Biographer Myra Friedman said she had witnessed a duet Joplin sang with Tina Turner during the Rolling Stones concert at the Garden on Thanksgiving Day. Friedman said Joplin was "so drunk, so stoned, so out of control, that she could have been an institutionalized psychotic rent by mania." During another Garden concert where she had solo billing on December 19, some observers believed Joplin tried to incite the audience to riot. For part of this concert she was joined onstage by Johnny Winter and Paul Butterfield. Joplin told rock journalist David Dalton that Garden audiences watched and listened to "every note [she sang] with 'Is she gonna make it?' in their eyes." In her interview with Dalton she added that she felt most comfortable performing at small, cheap venues in San Francisco that were associated with the counterculture. At the time of the June 1970 interview with Dalton, she had already performed in the Bay Area for what turned out to be the last time. Sam Andrew, the lead guitarist who had left Big Brother with Joplin in December 1968 to form her back-up band, quit in late summer 1969 and returned to Big Brother. At the end of the year, the Kozmic Blues Band broke up. Their final gig with Joplin was the one at Madison Square Garden with Winter and Butterfield. In February 1970, Joplin traveled to Brazil, where she stopped her drug and alcohol use. She was accompanied on vacation there by her friend Linda Gravenites (wife of songwriter Nick Gravenites), who had designed Janis's stage costumes from 1967 to 1969. In Brazil, Joplin was romanced by a fellow American tourist named David (George) Niehaus, who was traveling around the world. A Joplin biography written by her sister Laura said, "David was an upper-middle-class Cincinnati kid who had studied communications at Notre Dame. ... [and] had joined the Peace Corps after college and worked in a small village in Turkey. ... He tried law school, but when he met Janis he was taking time off." Niehaus and Joplin were photographed by the press at Rio Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Gravenites also took color photographs of the two during their Brazilian vacation. According to Joplin biographer Ellis Amburn, in Gravenites' snapshots they "look like a carefree, happy, healthy young couple having a tremendously good time." Rolling Stone magazine interviewed Joplin during an international phone call, quoting her: "I'm going into the jungle with a big bear of a beatnik named David Niehaus. I finally remembered I don't have to be on stage twelve months a year. I've decided to go and dig some other jungles for a couple of weeks." Amburn added in 1992, "Janis was trying to kick heroin in Brazil, and one of the nicest things about David was that he wasn't into drugs." When Joplin returned to the U.S., she began using heroin again. Her relationship with Niehaus soon ended because he witnessed her shooting drugs at her new home in Larkspur, California. The relationship was also complicated by her ongoing romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta, who also was an intravenous addict, and Joplin's refusal to take some time off and travel the world with him. Around this time, she formed her new band, known for a short time as Main Squeeze, then renamed the Full Tilt Boogie Band. The band comprised mostly young Canadian musicians previously associated with Ronnie Hawkins and featured an organ, but no horn section. Joplin took a more active role in putting together the Full Tilt Boogie band than she had with her prior group. She was quoted as saying, "It's my band. Finally it's my band!" In May 1970, after performing under the name Main Squeeze at a Hell's Angels event, the renamed Full Tilt Boogie Band began a nationwide tour. Joplin became very happy with her new group, which eventually received mostly positive feedback from both her fans and the critics. Prior to beginning a summer tour with Full Tilt Boogie, she performed in a reunion with Big Brother at the Fillmore West, in San Francisco, on April 4, 1970. Recordings from this concert were included in an in-concert album released posthumously in 1972. She again appeared with Big Brother on April 12 at Winterland, where she and Big Brother were reported to be in excellent form. She performed with the band, billed as Main Squeeze, at a party for the Hells Angels at a venue in San Rafael, California on May 21, 1970, according to a web site maintained by Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew. Andrew's web site quotes him as saying, "This will be the first time that Janis' old band and her new band will be at the same venue, so everyone is a little on edge." According to Joplin's biographer Ellis Amburn, Big Brother with its lead singer Nick Gravenites was the opening act at the party that was attended by 2,300 people. The Hells Angels, who had known Joplin since 1966, paid her a fee of 240 dollars to perform. Gravenites and Sam Andrew (who had resumed playing guitar with Big Brother) differed in their opinions of her performance and how substance abuse affected it. Gravenites described her singing as "stupendous," according to Amburn. Amburn quoted Andrew twenty years later: "She was visibly deteriorating and she looked bloated. She was like a parody of what she was at her best. I put it down to her drinking too much and I felt a tinge of fear for her well-being. Her singing was real flabby, no edge at all." Shortly thereafter, Joplin began wearing multi-colored feather boas in her hair. (She had not worn them at the May 21 Hell's Angels party / concert in San Rafael). By the time she began touring with Full Tilt Boogie, Joplin told people she was drug-free, but her drinking increased. From June 28 to July 4, 1970, during the Festival Express tour, Joplin and Full Tilt Boogie performed alongside Buddy Guy, the Band, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Ten Years After, the Grateful Dead, Delaney & Bonnie, Eric Andersen, and Ian & Sylvia. They played concerts in Toronto, Winnipeg, and Calgary. Joplin jammed with the other performers on the train, and her performances on this tour are considered to be among her greatest. Joplin headlined the festival on all three nights. At the last stop in Calgary, she took to the stage with Jerry Garcia while her band was tuning up. Film footage shows her telling the audience how great the tour was and shows her and Garcia presenting the organizers with a case of tequila. She then burst into a two-hour set, starting with "Tell Mama". Throughout this performance, Joplin engaged in several banters about her love life. In one, she reminisced about living in a San Francisco apartment and competing with a female neighbor in flirting with men on the street. She finished the Calgary concert with long versions of "Get It While You Can" and "Ball and Chain". Footage of her performance of "Tell Mama" in Calgary became an MTV video in the early 1980s, and the audio from the same film footage was included on the Farewell Song (1982) album. The audio of other Festival Express performances was included on Joplin's In Concert (1972) album. Video of the performances was also included on the Festival Express DVD. These performances of entire songs during the Festival Express concerts in Toronto and Calgary can be purchased, although other songs remain in vaults and have yet to be released. In the "Tell Mama" video shown on MTV in the 1980s, Joplin wore a psychedelically colored, loose-fitting costume and feathers in her hair. This was her standard stage costume in the spring and summer of 1970. She chose the new costumes after her friend and designer, Linda Gravenites (whom Joplin had praised in Vogues profile of her in its May 1968 edition), cut ties with Joplin shortly after their return from Brazil, due largely to Joplin's continued use of heroin. Among Joplin's last public appearances were two broadcasts of The Dick Cavett Show. In her June 25, 1970 appearance, she announced that she would attend her ten-year high school class reunion. When asked if she had been popular in school, she admitted that when in high school, her schoolmates "laughed me out of class, out of town and out of the state" (during the year she had spent at the University of Texas at Austin, Joplin had been voted "Ugliest Man on Campus" by frat boys). In the subsequent Cavett Show broadcast, on August 3, 1970, and featuring Gloria Swanson, Joplin discussed her upcoming performance at the Festival for Peace to be held at Shea Stadium in Queens, New York, three days later. On July 11, 1970, Full Tilt Boogie and Big Brother and the Holding Company both performed at the same concert in the San Diego Sports Arena, which was decades later renamed the Valley View Casino Center. Joplin sang with Full Tilt Boogie and appeared briefly onstage with Big Brother without singing, according to a July 13 review of the concert in the San Diego Union. On August 7, 1970, a tombstone—jointly paid for by Joplin and Juanita Green, who as a child had done housework for Bessie Smith—was erected at Smith's previously unmarked grave. The following day, the Associated Press circulated this news, and the August 9 edition of The New York Times carried it. The lead paragraph of the AP story said Joplin and Green had "shared the cost of a stone for the 'Empress of the Blues,'" but, according to publicist/biographer Myra Friedman, the two women never met. Joplin had been at home in Larkspur, California when she had received a long-distance phone call with an explanation of the need to finance a gravestone for Bessie Smith, whom Joplin had frequently cited as a musical influence. Joplin immediately wrote a check and mailed it to the name and address provided by the phone caller. On August 8, 1970, as the Associated Press circulated the news about Smith's new gravestone, Joplin performed at the Capitol Theatre (Port Chester, New York). It was there that she first performed "Mercedes Benz", a song (partially inspired by a Michael McClure poem) that she had composed with fellow musician and friend Bob Neuwirth a very short time earlier. According to Myra Friedman's account, Joplin performed two shows at the Capitol Theatre, the first of which was attended by actors Geraldine Page and her husband Rip Torn. Between the shows, at a "gin mill" [Friedman's words] very close to this concert venue, Joplin and Neuwirth penned the lyrics to the song and she performed it at the second show, according to Friedman. Neuwirth was quoted by The Wall Street Journal in 2015: "Around 7 p.m., after the Capitol sound check, we had a couple of hours to kill before [acts that opened for Joplin] Seatrain and Runt finished their sets. So the four of us [Joplin, Neuwirth, Geraldine Page, Rip Torn] walked to a bar about three minutes away called Vahsen’s [at 30 Broad Street in Port Chester]." While in Vahsen's, "Janis came up with words for the first verse. I was in charge of writing them down on bar napkins with a ballpoint pen. She came up with the second verse, too, about a color TV. I suggested words here and there, and came up with the third verse—about asking the Lord to buy us a night on the town and another round." Joplin's last public performance with the Full Tilt Boogie Band took place on August 12, 1970, at the Harvard Stadium in Boston. The Harvard Crimson gave the performance a positive, front-page review, despite the fact that Full Tilt Boogie had performed with makeshift amplifiers after their regular sound equipment was stolen in Boston. Joplin attended her high school reunion on August 14, accompanied by Neuwirth, road manager John Cooke, and sister Laura, but it was reportedly an unhappy experience for her. Joplin held a press conference in Port Arthur during her reunion visit. When asked by a reporter if she ever entertained at Thomas Jefferson High School when she was a student there, Joplin replied, "Only when I walked down the aisles." Joplin denigrated Port Arthur and the classmates who had humiliated her a decade earlier. During late August, September, and early October 1970, Joplin and her band rehearsed and recorded a new album in Los Angeles with producer Paul A. Rothchild, best known for his lengthy relationship with The Doors. Although Joplin died before all the tracks were fully completed, there was enough usable material to compile an LP. The posthumous Pearl (1971) became the biggest-selling album of her career and featured her biggest hit single, a cover of Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster's "Me and Bobby McGee" (Kristofferson had previously been Joplin's lover in the spring of 1970). The opening track, "Move Over", was written by Joplin, reflecting the way that she felt men treated women in relationships. Also included was the social commentary of "Mercedes Benz", presented in an a cappella arrangement; the track on the album features the first and only take that Joplin recorded. A cover of Nick Gravenites's "Buried Alive in the Blues", to which Joplin had been scheduled to add her vocals on the day she was found dead, was included as an instrumental. Joplin checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood on August 24, 1970, near Sunset Sound Recorders, where she began rehearsing and recording her album. During the sessions, Joplin continued a relationship with Seth Morgan, a 21-year-old UC Berkeley student, cocaine dealer, and future novelist who had visited her new home in Larkspur in July and August. She and Morgan were engaged to be married in early September, although he visited Sunset Sound Recorders for just eight of Joplin's many rehearsals and sessions. Morgan later told biographer Myra Friedman that, as a non-musician, he had felt excluded whenever he had visited Sunset Sound Recorders. Instead, he stayed at Joplin's Larkspur home while she stayed alone at the Landmark, although several times she visited Larkspur to be with him and to check the progress of renovations she was having done on the house. She told her construction crew to design a carport to be shaped like a flying saucer, according to biographer Ellis Amburn, the concrete foundation for which was poured the day before she died. Peggy Caserta claimed in her book, Going Down With Janis (1973), that she and Joplin had decided mutually in April 1970 to stay away from each other to avoid enabling each other's drug use. Caserta, a former Delta Air Lines stewardess and owner of one of the first clothing boutiques in the Haight Ashbury, said in the book that by September 1970, she was smuggling cannabis throughout California and had checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel because it attracted drug users. For approximately the first two weeks of Joplin's stay at the Landmark, she did not know Caserta was in Los Angeles. Joplin learned of Caserta's presence at the Landmark from a heroin dealer who made deliveries there. Joplin begged Caserta for heroin, and when Caserta refused to provide it, Joplin reportedly admonished her by saying, "Don't think if you can get it, I can't get it." Joplin's publicist Myra Friedman was unaware during Joplin's lifetime that this had happened. Later, while Friedman was working on her book Buried Alive, she determined that the time frame of the Joplin-Caserta encounter was one week before Jimi Hendrix's death. Within a few days, Joplin became a regular customer of the same heroin dealer who had been supplying Caserta. Joplin's manager Albert Grossman and his assistant/publicist Friedman had staged an intervention with Joplin the previous winter while Joplin was in New York. In September 1970, Grossman and Friedman, who worked out of a New York office, knew Joplin was staying at a Los Angeles hotel, but were unaware it was a haven for drug users and dealers. Grossman and Friedman knew during Joplin's lifetime that her friend Caserta, whom Friedman met during the New York sessions for Cheap Thrills and on later occasions, used heroin. During the many long-distance telephone conversations that Joplin and Friedman had in September 1970 and on October 1, Joplin never mentioned Caserta, and Friedman assumed Caserta had been out of Joplin's life for a while. Friedman, who had more time than Grossman to monitor the situation, never visited California. She thought Joplin sounded on the phone like she was less depressed than she had been over the summer. When Joplin was not at Sunset Sound Recorders, she liked to drive her Porsche over the speed limit "on the winding part of Sunset Blvd.", according to a statement made by her attorney Robert Gordon in 1995 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Friedman wrote that the only Full Tilt Boogie member who rode as her passenger, Ken Pearson, often hesitated to join her, though he did on the night she died. He was not interested in using hard drugs. On September 26, 1970, Joplin recorded vocals for "Half Moon" and "Cry Baby". The session ended with Joplin, organist Ken Pearson, and drummer Clark Pierson making a special one-minute recording as a birthday gift to John Lennon. Joplin was among several singers who had been contacted by Yoko Ono with a request for a taped greeting for Lennon's 30th birthday, on October 9. Joplin, Pearson, and Pierson chose the Dale Evans composition "Happy Trails" as part of the greeting. Lennon told Dick Cavett on-camera the following year that Joplin's recorded birthday wishes arrived at his home after her death. On October 1, 1970, Joplin completed her last recording, "Mercedes Benz", which was recorded in a single take. On Saturday, October 3, Joplin visited Sunset Sound Recorders to listen to the instrumental track for Nick Gravenites's song "Buried Alive in the Blues", which the band had recorded earlier that day. She and Paul Rothchild agreed she would record the vocal the following day. At some point on Saturday, she learned by telephone, to her dismay, that Seth Morgan had met other women at a Marin County, California, restaurant, invited them to her home, and was shooting pool with them using her pool table. People at Sunset Sound Recorders overheard Joplin expressing anger about the state of her relationship with Morgan, as well as joy about the progress of the sessions. Joplin and Ken Pearson later left the studio together and she drove him in her Porsche to the West Hollywood landmark called Barney's Beanery. Friedman wrote, "At the bar, she drank vodka and orange juice, only two." Bennett Glotzer, a business partner of Joplin's manager Albert Grossman, was present at Barney's Beanery, according to what he told John Byrne Cooke immediately after he (Glotzer) learned of her death. Evidently, Joplin had a friendly conversation with a young man whom she did not know, and he expressed admiration for her music. After midnight, she drove Ken Pearson and the male fan to the Landmark where she and Pearson were staying in separate rooms. During the car ride, the fan asked Joplin questions "about her singing style," according to Friedman, and "she mostly ignored him" so she could converse with Pearson. As Joplin and Pearson prepared to part in the lobby of the Landmark, she expressed a fear, possibly in jest, that he and the other Full Tilt Boogie musicians might decide to stop making music with her. Pearson was the second-to-last person to see her alive. The last was the Landmark's night shift desk clerk. He had met her several times but did not know her. Personal life Joplin's significant relationships with men included ones with Peter de Blanc, Country Joe McDonald (who wrote the song "Janis" at Joplin's request), David (George) Niehaus, Kris Kristofferson, and Seth Morgan (from July 1970 until her death, at which time they were allegedly engaged). She also had relationships with women. During her first stint in San Francisco in 1963, Joplin met and briefly lived with Jae Whitaker, a black woman whom she had met while playing pool at the bar Gino & Carlo in North Beach. Whitaker broke off their relationship because of Joplin's hard drug use and sexual relationships with other people. Whitaker was first identified by name in connection with the singer in 1999, when Alice Echols' biography Scars of Sweet Paradise was published. Joplin also had an on-again-off-again romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta. They first met in November 1966 when Big Brother performed at a San Francisco venue called The Matrix. Caserta was one of 15 people in the audience, and at the time, she ran a successful clothing boutique in the Haight Ashbury. Approximately a month after Caserta attended the concert, Joplin visited her boutique and said she could not afford to buy a pair of jeans that was for sale, instead asking to put down the first 50 cents on the $5 item. Caserta was amazed that such a talented singer could not afford a $5 item, and gave her a pair for free. Their friendship was platonic for more than a year. Before it moved to the next level, Caserta was in love with Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, and sometime during the first half of 1968 traveled from San Francisco to New York to flirt with him. He did not want a serious relationship, and Joplin sympathized with Caserta's disappointment. The Woodstock concert film includes 37 seconds of Joplin and Caserta walking together before they reached the tent where Joplin waited for her turn to perform. By the time the festival took place in August 1969, both were intravenous heroin addicts. According to Caserta's book Going Down With Janis, which Caserta has since disowned, Joplin introduced her to her boyfriend Seth Morgan in Joplin's room at the Landmark Motor Hotel on September 29, 1970. Caserta "had seen him around" San Francisco but had not met him before. At some point, an agreement was made for a threesome to take place the following Friday, although Caserta later said that she immediately abandoned the idea once she understood that it was Morgan who would be with Joplin. Morgan made alternate plans, believing that Caserta would be with Joplin that evening. Each one, however, was unaware that the other had bowed out. The day after Joplin introduced Caserta to Morgan, Caserta saw Joplin briefly, again in Joplin's room, when Caserta accommodated her new Los Angeles friend Debbie Nuciforo, age 19, an aspiring hard rock drummer who wanted to meet Joplin. Nuciforo was stoned on heroin at the time, and the three women's encounter was brief and unpleasant. Caserta suspected that the reason for Joplin's foul mood was that Morgan had abandoned her earlier that day after having spent less than 24 hours with her. Caserta did not see nor communicate by phone with Joplin again, although she later claimed she had made several attempts to reach her by phone at the Landmark Motor Hotel and at Sunset Sound Recorders. Caserta and Morgan lost touch with each other; each had independently made alternate plans for Friday night, October 2. Joplin mentioned her disappointment (over both of her friends' bailing out of their ménage à trois) to her drug dealer on Saturday, while he was selling her the dose of heroin that killed her, as Caserta later learned from the drug dealer. Biographer Myra Friedman commented in her original version of Buried Alive (1973): Given the near-infinite potentials of infancy, it is really impossible to make generalizations about what lies behind sexual practices. This, however, is probable: to become clearly homosexual, to make the choice that one honestly prefers relations with one's own sex, no matter the origins of such preference, requires a certain integration, a stability of psychic development, a tidiness of personality organization. The ridicule and the humiliation that took place at that most delicate period in [Joplin's] early teens, her own inability to surmount the obstacles to regular growth, devastated her a great deal more than most people comprehended. Janis was not heir to an ego so cohesive as to permit her an identity one way or the other. She was, as [the psychiatric social worker she saw regularly in Beaumont, Texas in 1965 and 1966] Mr. [Bernard] Giarritano put it [in an interview with Friedman], "diffused" -- spewing, splattering, splaying all over, without a center to hold. That had as much to do with her original use of drugs [before she first met Giarritano] as did the critical component of guilt and its multiplicity of sources above and beyond the contribution made by her relationships with women. Were she so simple as the lesbians wished her to be or so free as her associates imagined! Kim France reported in her May 2, 1999 The New York Times article, "Nothin' Left to Lose" : "Once she became famous, Joplin cursed like a truck driver, did not believe in wearing undergarments, was rarely seen without her bottle of Southern Comfort and delighted in playing the role of sexual predator." On July 11, 1970, Joplin made a revealing statement about her sexuality to her friend Richard Hundgen, the Grateful Dead's San Francisco-based road manager whom she had known since 1966. When Joplin and Hundgen were offstage during a San Diego gig for both Full Tilt Boogie and Big Brother and the Holding Company, she said the following that he later repeated to Myra Friedman: I hear a rumor that somebody in San Francisco is spreading stories that I'm a dyke. You go back there and find out who it is and tell them that Janis says she's gotten it on with a couple of thousand cats in her life and a few hundred chicks and see what they can do with that! Death On Sunday evening, October 4, 1970, Joplin was found dead on the floor of her room at the Landmark Motor Hotel by her road manager and close friend John Byrne Cooke. Alcohol was present in the room. Newspapers reported that no other drugs or paraphernalia were present. According to a 1983 book authored by Joseph DiMona and Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi, evidence of narcotics was removed from the scene by a friend of Joplin and later put back after the person realized that an autopsy was going to reveal that narcotics were in her system. The book adds that prior to Joplin's death, Noguchi had investigated other fatal drug overdoses in Los Angeles where friends believed they were doing favors for decedents by removing evidence of narcotics, then they "thought things over" and returned to put back the evidence. Noguchi performed an autopsy on Joplin and determined the cause of death to be a heroin overdose, possibly compounded by alcohol. John Byrne Cooke believed Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than what she and other L.A. heroin users had received on previous occasions, as was indicated by overdoses of several of her dealer's other customers during the same weekend. Her death was ruled accidental. Both Peggy Caserta, Joplin's close friend, and Seth Morgan, Joplin's fiancé, had failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death, October 2; Joplin had been expecting both of them to keep her company that night. According to Caserta, Joplin was saddened that neither of her friends visited her at the Landmark as they had promised. During the 24 hours Joplin lived after this disappointment, Caserta did not phone her to explain why she had failed to show up. Caserta admitted to waiting until late Saturday night to dial the Landmark switchboard, only to learn that Joplin had instructed the desk clerk not to accept any incoming phone calls for her after midnight. Morgan did speak to Joplin via telephone within the 24 hours prior to her death, but little is known about that call. She used a phone at Sunset Sound Recorders where her colleagues (“there were perhaps twenty to twenty-five people pre‪sent,” wrote biographer Myra Friedman) noticed that whatever Morgan said to her made her very angry. Peggy Caserta has insisted that Joplin's death was not an accidental overdose, but rather a result of a head gash suffered after the "hourglass heel" of her slingback sandal caught in the shag carpet, causing her to lose her balance. Caserta does concede, however, that drugs and/or alcohol may have played a role in hastening her death that night. Joplin was cremated at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary in Los Angeles, and her ashes were scattered from a plane into the Pacific Ocean. Legacy Joplin's death in October 1970 at age 27 stunned her fans and shocked the music world, especially when coupled with the death just 16 days earlier of another rock icon, Jimi Hendrix, also at age 27. (This would later cause some people to attribute significance to the death of musicians at the age of 27, as celebrated in the "27 Club.") Music historian Tom Moon wrote that Joplin had "a devastatingly original voice," music columnist Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote that Joplin as an artist was "overpowering and deeply vulnerable" and author Megan Terry said that Joplin was the female version of Elvis Presley in her ability to captivate an audience. A book about Joplin by her publicist Myra Friedman titled Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin (1973) was excerpted in many newspapers. At the same time, Peggy Caserta's memoir, Going Down With Janis (1973), attracted much attention; its provocative title is a reference to Caserta's claim that she had engaged in oral sex with Joplin while they were high on heroin in September 1970. The description provided by Dan Knapp, Caserta’s co-author whom she denounced decades later, repelled many people in 1973 when few books or filmed interviews of Joplin or her loved ones were accessible to the public. Joplin's bandmate Sam Andrew described Caserta as "halfway between a groupie and a friend" in an interview with writer Ellis Amburn. Soon after the 1973 publication of Going Down With Janis, Joplin's friends learned that graphic descriptions of sexual acts and intravenous drug use were not the only portions of the book that would haunt them. According to Kim Chappell, a close friend of Caserta and Joplin, Caserta's book angered the Los Angeles heroin dealer whom she had described in detail in her book, including the make and model of his car. According to Amburn, in 1973 a "carful of dope dealers" visited a Los Angeles lesbian bar that Caserta had been frequenting. Chappell, who was in the alley behind the bar, stated: "I was stabbed because, when Peggy's book came out, her dealer, the same one who'd given Janis her last fix, didn't like it that he was referred to and was out to get Peggy. He couldn't find her, so he went for her lover. When they realized who I was, they felt that my death would also hit Peggy, and so they stabbed me." Despite being "stabbed three times in the chest, puncturing both lungs," Chappell eventually recovered. In 2018, Caserta denounced Going Down With Janis as the pornographic fantasy of Dan Knapp, her co-author, and largely unreliable. During that year, the public had its first access to her own story via a memoir she co-wrote with Maggie Falcon titled I Ran Into Some Trouble. It describes a long, friendly relationship with Joplin that only occasionally featured sexuality. According to Joplin’s biographers, Caserta was among many friends of Joplin who did not become clean and sober until a very long time after Joplin's death, while others died from overdoses. Although the wife of Big Brother guitarist James Gurley, who was Joplin's close friend, died from a heroin overdose in 1969, devastating Joplin, Gurley himself did not become clean and sober until 1984. Caserta survived "a near-fatal OD in December 1995," wrote Alice Echols. On January 13, 2000, Caserta appeared during a segment about Joplin on 20/20. Joplin's body art, with a wristlet and a small heart on her left breast by the San Francisco tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle, marked an early moment in the popular culture's acceptance of tattoos as art. Another trademark was her flamboyant hair styles, which often included colored streaks and accessories such as scarves, beads and feathers. When in New York City, Joplin frequented the Limbo boutique on St. Mark's Place, and she wore some of the vintage and unique garments that she purchased there on stage. The Mamas & the Papas' song "Pearl" (1971), from their People Like Us album, was a tribute. Leonard Cohen's song "Chelsea Hotel#2" (1974) is about Joplin. Lyricist Robert Hunter has commented that Jerry Garcia's "Birdsong" from his first solo album, Garcia (1972), is about Joplin and the end of her suffering through death. Mimi Farina's composition "In the Quiet Morning", most famously covered by Joan Baez on her Come from the Shadows (1972) album, was a tribute to Joplin. Another song by Baez, "Children of the Eighties," mentioned Joplin. A Serge Gainsbourg-penned French language song by English singer Jane Birkin, "Ex fan des sixties" (1978), references Joplin along with other disappeared "idols" such as Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones and Marc Bolan. When Joplin was alive, Country Joe McDonald released a song called "Janis" on his band's album I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die (1967). The film The Rose (1979) is loosely based on Joplin's life. Originally planned to be titled Pearl—Joplin's nickname and the title of her last album—the film was fictionalized after her family declined to allow the producers the rights to her story. Bette Midler earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the film. In 1988, on what would have been Joplin's 45th birthday, the Janis Joplin Memorial, with an original gold, multi-image sculpture of Joplin by Douglas Clark, was dedicated during a ceremony in Port Arthur, Texas. In 1992, the first major biography of Joplin in two decades, Love, Janis, authored by her younger sister Laura Joplin, was published. In an interview, Laura stated that Joplin enjoyed being on the Dick Cavett Show, that Joplin had difficulties with some, but not all, people at Thomas Jefferson High School and that Joplin enthusiastically talked about Woodstock with her parents and siblings during a visit to their Texas home a few weeks after she had performed at the festival. In 1995, Joplin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2005, she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In November 2009, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum honored her as part of its annual American Music Masters Series; among the artifacts at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum exhibition are Joplin's scarf and necklaces, her psychedelically painted 1965 Porsche 356 Cabriolet and a sheet of LSD blotting paper designed by Robert Crumb, designer of the Cheap Thrills cover. Also in 2009, Joplin was the honoree at the Rock Hall's American Music Master concert and lecture series. In the late 1990s, the musical play Love, Janis was created and directed by Randal Myler, with input from Janis' younger sister Laura and Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, with an aim to take it to Off-Broadway. Opening in the summer of 2001 and scheduled for only a few weeks of performances, the show won acclaim, played to packed houses and was held over several times. In 2013, Washington's Arena Stage featured a production of A Night with Janis Joplin, starring Mary Bridget Davies. In it, Joplin performs a concert for the audience while telling stories of her past inspirations, including those of Odetta and Aretha Franklin. The show went on tour in 2016. On November 4, 2013, Joplin was awarded with the 2,510th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the music industry. Her star is located at 6752 Hollywood Boulevard, in front of Musicians Institute. On August 8, 2014, the U.S. Postal Service revealed a commemorative stamp honoring Joplin as part of its Music Icons stamp series during a first-day-of-issue ceremony at the Outside Lands Music Festival at Golden Gate Park. Among the memorabilia Joplin left behind is a Gibson Hummingbird guitar. In 2015, the biographical documentary film Janis: Little Girl Blue, directed by Amy J. Berg and narrated by Cat Power, was released. It was a New York Times Critics' Pick. Influence Joplin had a profound influence on many singers. Pink said about Joplin: "She was so inspiring by singing blues music when it wasn't culturally acceptable for white women, and she wore her heart on her sleeve. She was so witty and charming and intelligent, but she also battled an ugly-duckling syndrome. I would love to play her in a movie." In a tribute performance on her Try This Tour, Pink called Joplin "a woman who inspired me when everyone else ... didn't!" Discography Janis Joplin recorded four albums in her four-year career. The first two albums were recorded with and credited to Big Brother and the Holding Company; the later two were recorded with different backing bands and released as solo albums. Posthumous releases have included previously unreleased studio and live material. Studio albums As lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company As solo artist Live albums Compilation albums Singles As lead of Big Brother and the Holding Company As solo artist Filmography Monterey Pop (1968) Petulia (1968) Janis Joplin Live in Frankfurt (1969) Janis (1974) Janis: The Way She Was (1974) Comin' Home (1988) Woodstock – The Lost Performances (1991) Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director's Cut) (1994) Festival Express (2003) Nine Hundred Nights (2004) The Dick Cavett Show: Rock Icons (2005) Shout Factory Rockin' at the Red Dog: The Dawn of Psychedelic Rock (2005) This is Tom Jones (2007) 1969 appearance on TV show Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (Director's Cut) 40th Anniversary Edition (2009) Janis Joplin with Big Brother: Ball and Chain (DVD) Charly (2009) Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015) Notes References Further reading – an encounter with Janis Joplin at the wheel. External links Janis Joplin at the Grammy Awards Janis Joplin on the Music-Map 1943 births 1970 deaths 20th-century American singers 20th-century American women singers American blues singers American child singers American mezzo-sopranos American women rock singers American women singer-songwriters American rhythm and blues singer-songwriters American rock songwriters American soul musicians Accidental deaths in California Big Brother and the Holding Company members Bisexual musicians Bisexual women Blues rock musicians Columbia Records artists Deaths by heroin overdose in California Drug-related deaths in California Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners LGBT people from Texas LGBT singers from the United States LGBT songwriters Lamar University alumni People from Beaumont, Texas People from Port Arthur, Texas Singer-songwriters from Texas University of Texas at Austin alumni 20th-century LGBT people
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[ "Miracle Row is the ninth studio album by Janis Ian, and her fourth for Columbia Records, released in 1977.\n\nIn contrast to her previous three albums, Miracle Row was recorded in New York City with her recent touring band and lacked the orchestration. Following her previous album Aftertones, Ian would spend much time in Spanish Harlem with her mother, and aimed to capture that vibe on her new album.\n\nReception\n\nThe Kingsport News gave the album \"A\" upon release, saying that Janis was \"the best realist woman poet around today\" and also one if its best vocalists. The Irving Daily News’ Jason Christopher also praised the album, saying that Janis Ian “scored another triumph” and that the album was “highly recommended for rainy-day listening”. Joe McNally writing for the San Antonio Express, said that Janis “did what she did very well” and the critic admitted that he was a sucker for what she did.\n\nMiracle Row, despite these positive reviews, was substantially ignored by most critics, many of whom, for example Robert Christgau, did not review the album at all. Miracle Row proved a major commercial flop, failing to crack the top 40 of the Billboard pop albums chart, whilst none of its three singles would chart anywhere except for \"Will You Dance?\" being a top 40 hit in Japan. It proved to be Ian's last album to dent the top 100 in the United States, for her efforts to adopt a highly commercial pop sound on her subsequent Columbia albums would gain success only in Europe and Australia, and not do so consistently even there.\n\nTrack listing\n\nPersonnel\n Janis Ian – composer, producer, vocals, guitar, keyboards\n Rubens Bassini – conductor, congas, percussion\n Claire Bay – vocals\n Phil Kraus – bass, cymbals, percussion\n Jeff Layton – guitar, guitar arrangements, horn\n Barry Lazarowitz – drums, percussion\n Stu Woods – bass\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n1977 albums\nJanis Ian albums\nColumbia Records albums", "\"Goodbye Yellow Brick Road\" is the 18th episode of the ABC series FlashForward.\n\nPlot\nAaron meets with Wedeck's contact in Afghanistan, who offers to help him find a doctor of a medical relief group that Aaron had met in his flashforward. Aaron and his contact are ambushed by a rebel group out in the desert, but Aaron is saved by another armed group, this one led by the Kahmir, the doctor he had been seeking.\n\nOlivia continues to be accosted by Gabriel, who seems to know a lot about her and her life. Olivia also learns Gabriel has been following her around; Olivia checks older photos of her and spots Gabriel in many of them. Olivia finally visits Raven Rivers, a psychiatric hospital, where Gabriel explains where it had all begun. Gabriel reveals that he and other savants like him were forced to watch flashforwards, generated by experiments run by Dyson Frost; their eidetic memory allowed them to record what they saw in great detail. Gabriel explains his flashforwards always concerned Olivia, and that in all of them, she had always been with Lloyd, having never even met Mark. Gabriel explains he kept trying to push her on the \"right path,\" ever since she had decided to attend UCLA instead of Harvard, where she would have met Lloyd, instead of Mark in Los Angeles.\n\nFlashbacks from two years ago show how Janis was first approached to being a mole in the FBI. She agreed in order to earn the extra cash, and was to report all her findings to the owner of a local pet store. However, it was later revealed that around this period, Vogel had also secretly arranged to meet her, and told her she would be the most likely candidate for being approached on being a mole. Vogel told her to accept the job and act as a double agent. After the blackout, Janis confronts the owner about wanting to quit, horrified she had helped in something so catastrophic. The owner, however, tells her she can't and will have to continue her job.\n\nIn the present, Mark has begun deciphering one of the pictures found on Frost: a large blueprint of an ancient mechanical device. Janis takes the blueprint to an antiquities professor to figure out what it means. When Janis shows a copy of the blueprint to the pet store lady, she orders Janis to take back the blueprint and destroy the other copy on Mark's mosaic board. Janis successfully infiltrates the professor's office and takes the blueprint, and also wipes his computer's hard drive. When she sneaks into Mark's office to take the copy, Mark catches her, and Janis hurriedly explains she needs it to replace the one that the professor had lost. Mark tells her he'll make a copy in the morning; the next day, the professor tells them his findings, as he had already taken pictures of the blueprints: he uses a computer to construct a model of the blueprints, which depict a clock-like device with many gears. The professor explains the machine outputs dates, with the first one being October 6, 2009, the day of the blackout. Meanwhile, Mark tries to interpret Frost's dying words: “You’ll be saved by the lady you see every day.” Mark realizes the “lady” to be the white queen chess piece tacked on his mosaic board, the one found with Frost at Utah. Mark breaks the chess piece open to reveal a ring, the same one Suspect Zero had been wearing. Lloyd and Simon identify the ring as a QED, or quantum entanglement device, and wearing it would make someone immune to the effects of the blackout. Mark theorizes that this might be the reason men come to attack him on April 29. Later, Janis reports to her handler, who orders her to retrieve the ring and not mess up again like she did with the blueprints. She also gives her a final task: to kill Mark Benford.\n\nTitle sequence image\nGabriel tied down in a bed for the Raven Rivers experiments.\n\nReception\nThis episode was watched by 5.17 million viewers in the United States, down from last week's 5.56 million viewers. IGN gave the episode a 7.8 rating out of 10. The episode also received a B from The A.V. Club, stating \"there was a surprising amount of good stuff in this one.\"\n\nReferences\n\n2010 American television episodes\nFlashForward episodes" ]
[ "Ai Otsuka", "Love Cook" ]
C_44d96215ff6942c18b21f9d96e2ef26d_0
Is Love Cook an album or a single?
1
Is Love Cook by Ai Otsuka an album or a single?
Ai Otsuka
"Smily/Biidama" was her first single to be released after Love Jam. Both songs from the single were used for commercials. "Smily/Biidama" sold 110,512 copies during its debut week and charted at first place. "Smily/Biidama" sold a total of 308,338 copies in 2005, placing it as the twenty-sixth single of that year. It was during this time, in June 2005, that Otsuka made her acting debut with the drama Tokyo Friends. Unlike most dramas, the series was directly released on DVD and never aired on TV. The drama used three songs as its theme song, Boo Bee Benz's "To Me" and "Kimi to Iu Hana," as well the coupling song to her sixth single, "Friends: Sabakan Ver." All three tracks would eventually be included in the soundtrack for the drama's movie sequel. Otsuka released her tenth single in 2005, "Neko ni Fusen" in middle of the year in July. "Neko ni Fusen" was her lowest single that year, only reaching third on the chart and selling 111,324 copies. It placed ninety-second on the 2005 yearly charts. Otsuka's single "Planetarium", was released on September 20, 2005. This was her last single of that year. "Planetarium" sales of 315,669 was her second highest single second only to "Sakuranbo," before her third studio album was released. "Planetarium" was used as the insert song for the live action version of the drama Hana Yori Dango. Love Cook, her third studio album, came out on December 14, 2005. In its first week, it sold 335,000 copies. The promotional videos for this album were filmed as mini-dramas. She also hosts a radio show on JOQR Recomen!! AM1134hHz called Otsuka Ai no ai-r jack. CANNOTANSWER
Love Cook, her third studio album,
is a Japanese singer-songwriter from Suminoe-ku, Osaka, Japan. She is a popular artist on the Avex Trax label and is best known for her 2003 hit "Sakuranbo", which stayed in the Top 200 Oricon Weekly Singles Chart for 103 weeks. A piano player since age four, Otsuka composes and co-produces her own songs, as well as writes her own lyrics. Her music ranges from upbeat pop/rock music to ballads. Every year, Otsuka also has her own Love is Born tour to mark the anniversary of being in the music industry and her birthday in September. All of the Love is Born concerts take place in Japan, ending in her hometown of Osaka. On Love is Born 5th Anniversary in 2008, Otsuka held a leg of the concert in Taiwan, where she performed a Chinese version of her song "Planetarium". In 2009, Otsuka held 3 Love is Born 6th Anniversary concerts in Japan, as well as two concerts in Taiwan. In 2012, Otsuka debuted as the vocalist of the band Rabbit. She sold 7 million copies in Japan. Biography Early life and career beginnings Otsuka started to play piano at the age of four. She composed her first track at 15, as a homework given by her piano teacher. After graduating from high school she entered to the Osaka University of Arts Nursery College, where she got her degree as a nursery teacher. For a short period of time -around late 2001- she was part of a duo called HimawaRi, along with classmate Mami Nishida. They released only the song "Sakuranbo" on the Internet, and were active for a little time. She sent demo tapes to record labels with no positive results, until she got a call back from Avex just before her graduation from university. 2003: Debut and Love Punch Her debut single, entitled "Momo no Hanabira", was released on September 10, 2003. The single was a minor hit, peaking at number 24 on the Oricon weekly singles top 100, but stayed on the charts for 21 weeks. Her second single, "Sakuranbo", was released on December 17, 2003. The song debuted at number 20 on the Oricon charts, but managed to get into the Top 10 in February 2004 and went to peak at number five. Eventually, the single stayed on the chart for 101 weeks (almost two years), and a special "encore press" version was commissioned, which peaked at number 4, and it became the twelfth best selling single of 2004. Gradually climbing the charts to top 5, the single. In early March 2004, Otsuka released her third single, "Amaenbo". The song peaked at the sixth position on the Japanese charts, while at the same time "Sakuranbo" was fifth. This was the first time in Japanese music history a female artist was able to have two singles in the top ten in the same week. By end of March 2004, her first album, Love Punch, was released, and peaked third on the Oricon charts selling 190,265 copies in its first week. Love Jam In November 2004, the follow-up to Love Punch, Love Jam, was released, which met even greater popular success. Along with three single released before her second studio album was released. First, "Happy Days" sold 163,433 units and reached third on the Oricon weekly chart. Love Jam Tour 2005, her first tour, began on April 24, 2005. It was completed in June 2005 and a live DVD with footage was released on July 27, 2005. Love Cook, her third album was released on December 14, 2005. "Kingyo Hanabi" was the second single to be released after her first album. "Kingyo Hanabi" also landed in third on the Oricon weekly chart but was able to sell 148,121 units, about 20,000 copies less than her "Happy Days" single. Two months later, Otsuka released another single, "Daisuki da Yo". Like the previous two singles, it reached number 3 on the Oricon weekly chart and sold 156,844 units. Otsuka released her second studio album a month later in November 2004. Love Jam debuted at the number one position and sold 224,381 units in its first week. In total, 656,700 units were sold. Love Jam became her first album to top the chart, but at the same time it was her lowest selling studio album. Love Jam was released in two different versions including a CD and a CD+DVD version. Following the release of Love Jam, Ai Otsuka released the recut single "Kuroge Wagyu Joshio Tan Yaki 680 Yen" in February 2005. It was a different version of the "Kuroge Wagyu Joshio Tan Yaki 735 Yen" track on Love Jam. "Kuroge Wagyu Joshio Tan Yaki 680 Yen" is arranged differently in terms of music and vocals. This single sold 149,134 units and debuted third on the Oricon weekly chart and was the sixty-eighth single of 2005. It was the first ending theme song for the anime Black Jack. Love Cook "Smily/Biidama" was her first single to be released after Love Jam. Both songs from the single were used for commercials. "Smily/Biidama" sold 110,512 copies during its debut week and charted at first place. "Smily/Biidama" sold a total of 308,338 copies in 2005, placing it as the twenty-sixth single of that year. It was during this time, in June 2005, that Otsuka made her acting debut with the drama Tokyo Friends. Unlike most dramas, the series was directly released on DVD and never aired on TV. The drama used three songs as its theme song, Boo Bee Benz's "To Me" and "Kimi to Iu Hana," as well the coupling song to her sixth single, "Friends: Sabakan Ver." All three tracks would eventually be included in the soundtrack for the drama's movie sequel. Otsuka released her tenth single in 2005, "Neko ni Fūsen" in middle of the year in July. "Neko ni Fūsen" was her lowest single that year, only reaching third on the chart and selling 111,324 copies. It placed ninety-second on the 2005 yearly charts. Otsuka's single "Planetarium", was released on September 20, 2005. This was her last single of that year. "Planetarium" sales of 315,669 was her second highest single second only to "Sakuranbo," before her third studio album was released. "Planetarium" was used as the insert song for the live action version of the drama Hana Yori Dango. Love Cook, her third studio album, came out on December 14, 2005. In its first week, it sold 335,000 copies. The promotional videos for this album were filmed as mini-dramas. She also hosts a radio show on JOQR Recomen!! AM1134hHz called Otsuka Ai no ai-r jack. Love Piece In April 2006, Otsuka released "Frienger" (a portmanteau of the words Friend and Ranger). The promotional video was shot in Taiwan and was used as the commercial song for the Toshiba W41T 4 GB MP3 mobile phone. Soon after the release of "Frienger," Otsuka reprised her role as an actress for Tokyo Friends: The Movie, which hit theaters in Japan on August 12, 2006. The movie is a direct sequel to the DVD drama released the previous year. Otsuka also sang the opening theme for Tokyo Friends, "Yumekui", which was released as a new single on August 2, 2006. It debuted fifth on the weekly chart, selling 63,428 copies in the first week and a total of 145,281 copies. Two months after "Yumekui", Otsuka released another single titled "Renai Shashin" on October 25, 2006, which was used as the opening theme song for the movie Tada, Kimi o Aishiteru. The song was based on events from the film and its original novel, also called Renai Shashin. "Renai Shashin" debuted at number 2 and sold 129,855 copies, making it the 75th best-selling single of the year. At the end of 2006, Otsuka had released a total of three singles and charted on Oricon's 2006 yearly chart with "Frienger" at number 60, "Yumekui" at number 66, and "Renai Shashin" at number 75. Otsuka released her fourteenth single, "Chu-Lip," on February 21, 2007. The single was used as the theme song for the TBS drama Kirakira Kenshui, starring Manami Konishi and Wentz Eiji of WaT and managed to claim the third position on the Oricon charts. Ai Am Best Otsuka released her first best hits compilation album, titled Ai am Best, on March 28, 2007, which features 13 pre-2006 songs and their respective promotional videos. There are 11 songs that span her singles in chronological order, one song from Love Cook and one song from a Nana sound track: "Love for Nana: Only 1 Tribute". Ai am Best sold 64,396 copies on the first day and topped the Oricon charts, making it Otsuka's best selling album. It sold over 350,000 copies in its first week. "Ai am Best" also features two bonus tracks—one for the DVD, "Best of Babashi", and one for the CD, "Babashi". First Press "Ai am Best" includes an Ai stamp and Ai wallet calendar. Some also include an Ai pin in yellow or white. Otsuka went on a tour titled Ai am Best Tour that featured songs from Ai am Best and more. The tour started on May 18 and ended on July 7, 2007. 2007–2008: Love debut and Love Piece On April 11, 2007 Otsuka released a new single, "Love no Theme," as the self-created bunny rabbit character "Love-chan". "Love no Theme" was sung on her Jam Punch Tour 2005. Before its release, it was titled I canChu before it was changed to "Love no Theme". The "Love no Theme" single included a preview of a new single featuring Love, titled "White Choco." This song could only be found previously on the promotional CD released before "Momo no Hanabira". "Love no Theme" unfortunately did not sell as well as Otsuka's normal singles. Otsuka released her first single after Ai am Best, "Peach/Heart" on July 25, 2007. The first A-side "Peach" is an up-beat summer song and was used as the end theme for the summer drama Hanazakari no Kimitachi E (starring Maki Horikita and Shun Oguri), while the second "Heart" is a mid-tempo track. The single also includes a rearranged version of "Renai Shashin", titled . On September 26, 2007, Otsuka released two CDs and a DVD. The first CD was Otsuka's fourth original album, titled Love Piece. This included all of her singles from "Frienger" to "Peach/Heart", with five new songs on an 11-track album. The album was released in CD+DVD and CD-only formats, with the DVD including a music video of "Heart" and , a song from the album. The first-press of the DVD also includes the PV of "U-Boat," while the first-press of the CD-only version comes with a 40-page color photobook. The second CD was a limited pressing re-release of the best album "Ai am Best" in CD-only format. Also on September 26, Otsuka released a DVD of her Ai am Best Tour 2007, recorded at the Tokyo International Forum Hall A on July 9, 2007. The DVD is available in a single-disc edition, as well as a special two-disc edition with outtakes of the tour. The first-press of the special edition comes with a 40-page photobook. Otsuka performed at Makuhari Messe on July 7, 2007, for one of Japan's two Live Earth concerts, alongside contemporaries Kumi Koda and Ayaka. 2009–2010: Love Letter and Love is Best Otsuka released her 16th single "Pocket" on November 7, 2007. And two weeks later, Love-chan's second single, "White Choco", was released on November 21, 2007. During 2008, Otsuka embarked on her Love Piece Tour 2008, her fourth solo tour, from February to May. Her 17th single, "Rocket Sneaker/One x Time", was released on May 21. Otsuka's 18th single, "Kurage, Nagareboshi", was released on September 10, 2008. The single was released in four different formats, as a commemoration of her fifth anniversary in the music industry since the release of her debut single "Momo no Hanabira". On December 17, 2008, she released her fifth studio album, Love Letter, which peaked third on the weekly Oricon charts. It contains all of her singles since Love Piece including "Pocket", the third track on the album. Love Letter was her lowest-selling album. On February 25, 2009, "Bye Bye" was released as her second re-cut single. "Bye Bye" was used in a commercial for the Asahi Breweries beverage, Asahi Slat. Otsuka's second compilation album, Love Is Best, was released on November 11, 2009. The album features a collection of "love songs," ranging from singles to album tracks and b-sides, and will feature re-recorded versions of some tracks including a duet with Su from hip-hop band Rip Slyme on the song "Aisu x Time." On its first day of release the album charted at number one with a sales total of 22,895. As her character Love, she also released her first mini album entitled Love It (pronounced Rabitto, as rabbit), on November 18, 2009 (a week after Love Is Best). The album's track "Magic" was used in TV commercials for Music.jp. In January 2010, Otsuka performed a song for Fuji Television titled "Lucky Star" which the network used as the theme song for its coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics. In February it was announced that "Lucky Star" would be released as a cellphone-only digital single, but later was announced to have a physical release as a double A-side single, "Zokkondition/Lucky Star", which released on April 7, 2010. "Zokkondition" was used in advertisements for Asahi Beer, similar to her previous single "Bye Bye". On September 8, 2010, she released another single "'I Love..." (I ♥ xxx), which was her 21st and last single before taking a hiatus from music. 2011–present: Hiatus, Rabbit and Love Fantastic During Otsuka's hiatus from music due to her pregnancy, a new song titled "Hikari" was made available for download on October 9, 2011, through her official mobile website Love 9 Cube. On March 30, 2012, she released Neko ga Suki ni natta Kirai na Neko, a series of two picture books about cats. Purchasers of the books had the chance to download another new song, called "Gomen ne". On September 9, 2012, she celebrated her 30th birthday and ninth anniversary in the music industry with Love Is Born: 9th Anniversary 2012, her first series of concerts in two years, in which she held performances in Tokyo, Hyogo and Aichi. In October 2012, Otsuka announced that she would be debuting as the vocalist of a new band called Rabbit. The band released their debut album Rabito on December 12, 2012 through the Cutting Edge label. The album peaked at number 61 on the Oricon charts. Rabbit went on their first domestic tour in Japan starting in February 2013. This month it was also announced that Otsuka, as a solo, would begin a tour in September to celebrate her tenth anniversary in the music industry,. In July 2013, it was announced that Otsuka would be releasing her first solo single in three years, entitled "Re:Name", to celebrate her tenth anniversary. The single was released on October 9, 2013, and debuted at number eight on the Japanese charts. On December 13, 2013, a song entitled "Sakuranbo (Cocktail)", which was a self-cover version of her second single, was released digitally through the iTunes Music Store. On March 26, 2014, Otsuka released an EP entitled AIO Punch, which included other self-covers from previously released songs. And she also recorded a cover of Dreams Come True's "Romance" for their tribute album Watashi to Dori Kamu: Dreams Come True 25th Anniversary Best Covers, which was released on the same day. Her 23rd single, "More More" was released on May 21, 2014. Otsuka's sixth studio album, entitled Love Fantastic, was released on July 16, 2014. She released her seventh album, Love Tricky, on April 22, 2015. Otsuka's eighth studio album, Love Honey, came out on April 12, 2017. Personal life In February 2010, it was reported by Josei Seven magazine that Otsuka was dating rapper Kazuto Otsuki (publicly known as Su, member of hip hop group Rip Slyme), with whom she collaborated in October 2009 for her song "Aisu x Time". Neither of the artists' agencies would comment on the matter. On June 26, 2010, Otsuka announced via a message on her official Web site that she and Su had gotten married on the previous day. Su also posted an announcement on Rip Slyme's website, confirming what Otsuka wrote on her website. During her Love is Born concert held on September 11, 2010, Otsuka revealed to the audience that she was expecting her first child, and on March 24, 2011, she gave birth to a daughter. On November 22, 2018, Otsuka announced that she had filed for divorce. Discography Studio albums 2004: Love Punch 2004: Love Jam 2005: Love Cook 2007: Love Piece 2008: Love Letter 2014: Love Fantastic 2015: Love Tricky 2017: Love Honey Compilation albums 2007: Ai Am Best 2009: Love Is Best 2019: Ai Am Best, too Radio shows Otsuka Ai ai-r Jack (Nippon Cultural Broadcasting) Corolla presents Life-Love Circle (Tokyo FM) Books (February 25, 2005) Love World (September 25, 2007) (January 31, 2008) (March 31, 2010) (March 30, 2012) Awards Japan Cable Radio Awards 2004: Best New Artist Best Hits Kayōsai 2004: Best New Artist 2005: Gold Artist Prize – "Planetarium" 2006: Gold Artist Prize – "Ren'ai Shashin" 2007: Gold Artist Prize – "Pocket" Japan Gold Disc Award 2005: Rock & Pop Album of the Year – Love Punch 2005: Rock & Pop Album of the Year – Love Jam 2006: Rock & Pop Album of the Year – Love Cook 2007: The Best 10 Albums - Ai Am Best MTV Video Music Awards Japan 2007: Best Pop Video - "Ren'ai Shashin" 2007: Best Video from a Film - "Ren'ai Shashin" (from Tada, Kimi o Aishiteru) References External links Love website 1982 births Living people Japanese women pop singers Japanese actresses Japanese women singer-songwriters Japanese singer-songwriters Musicians from Osaka Osaka University of Arts alumni Avex Trax artists 21st-century Japanese women singers 21st-century Japanese singers
true
[ "\"All We Need Is Love\" is a 2014 song by Australian singer Ricki-Lee Coulter.\n\nAll We Need Is Love may also refer to:\nAll We Need Is Love (album), an album by Stefanie Heinzmann\n\"All We Need Is Love\", a 2000 single by Landsholdet, the Denmark national football team\n\"All We Need Is Love\", a song by Ric Ocasek from the 1991 album Fireball Zone\n\"All We Need Is Love\", a song by Elizabeth Cook from the album This Side of the Moon\n\"All We Need Is Love\", a song by the Leningrad Cowboys from the 2011 album Buena Vodka Social Club\n\"All We Need Is Love (Christmas in the Yard)\", a song by The Big Yard Family featuring Shaggy from Now That's What I Call Christmas!\n\"All We Need Is Love\", a 1977 single by Kelly Marie", "This list is an attempt to document every song recorded and released under the name of Mike Love, whether on an album, single, compilation or anthology album.\n\nLove, Mike\nMike Love" ]
[ "Ai Otsuka", "Love Cook", "Is Love Cook an album or a single?", "Love Cook, her third studio album," ]
C_44d96215ff6942c18b21f9d96e2ef26d_0
Did it debut on the charts?
2
Did Love Cook by Ai Otsuka debut on the charts?
Ai Otsuka
"Smily/Biidama" was her first single to be released after Love Jam. Both songs from the single were used for commercials. "Smily/Biidama" sold 110,512 copies during its debut week and charted at first place. "Smily/Biidama" sold a total of 308,338 copies in 2005, placing it as the twenty-sixth single of that year. It was during this time, in June 2005, that Otsuka made her acting debut with the drama Tokyo Friends. Unlike most dramas, the series was directly released on DVD and never aired on TV. The drama used three songs as its theme song, Boo Bee Benz's "To Me" and "Kimi to Iu Hana," as well the coupling song to her sixth single, "Friends: Sabakan Ver." All three tracks would eventually be included in the soundtrack for the drama's movie sequel. Otsuka released her tenth single in 2005, "Neko ni Fusen" in middle of the year in July. "Neko ni Fusen" was her lowest single that year, only reaching third on the chart and selling 111,324 copies. It placed ninety-second on the 2005 yearly charts. Otsuka's single "Planetarium", was released on September 20, 2005. This was her last single of that year. "Planetarium" sales of 315,669 was her second highest single second only to "Sakuranbo," before her third studio album was released. "Planetarium" was used as the insert song for the live action version of the drama Hana Yori Dango. Love Cook, her third studio album, came out on December 14, 2005. In its first week, it sold 335,000 copies. The promotional videos for this album were filmed as mini-dramas. She also hosts a radio show on JOQR Recomen!! AM1134hHz called Otsuka Ai no ai-r jack. CANNOTANSWER
In its first week, it sold 335,000 copies.
is a Japanese singer-songwriter from Suminoe-ku, Osaka, Japan. She is a popular artist on the Avex Trax label and is best known for her 2003 hit "Sakuranbo", which stayed in the Top 200 Oricon Weekly Singles Chart for 103 weeks. A piano player since age four, Otsuka composes and co-produces her own songs, as well as writes her own lyrics. Her music ranges from upbeat pop/rock music to ballads. Every year, Otsuka also has her own Love is Born tour to mark the anniversary of being in the music industry and her birthday in September. All of the Love is Born concerts take place in Japan, ending in her hometown of Osaka. On Love is Born 5th Anniversary in 2008, Otsuka held a leg of the concert in Taiwan, where she performed a Chinese version of her song "Planetarium". In 2009, Otsuka held 3 Love is Born 6th Anniversary concerts in Japan, as well as two concerts in Taiwan. In 2012, Otsuka debuted as the vocalist of the band Rabbit. She sold 7 million copies in Japan. Biography Early life and career beginnings Otsuka started to play piano at the age of four. She composed her first track at 15, as a homework given by her piano teacher. After graduating from high school she entered to the Osaka University of Arts Nursery College, where she got her degree as a nursery teacher. For a short period of time -around late 2001- she was part of a duo called HimawaRi, along with classmate Mami Nishida. They released only the song "Sakuranbo" on the Internet, and were active for a little time. She sent demo tapes to record labels with no positive results, until she got a call back from Avex just before her graduation from university. 2003: Debut and Love Punch Her debut single, entitled "Momo no Hanabira", was released on September 10, 2003. The single was a minor hit, peaking at number 24 on the Oricon weekly singles top 100, but stayed on the charts for 21 weeks. Her second single, "Sakuranbo", was released on December 17, 2003. The song debuted at number 20 on the Oricon charts, but managed to get into the Top 10 in February 2004 and went to peak at number five. Eventually, the single stayed on the chart for 101 weeks (almost two years), and a special "encore press" version was commissioned, which peaked at number 4, and it became the twelfth best selling single of 2004. Gradually climbing the charts to top 5, the single. In early March 2004, Otsuka released her third single, "Amaenbo". The song peaked at the sixth position on the Japanese charts, while at the same time "Sakuranbo" was fifth. This was the first time in Japanese music history a female artist was able to have two singles in the top ten in the same week. By end of March 2004, her first album, Love Punch, was released, and peaked third on the Oricon charts selling 190,265 copies in its first week. Love Jam In November 2004, the follow-up to Love Punch, Love Jam, was released, which met even greater popular success. Along with three single released before her second studio album was released. First, "Happy Days" sold 163,433 units and reached third on the Oricon weekly chart. Love Jam Tour 2005, her first tour, began on April 24, 2005. It was completed in June 2005 and a live DVD with footage was released on July 27, 2005. Love Cook, her third album was released on December 14, 2005. "Kingyo Hanabi" was the second single to be released after her first album. "Kingyo Hanabi" also landed in third on the Oricon weekly chart but was able to sell 148,121 units, about 20,000 copies less than her "Happy Days" single. Two months later, Otsuka released another single, "Daisuki da Yo". Like the previous two singles, it reached number 3 on the Oricon weekly chart and sold 156,844 units. Otsuka released her second studio album a month later in November 2004. Love Jam debuted at the number one position and sold 224,381 units in its first week. In total, 656,700 units were sold. Love Jam became her first album to top the chart, but at the same time it was her lowest selling studio album. Love Jam was released in two different versions including a CD and a CD+DVD version. Following the release of Love Jam, Ai Otsuka released the recut single "Kuroge Wagyu Joshio Tan Yaki 680 Yen" in February 2005. It was a different version of the "Kuroge Wagyu Joshio Tan Yaki 735 Yen" track on Love Jam. "Kuroge Wagyu Joshio Tan Yaki 680 Yen" is arranged differently in terms of music and vocals. This single sold 149,134 units and debuted third on the Oricon weekly chart and was the sixty-eighth single of 2005. It was the first ending theme song for the anime Black Jack. Love Cook "Smily/Biidama" was her first single to be released after Love Jam. Both songs from the single were used for commercials. "Smily/Biidama" sold 110,512 copies during its debut week and charted at first place. "Smily/Biidama" sold a total of 308,338 copies in 2005, placing it as the twenty-sixth single of that year. It was during this time, in June 2005, that Otsuka made her acting debut with the drama Tokyo Friends. Unlike most dramas, the series was directly released on DVD and never aired on TV. The drama used three songs as its theme song, Boo Bee Benz's "To Me" and "Kimi to Iu Hana," as well the coupling song to her sixth single, "Friends: Sabakan Ver." All three tracks would eventually be included in the soundtrack for the drama's movie sequel. Otsuka released her tenth single in 2005, "Neko ni Fūsen" in middle of the year in July. "Neko ni Fūsen" was her lowest single that year, only reaching third on the chart and selling 111,324 copies. It placed ninety-second on the 2005 yearly charts. Otsuka's single "Planetarium", was released on September 20, 2005. This was her last single of that year. "Planetarium" sales of 315,669 was her second highest single second only to "Sakuranbo," before her third studio album was released. "Planetarium" was used as the insert song for the live action version of the drama Hana Yori Dango. Love Cook, her third studio album, came out on December 14, 2005. In its first week, it sold 335,000 copies. The promotional videos for this album were filmed as mini-dramas. She also hosts a radio show on JOQR Recomen!! AM1134hHz called Otsuka Ai no ai-r jack. Love Piece In April 2006, Otsuka released "Frienger" (a portmanteau of the words Friend and Ranger). The promotional video was shot in Taiwan and was used as the commercial song for the Toshiba W41T 4 GB MP3 mobile phone. Soon after the release of "Frienger," Otsuka reprised her role as an actress for Tokyo Friends: The Movie, which hit theaters in Japan on August 12, 2006. The movie is a direct sequel to the DVD drama released the previous year. Otsuka also sang the opening theme for Tokyo Friends, "Yumekui", which was released as a new single on August 2, 2006. It debuted fifth on the weekly chart, selling 63,428 copies in the first week and a total of 145,281 copies. Two months after "Yumekui", Otsuka released another single titled "Renai Shashin" on October 25, 2006, which was used as the opening theme song for the movie Tada, Kimi o Aishiteru. The song was based on events from the film and its original novel, also called Renai Shashin. "Renai Shashin" debuted at number 2 and sold 129,855 copies, making it the 75th best-selling single of the year. At the end of 2006, Otsuka had released a total of three singles and charted on Oricon's 2006 yearly chart with "Frienger" at number 60, "Yumekui" at number 66, and "Renai Shashin" at number 75. Otsuka released her fourteenth single, "Chu-Lip," on February 21, 2007. The single was used as the theme song for the TBS drama Kirakira Kenshui, starring Manami Konishi and Wentz Eiji of WaT and managed to claim the third position on the Oricon charts. Ai Am Best Otsuka released her first best hits compilation album, titled Ai am Best, on March 28, 2007, which features 13 pre-2006 songs and their respective promotional videos. There are 11 songs that span her singles in chronological order, one song from Love Cook and one song from a Nana sound track: "Love for Nana: Only 1 Tribute". Ai am Best sold 64,396 copies on the first day and topped the Oricon charts, making it Otsuka's best selling album. It sold over 350,000 copies in its first week. "Ai am Best" also features two bonus tracks—one for the DVD, "Best of Babashi", and one for the CD, "Babashi". First Press "Ai am Best" includes an Ai stamp and Ai wallet calendar. Some also include an Ai pin in yellow or white. Otsuka went on a tour titled Ai am Best Tour that featured songs from Ai am Best and more. The tour started on May 18 and ended on July 7, 2007. 2007–2008: Love debut and Love Piece On April 11, 2007 Otsuka released a new single, "Love no Theme," as the self-created bunny rabbit character "Love-chan". "Love no Theme" was sung on her Jam Punch Tour 2005. Before its release, it was titled I canChu before it was changed to "Love no Theme". The "Love no Theme" single included a preview of a new single featuring Love, titled "White Choco." This song could only be found previously on the promotional CD released before "Momo no Hanabira". "Love no Theme" unfortunately did not sell as well as Otsuka's normal singles. Otsuka released her first single after Ai am Best, "Peach/Heart" on July 25, 2007. The first A-side "Peach" is an up-beat summer song and was used as the end theme for the summer drama Hanazakari no Kimitachi E (starring Maki Horikita and Shun Oguri), while the second "Heart" is a mid-tempo track. The single also includes a rearranged version of "Renai Shashin", titled . On September 26, 2007, Otsuka released two CDs and a DVD. The first CD was Otsuka's fourth original album, titled Love Piece. This included all of her singles from "Frienger" to "Peach/Heart", with five new songs on an 11-track album. The album was released in CD+DVD and CD-only formats, with the DVD including a music video of "Heart" and , a song from the album. The first-press of the DVD also includes the PV of "U-Boat," while the first-press of the CD-only version comes with a 40-page color photobook. The second CD was a limited pressing re-release of the best album "Ai am Best" in CD-only format. Also on September 26, Otsuka released a DVD of her Ai am Best Tour 2007, recorded at the Tokyo International Forum Hall A on July 9, 2007. The DVD is available in a single-disc edition, as well as a special two-disc edition with outtakes of the tour. The first-press of the special edition comes with a 40-page photobook. Otsuka performed at Makuhari Messe on July 7, 2007, for one of Japan's two Live Earth concerts, alongside contemporaries Kumi Koda and Ayaka. 2009–2010: Love Letter and Love is Best Otsuka released her 16th single "Pocket" on November 7, 2007. And two weeks later, Love-chan's second single, "White Choco", was released on November 21, 2007. During 2008, Otsuka embarked on her Love Piece Tour 2008, her fourth solo tour, from February to May. Her 17th single, "Rocket Sneaker/One x Time", was released on May 21. Otsuka's 18th single, "Kurage, Nagareboshi", was released on September 10, 2008. The single was released in four different formats, as a commemoration of her fifth anniversary in the music industry since the release of her debut single "Momo no Hanabira". On December 17, 2008, she released her fifth studio album, Love Letter, which peaked third on the weekly Oricon charts. It contains all of her singles since Love Piece including "Pocket", the third track on the album. Love Letter was her lowest-selling album. On February 25, 2009, "Bye Bye" was released as her second re-cut single. "Bye Bye" was used in a commercial for the Asahi Breweries beverage, Asahi Slat. Otsuka's second compilation album, Love Is Best, was released on November 11, 2009. The album features a collection of "love songs," ranging from singles to album tracks and b-sides, and will feature re-recorded versions of some tracks including a duet with Su from hip-hop band Rip Slyme on the song "Aisu x Time." On its first day of release the album charted at number one with a sales total of 22,895. As her character Love, she also released her first mini album entitled Love It (pronounced Rabitto, as rabbit), on November 18, 2009 (a week after Love Is Best). The album's track "Magic" was used in TV commercials for Music.jp. In January 2010, Otsuka performed a song for Fuji Television titled "Lucky Star" which the network used as the theme song for its coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics. In February it was announced that "Lucky Star" would be released as a cellphone-only digital single, but later was announced to have a physical release as a double A-side single, "Zokkondition/Lucky Star", which released on April 7, 2010. "Zokkondition" was used in advertisements for Asahi Beer, similar to her previous single "Bye Bye". On September 8, 2010, she released another single "'I Love..." (I ♥ xxx), which was her 21st and last single before taking a hiatus from music. 2011–present: Hiatus, Rabbit and Love Fantastic During Otsuka's hiatus from music due to her pregnancy, a new song titled "Hikari" was made available for download on October 9, 2011, through her official mobile website Love 9 Cube. On March 30, 2012, she released Neko ga Suki ni natta Kirai na Neko, a series of two picture books about cats. Purchasers of the books had the chance to download another new song, called "Gomen ne". On September 9, 2012, she celebrated her 30th birthday and ninth anniversary in the music industry with Love Is Born: 9th Anniversary 2012, her first series of concerts in two years, in which she held performances in Tokyo, Hyogo and Aichi. In October 2012, Otsuka announced that she would be debuting as the vocalist of a new band called Rabbit. The band released their debut album Rabito on December 12, 2012 through the Cutting Edge label. The album peaked at number 61 on the Oricon charts. Rabbit went on their first domestic tour in Japan starting in February 2013. This month it was also announced that Otsuka, as a solo, would begin a tour in September to celebrate her tenth anniversary in the music industry,. In July 2013, it was announced that Otsuka would be releasing her first solo single in three years, entitled "Re:Name", to celebrate her tenth anniversary. The single was released on October 9, 2013, and debuted at number eight on the Japanese charts. On December 13, 2013, a song entitled "Sakuranbo (Cocktail)", which was a self-cover version of her second single, was released digitally through the iTunes Music Store. On March 26, 2014, Otsuka released an EP entitled AIO Punch, which included other self-covers from previously released songs. And she also recorded a cover of Dreams Come True's "Romance" for their tribute album Watashi to Dori Kamu: Dreams Come True 25th Anniversary Best Covers, which was released on the same day. Her 23rd single, "More More" was released on May 21, 2014. Otsuka's sixth studio album, entitled Love Fantastic, was released on July 16, 2014. She released her seventh album, Love Tricky, on April 22, 2015. Otsuka's eighth studio album, Love Honey, came out on April 12, 2017. Personal life In February 2010, it was reported by Josei Seven magazine that Otsuka was dating rapper Kazuto Otsuki (publicly known as Su, member of hip hop group Rip Slyme), with whom she collaborated in October 2009 for her song "Aisu x Time". Neither of the artists' agencies would comment on the matter. On June 26, 2010, Otsuka announced via a message on her official Web site that she and Su had gotten married on the previous day. Su also posted an announcement on Rip Slyme's website, confirming what Otsuka wrote on her website. During her Love is Born concert held on September 11, 2010, Otsuka revealed to the audience that she was expecting her first child, and on March 24, 2011, she gave birth to a daughter. On November 22, 2018, Otsuka announced that she had filed for divorce. Discography Studio albums 2004: Love Punch 2004: Love Jam 2005: Love Cook 2007: Love Piece 2008: Love Letter 2014: Love Fantastic 2015: Love Tricky 2017: Love Honey Compilation albums 2007: Ai Am Best 2009: Love Is Best 2019: Ai Am Best, too Radio shows Otsuka Ai ai-r Jack (Nippon Cultural Broadcasting) Corolla presents Life-Love Circle (Tokyo FM) Books (February 25, 2005) Love World (September 25, 2007) (January 31, 2008) (March 31, 2010) (March 30, 2012) Awards Japan Cable Radio Awards 2004: Best New Artist Best Hits Kayōsai 2004: Best New Artist 2005: Gold Artist Prize – "Planetarium" 2006: Gold Artist Prize – "Ren'ai Shashin" 2007: Gold Artist Prize – "Pocket" Japan Gold Disc Award 2005: Rock & Pop Album of the Year – Love Punch 2005: Rock & Pop Album of the Year – Love Jam 2006: Rock & Pop Album of the Year – Love Cook 2007: The Best 10 Albums - Ai Am Best MTV Video Music Awards Japan 2007: Best Pop Video - "Ren'ai Shashin" 2007: Best Video from a Film - "Ren'ai Shashin" (from Tada, Kimi o Aishiteru) References External links Love website 1982 births Living people Japanese women pop singers Japanese actresses Japanese women singer-songwriters Japanese singer-songwriters Musicians from Osaka Osaka University of Arts alumni Avex Trax artists 21st-century Japanese women singers 21st-century Japanese singers
true
[ "\"Summer Suspicion\" (Japanese: サマー・サスピション) is the debut single by Kiyotaka Sugiyama & Omega Tribe, released by VAP on April 21, 1983. The single reached at #9 on the Oricon charts.\n\nBackground \nInitially, the song \"Umikaze Tsushin\" was the candidate for their debut song, but producer Koichi Fujita did not want the song to be used as the debut, saying \"It's not too bad, but could you write another song? I'd like it to have a more melodic melody and crying.\" The song was created after.\n\nOne month before the release of the single, Kiyotaka Sugiyama performed the song at the 12th Tokyo Music Festival, held at the Nippon Budokan on March 27, 1983. He then appeared on the Tokyo Broadcasting System program Apple City 500, promoting the song. The song was first shown at the TBS TV program \"The Best Ten\" on August 4, 1983, then on the Nippon TV program The Top Ten on July 11, 1983. The single ranked in the top 10's on both programs.\n\nThe single was included in their debut album Aqua City, which released on September 21, 1983. It was included in the albums Single's History and was planned to also be included on the album Kamasami Kong DJ Special until the project was scrapped. Kiyotaka Sugiyama covered the song on his albums Hula Moon Sessions and I Am Me.\n\nTrack listing\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nReferences \n\nOmega Tribe (Japanese band) songs\n1983 songs\n1983 debut singles\nSongs with lyrics by Chinfa Kan", "A Time for Us is the debut studio album by Australian recording artist Luke Kennedy, who finished second on the second season of The Voice Australia. The album was released on 12 July 2013, through Universal Music Australia. It features eight songs Kennedy performed on The Voice, two original songs, as well as two newly recorded covers.\n\nSingles\n \"Stay for a Minute\" – Released on 5 July 2013. It did not reach the Aria Charts top 100.\n\nTrack listing\n\nCharts\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\n2013 debut albums" ]
[ "Ai Otsuka", "Love Cook", "Is Love Cook an album or a single?", "Love Cook, her third studio album,", "Did it debut on the charts?", "In its first week, it sold 335,000 copies." ]
C_44d96215ff6942c18b21f9d96e2ef26d_0
What year was Love Cook released?
3
What year was Love Cook by Ai Otsuka released?
Ai Otsuka
"Smily/Biidama" was her first single to be released after Love Jam. Both songs from the single were used for commercials. "Smily/Biidama" sold 110,512 copies during its debut week and charted at first place. "Smily/Biidama" sold a total of 308,338 copies in 2005, placing it as the twenty-sixth single of that year. It was during this time, in June 2005, that Otsuka made her acting debut with the drama Tokyo Friends. Unlike most dramas, the series was directly released on DVD and never aired on TV. The drama used three songs as its theme song, Boo Bee Benz's "To Me" and "Kimi to Iu Hana," as well the coupling song to her sixth single, "Friends: Sabakan Ver." All three tracks would eventually be included in the soundtrack for the drama's movie sequel. Otsuka released her tenth single in 2005, "Neko ni Fusen" in middle of the year in July. "Neko ni Fusen" was her lowest single that year, only reaching third on the chart and selling 111,324 copies. It placed ninety-second on the 2005 yearly charts. Otsuka's single "Planetarium", was released on September 20, 2005. This was her last single of that year. "Planetarium" sales of 315,669 was her second highest single second only to "Sakuranbo," before her third studio album was released. "Planetarium" was used as the insert song for the live action version of the drama Hana Yori Dango. Love Cook, her third studio album, came out on December 14, 2005. In its first week, it sold 335,000 copies. The promotional videos for this album were filmed as mini-dramas. She also hosts a radio show on JOQR Recomen!! AM1134hHz called Otsuka Ai no ai-r jack. CANNOTANSWER
December 14, 2005.
is a Japanese singer-songwriter from Suminoe-ku, Osaka, Japan. She is a popular artist on the Avex Trax label and is best known for her 2003 hit "Sakuranbo", which stayed in the Top 200 Oricon Weekly Singles Chart for 103 weeks. A piano player since age four, Otsuka composes and co-produces her own songs, as well as writes her own lyrics. Her music ranges from upbeat pop/rock music to ballads. Every year, Otsuka also has her own Love is Born tour to mark the anniversary of being in the music industry and her birthday in September. All of the Love is Born concerts take place in Japan, ending in her hometown of Osaka. On Love is Born 5th Anniversary in 2008, Otsuka held a leg of the concert in Taiwan, where she performed a Chinese version of her song "Planetarium". In 2009, Otsuka held 3 Love is Born 6th Anniversary concerts in Japan, as well as two concerts in Taiwan. In 2012, Otsuka debuted as the vocalist of the band Rabbit. She sold 7 million copies in Japan. Biography Early life and career beginnings Otsuka started to play piano at the age of four. She composed her first track at 15, as a homework given by her piano teacher. After graduating from high school she entered to the Osaka University of Arts Nursery College, where she got her degree as a nursery teacher. For a short period of time -around late 2001- she was part of a duo called HimawaRi, along with classmate Mami Nishida. They released only the song "Sakuranbo" on the Internet, and were active for a little time. She sent demo tapes to record labels with no positive results, until she got a call back from Avex just before her graduation from university. 2003: Debut and Love Punch Her debut single, entitled "Momo no Hanabira", was released on September 10, 2003. The single was a minor hit, peaking at number 24 on the Oricon weekly singles top 100, but stayed on the charts for 21 weeks. Her second single, "Sakuranbo", was released on December 17, 2003. The song debuted at number 20 on the Oricon charts, but managed to get into the Top 10 in February 2004 and went to peak at number five. Eventually, the single stayed on the chart for 101 weeks (almost two years), and a special "encore press" version was commissioned, which peaked at number 4, and it became the twelfth best selling single of 2004. Gradually climbing the charts to top 5, the single. In early March 2004, Otsuka released her third single, "Amaenbo". The song peaked at the sixth position on the Japanese charts, while at the same time "Sakuranbo" was fifth. This was the first time in Japanese music history a female artist was able to have two singles in the top ten in the same week. By end of March 2004, her first album, Love Punch, was released, and peaked third on the Oricon charts selling 190,265 copies in its first week. Love Jam In November 2004, the follow-up to Love Punch, Love Jam, was released, which met even greater popular success. Along with three single released before her second studio album was released. First, "Happy Days" sold 163,433 units and reached third on the Oricon weekly chart. Love Jam Tour 2005, her first tour, began on April 24, 2005. It was completed in June 2005 and a live DVD with footage was released on July 27, 2005. Love Cook, her third album was released on December 14, 2005. "Kingyo Hanabi" was the second single to be released after her first album. "Kingyo Hanabi" also landed in third on the Oricon weekly chart but was able to sell 148,121 units, about 20,000 copies less than her "Happy Days" single. Two months later, Otsuka released another single, "Daisuki da Yo". Like the previous two singles, it reached number 3 on the Oricon weekly chart and sold 156,844 units. Otsuka released her second studio album a month later in November 2004. Love Jam debuted at the number one position and sold 224,381 units in its first week. In total, 656,700 units were sold. Love Jam became her first album to top the chart, but at the same time it was her lowest selling studio album. Love Jam was released in two different versions including a CD and a CD+DVD version. Following the release of Love Jam, Ai Otsuka released the recut single "Kuroge Wagyu Joshio Tan Yaki 680 Yen" in February 2005. It was a different version of the "Kuroge Wagyu Joshio Tan Yaki 735 Yen" track on Love Jam. "Kuroge Wagyu Joshio Tan Yaki 680 Yen" is arranged differently in terms of music and vocals. This single sold 149,134 units and debuted third on the Oricon weekly chart and was the sixty-eighth single of 2005. It was the first ending theme song for the anime Black Jack. Love Cook "Smily/Biidama" was her first single to be released after Love Jam. Both songs from the single were used for commercials. "Smily/Biidama" sold 110,512 copies during its debut week and charted at first place. "Smily/Biidama" sold a total of 308,338 copies in 2005, placing it as the twenty-sixth single of that year. It was during this time, in June 2005, that Otsuka made her acting debut with the drama Tokyo Friends. Unlike most dramas, the series was directly released on DVD and never aired on TV. The drama used three songs as its theme song, Boo Bee Benz's "To Me" and "Kimi to Iu Hana," as well the coupling song to her sixth single, "Friends: Sabakan Ver." All three tracks would eventually be included in the soundtrack for the drama's movie sequel. Otsuka released her tenth single in 2005, "Neko ni Fūsen" in middle of the year in July. "Neko ni Fūsen" was her lowest single that year, only reaching third on the chart and selling 111,324 copies. It placed ninety-second on the 2005 yearly charts. Otsuka's single "Planetarium", was released on September 20, 2005. This was her last single of that year. "Planetarium" sales of 315,669 was her second highest single second only to "Sakuranbo," before her third studio album was released. "Planetarium" was used as the insert song for the live action version of the drama Hana Yori Dango. Love Cook, her third studio album, came out on December 14, 2005. In its first week, it sold 335,000 copies. The promotional videos for this album were filmed as mini-dramas. She also hosts a radio show on JOQR Recomen!! AM1134hHz called Otsuka Ai no ai-r jack. Love Piece In April 2006, Otsuka released "Frienger" (a portmanteau of the words Friend and Ranger). The promotional video was shot in Taiwan and was used as the commercial song for the Toshiba W41T 4 GB MP3 mobile phone. Soon after the release of "Frienger," Otsuka reprised her role as an actress for Tokyo Friends: The Movie, which hit theaters in Japan on August 12, 2006. The movie is a direct sequel to the DVD drama released the previous year. Otsuka also sang the opening theme for Tokyo Friends, "Yumekui", which was released as a new single on August 2, 2006. It debuted fifth on the weekly chart, selling 63,428 copies in the first week and a total of 145,281 copies. Two months after "Yumekui", Otsuka released another single titled "Renai Shashin" on October 25, 2006, which was used as the opening theme song for the movie Tada, Kimi o Aishiteru. The song was based on events from the film and its original novel, also called Renai Shashin. "Renai Shashin" debuted at number 2 and sold 129,855 copies, making it the 75th best-selling single of the year. At the end of 2006, Otsuka had released a total of three singles and charted on Oricon's 2006 yearly chart with "Frienger" at number 60, "Yumekui" at number 66, and "Renai Shashin" at number 75. Otsuka released her fourteenth single, "Chu-Lip," on February 21, 2007. The single was used as the theme song for the TBS drama Kirakira Kenshui, starring Manami Konishi and Wentz Eiji of WaT and managed to claim the third position on the Oricon charts. Ai Am Best Otsuka released her first best hits compilation album, titled Ai am Best, on March 28, 2007, which features 13 pre-2006 songs and their respective promotional videos. There are 11 songs that span her singles in chronological order, one song from Love Cook and one song from a Nana sound track: "Love for Nana: Only 1 Tribute". Ai am Best sold 64,396 copies on the first day and topped the Oricon charts, making it Otsuka's best selling album. It sold over 350,000 copies in its first week. "Ai am Best" also features two bonus tracks—one for the DVD, "Best of Babashi", and one for the CD, "Babashi". First Press "Ai am Best" includes an Ai stamp and Ai wallet calendar. Some also include an Ai pin in yellow or white. Otsuka went on a tour titled Ai am Best Tour that featured songs from Ai am Best and more. The tour started on May 18 and ended on July 7, 2007. 2007–2008: Love debut and Love Piece On April 11, 2007 Otsuka released a new single, "Love no Theme," as the self-created bunny rabbit character "Love-chan". "Love no Theme" was sung on her Jam Punch Tour 2005. Before its release, it was titled I canChu before it was changed to "Love no Theme". The "Love no Theme" single included a preview of a new single featuring Love, titled "White Choco." This song could only be found previously on the promotional CD released before "Momo no Hanabira". "Love no Theme" unfortunately did not sell as well as Otsuka's normal singles. Otsuka released her first single after Ai am Best, "Peach/Heart" on July 25, 2007. The first A-side "Peach" is an up-beat summer song and was used as the end theme for the summer drama Hanazakari no Kimitachi E (starring Maki Horikita and Shun Oguri), while the second "Heart" is a mid-tempo track. The single also includes a rearranged version of "Renai Shashin", titled . On September 26, 2007, Otsuka released two CDs and a DVD. The first CD was Otsuka's fourth original album, titled Love Piece. This included all of her singles from "Frienger" to "Peach/Heart", with five new songs on an 11-track album. The album was released in CD+DVD and CD-only formats, with the DVD including a music video of "Heart" and , a song from the album. The first-press of the DVD also includes the PV of "U-Boat," while the first-press of the CD-only version comes with a 40-page color photobook. The second CD was a limited pressing re-release of the best album "Ai am Best" in CD-only format. Also on September 26, Otsuka released a DVD of her Ai am Best Tour 2007, recorded at the Tokyo International Forum Hall A on July 9, 2007. The DVD is available in a single-disc edition, as well as a special two-disc edition with outtakes of the tour. The first-press of the special edition comes with a 40-page photobook. Otsuka performed at Makuhari Messe on July 7, 2007, for one of Japan's two Live Earth concerts, alongside contemporaries Kumi Koda and Ayaka. 2009–2010: Love Letter and Love is Best Otsuka released her 16th single "Pocket" on November 7, 2007. And two weeks later, Love-chan's second single, "White Choco", was released on November 21, 2007. During 2008, Otsuka embarked on her Love Piece Tour 2008, her fourth solo tour, from February to May. Her 17th single, "Rocket Sneaker/One x Time", was released on May 21. Otsuka's 18th single, "Kurage, Nagareboshi", was released on September 10, 2008. The single was released in four different formats, as a commemoration of her fifth anniversary in the music industry since the release of her debut single "Momo no Hanabira". On December 17, 2008, she released her fifth studio album, Love Letter, which peaked third on the weekly Oricon charts. It contains all of her singles since Love Piece including "Pocket", the third track on the album. Love Letter was her lowest-selling album. On February 25, 2009, "Bye Bye" was released as her second re-cut single. "Bye Bye" was used in a commercial for the Asahi Breweries beverage, Asahi Slat. Otsuka's second compilation album, Love Is Best, was released on November 11, 2009. The album features a collection of "love songs," ranging from singles to album tracks and b-sides, and will feature re-recorded versions of some tracks including a duet with Su from hip-hop band Rip Slyme on the song "Aisu x Time." On its first day of release the album charted at number one with a sales total of 22,895. As her character Love, she also released her first mini album entitled Love It (pronounced Rabitto, as rabbit), on November 18, 2009 (a week after Love Is Best). The album's track "Magic" was used in TV commercials for Music.jp. In January 2010, Otsuka performed a song for Fuji Television titled "Lucky Star" which the network used as the theme song for its coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics. In February it was announced that "Lucky Star" would be released as a cellphone-only digital single, but later was announced to have a physical release as a double A-side single, "Zokkondition/Lucky Star", which released on April 7, 2010. "Zokkondition" was used in advertisements for Asahi Beer, similar to her previous single "Bye Bye". On September 8, 2010, she released another single "'I Love..." (I ♥ xxx), which was her 21st and last single before taking a hiatus from music. 2011–present: Hiatus, Rabbit and Love Fantastic During Otsuka's hiatus from music due to her pregnancy, a new song titled "Hikari" was made available for download on October 9, 2011, through her official mobile website Love 9 Cube. On March 30, 2012, she released Neko ga Suki ni natta Kirai na Neko, a series of two picture books about cats. Purchasers of the books had the chance to download another new song, called "Gomen ne". On September 9, 2012, she celebrated her 30th birthday and ninth anniversary in the music industry with Love Is Born: 9th Anniversary 2012, her first series of concerts in two years, in which she held performances in Tokyo, Hyogo and Aichi. In October 2012, Otsuka announced that she would be debuting as the vocalist of a new band called Rabbit. The band released their debut album Rabito on December 12, 2012 through the Cutting Edge label. The album peaked at number 61 on the Oricon charts. Rabbit went on their first domestic tour in Japan starting in February 2013. This month it was also announced that Otsuka, as a solo, would begin a tour in September to celebrate her tenth anniversary in the music industry,. In July 2013, it was announced that Otsuka would be releasing her first solo single in three years, entitled "Re:Name", to celebrate her tenth anniversary. The single was released on October 9, 2013, and debuted at number eight on the Japanese charts. On December 13, 2013, a song entitled "Sakuranbo (Cocktail)", which was a self-cover version of her second single, was released digitally through the iTunes Music Store. On March 26, 2014, Otsuka released an EP entitled AIO Punch, which included other self-covers from previously released songs. And she also recorded a cover of Dreams Come True's "Romance" for their tribute album Watashi to Dori Kamu: Dreams Come True 25th Anniversary Best Covers, which was released on the same day. Her 23rd single, "More More" was released on May 21, 2014. Otsuka's sixth studio album, entitled Love Fantastic, was released on July 16, 2014. She released her seventh album, Love Tricky, on April 22, 2015. Otsuka's eighth studio album, Love Honey, came out on April 12, 2017. Personal life In February 2010, it was reported by Josei Seven magazine that Otsuka was dating rapper Kazuto Otsuki (publicly known as Su, member of hip hop group Rip Slyme), with whom she collaborated in October 2009 for her song "Aisu x Time". Neither of the artists' agencies would comment on the matter. On June 26, 2010, Otsuka announced via a message on her official Web site that she and Su had gotten married on the previous day. Su also posted an announcement on Rip Slyme's website, confirming what Otsuka wrote on her website. During her Love is Born concert held on September 11, 2010, Otsuka revealed to the audience that she was expecting her first child, and on March 24, 2011, she gave birth to a daughter. On November 22, 2018, Otsuka announced that she had filed for divorce. Discography Studio albums 2004: Love Punch 2004: Love Jam 2005: Love Cook 2007: Love Piece 2008: Love Letter 2014: Love Fantastic 2015: Love Tricky 2017: Love Honey Compilation albums 2007: Ai Am Best 2009: Love Is Best 2019: Ai Am Best, too Radio shows Otsuka Ai ai-r Jack (Nippon Cultural Broadcasting) Corolla presents Life-Love Circle (Tokyo FM) Books (February 25, 2005) Love World (September 25, 2007) (January 31, 2008) (March 31, 2010) (March 30, 2012) Awards Japan Cable Radio Awards 2004: Best New Artist Best Hits Kayōsai 2004: Best New Artist 2005: Gold Artist Prize – "Planetarium" 2006: Gold Artist Prize – "Ren'ai Shashin" 2007: Gold Artist Prize – "Pocket" Japan Gold Disc Award 2005: Rock & Pop Album of the Year – Love Punch 2005: Rock & Pop Album of the Year – Love Jam 2006: Rock & Pop Album of the Year – Love Cook 2007: The Best 10 Albums - Ai Am Best MTV Video Music Awards Japan 2007: Best Pop Video - "Ren'ai Shashin" 2007: Best Video from a Film - "Ren'ai Shashin" (from Tada, Kimi o Aishiteru) References External links Love website 1982 births Living people Japanese women pop singers Japanese actresses Japanese women singer-songwriters Japanese singer-songwriters Musicians from Osaka Osaka University of Arts alumni Avex Trax artists 21st-century Japanese women singers 21st-century Japanese singers
true
[ "Vessel of Love is a studio album by reggae musician Hollie Cook. It was released in 2018 via Merge Records.\n\nCritical reception\nPitchfork wrote that Cook \"always sounds strong and self-possessed, and that is what most makes Vessel of Love sound like pure joy.\" PopMatters wrote that \"Cook's breezy voice soothes on backdrops of steady brass and lush synths, making for a true tropical retreat.\"\n\nTrack listing\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n2018 albums\nMerge Records albums", "Kristy Lee Cook (born January 18, 1984) is an American country music singer and television personality. She was the seventh place finalist on the seventh season of American Idol. In 2005, Cook released her first album called Devoted. In June 2008, Cook signed to 19 Recordings and Arista Nashville. She released her post-Idol album, Why Wait, on September 16, 2008. This album produced her first chart single, \"15 Minutes of Shame\", a Top 30 hit on the Billboard country charts. Her first single for Broken Bow Records, \"Airborne Ranger Infantry\", was released on October 16, 2012.\n\nCook hosted the 2010 TV show Outdoor's 10 Best, and was a main judge on the 2011 competition show Wanted: Adventure Host. She starred in the 2011 reality television show Goin' Country. Since 2015, she has hosted the show The Most Wanted List.\n\nPersonal life\nCook was born in Seattle, Washington, to Larry and Carlene Cook. She is the youngest of three children. Her brother-in-law is retired American football quarterback John Dutton of the Arena Football League. She lives in Amarillo, Texas.\n\nEarly career\nIn 2001, at the age of 17, Cook signed her first contract with BMI. According to her RMG page, she signed with RCA Records/Arista Nashville in 1999, and was the first artist signed to Britney Spears' production company. Spears agreed to make a cameo appearance in her first music video. However, RCA placed Cook and other younger artists on hold and then dropped her.\n\nCook then moved to Dallas, Texas, in an attempt to pursue her career and to gain more experience. She began modeling and appeared in commercials. In 2005, Ren-Hen Records released her first album, Devoted. During this time, Kristy Lee performed for two years at Cowboy's nightclub in Arlington, Texas, singing eight songs per night with the band Six Shooter.\n\nIn 2007, Cook returned to Selma, Oregon, to prepare for the American Idol audition. To raise funds for her audition and travel expenses, she sold her \"really good\" barrel horse. She had hoped to earn enough money to repurchase her horse on her return. However, the night she was eliminated, she commented that the person to whom she had sold the horse was unwilling to sell it back.\n\nAmerican Idol\n\nOverview\n\nCook auditioned for American Idol in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by singing \"Amazing Grace\". All three judges liked her voice and sent her straight through to Hollywood. In Hollywood, her first song did not impress the judges. For her second and final chance, she sang \"Amazing Grace\" again; she was then selected as one of the top 24 contestants in the semi-finals. She was the first female performer of the season and sang \"Rescue Me\". The judges did not care for her performance but gave her props since she was the first of the night and she had bronchitis. On March 12, Cook was placed in the bottom three with Syesha Mercado and David Hernandez. She was declared safe. On March 19, she was placed in the bottom three again with Carly Smithson and Amanda Overmyer, but she survived again, ensuring herself a spot in the American Idol Top 10 Concert Tour for the coming summer. Once again, on April 2, she was placed in the bottom three with her two roommates, Ramiele Malubay and Brooke White. Malubay was eliminated.\n\nPerformances\n\n When Ryan Seacrest announced the results for this particular night, Cook was among the bottom three but was declared safe second when David Hernandez was eliminated.\n When Seacrest announced the results for this particular night, Cook was among the bottom three but declared safe second when Amanda Overmyer was eliminated.\n When Seacrest announced the results for this particular night, Cook was among the bottom three but declared safe second when Ramiele Malubay was eliminated.\n\nPost-Idol career, 2008-2009\nAfter American Idol, Cook was interviewed on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Live with Regis and Kelly and on WNYW in New York City. She performed with the other top 10 finalists on the American Idols LIVE! Tour 2008 which ran from July 1 to September 13, 2008. She sang \"Squeezin' the Love Outta You\" (Redmon and Vale), \"God Bless the USA\" (Lee Greenwood), which she performed on Top 10 night during the season, and \"Cowgirls\" (Kerry Harvick). In Toronto, she replaced \"God Bless the USA\" with \"Anyway\" (Martina McBride), which she had performed on Top 8 night during the season.\n\nCook announced on June 29, 2008, that she had once again signed with Arista Nashville and with 19 Recordings. On August 12 of that year, \"15 Minutes of Shame\" was released as the first single for Cook's upcoming studio album. It entered the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts at number 58 a week before its release and peaked at number 28. Her album, Why Wait, released on September 16, 2008, was produced by the Nashville singer-songwriter Brett James.\n\nIn the fall of 2008 and 2009, Cook performed \"The Star-Spangled Banner\" at NCAA football games hosted by both Vanderbilt Commodores and Middle Tennessee State University. On October 25, 2008, Cook made her first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry. Arista Nashville announced on December 10, 2008, that Cook and the label had parted ways.\n\nBroken Bow Records\nOn August 4, 2010, it was announced Cook had signed with Broken Bow Records.\n\nOn October 16, 2012, Cook's first single from Broken Bow Records, \"Airborne Ranger Infantry\", was released. She was inspired to write the songs after reading poems written by her father, Larry Cook, about his experiences in the Army during the Vietnam War. \"We took lines directly from the poems and put them into the song,\" Kristy said. \"I wouldn't have written the song if my dad hadn't written those poems, because he doesn't really talk about much. The cool thing is that it gives perspective to someone who doesn't know what it's like to know how they feel and what they're experiencing. It was really important for us to make sure it was right, and exactly what they would say.\" Cook's second Broken Bow single, \"Wherever Love Goes\", was released to country radio on August 12, 2013. The song was originally recorded by Cook as a duet with labelmate Randy Houser on his 2013 album How Country Feels; the single version changes the vocal parts from the original to make Cook more prominent. Cook has been released from her record deal with Broken Bow Records and her album believed to have been scrapped.\n\nTV career\nCook hosted Outdoor's 10 Best in 2010. She appeared as a judge in the same year in Wanted: Adventure Host. She starred in a reality show, Goin' Country, which documented her two loves of hunting and singing, in 2011. Since 2015, she has hosted the hunting show The Most Wanted List.\n\nCharity work\nCook founded the Kristy Lee Horse Heaven Foundation, which specializes in caring for, saving and training horses. \"I love horses with all my heart, and they have always been there for me through the good and the difficult times. The least I can do is to give back to them in appreciation of all they have done and meant to me.\" Cook also enters the horses in gymkhanas and other horse events.\n\nDiscography\n\nStudio albums\n\nExtended plays\n\nSingles\n\nMusic videos\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n1984 births\nLiving people\n21st-century American singers\nPeople from Josephine County, Oregon\nSinger-songwriters from Oregon\nAmerican women country singers\nAmerican country singer-songwriters\nAmerican Idol participants\nArista Nashville artists\nBBR Music Group artists\n21st-century American women singers" ]
[ "Ai Otsuka", "Love Cook", "Is Love Cook an album or a single?", "Love Cook, her third studio album,", "Did it debut on the charts?", "In its first week, it sold 335,000 copies.", "What year was Love Cook released?", "December 14, 2005." ]
C_44d96215ff6942c18b21f9d96e2ef26d_0
What country did the album debut in first?
4
What country did the Love Cook by Ai Otsuka debut in first?
Ai Otsuka
"Smily/Biidama" was her first single to be released after Love Jam. Both songs from the single were used for commercials. "Smily/Biidama" sold 110,512 copies during its debut week and charted at first place. "Smily/Biidama" sold a total of 308,338 copies in 2005, placing it as the twenty-sixth single of that year. It was during this time, in June 2005, that Otsuka made her acting debut with the drama Tokyo Friends. Unlike most dramas, the series was directly released on DVD and never aired on TV. The drama used three songs as its theme song, Boo Bee Benz's "To Me" and "Kimi to Iu Hana," as well the coupling song to her sixth single, "Friends: Sabakan Ver." All three tracks would eventually be included in the soundtrack for the drama's movie sequel. Otsuka released her tenth single in 2005, "Neko ni Fusen" in middle of the year in July. "Neko ni Fusen" was her lowest single that year, only reaching third on the chart and selling 111,324 copies. It placed ninety-second on the 2005 yearly charts. Otsuka's single "Planetarium", was released on September 20, 2005. This was her last single of that year. "Planetarium" sales of 315,669 was her second highest single second only to "Sakuranbo," before her third studio album was released. "Planetarium" was used as the insert song for the live action version of the drama Hana Yori Dango. Love Cook, her third studio album, came out on December 14, 2005. In its first week, it sold 335,000 copies. The promotional videos for this album were filmed as mini-dramas. She also hosts a radio show on JOQR Recomen!! AM1134hHz called Otsuka Ai no ai-r jack. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
is a Japanese singer-songwriter from Suminoe-ku, Osaka, Japan. She is a popular artist on the Avex Trax label and is best known for her 2003 hit "Sakuranbo", which stayed in the Top 200 Oricon Weekly Singles Chart for 103 weeks. A piano player since age four, Otsuka composes and co-produces her own songs, as well as writes her own lyrics. Her music ranges from upbeat pop/rock music to ballads. Every year, Otsuka also has her own Love is Born tour to mark the anniversary of being in the music industry and her birthday in September. All of the Love is Born concerts take place in Japan, ending in her hometown of Osaka. On Love is Born 5th Anniversary in 2008, Otsuka held a leg of the concert in Taiwan, where she performed a Chinese version of her song "Planetarium". In 2009, Otsuka held 3 Love is Born 6th Anniversary concerts in Japan, as well as two concerts in Taiwan. In 2012, Otsuka debuted as the vocalist of the band Rabbit. She sold 7 million copies in Japan. Biography Early life and career beginnings Otsuka started to play piano at the age of four. She composed her first track at 15, as a homework given by her piano teacher. After graduating from high school she entered to the Osaka University of Arts Nursery College, where she got her degree as a nursery teacher. For a short period of time -around late 2001- she was part of a duo called HimawaRi, along with classmate Mami Nishida. They released only the song "Sakuranbo" on the Internet, and were active for a little time. She sent demo tapes to record labels with no positive results, until she got a call back from Avex just before her graduation from university. 2003: Debut and Love Punch Her debut single, entitled "Momo no Hanabira", was released on September 10, 2003. The single was a minor hit, peaking at number 24 on the Oricon weekly singles top 100, but stayed on the charts for 21 weeks. Her second single, "Sakuranbo", was released on December 17, 2003. The song debuted at number 20 on the Oricon charts, but managed to get into the Top 10 in February 2004 and went to peak at number five. Eventually, the single stayed on the chart for 101 weeks (almost two years), and a special "encore press" version was commissioned, which peaked at number 4, and it became the twelfth best selling single of 2004. Gradually climbing the charts to top 5, the single. In early March 2004, Otsuka released her third single, "Amaenbo". The song peaked at the sixth position on the Japanese charts, while at the same time "Sakuranbo" was fifth. This was the first time in Japanese music history a female artist was able to have two singles in the top ten in the same week. By end of March 2004, her first album, Love Punch, was released, and peaked third on the Oricon charts selling 190,265 copies in its first week. Love Jam In November 2004, the follow-up to Love Punch, Love Jam, was released, which met even greater popular success. Along with three single released before her second studio album was released. First, "Happy Days" sold 163,433 units and reached third on the Oricon weekly chart. Love Jam Tour 2005, her first tour, began on April 24, 2005. It was completed in June 2005 and a live DVD with footage was released on July 27, 2005. Love Cook, her third album was released on December 14, 2005. "Kingyo Hanabi" was the second single to be released after her first album. "Kingyo Hanabi" also landed in third on the Oricon weekly chart but was able to sell 148,121 units, about 20,000 copies less than her "Happy Days" single. Two months later, Otsuka released another single, "Daisuki da Yo". Like the previous two singles, it reached number 3 on the Oricon weekly chart and sold 156,844 units. Otsuka released her second studio album a month later in November 2004. Love Jam debuted at the number one position and sold 224,381 units in its first week. In total, 656,700 units were sold. Love Jam became her first album to top the chart, but at the same time it was her lowest selling studio album. Love Jam was released in two different versions including a CD and a CD+DVD version. Following the release of Love Jam, Ai Otsuka released the recut single "Kuroge Wagyu Joshio Tan Yaki 680 Yen" in February 2005. It was a different version of the "Kuroge Wagyu Joshio Tan Yaki 735 Yen" track on Love Jam. "Kuroge Wagyu Joshio Tan Yaki 680 Yen" is arranged differently in terms of music and vocals. This single sold 149,134 units and debuted third on the Oricon weekly chart and was the sixty-eighth single of 2005. It was the first ending theme song for the anime Black Jack. Love Cook "Smily/Biidama" was her first single to be released after Love Jam. Both songs from the single were used for commercials. "Smily/Biidama" sold 110,512 copies during its debut week and charted at first place. "Smily/Biidama" sold a total of 308,338 copies in 2005, placing it as the twenty-sixth single of that year. It was during this time, in June 2005, that Otsuka made her acting debut with the drama Tokyo Friends. Unlike most dramas, the series was directly released on DVD and never aired on TV. The drama used three songs as its theme song, Boo Bee Benz's "To Me" and "Kimi to Iu Hana," as well the coupling song to her sixth single, "Friends: Sabakan Ver." All three tracks would eventually be included in the soundtrack for the drama's movie sequel. Otsuka released her tenth single in 2005, "Neko ni Fūsen" in middle of the year in July. "Neko ni Fūsen" was her lowest single that year, only reaching third on the chart and selling 111,324 copies. It placed ninety-second on the 2005 yearly charts. Otsuka's single "Planetarium", was released on September 20, 2005. This was her last single of that year. "Planetarium" sales of 315,669 was her second highest single second only to "Sakuranbo," before her third studio album was released. "Planetarium" was used as the insert song for the live action version of the drama Hana Yori Dango. Love Cook, her third studio album, came out on December 14, 2005. In its first week, it sold 335,000 copies. The promotional videos for this album were filmed as mini-dramas. She also hosts a radio show on JOQR Recomen!! AM1134hHz called Otsuka Ai no ai-r jack. Love Piece In April 2006, Otsuka released "Frienger" (a portmanteau of the words Friend and Ranger). The promotional video was shot in Taiwan and was used as the commercial song for the Toshiba W41T 4 GB MP3 mobile phone. Soon after the release of "Frienger," Otsuka reprised her role as an actress for Tokyo Friends: The Movie, which hit theaters in Japan on August 12, 2006. The movie is a direct sequel to the DVD drama released the previous year. Otsuka also sang the opening theme for Tokyo Friends, "Yumekui", which was released as a new single on August 2, 2006. It debuted fifth on the weekly chart, selling 63,428 copies in the first week and a total of 145,281 copies. Two months after "Yumekui", Otsuka released another single titled "Renai Shashin" on October 25, 2006, which was used as the opening theme song for the movie Tada, Kimi o Aishiteru. The song was based on events from the film and its original novel, also called Renai Shashin. "Renai Shashin" debuted at number 2 and sold 129,855 copies, making it the 75th best-selling single of the year. At the end of 2006, Otsuka had released a total of three singles and charted on Oricon's 2006 yearly chart with "Frienger" at number 60, "Yumekui" at number 66, and "Renai Shashin" at number 75. Otsuka released her fourteenth single, "Chu-Lip," on February 21, 2007. The single was used as the theme song for the TBS drama Kirakira Kenshui, starring Manami Konishi and Wentz Eiji of WaT and managed to claim the third position on the Oricon charts. Ai Am Best Otsuka released her first best hits compilation album, titled Ai am Best, on March 28, 2007, which features 13 pre-2006 songs and their respective promotional videos. There are 11 songs that span her singles in chronological order, one song from Love Cook and one song from a Nana sound track: "Love for Nana: Only 1 Tribute". Ai am Best sold 64,396 copies on the first day and topped the Oricon charts, making it Otsuka's best selling album. It sold over 350,000 copies in its first week. "Ai am Best" also features two bonus tracks—one for the DVD, "Best of Babashi", and one for the CD, "Babashi". First Press "Ai am Best" includes an Ai stamp and Ai wallet calendar. Some also include an Ai pin in yellow or white. Otsuka went on a tour titled Ai am Best Tour that featured songs from Ai am Best and more. The tour started on May 18 and ended on July 7, 2007. 2007–2008: Love debut and Love Piece On April 11, 2007 Otsuka released a new single, "Love no Theme," as the self-created bunny rabbit character "Love-chan". "Love no Theme" was sung on her Jam Punch Tour 2005. Before its release, it was titled I canChu before it was changed to "Love no Theme". The "Love no Theme" single included a preview of a new single featuring Love, titled "White Choco." This song could only be found previously on the promotional CD released before "Momo no Hanabira". "Love no Theme" unfortunately did not sell as well as Otsuka's normal singles. Otsuka released her first single after Ai am Best, "Peach/Heart" on July 25, 2007. The first A-side "Peach" is an up-beat summer song and was used as the end theme for the summer drama Hanazakari no Kimitachi E (starring Maki Horikita and Shun Oguri), while the second "Heart" is a mid-tempo track. The single also includes a rearranged version of "Renai Shashin", titled . On September 26, 2007, Otsuka released two CDs and a DVD. The first CD was Otsuka's fourth original album, titled Love Piece. This included all of her singles from "Frienger" to "Peach/Heart", with five new songs on an 11-track album. The album was released in CD+DVD and CD-only formats, with the DVD including a music video of "Heart" and , a song from the album. The first-press of the DVD also includes the PV of "U-Boat," while the first-press of the CD-only version comes with a 40-page color photobook. The second CD was a limited pressing re-release of the best album "Ai am Best" in CD-only format. Also on September 26, Otsuka released a DVD of her Ai am Best Tour 2007, recorded at the Tokyo International Forum Hall A on July 9, 2007. The DVD is available in a single-disc edition, as well as a special two-disc edition with outtakes of the tour. The first-press of the special edition comes with a 40-page photobook. Otsuka performed at Makuhari Messe on July 7, 2007, for one of Japan's two Live Earth concerts, alongside contemporaries Kumi Koda and Ayaka. 2009–2010: Love Letter and Love is Best Otsuka released her 16th single "Pocket" on November 7, 2007. And two weeks later, Love-chan's second single, "White Choco", was released on November 21, 2007. During 2008, Otsuka embarked on her Love Piece Tour 2008, her fourth solo tour, from February to May. Her 17th single, "Rocket Sneaker/One x Time", was released on May 21. Otsuka's 18th single, "Kurage, Nagareboshi", was released on September 10, 2008. The single was released in four different formats, as a commemoration of her fifth anniversary in the music industry since the release of her debut single "Momo no Hanabira". On December 17, 2008, she released her fifth studio album, Love Letter, which peaked third on the weekly Oricon charts. It contains all of her singles since Love Piece including "Pocket", the third track on the album. Love Letter was her lowest-selling album. On February 25, 2009, "Bye Bye" was released as her second re-cut single. "Bye Bye" was used in a commercial for the Asahi Breweries beverage, Asahi Slat. Otsuka's second compilation album, Love Is Best, was released on November 11, 2009. The album features a collection of "love songs," ranging from singles to album tracks and b-sides, and will feature re-recorded versions of some tracks including a duet with Su from hip-hop band Rip Slyme on the song "Aisu x Time." On its first day of release the album charted at number one with a sales total of 22,895. As her character Love, she also released her first mini album entitled Love It (pronounced Rabitto, as rabbit), on November 18, 2009 (a week after Love Is Best). The album's track "Magic" was used in TV commercials for Music.jp. In January 2010, Otsuka performed a song for Fuji Television titled "Lucky Star" which the network used as the theme song for its coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics. In February it was announced that "Lucky Star" would be released as a cellphone-only digital single, but later was announced to have a physical release as a double A-side single, "Zokkondition/Lucky Star", which released on April 7, 2010. "Zokkondition" was used in advertisements for Asahi Beer, similar to her previous single "Bye Bye". On September 8, 2010, she released another single "'I Love..." (I ♥ xxx), which was her 21st and last single before taking a hiatus from music. 2011–present: Hiatus, Rabbit and Love Fantastic During Otsuka's hiatus from music due to her pregnancy, a new song titled "Hikari" was made available for download on October 9, 2011, through her official mobile website Love 9 Cube. On March 30, 2012, she released Neko ga Suki ni natta Kirai na Neko, a series of two picture books about cats. Purchasers of the books had the chance to download another new song, called "Gomen ne". On September 9, 2012, she celebrated her 30th birthday and ninth anniversary in the music industry with Love Is Born: 9th Anniversary 2012, her first series of concerts in two years, in which she held performances in Tokyo, Hyogo and Aichi. In October 2012, Otsuka announced that she would be debuting as the vocalist of a new band called Rabbit. The band released their debut album Rabito on December 12, 2012 through the Cutting Edge label. The album peaked at number 61 on the Oricon charts. Rabbit went on their first domestic tour in Japan starting in February 2013. This month it was also announced that Otsuka, as a solo, would begin a tour in September to celebrate her tenth anniversary in the music industry,. In July 2013, it was announced that Otsuka would be releasing her first solo single in three years, entitled "Re:Name", to celebrate her tenth anniversary. The single was released on October 9, 2013, and debuted at number eight on the Japanese charts. On December 13, 2013, a song entitled "Sakuranbo (Cocktail)", which was a self-cover version of her second single, was released digitally through the iTunes Music Store. On March 26, 2014, Otsuka released an EP entitled AIO Punch, which included other self-covers from previously released songs. And she also recorded a cover of Dreams Come True's "Romance" for their tribute album Watashi to Dori Kamu: Dreams Come True 25th Anniversary Best Covers, which was released on the same day. Her 23rd single, "More More" was released on May 21, 2014. Otsuka's sixth studio album, entitled Love Fantastic, was released on July 16, 2014. She released her seventh album, Love Tricky, on April 22, 2015. Otsuka's eighth studio album, Love Honey, came out on April 12, 2017. Personal life In February 2010, it was reported by Josei Seven magazine that Otsuka was dating rapper Kazuto Otsuki (publicly known as Su, member of hip hop group Rip Slyme), with whom she collaborated in October 2009 for her song "Aisu x Time". Neither of the artists' agencies would comment on the matter. On June 26, 2010, Otsuka announced via a message on her official Web site that she and Su had gotten married on the previous day. Su also posted an announcement on Rip Slyme's website, confirming what Otsuka wrote on her website. During her Love is Born concert held on September 11, 2010, Otsuka revealed to the audience that she was expecting her first child, and on March 24, 2011, she gave birth to a daughter. On November 22, 2018, Otsuka announced that she had filed for divorce. Discography Studio albums 2004: Love Punch 2004: Love Jam 2005: Love Cook 2007: Love Piece 2008: Love Letter 2014: Love Fantastic 2015: Love Tricky 2017: Love Honey Compilation albums 2007: Ai Am Best 2009: Love Is Best 2019: Ai Am Best, too Radio shows Otsuka Ai ai-r Jack (Nippon Cultural Broadcasting) Corolla presents Life-Love Circle (Tokyo FM) Books (February 25, 2005) Love World (September 25, 2007) (January 31, 2008) (March 31, 2010) (March 30, 2012) Awards Japan Cable Radio Awards 2004: Best New Artist Best Hits Kayōsai 2004: Best New Artist 2005: Gold Artist Prize – "Planetarium" 2006: Gold Artist Prize – "Ren'ai Shashin" 2007: Gold Artist Prize – "Pocket" Japan Gold Disc Award 2005: Rock & Pop Album of the Year – Love Punch 2005: Rock & Pop Album of the Year – Love Jam 2006: Rock & Pop Album of the Year – Love Cook 2007: The Best 10 Albums - Ai Am Best MTV Video Music Awards Japan 2007: Best Pop Video - "Ren'ai Shashin" 2007: Best Video from a Film - "Ren'ai Shashin" (from Tada, Kimi o Aishiteru) References External links Love website 1982 births Living people Japanese women pop singers Japanese actresses Japanese women singer-songwriters Japanese singer-songwriters Musicians from Osaka Osaka University of Arts alumni Avex Trax artists 21st-century Japanese women singers 21st-century Japanese singers
false
[ "\"'What're You Doing Tonight'\" is a song written by Bob McDill that was recorded by American country music artist Janie Fricke. It was released as her debut solo single in August 1977 and reached chart positions in both the United States and Canada. It was the first single from Fricke's debut album Singer of Songs.\n\nBackground and recording\nJanie Fricke had gone from a studio background singer and commercial jingle performer to a recording artist in 1977. After being heard on a single by country artist Johnny Duncan, she signed her own contract with Columbia Records in 1977. Under the production of producer Billy Sherrill, Fricke recorded her first single \"What're You Doing Tonight\". It was composed by Nashville songwriter Bob McDill. The song was recorded at the Columbia Studio in Nashville, Tennessee under the direction of Sherrill. The session took place in June 1977. Also cut during the same session was the track \"We're a Love Song\".\n\nRelease, chart performance and reception\nIn August 1977, \"What're You Doing Tonight\" was released as a single on Columbia Records. It was backed on the B-side by Fricke's self-composed tune \"We're a Love Song\". It was issued as a seven inch vinyl single and was the debut single released in her career. It became Fricke's first single to reach the American Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. Spending 13 weeks on the survey, the single peaked at number 21 in November 1977. On Canada's RPM Country Songs chart, the single reached the top 20, peaking at number 14. \"What're You Doing Tonight\" was later included on Fricke's debut studio album called Singer of Songs. The album was released on Columbia in May 1978. At the 20th Annual Grammy Awards, Fricke was nominated for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. She would be nominated three more times for the same award in her career.\n\nTrack listing\n7\" vinyl single\n \"What're You Doing Tonight\" – 2:49\n \"We're a Love Song\" – 3:17\n\nCharts\n\nAccolades\n\n!\n|-\n| 1978\n| 20th Annual Grammy Awards\n| Best Female Country Vocal Performance\n| \n| \n|-\n|}\n\nReferences\n\n1977 debut singles\n1977 songs\nColumbia Records singles\nJanie Fricke songs\nSong recordings produced by Billy Sherrill\nSongs written by Bob McDill", "Cyndi Thomson (born October 19, 1976) is an American country music artist. Thomson wrote songs with songwriter Tommy Lee James and in 2000, she signed with Capitol Records Nashville as a recording artist. She released her first album, My World, in 2001 and her debut single, \"What I Really Meant to Say\", became a number one hit on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks (now Hot Country Songs) charts. She later abandoned her recording career in 2002, but resumed recording in 2006.\n\nBiography\n\nEarly life\nCyndi Thomson was born and raised in Tifton, Georgia, the youngest of four daughters for Pat and Russ Thomson. As a child, she was exposed to many different types of music. Her parents listened to the oldies while her sisters listened to music by Manhattan Transfer and Janet Jackson among others. As Thomson got older, she began singing in church like her sisters did. At the age of twelve, she knew that she wanted to be a singer and at thirteen, after listening to Trisha Yearwood's \"She's in Love with the Boy\", she knew that she wanted to be a country singer.\n\nAfter graduating high school and winning a Georgia Music Hall of Fame scholarship, Thomson attended Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw. Feeling that her dream of being a country singer was not going to be realized staying in Atlanta, she moved to Nashville, Tennessee. There, she attended Belmont University and enrolled in its music business program, but dropped out after a year and a half realizing that school was not necessary for her to do what she wanted to do. Thomson did various jobs while pursuing the recording career that she wanted, one of which was a modelling job at a party for Deana Carter's album Did I Shave My Legs for This? going platinum. One of the other models there later introduced Thomson to songwriter Tommy Lee James, who wrote for Brooks & Dunn and Martina McBride.\n\nMusic career\nEven though Thomson had never written a song before, James agreed to work with her and within a year of writing their first song, Thomson signed with Sony-ATV Music Publishing as a songwriter. In 2000, James introduced Thomson to Capitol Records Nashville which signed her to a record deal immediately after hearing her sing three songs. Thomson co-wrote eight of the eleven songs on her debut album My World, released on July 31, 2001. Co-produced by James and producer Paul Worley, it became the best-selling debut album by a female country singer since LeAnn Rimes' album Blue was released in 1996. The album was certified gold, for selling more than 500,000 copies, by the Recording Industry Association of America ten months after the album's release.\n\nLead-off single \"What I Really Meant to Say,\" written after an encounter with an older boy at a party one night, spent three weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks (now Hot Country Songs) charts. It also became the only debut single by a female country singer to spend more than one week at the top of the Radio & Records country chart. Her next two singles, \"I Always Liked That Best\" and \"I'm Gone\", failed to reach the top 20, with the former peaking at No. 21 and the latter peaking at No. 31 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart.\n\nIn late 2002, Thomson, in a letter written to her record label, fans and friends, announced that she was walking away from her recording career. Thomson, who married musician and producer Daniel Goodman earlier that year, stated that being a recording artist was an \"overwhelming life changing experience\" and that she \"cannot commit to [the] obligations\" of making a new album. She did, however, contribute to the 2004 album Amazing Grace 3: A Country Salute to Gospel, on which she sang \"'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus\". She also sang \"Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas\" for the album Christmas Angels released by Capitol Nashville in 2005. \"Life Ain't Always Beautiful\", co-written by Thomson and credited to her as Cyndi Goodman, became a top five hit for Gary Allan in 2006. That year, she also returned to Capitol Nashville after leaving the label for four years and started recording for her second album with James. She never released anything, however, and was once again dropped from Capitol's roster.\n\nOn October 29, 2009, Thomson released her first new music album in eight years, This Time, a digital-only EP featuring five original songs.\n\nDiscography\n\nStudio albums\n\nEPs\n\nSingles\n\nMusic videos\n\nReferences\n\n1976 births\nAmerican women country singers\nAmerican country singer-songwriters\nLiving people\nCapitol Records artists\n21st-century American singers\n21st-century American women singers\nCountry musicians from Georgia (U.S. state)\nSinger-songwriters from Georgia (U.S. state)" ]
[ "Bernard Lewis", "Academic career" ]
C_ec17aa9fcd4345f3848566410f6c0500_1
Where did he go to school?
1
Where did Bernard Lewis go to school?
Bernard Lewis
In 1936, Lewis graduated from the School of Oriental Studies (now School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS) at the University of London with a BA in history with special reference to the Near and Middle East. He earned his PhD three years later, also from SOAS, specializing in the history of Islam. Lewis also studied law, going part of the way toward becoming a solicitor, but returned to study Middle Eastern history. He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, where he studied with the orientalist Louis Massignon and earned the "Diplome des Etudes Semitiques" in 1937. He returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History. During the Second World War, Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and as a Corporal in the Intelligence Corps in 1940-41 before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to SOAS. In 1949, at the age of 33, he was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History. In 1974, aged 57, Lewis accepted a joint position at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, also located in Princeton, New Jersey. The terms of his appointment were such that Lewis taught only one semester per year, and being free from administrative responsibilities, he could devote more time to research than previously. Consequently, Lewis's arrival at Princeton marked the beginning of the most prolific period in his research career during which he published numerous books and articles based on previously accumulated materials. After retiring from Princeton in 1986, Lewis served at Cornell University until 1990. In 1966, Lewis was a founding member of the learned society, Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), but in 2007 he broke away and founded Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) to challenge MESA, which the New York Sun noted as "dominated by academics who have been critical of Israel and of America's role in the Middle East." The organization was formed as an academic society dedicated to promoting high standards of research and teaching in Middle Eastern and African studies and other related fields, with Lewis as Chairman of its academic council. In 1990, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Lewis for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. His lecture, entitled "Western Civilization: A View from the East", was revised and reprinted in The Atlantic Monthly under the title "The Roots of Muslim Rage." His 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture, given to the American Enterprise Institute, was published as Europe and Islam. CANNOTANSWER
University of London
Bernard Lewis, (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Lewis's expertise was in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West. Lewis served as a soldier in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and Intelligence Corps during the Second World War before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern history. In 2007 Lewis was called "the West's leading interpreter of the Middle East". Others have argued Lewis's approach is essentialist and generalizing to the Muslim world, as well as his tendency to restate hypotheses that were challenged by more recent research. On a political level, Lewis is accused by his detractors with having revived the image of the cultural inferiority of Islam and of emphasizing the dangers of jihad. His advice was frequently sought by neoconservative policymakers, including the Bush administration. However, his active support of the Iraq War and neoconservative ideals have since come under scrutiny. Lewis was also notable for his public debates with Edward Said, who accused Lewis and other orientalists of misrepresenting Islam and serving the purposes of Western imperialist domination, to which Lewis responded by defending Orientalism as a facet of humanism and accusing Said of politicizing the subject. Furthermore, Lewis notoriously denied the Armenian genocide. He argued that the deaths of the mass killings resulted from a struggle between two nationalistic movements, claiming that there is no proof of intent by the Ottoman government to exterminate the Armenian nation. Family and personal life Bernard Lewis was born on 31 May 1916 to middle-class British Jewish parents, Harry Lewis and the former Jane Levy, in Stoke Newington, London. He became interested in languages and history while preparing for his bar mitzvah. In 1947 he married Ruth Hélène Oppenhejm, with whom he had a daughter and a son. Their marriage was dissolved in 1974. Lewis became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1982. Academic career In 1936, Lewis graduated from the School of Oriental Studies (now School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS) at the University of London with a BA in history with special reference to the Near and Middle East. He earned his PhD three years later, also from SOAS, specializing in the history of Islam. Lewis also studied law, going part of the way toward becoming a solicitor, but returned to study Middle Eastern history. He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, where he studied with the orientalist Louis Massignon and earned the "Diplôme des Études Sémitiques" in 1937. He returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History. During the Second World War, Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and as a Corporal in the Intelligence Corps in 1940–41 before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to SOAS, where he would remain for the next 25 years. In 1949, at the age of 33, he was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History. In 1963, Lewis was granted fellowship of the British Academy. In 1974, aged 57, Lewis accepted a joint position at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, also located in Princeton, New Jersey. The terms of his appointment were such that Lewis taught only one semester per year, and being free from administrative responsibilities, he could devote more time to research than previously. Consequently, Lewis's arrival at Princeton marked the beginning of the most prolific period in his research career during which he published numerous books and articles based on previously accumulated materials. After retiring from Princeton in 1986, Lewis served at Cornell University until 1990. In 1966, Lewis was a founding member of the learned society, Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), but in 2007 he broke away and founded Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) to challenge MESA, which the New York Sun noted as "dominated by academics who have been critical of Israel and of America's role in the Middle East". The organization was formed as an academic society dedicated to promoting high standards of research and teaching in Middle Eastern and African studies and other related fields, with Lewis as Chairman of its academic council. In 1990, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Lewis for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. His lecture, entitled "Western Civilization: A View from the East", was revised and reprinted in The Atlantic Monthly under the title "The Roots of Muslim Rage." His 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture, given to the American Enterprise Institute, was published as Europe and Islam. Research Lewis's influence extends beyond academia to the general public. He began his research career with the study of medieval Arab, especially Syrian, history. His first article, dedicated to professional guilds of medieval Islam, had been widely regarded as the most authoritative work on the subject for about thirty years. However, after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, scholars of Jewish origin found it more and more difficult to conduct archival and field research in Arab countries, where they were suspected of espionage. Therefore, Lewis switched to the study of the Ottoman Empire, while continuing to research Arab history through the Ottoman archives which had only recently been opened to Western researchers. A series of articles that Lewis published over the next several years revolutionized the history of the Middle East by giving a broad picture of Islamic society, including its government, economy, and demographics. Lewis argued that the Middle East is currently backward and its decline was a largely self-inflicted condition resulting from both culture and religion, as opposed to the post-colonialist view which posits the problems of the region as economic and political maldevelopment mainly due to the 19th-century European colonization. In his 1982 work Muslim Discovery of Europe, Lewis argues that Muslim societies could not keep pace with the West and that "Crusader successes were due in no small part to Muslim weakness." Further, he suggested that as early as the 11th century Islamic societies were decaying, primarily the byproduct of internal problems like "cultural arrogance," which was a barrier to creative borrowing, rather than external pressures like the Crusades. In the wake of Soviet and Arab attempts to delegitimize Israel as a racist country, Lewis wrote a study of anti-Semitism, Semites and Anti-Semites (1986). In other works he argued Arab rage against Israel was disproportionate to other tragedies or injustices in the Muslim world, such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and control of Muslim-majority land in Central Asia, the bloody and destructive fighting during the Hama uprising in Syria (1982), the Algerian Civil War (1992–1998), and the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988). In addition to his scholarly works, Lewis wrote several influential books accessible to the general public: The Arabs in History (1950), The Middle East and the West (1964), and The Middle East (1995). In the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks, the interest in Lewis's work surged, especially his 1990 essay The Roots of Muslim Rage. Three of his books were published after 9/11: What Went Wrong? (written before the attacks), which explored the reasons of the Muslim world's apprehension of (and sometimes outright hostility to) modernization; The Crisis of Islam; and Islam: The Religion and the People. Abraham Udovitch described him as "certainly the most eminent and respected historian of the Arab world, of the Islamic world, of the Middle East and beyond". Armenian genocide The first two editions of Lewis's The Emergence of Modern Turkey (1961 and 1968) describe the Armenian genocide as "the terrible holocaust of 1915, when a million and a half Armenians perished". In later editions, this text is altered to "the terrible slaughter of 1915, when, according to estimates, more than a million Armenians perished, as well as an unknown number of Turks". In this passage, Lewis argues that the deaths were the result of a struggle for the same land between two competing nationalist movements. The change in Lewis's textual description of the Armenian genocide and his signing of the petition against the Congressional resolution was controversial among some Armenian historians as well as journalists, who suggested that Lewis was engaging in historical revisionism to serve his own political and personal interests. Lewis called the label "genocide" the "Armenian version of this history" in a November 1993 interview with Le Monde, for which he faced a civil proceeding in a French court. In a subsequent exchange on the pages of Le Monde, Lewis wrote that while "terrible atrocities" did occur, "there exists no serious proof of a decision and of a plan of the Ottoman government aiming to exterminate the Armenian nation". He was ordered to pay one franc as damages for his statements on the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey. Three other court cases against Bernard Lewis failed in the Paris tribunal, including one filed by the Armenian National Committee of France and two filed by Jacques Trémollet de Villers. Lewis's views on the Armenian genocide were criticized by a number of historians and sociologists, among them Alain Finkielkraut, Yves Ternon, Richard G. Hovannisian, Robert Melson, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Finkelstein|first1=Norman G.|title=The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering|date=2003|publisher=Verso|location=London|isbn=978-1859844885|page=69}}</ref> Lewis has argued for his denial stance that: Lewis has been labelled a "genocide denier" by Stephen Zunes, Israel Charny, David B. MacDonald and the Armenian National Committee of America. Israeli historian Yair Auron suggested that "Lewis' stature provided a lofty cover for the Turkish national agenda of obfuscating academic research on the Armenian Genocide". Israel Charny wrote that Lewis's "seemingly scholarly concern ... of Armenians constituting a threat to the Turks as a rebellious force who together with the Russians threatened the Ottoman Empire, and the insistence that only a policy of deportations was executed, barely conceal the fact that the organized deportations constituted systematic mass murder". Charny compares the "logical structures" employed by Lewis in his denial of the genocide to those employed by Ernst Nolte in his Holocaust negationism. Views and influence on contemporary politics In the mid-1960s, Lewis emerged as a commentator on the issues of the modern Middle East and his analysis of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the rise of militant Islam brought him publicity and aroused significant controversy. American historian Joel Beinin has called him "perhaps the most articulate and learned Zionist advocate in the North American Middle East academic community". Lewis's policy advice has particular weight thanks to this scholarly authority. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney remarked "in this new century, his wisdom is sought daily by policymakers, diplomats, fellow academics, and the news media". A harsh critic of the Soviet Union, Lewis continued the liberal tradition in Islamic historical studies. Although his early Marxist views had a bearing on his first book The Origins of Ismailism, Lewis subsequently discarded Marxism. His later works are a reaction against the left-wing current of Third-worldism which came to be a significant current in Middle Eastern studies. During his career Lewis developed ties with governments around the world: during her time as Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir assigned Lewis's articles as reading to her cabinet members, and during the Presidency of George W. Bush, he advised administration members including Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Bush himself. He was also close to King Hussein of Jordan and his brother, Prince Hassan bin Talal. He also had ties to the regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, the Turkish military dictatorship led by Kenan Evren, and the Egyptian government of Anwar Sadat: he acted as a go-between between the Sadat administration and Israel in 1971 when he relayed a message to the Israeli government regarding the possibility of a peace agreement at the request of Sadat's spokesman Tahasin Bashir. Lewis advocated closer Western ties with Israel and Turkey, which he saw as especially important in light of the extension of the Soviet influence in the Middle East. Modern Turkey holds a special place in Lewis's view of the region due to the country's efforts to become a part of the West. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Turkish Studies, an honor which is given "on the basis of generally recognized scholarly distinction and ... long and devoted service to the field of Turkish Studies." Lewis views Christendom and Islam as civilizations that have been in perpetual collision since the advent of Islam in the 7th century. In his essay The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990), he argued that the struggle between the West and Islam was gathering strength. According to one source, this essay (and Lewis's 1990 Jefferson Lecture on which the article was based) first introduced the term "Islamic fundamentalism" to North America. This essay has been credited with coining the phrase "clash of civilizations", which received prominence in the eponymous book by Samuel Huntington. However, another source indicates that Lewis first used the phrase "clash of civilizations" at a 1957 meeting in Washington where it was recorded in the transcript. In 1998, Lewis read in a London-based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi a declaration of war on the United States by Osama bin Laden. In his essay "A License to Kill", Lewis indicated he considered bin Laden's language as the "ideology of jihad" and warned that bin Laden would be a danger to the West. The essay was published after the Clinton administration and the US intelligence community had begun its hunt for bin Laden in Sudan and then in Afghanistan. Jihad Lewis writes of jihad as a distinct religious obligation, but suggests that it is a pity that people engaging in terrorist activities are not more aware of their own religion:The fanatical warrior offering his victims the choice of the Koran or the sword is not only untrue, it is impossible. The alleged choice - conversion or death - is also, with rare and atypical exceptions, untrue. Muslim tolerance of unbelievers and misbelievers was far better than anything available in Christendom until the rise of secularism in the 17th century. Muslim fighters are commanded not to kill women, children, or the aged unless they attack first; not to torture or otherwise ill-treat prisoners; to give fair warnings of the opening of hostilities or their resumption after a truce; and to honor agreements. At no time did the classical jurists offer any approval or legitimacy to what we nowdays call terrorism. Nor indeed is there any evidence of the use of terrorism as it is practiced nowadays. The emergence of the by now widespread terrorism practice of suicide bombing is a development of the 20th century. It has no antecedents in Islamic history, and no justification in the terms of Islamic theology, law, or tradition.As'ad AbuKhalil, has criticized this view and stated: "Methodologically, [Lewis] insists that terrorism by individual Muslims should be considered Islamic terrorism, while terrorism by individual Jews or Christians is never considered Jewish or Christian terrorism." He also criticised Lewis's understanding of Osama bin Laden, seeing Lewis's interpretation of bin Laden "as some kind of influential Muslim theologian" along the lines of classical theologians like Al-Ghazali, rather than "the terrorist fanatic that he is". AbuKhalil has also criticized the place of Islam in Lewis's worldview more generally, arguing that the most prominent feature of his work was its "theologocentrism" (borrowing a term from Maxime Rodinson) - that Lewis interprets all aspects of behavior among Muslims solely through the lens of Islamic theology, subsuming the study of Muslim peoples, their languages, the geographical areas where Muslims predominate, Islamic governments, the governments of Arab countries and Sharia under the label of "Islam". Debates with Edward Said Lewis was known for his literary debates with Edward Said, the Palestinian American literary theorist whose aim was to deconstruct what he called Orientalist scholarship. Said, who was a professor at Columbia University, characterized Lewis's work as a prime example of Orientalism in his 1978 book Orientalism and in his later book Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (1981). Said asserted that the field of Orientalism was political intellectualism bent on self-affirmation rather than objective study, a form of racism, and a tool of imperialist domination. He further questioned the scientific neutrality of some leading Middle East scholars, including Lewis, on the Arab World. In an interview with Al-Ahram weekly, Said suggested that Lewis's knowledge of the Middle East was so biased that it could not be taken seriously and claimed "Bernard Lewis hasn't set foot in the Middle East, in the Arab world, for at least 40 years. He knows something about Turkey, I'm told, but he knows nothing about the Arab world." Said considered that Lewis treats Islam as a monolithic entity without the nuance of its plurality, internal dynamics, and historical complexities, and accused him of "demagogy and downright ignorance". In Covering Islam, Said argued that "Lewis simply cannot deal with the diversity of Muslim, much less human life, because it is closed to him as something foreign, radically different, and other," and he criticised Lewis's "inability to grant that the Islamic peoples are entitled to their own cultural, political, and historical practices, free from Lewis's calculated attempt to show that because they are not Western... they can't be good." Rejecting the view that Western scholarship was biased against the Middle East, Lewis responded that Orientalism developed as a facet of European humanism, independently of the past European imperial expansion. He noted the French and English pursued the study of Islam in the 16th and 17th centuries, yet not in an organized way, but long before they had any control or hope of control in the Middle East; and that much of Orientalist study did nothing to advance the cause of imperialism. In his 1993 book Islam and the West, Lewis wrote "What imperial purpose was served by deciphering the ancient Egyptian language, for example, and then restoring to the Egyptians knowledge of and pride in their forgotten, ancient past?" Furthermore, Lewis accused Said of politicizing the scientific study of the Middle East (and Arabic studies in particular); neglecting to critique the scholarly findings of the Orientalists; and giving "free rein" to his biases. Stance on the Iraq War In 2002, Lewis wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal regarding the buildup to the Iraq War entitled "Time for Toppling", where he stated his opinion that "a regime change may well be dangerous, but sometimes the dangers of inaction are greater than those of action". In 2007, Jacob Weisberg described Lewis as "perhaps the most significant intellectual influence behind the invasion of Iraq". Michael Hirsh attributed to Lewis the view that regime change in Iraq would provide a jolt that would "modernize the Middle East" and suggested that Lewis's allegedly 'orientalist' theories about "what went wrong" in the Middle East, and other writings, formed the intellectual basis of the push towards war in Iraq. Hirsch reported that Lewis had told him in an interview that he viewed the 11 September attacks as "the opening salvo of the final battle" between Western and Islamic civilisations: Lewis believed that a forceful response was necessary. In the run up to the Iraq War, he met with Vice President Dick Cheney several times: Hirsch quoted an unnamed official who was present at a number of these meetings, who summarised Lewis's view of Iraq as "Get on with it. Don't dither". Brent Scowcroft quoted Lewis as stating that he believed "that one of the things you’ve got to do to Arabs is hit them between the eyes with a big stick. They respect power". As'ad AbuKhalil has claimed that Lewis assured Cheney that American troops would be welcomed by Iraqis and Arabs, relying on the opinion of his colleague Fouad Ajami. Hirsch also drew parallels between the Bush administration's plans for post-invasion Iraq and Lewis's views, in particular his admiration for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's secularist and Westernising reforms in the new Republic of Turkey which emerged from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Writing in 2008, Lewis did not advocate imposing freedom and democracy on Islamic nations. "There are things you can't impose. Freedom, for example. Or democracy. Democracy is a very strong medicine which has to be administered to the patient in small, gradually increasing doses. Otherwise, you risk killing the patient. In the main, the Muslims have to do it themselves." Ian Buruma, writing for The New Yorker in an article subtitled "The two Minds of Bernard Lewis", finds Lewis's stance on the war difficult to reconcile with Lewis's past statements cautioning democracy enforcement in the world at large. Buruma ultimately rejects suggestions by his peers that Lewis promotes war with Iraq to safeguard Israel, but instead concludes "perhaps he loves it [the Arab world] too much": Hamid Dabashi, writing on 28 May 2018, in an article subtitled "On Bernard Lewis and 'his extraordinary capacity for getting everything wrong'", asked: "Just imagine: What sort of a person would spend a lifetime studying people he loathes? It is quite a bizarre proposition. But there you have it: the late Bernard Lewis did precisely that." Similarly, Richard Bulliet described Lewis as "...a person who does not like the people he is purporting to have expertise about...he doesn’t respect them, he considers them to be good and worthy only to the degree they follow a Western path". According to As'ad AbuKhalil, "Lewis has poisoned the Middle East academic field more than any other Orientalist and his influence has been both academic and political. But there is a new generation of Middle East experts in the West who now see clearly the political agenda of Bernard Lewis. It was fully exposed in the Bush years." Alleged nuclear threat from Iran In 2006, Lewis wrote that Iran had been working on a nuclear weapon for fifteen years. In August 2006, in an article about whether the world can rely on the concept of mutual assured destruction as a deterrent in its dealings with Iran, Lewis wrote in The Wall Street Journal about the significance of 22 August 2006 in the Islamic calendar. The Iranian president had indicated he would respond by that date to U.S. demands regarding Iran's development of nuclear power. Lewis wrote that the date corresponded to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427, the day Muslims commemorate the night flight of Muhammad from Jerusalem to heaven and back. Lewis wrote that it would be "an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and, if necessary, of the world". According to Lewis, mutual assured destruction is not an effective deterrent in the case of Iran, because of what Lewis describes as the Iranian leadership's "apocalyptic worldview" and the "suicide or martyrdom complex that plagues parts of the Islamic world today". Lewis's article received significant press coverage. However, the day passed without any incident. Death Bernard Lewis died on 19 May 2018 at the age of 101, at an assisted-living care facility in Voorhees Township, New Jersey, twelve days before his 102nd birthday. He is buried in Trumpeldor Cemetery in Tel Aviv. Bibliography Awards and honors 1963: Elected as a Fellow of the British Academy 1978: The Harvey Prize, from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, for "his profound insight into the life and mores of the peoples of the Middle East through his writings" 1983: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1990: Selected for the Jefferson Lecture by the National Endowment for the Humanities 1996: Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction, for The Middle East (Scribner) 1999: National Jewish Book Award in the Israel category for The Multiple Identities of the Middle East 2002: The Thomas Jefferson Medal, awarded by the American Philosophical Society 2002: Atatürk International Peace Prize on grounds that he contributed extensively to history scholarship with his accurate analysis of Turkey’s and in particular of Atatürk’s positive impact on Middle Eastern history. 2004: Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement 2006: National Humanities Medal, from the National Endowment for the Humanities 2007: Irving Kristol Award, from the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research 2007: The Scholar-Statesman Award from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy See also Bernard Lewis bibliography List of Princeton University people References External links Lewis's page at Princeton University Revered and Reviled – Lewis's profile on Moment Magazine'' The Legacy and Fallacies of Bernard Lewis by As`ad AbuKhalil 1916 births 2018 deaths 20th-century American historians 20th-century British historians 20th-century British writers 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers 21st-century British historians 21st-century British writers Academics of SOAS University of London Alumni of SOAS University of London American centenarians American historians American male non-fiction writers American people of English-Jewish descent Deniers of the Armenian genocide British Army personnel of World War II English centenarians British emigrants to the United States English historians English Jews Fellows of the British Academy Historians of Islam Historians of the Ottoman Empire Honorary members of the Turkish Academy of Sciences Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars Intelligence Corps soldiers Islam and antisemitism Islam and politics Jewish American historians Jewish scholars Jewish scholars of Islam Men centenarians Middle Eastern studies in the United States National Humanities Medal recipients Neoconservatism People from Stoke Newington British political commentators Princeton University faculty Royal Armoured Corps soldiers Scholars of antisemitism University of Paris alumni Cornell University faculty Foreign Policy Research Institute Historians of the Middle East Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs Middle Eastern studies scholars Burials at Trumpeldor Cemetery 21st-century American Jews
true
[ "Where Did We Go Wrong may refer to:\n \"Where Did We Go Wrong\" (Dondria song), 2010\n \"Where Did We Go Wrong\" (Toni Braxton and Babyface song), 2013\n \"Where Did We Go Wrong\", a song by Petula Clark from the album My Love\n \"Where Did We Go Wrong\", a song by Diana Ross from the album Ross\n \"Where Did We Go Wrong\", a 1980 song by Frankie Valli", "California Concordia College existed in Oakland, California, United States from 1906 until 1973.\n\nAmong the presidents of California Concordia College was Johann Theodore Gotthold Brohm Jr.\n\nCalifornia Concordia College and the Academy of California College were located at 2365 Camden Street, Oakland, California. Some of the school buildings still exist at this location, but older buildings that housed the earlier classrooms and later the dormitories are gone. The site is now the location of the Spectrum Center Camden Campus, a provider of special education services.\n\nThe \"Academy\" was the official name for the high school. California Concordia was a six-year institution patterned after the German gymnasium. This provided four years of high school, plus two years of junior college. Years in the school took their names from Latin numbers and referred to the years to go before graduation. The classes were named:\n\n Sexta - 6 years to go; high school freshman\n Qunita - 5 years to go; high school sophomore\n Quarta - 4 years to go; high school junior\n Tertia - 3 years to go; high school senior\n Secunda - 2 years to go; college freshman\n Prima - 1 year to go; college sophomore\n\nThose in Sexta were usually hazed in a mild way by upperclassmen. In addition, those in Sexta were required to do a certain amount of clean-up work around the school, such as picking up trash.\n\nMost students, even high school freshmen, lived in dormitories. High school students were supervised by \"proctors\" (selected high school seniors in Tertia). High school students were required to study for two hours each night in their study rooms from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. Students could not leave their rooms for any reason without permission. This requirement came as quite a shock to those in Sexta (freshmen) on their first night, when they were caught and scolded by a proctor when they left their study room to go to the bathroom without permission. Seniors (those in Tertia) were allowed one night off where they did not need to be in their study hall.\n\nFrom 9:00 to 9:30 pm all students gathered for a chapel service. From 9:30 to 10 pm, high school students were free to roam, and sometimes went to the local Lucky Supermarket to purchase snacks. All high school students were required to be in bed with lights out by 10:00 pm. There were generally five students in each dormitory room. The room had two sections: a bedroom area and (across the hallway) another room for studying. Four beds, including at least one bunk bed, were in the bedroom, and four or five desks were in the study room\n\nA few interesting words used by Concordia students were \"fink\" and \"rack.\" To \"fink\" meant to \"sing like a canary\" or \"squeal.\" A student who finked told everything he knew about a misbehavior committed by another student. \"Rack\" was actually an official term used by proctors and administrators who lived on campus in the dormitories with students. When students misbehaved they were racked (punished). Proctors held a meeting once a week and decided which students, if any, deserved to be racked. If a student were racked, he might be forbidden from leaving the campus grounds, even during normal free time School hours were from 7:30 am to 3:30 pm. After 3:30 pm and until 7:00 pm, students could normally explore the local area surrounding the school, for example, to go to a local store to buy a snack. However, if a student were racked for the week, he could not do so.\n\nProctors made their rounds in the morning to make sure beds were made and inspected rooms in the evening to ensure that students were in bed by 10:00 pm. Often after the proctors left a room at night, the room lights would go back on and students enjoyed studying their National Geographic magazines. Student might be racked if they failed to make their beds or did not make them neatly enough.\n\nAlthough California Concordia College no longer exists, it does receive some recognition by Concordia University Irvine. This is also the location of its old academic records.\n\nSources\n\nExternal links \n Photos of old campus\n\nEducational institutions disestablished in 1973\nDefunct private universities and colleges in California\nEducational institutions established in 1906\n1906 establishments in California\n1973 disestablishments in California\nUniversities and colleges affiliated with the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod" ]
[ "Bernard Lewis", "Academic career", "Where did he go to school?", "University of London" ]
C_ec17aa9fcd4345f3848566410f6c0500_1
What did he study?
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What did Bernard Lewis study?
Bernard Lewis
In 1936, Lewis graduated from the School of Oriental Studies (now School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS) at the University of London with a BA in history with special reference to the Near and Middle East. He earned his PhD three years later, also from SOAS, specializing in the history of Islam. Lewis also studied law, going part of the way toward becoming a solicitor, but returned to study Middle Eastern history. He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, where he studied with the orientalist Louis Massignon and earned the "Diplome des Etudes Semitiques" in 1937. He returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History. During the Second World War, Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and as a Corporal in the Intelligence Corps in 1940-41 before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to SOAS. In 1949, at the age of 33, he was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History. In 1974, aged 57, Lewis accepted a joint position at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, also located in Princeton, New Jersey. The terms of his appointment were such that Lewis taught only one semester per year, and being free from administrative responsibilities, he could devote more time to research than previously. Consequently, Lewis's arrival at Princeton marked the beginning of the most prolific period in his research career during which he published numerous books and articles based on previously accumulated materials. After retiring from Princeton in 1986, Lewis served at Cornell University until 1990. In 1966, Lewis was a founding member of the learned society, Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), but in 2007 he broke away and founded Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) to challenge MESA, which the New York Sun noted as "dominated by academics who have been critical of Israel and of America's role in the Middle East." The organization was formed as an academic society dedicated to promoting high standards of research and teaching in Middle Eastern and African studies and other related fields, with Lewis as Chairman of its academic council. In 1990, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Lewis for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. His lecture, entitled "Western Civilization: A View from the East", was revised and reprinted in The Atlantic Monthly under the title "The Roots of Muslim Rage." His 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture, given to the American Enterprise Institute, was published as Europe and Islam. CANNOTANSWER
graduated from the School of Oriental Studies
Bernard Lewis, (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Lewis's expertise was in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West. Lewis served as a soldier in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and Intelligence Corps during the Second World War before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern history. In 2007 Lewis was called "the West's leading interpreter of the Middle East". Others have argued Lewis's approach is essentialist and generalizing to the Muslim world, as well as his tendency to restate hypotheses that were challenged by more recent research. On a political level, Lewis is accused by his detractors with having revived the image of the cultural inferiority of Islam and of emphasizing the dangers of jihad. His advice was frequently sought by neoconservative policymakers, including the Bush administration. However, his active support of the Iraq War and neoconservative ideals have since come under scrutiny. Lewis was also notable for his public debates with Edward Said, who accused Lewis and other orientalists of misrepresenting Islam and serving the purposes of Western imperialist domination, to which Lewis responded by defending Orientalism as a facet of humanism and accusing Said of politicizing the subject. Furthermore, Lewis notoriously denied the Armenian genocide. He argued that the deaths of the mass killings resulted from a struggle between two nationalistic movements, claiming that there is no proof of intent by the Ottoman government to exterminate the Armenian nation. Family and personal life Bernard Lewis was born on 31 May 1916 to middle-class British Jewish parents, Harry Lewis and the former Jane Levy, in Stoke Newington, London. He became interested in languages and history while preparing for his bar mitzvah. In 1947 he married Ruth Hélène Oppenhejm, with whom he had a daughter and a son. Their marriage was dissolved in 1974. Lewis became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1982. Academic career In 1936, Lewis graduated from the School of Oriental Studies (now School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS) at the University of London with a BA in history with special reference to the Near and Middle East. He earned his PhD three years later, also from SOAS, specializing in the history of Islam. Lewis also studied law, going part of the way toward becoming a solicitor, but returned to study Middle Eastern history. He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, where he studied with the orientalist Louis Massignon and earned the "Diplôme des Études Sémitiques" in 1937. He returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History. During the Second World War, Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and as a Corporal in the Intelligence Corps in 1940–41 before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to SOAS, where he would remain for the next 25 years. In 1949, at the age of 33, he was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History. In 1963, Lewis was granted fellowship of the British Academy. In 1974, aged 57, Lewis accepted a joint position at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, also located in Princeton, New Jersey. The terms of his appointment were such that Lewis taught only one semester per year, and being free from administrative responsibilities, he could devote more time to research than previously. Consequently, Lewis's arrival at Princeton marked the beginning of the most prolific period in his research career during which he published numerous books and articles based on previously accumulated materials. After retiring from Princeton in 1986, Lewis served at Cornell University until 1990. In 1966, Lewis was a founding member of the learned society, Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), but in 2007 he broke away and founded Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) to challenge MESA, which the New York Sun noted as "dominated by academics who have been critical of Israel and of America's role in the Middle East". The organization was formed as an academic society dedicated to promoting high standards of research and teaching in Middle Eastern and African studies and other related fields, with Lewis as Chairman of its academic council. In 1990, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Lewis for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. His lecture, entitled "Western Civilization: A View from the East", was revised and reprinted in The Atlantic Monthly under the title "The Roots of Muslim Rage." His 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture, given to the American Enterprise Institute, was published as Europe and Islam. Research Lewis's influence extends beyond academia to the general public. He began his research career with the study of medieval Arab, especially Syrian, history. His first article, dedicated to professional guilds of medieval Islam, had been widely regarded as the most authoritative work on the subject for about thirty years. However, after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, scholars of Jewish origin found it more and more difficult to conduct archival and field research in Arab countries, where they were suspected of espionage. Therefore, Lewis switched to the study of the Ottoman Empire, while continuing to research Arab history through the Ottoman archives which had only recently been opened to Western researchers. A series of articles that Lewis published over the next several years revolutionized the history of the Middle East by giving a broad picture of Islamic society, including its government, economy, and demographics. Lewis argued that the Middle East is currently backward and its decline was a largely self-inflicted condition resulting from both culture and religion, as opposed to the post-colonialist view which posits the problems of the region as economic and political maldevelopment mainly due to the 19th-century European colonization. In his 1982 work Muslim Discovery of Europe, Lewis argues that Muslim societies could not keep pace with the West and that "Crusader successes were due in no small part to Muslim weakness." Further, he suggested that as early as the 11th century Islamic societies were decaying, primarily the byproduct of internal problems like "cultural arrogance," which was a barrier to creative borrowing, rather than external pressures like the Crusades. In the wake of Soviet and Arab attempts to delegitimize Israel as a racist country, Lewis wrote a study of anti-Semitism, Semites and Anti-Semites (1986). In other works he argued Arab rage against Israel was disproportionate to other tragedies or injustices in the Muslim world, such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and control of Muslim-majority land in Central Asia, the bloody and destructive fighting during the Hama uprising in Syria (1982), the Algerian Civil War (1992–1998), and the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988). In addition to his scholarly works, Lewis wrote several influential books accessible to the general public: The Arabs in History (1950), The Middle East and the West (1964), and The Middle East (1995). In the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks, the interest in Lewis's work surged, especially his 1990 essay The Roots of Muslim Rage. Three of his books were published after 9/11: What Went Wrong? (written before the attacks), which explored the reasons of the Muslim world's apprehension of (and sometimes outright hostility to) modernization; The Crisis of Islam; and Islam: The Religion and the People. Abraham Udovitch described him as "certainly the most eminent and respected historian of the Arab world, of the Islamic world, of the Middle East and beyond". Armenian genocide The first two editions of Lewis's The Emergence of Modern Turkey (1961 and 1968) describe the Armenian genocide as "the terrible holocaust of 1915, when a million and a half Armenians perished". In later editions, this text is altered to "the terrible slaughter of 1915, when, according to estimates, more than a million Armenians perished, as well as an unknown number of Turks". In this passage, Lewis argues that the deaths were the result of a struggle for the same land between two competing nationalist movements. The change in Lewis's textual description of the Armenian genocide and his signing of the petition against the Congressional resolution was controversial among some Armenian historians as well as journalists, who suggested that Lewis was engaging in historical revisionism to serve his own political and personal interests. Lewis called the label "genocide" the "Armenian version of this history" in a November 1993 interview with Le Monde, for which he faced a civil proceeding in a French court. In a subsequent exchange on the pages of Le Monde, Lewis wrote that while "terrible atrocities" did occur, "there exists no serious proof of a decision and of a plan of the Ottoman government aiming to exterminate the Armenian nation". He was ordered to pay one franc as damages for his statements on the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey. Three other court cases against Bernard Lewis failed in the Paris tribunal, including one filed by the Armenian National Committee of France and two filed by Jacques Trémollet de Villers. Lewis's views on the Armenian genocide were criticized by a number of historians and sociologists, among them Alain Finkielkraut, Yves Ternon, Richard G. Hovannisian, Robert Melson, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Finkelstein|first1=Norman G.|title=The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering|date=2003|publisher=Verso|location=London|isbn=978-1859844885|page=69}}</ref> Lewis has argued for his denial stance that: Lewis has been labelled a "genocide denier" by Stephen Zunes, Israel Charny, David B. MacDonald and the Armenian National Committee of America. Israeli historian Yair Auron suggested that "Lewis' stature provided a lofty cover for the Turkish national agenda of obfuscating academic research on the Armenian Genocide". Israel Charny wrote that Lewis's "seemingly scholarly concern ... of Armenians constituting a threat to the Turks as a rebellious force who together with the Russians threatened the Ottoman Empire, and the insistence that only a policy of deportations was executed, barely conceal the fact that the organized deportations constituted systematic mass murder". Charny compares the "logical structures" employed by Lewis in his denial of the genocide to those employed by Ernst Nolte in his Holocaust negationism. Views and influence on contemporary politics In the mid-1960s, Lewis emerged as a commentator on the issues of the modern Middle East and his analysis of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the rise of militant Islam brought him publicity and aroused significant controversy. American historian Joel Beinin has called him "perhaps the most articulate and learned Zionist advocate in the North American Middle East academic community". Lewis's policy advice has particular weight thanks to this scholarly authority. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney remarked "in this new century, his wisdom is sought daily by policymakers, diplomats, fellow academics, and the news media". A harsh critic of the Soviet Union, Lewis continued the liberal tradition in Islamic historical studies. Although his early Marxist views had a bearing on his first book The Origins of Ismailism, Lewis subsequently discarded Marxism. His later works are a reaction against the left-wing current of Third-worldism which came to be a significant current in Middle Eastern studies. During his career Lewis developed ties with governments around the world: during her time as Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir assigned Lewis's articles as reading to her cabinet members, and during the Presidency of George W. Bush, he advised administration members including Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Bush himself. He was also close to King Hussein of Jordan and his brother, Prince Hassan bin Talal. He also had ties to the regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, the Turkish military dictatorship led by Kenan Evren, and the Egyptian government of Anwar Sadat: he acted as a go-between between the Sadat administration and Israel in 1971 when he relayed a message to the Israeli government regarding the possibility of a peace agreement at the request of Sadat's spokesman Tahasin Bashir. Lewis advocated closer Western ties with Israel and Turkey, which he saw as especially important in light of the extension of the Soviet influence in the Middle East. Modern Turkey holds a special place in Lewis's view of the region due to the country's efforts to become a part of the West. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Turkish Studies, an honor which is given "on the basis of generally recognized scholarly distinction and ... long and devoted service to the field of Turkish Studies." Lewis views Christendom and Islam as civilizations that have been in perpetual collision since the advent of Islam in the 7th century. In his essay The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990), he argued that the struggle between the West and Islam was gathering strength. According to one source, this essay (and Lewis's 1990 Jefferson Lecture on which the article was based) first introduced the term "Islamic fundamentalism" to North America. This essay has been credited with coining the phrase "clash of civilizations", which received prominence in the eponymous book by Samuel Huntington. However, another source indicates that Lewis first used the phrase "clash of civilizations" at a 1957 meeting in Washington where it was recorded in the transcript. In 1998, Lewis read in a London-based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi a declaration of war on the United States by Osama bin Laden. In his essay "A License to Kill", Lewis indicated he considered bin Laden's language as the "ideology of jihad" and warned that bin Laden would be a danger to the West. The essay was published after the Clinton administration and the US intelligence community had begun its hunt for bin Laden in Sudan and then in Afghanistan. Jihad Lewis writes of jihad as a distinct religious obligation, but suggests that it is a pity that people engaging in terrorist activities are not more aware of their own religion:The fanatical warrior offering his victims the choice of the Koran or the sword is not only untrue, it is impossible. The alleged choice - conversion or death - is also, with rare and atypical exceptions, untrue. Muslim tolerance of unbelievers and misbelievers was far better than anything available in Christendom until the rise of secularism in the 17th century. Muslim fighters are commanded not to kill women, children, or the aged unless they attack first; not to torture or otherwise ill-treat prisoners; to give fair warnings of the opening of hostilities or their resumption after a truce; and to honor agreements. At no time did the classical jurists offer any approval or legitimacy to what we nowdays call terrorism. Nor indeed is there any evidence of the use of terrorism as it is practiced nowadays. The emergence of the by now widespread terrorism practice of suicide bombing is a development of the 20th century. It has no antecedents in Islamic history, and no justification in the terms of Islamic theology, law, or tradition.As'ad AbuKhalil, has criticized this view and stated: "Methodologically, [Lewis] insists that terrorism by individual Muslims should be considered Islamic terrorism, while terrorism by individual Jews or Christians is never considered Jewish or Christian terrorism." He also criticised Lewis's understanding of Osama bin Laden, seeing Lewis's interpretation of bin Laden "as some kind of influential Muslim theologian" along the lines of classical theologians like Al-Ghazali, rather than "the terrorist fanatic that he is". AbuKhalil has also criticized the place of Islam in Lewis's worldview more generally, arguing that the most prominent feature of his work was its "theologocentrism" (borrowing a term from Maxime Rodinson) - that Lewis interprets all aspects of behavior among Muslims solely through the lens of Islamic theology, subsuming the study of Muslim peoples, their languages, the geographical areas where Muslims predominate, Islamic governments, the governments of Arab countries and Sharia under the label of "Islam". Debates with Edward Said Lewis was known for his literary debates with Edward Said, the Palestinian American literary theorist whose aim was to deconstruct what he called Orientalist scholarship. Said, who was a professor at Columbia University, characterized Lewis's work as a prime example of Orientalism in his 1978 book Orientalism and in his later book Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (1981). Said asserted that the field of Orientalism was political intellectualism bent on self-affirmation rather than objective study, a form of racism, and a tool of imperialist domination. He further questioned the scientific neutrality of some leading Middle East scholars, including Lewis, on the Arab World. In an interview with Al-Ahram weekly, Said suggested that Lewis's knowledge of the Middle East was so biased that it could not be taken seriously and claimed "Bernard Lewis hasn't set foot in the Middle East, in the Arab world, for at least 40 years. He knows something about Turkey, I'm told, but he knows nothing about the Arab world." Said considered that Lewis treats Islam as a monolithic entity without the nuance of its plurality, internal dynamics, and historical complexities, and accused him of "demagogy and downright ignorance". In Covering Islam, Said argued that "Lewis simply cannot deal with the diversity of Muslim, much less human life, because it is closed to him as something foreign, radically different, and other," and he criticised Lewis's "inability to grant that the Islamic peoples are entitled to their own cultural, political, and historical practices, free from Lewis's calculated attempt to show that because they are not Western... they can't be good." Rejecting the view that Western scholarship was biased against the Middle East, Lewis responded that Orientalism developed as a facet of European humanism, independently of the past European imperial expansion. He noted the French and English pursued the study of Islam in the 16th and 17th centuries, yet not in an organized way, but long before they had any control or hope of control in the Middle East; and that much of Orientalist study did nothing to advance the cause of imperialism. In his 1993 book Islam and the West, Lewis wrote "What imperial purpose was served by deciphering the ancient Egyptian language, for example, and then restoring to the Egyptians knowledge of and pride in their forgotten, ancient past?" Furthermore, Lewis accused Said of politicizing the scientific study of the Middle East (and Arabic studies in particular); neglecting to critique the scholarly findings of the Orientalists; and giving "free rein" to his biases. Stance on the Iraq War In 2002, Lewis wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal regarding the buildup to the Iraq War entitled "Time for Toppling", where he stated his opinion that "a regime change may well be dangerous, but sometimes the dangers of inaction are greater than those of action". In 2007, Jacob Weisberg described Lewis as "perhaps the most significant intellectual influence behind the invasion of Iraq". Michael Hirsh attributed to Lewis the view that regime change in Iraq would provide a jolt that would "modernize the Middle East" and suggested that Lewis's allegedly 'orientalist' theories about "what went wrong" in the Middle East, and other writings, formed the intellectual basis of the push towards war in Iraq. Hirsch reported that Lewis had told him in an interview that he viewed the 11 September attacks as "the opening salvo of the final battle" between Western and Islamic civilisations: Lewis believed that a forceful response was necessary. In the run up to the Iraq War, he met with Vice President Dick Cheney several times: Hirsch quoted an unnamed official who was present at a number of these meetings, who summarised Lewis's view of Iraq as "Get on with it. Don't dither". Brent Scowcroft quoted Lewis as stating that he believed "that one of the things you’ve got to do to Arabs is hit them between the eyes with a big stick. They respect power". As'ad AbuKhalil has claimed that Lewis assured Cheney that American troops would be welcomed by Iraqis and Arabs, relying on the opinion of his colleague Fouad Ajami. Hirsch also drew parallels between the Bush administration's plans for post-invasion Iraq and Lewis's views, in particular his admiration for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's secularist and Westernising reforms in the new Republic of Turkey which emerged from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Writing in 2008, Lewis did not advocate imposing freedom and democracy on Islamic nations. "There are things you can't impose. Freedom, for example. Or democracy. Democracy is a very strong medicine which has to be administered to the patient in small, gradually increasing doses. Otherwise, you risk killing the patient. In the main, the Muslims have to do it themselves." Ian Buruma, writing for The New Yorker in an article subtitled "The two Minds of Bernard Lewis", finds Lewis's stance on the war difficult to reconcile with Lewis's past statements cautioning democracy enforcement in the world at large. Buruma ultimately rejects suggestions by his peers that Lewis promotes war with Iraq to safeguard Israel, but instead concludes "perhaps he loves it [the Arab world] too much": Hamid Dabashi, writing on 28 May 2018, in an article subtitled "On Bernard Lewis and 'his extraordinary capacity for getting everything wrong'", asked: "Just imagine: What sort of a person would spend a lifetime studying people he loathes? It is quite a bizarre proposition. But there you have it: the late Bernard Lewis did precisely that." Similarly, Richard Bulliet described Lewis as "...a person who does not like the people he is purporting to have expertise about...he doesn’t respect them, he considers them to be good and worthy only to the degree they follow a Western path". According to As'ad AbuKhalil, "Lewis has poisoned the Middle East academic field more than any other Orientalist and his influence has been both academic and political. But there is a new generation of Middle East experts in the West who now see clearly the political agenda of Bernard Lewis. It was fully exposed in the Bush years." Alleged nuclear threat from Iran In 2006, Lewis wrote that Iran had been working on a nuclear weapon for fifteen years. In August 2006, in an article about whether the world can rely on the concept of mutual assured destruction as a deterrent in its dealings with Iran, Lewis wrote in The Wall Street Journal about the significance of 22 August 2006 in the Islamic calendar. The Iranian president had indicated he would respond by that date to U.S. demands regarding Iran's development of nuclear power. Lewis wrote that the date corresponded to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427, the day Muslims commemorate the night flight of Muhammad from Jerusalem to heaven and back. Lewis wrote that it would be "an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and, if necessary, of the world". According to Lewis, mutual assured destruction is not an effective deterrent in the case of Iran, because of what Lewis describes as the Iranian leadership's "apocalyptic worldview" and the "suicide or martyrdom complex that plagues parts of the Islamic world today". Lewis's article received significant press coverage. However, the day passed without any incident. Death Bernard Lewis died on 19 May 2018 at the age of 101, at an assisted-living care facility in Voorhees Township, New Jersey, twelve days before his 102nd birthday. He is buried in Trumpeldor Cemetery in Tel Aviv. Bibliography Awards and honors 1963: Elected as a Fellow of the British Academy 1978: The Harvey Prize, from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, for "his profound insight into the life and mores of the peoples of the Middle East through his writings" 1983: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1990: Selected for the Jefferson Lecture by the National Endowment for the Humanities 1996: Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction, for The Middle East (Scribner) 1999: National Jewish Book Award in the Israel category for The Multiple Identities of the Middle East 2002: The Thomas Jefferson Medal, awarded by the American Philosophical Society 2002: Atatürk International Peace Prize on grounds that he contributed extensively to history scholarship with his accurate analysis of Turkey’s and in particular of Atatürk’s positive impact on Middle Eastern history. 2004: Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement 2006: National Humanities Medal, from the National Endowment for the Humanities 2007: Irving Kristol Award, from the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research 2007: The Scholar-Statesman Award from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy See also Bernard Lewis bibliography List of Princeton University people References External links Lewis's page at Princeton University Revered and Reviled – Lewis's profile on Moment Magazine'' The Legacy and Fallacies of Bernard Lewis by As`ad AbuKhalil 1916 births 2018 deaths 20th-century American historians 20th-century British historians 20th-century British writers 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers 21st-century British historians 21st-century British writers Academics of SOAS University of London Alumni of SOAS University of London American centenarians American historians American male non-fiction writers American people of English-Jewish descent Deniers of the Armenian genocide British Army personnel of World War II English centenarians British emigrants to the United States English historians English Jews Fellows of the British Academy Historians of Islam Historians of the Ottoman Empire Honorary members of the Turkish Academy of Sciences Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars Intelligence Corps soldiers Islam and antisemitism Islam and politics Jewish American historians Jewish scholars Jewish scholars of Islam Men centenarians Middle Eastern studies in the United States National Humanities Medal recipients Neoconservatism People from Stoke Newington British political commentators Princeton University faculty Royal Armoured Corps soldiers Scholars of antisemitism University of Paris alumni Cornell University faculty Foreign Policy Research Institute Historians of the Middle East Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs Middle Eastern studies scholars Burials at Trumpeldor Cemetery 21st-century American Jews
true
[ "The Predator is the third EP by American metalcore band Ice Nine Kills and was self-released by the band on January 15, 2013. The EP debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart.\n\nIt is the only album to feature Steve Koch as bassist and backup singer after his departure in 2013, and the last album to feature Justin Morrow as rhythm guitarist; he would switch to bass guitar and backing vocals (on live performance only) while still playing rhythm guitar in studio in 2013.\n\nThe tracks \"The Coffin Is Moving\" and \"What I Never Learned in Study Hall\" later would be featured on the band's 2014 album The Predator Becomes the Prey.\n\nThe track \"What I Never Learned in Study Hall\" was later re-recorded acoustically for Take Action. Vol. 11 making it similar to the song's predecessors \"What I Really Learned in Study Hall\" and \"What I Should Have Learned in Study Hall\". Unlike the original version, the acoustic version did not feature Tyler Carter as guest vocalist, but instead featured former Kid's Jackson Summer vocalist Kate Ellen Dean.\n\nTrack listing\n\nPersonnel \n Spencer Charnas - lead vocals, piano on \"A Reptile's Dysfunction\"\n Justin \"JD\" DeBlieck - lead guitar, lead vocals\n Justin Morrow - rhythm guitar\n Steve Koch - bass guitar, backing vocals\n Connor Sullivan - drums\n Steve Sopchak - producer, engineer, mixing\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n2013 EPs\nIce Nine Kills EPs\nSelf-released EPs", "Homeric psychology is a field of study with regards to the psychology of ancient Greek culture no later than Mycenaean Greece, around 1700–1200 BCE, during the Homeric epic poems (specifically the Illiad and the Odyssey).\n\nHistory of Homeric psychology\nThe first scholar to present a theory was Bruno Snell in his 1953 book, originally in German. His argument was that the ancient Greek individual did not have a sense of self, and that later the Greek culture \"self-realized\" or \"discovered\" what we consider to be the modern \"intellect\".\n\nLater, Eric Robertson Dodds in 1951, wrote how ancient Greek thought may have been irrational, as compared to modern \"rational\" culture. In this Dodds' theory, the Greeks may have known that an individual did things, but the reason an individual did things were attributed to divine externalities, such as gods or daemons.\n\nJulian Jaynes proposed a theory in 1976. He stipulated that Greek consciousness emerged from the use of special words related to cognition. Some of Jaynes' findings were empirically supported in a 2021 study by Boban Dedović, a psychohistorian. The study compared the word counts of mental language between thirty-four versions of the Iliad and Odyssey.\n\nReferences \n\nConsciousness studies\nPhilosophy of mind\nPhilology\nCognitive psychology\nHistorical linguistics\nArguments in philosophy of mind" ]
[ "Bernard Lewis", "Academic career", "Where did he go to school?", "University of London", "What did he study?", "graduated from the School of Oriental Studies" ]
C_ec17aa9fcd4345f3848566410f6c0500_1
Did he study anywhere else?
3
Did Bernard Lewis study anywhere other than the School of Oriental Studies?
Bernard Lewis
In 1936, Lewis graduated from the School of Oriental Studies (now School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS) at the University of London with a BA in history with special reference to the Near and Middle East. He earned his PhD three years later, also from SOAS, specializing in the history of Islam. Lewis also studied law, going part of the way toward becoming a solicitor, but returned to study Middle Eastern history. He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, where he studied with the orientalist Louis Massignon and earned the "Diplome des Etudes Semitiques" in 1937. He returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History. During the Second World War, Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and as a Corporal in the Intelligence Corps in 1940-41 before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to SOAS. In 1949, at the age of 33, he was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History. In 1974, aged 57, Lewis accepted a joint position at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, also located in Princeton, New Jersey. The terms of his appointment were such that Lewis taught only one semester per year, and being free from administrative responsibilities, he could devote more time to research than previously. Consequently, Lewis's arrival at Princeton marked the beginning of the most prolific period in his research career during which he published numerous books and articles based on previously accumulated materials. After retiring from Princeton in 1986, Lewis served at Cornell University until 1990. In 1966, Lewis was a founding member of the learned society, Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), but in 2007 he broke away and founded Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) to challenge MESA, which the New York Sun noted as "dominated by academics who have been critical of Israel and of America's role in the Middle East." The organization was formed as an academic society dedicated to promoting high standards of research and teaching in Middle Eastern and African studies and other related fields, with Lewis as Chairman of its academic council. In 1990, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Lewis for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. His lecture, entitled "Western Civilization: A View from the East", was revised and reprinted in The Atlantic Monthly under the title "The Roots of Muslim Rage." His 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture, given to the American Enterprise Institute, was published as Europe and Islam. CANNOTANSWER
He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris,
Bernard Lewis, (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Lewis's expertise was in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West. Lewis served as a soldier in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and Intelligence Corps during the Second World War before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern history. In 2007 Lewis was called "the West's leading interpreter of the Middle East". Others have argued Lewis's approach is essentialist and generalizing to the Muslim world, as well as his tendency to restate hypotheses that were challenged by more recent research. On a political level, Lewis is accused by his detractors with having revived the image of the cultural inferiority of Islam and of emphasizing the dangers of jihad. His advice was frequently sought by neoconservative policymakers, including the Bush administration. However, his active support of the Iraq War and neoconservative ideals have since come under scrutiny. Lewis was also notable for his public debates with Edward Said, who accused Lewis and other orientalists of misrepresenting Islam and serving the purposes of Western imperialist domination, to which Lewis responded by defending Orientalism as a facet of humanism and accusing Said of politicizing the subject. Furthermore, Lewis notoriously denied the Armenian genocide. He argued that the deaths of the mass killings resulted from a struggle between two nationalistic movements, claiming that there is no proof of intent by the Ottoman government to exterminate the Armenian nation. Family and personal life Bernard Lewis was born on 31 May 1916 to middle-class British Jewish parents, Harry Lewis and the former Jane Levy, in Stoke Newington, London. He became interested in languages and history while preparing for his bar mitzvah. In 1947 he married Ruth Hélène Oppenhejm, with whom he had a daughter and a son. Their marriage was dissolved in 1974. Lewis became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1982. Academic career In 1936, Lewis graduated from the School of Oriental Studies (now School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS) at the University of London with a BA in history with special reference to the Near and Middle East. He earned his PhD three years later, also from SOAS, specializing in the history of Islam. Lewis also studied law, going part of the way toward becoming a solicitor, but returned to study Middle Eastern history. He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, where he studied with the orientalist Louis Massignon and earned the "Diplôme des Études Sémitiques" in 1937. He returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History. During the Second World War, Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and as a Corporal in the Intelligence Corps in 1940–41 before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to SOAS, where he would remain for the next 25 years. In 1949, at the age of 33, he was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History. In 1963, Lewis was granted fellowship of the British Academy. In 1974, aged 57, Lewis accepted a joint position at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, also located in Princeton, New Jersey. The terms of his appointment were such that Lewis taught only one semester per year, and being free from administrative responsibilities, he could devote more time to research than previously. Consequently, Lewis's arrival at Princeton marked the beginning of the most prolific period in his research career during which he published numerous books and articles based on previously accumulated materials. After retiring from Princeton in 1986, Lewis served at Cornell University until 1990. In 1966, Lewis was a founding member of the learned society, Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), but in 2007 he broke away and founded Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) to challenge MESA, which the New York Sun noted as "dominated by academics who have been critical of Israel and of America's role in the Middle East". The organization was formed as an academic society dedicated to promoting high standards of research and teaching in Middle Eastern and African studies and other related fields, with Lewis as Chairman of its academic council. In 1990, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Lewis for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. His lecture, entitled "Western Civilization: A View from the East", was revised and reprinted in The Atlantic Monthly under the title "The Roots of Muslim Rage." His 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture, given to the American Enterprise Institute, was published as Europe and Islam. Research Lewis's influence extends beyond academia to the general public. He began his research career with the study of medieval Arab, especially Syrian, history. His first article, dedicated to professional guilds of medieval Islam, had been widely regarded as the most authoritative work on the subject for about thirty years. However, after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, scholars of Jewish origin found it more and more difficult to conduct archival and field research in Arab countries, where they were suspected of espionage. Therefore, Lewis switched to the study of the Ottoman Empire, while continuing to research Arab history through the Ottoman archives which had only recently been opened to Western researchers. A series of articles that Lewis published over the next several years revolutionized the history of the Middle East by giving a broad picture of Islamic society, including its government, economy, and demographics. Lewis argued that the Middle East is currently backward and its decline was a largely self-inflicted condition resulting from both culture and religion, as opposed to the post-colonialist view which posits the problems of the region as economic and political maldevelopment mainly due to the 19th-century European colonization. In his 1982 work Muslim Discovery of Europe, Lewis argues that Muslim societies could not keep pace with the West and that "Crusader successes were due in no small part to Muslim weakness." Further, he suggested that as early as the 11th century Islamic societies were decaying, primarily the byproduct of internal problems like "cultural arrogance," which was a barrier to creative borrowing, rather than external pressures like the Crusades. In the wake of Soviet and Arab attempts to delegitimize Israel as a racist country, Lewis wrote a study of anti-Semitism, Semites and Anti-Semites (1986). In other works he argued Arab rage against Israel was disproportionate to other tragedies or injustices in the Muslim world, such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and control of Muslim-majority land in Central Asia, the bloody and destructive fighting during the Hama uprising in Syria (1982), the Algerian Civil War (1992–1998), and the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988). In addition to his scholarly works, Lewis wrote several influential books accessible to the general public: The Arabs in History (1950), The Middle East and the West (1964), and The Middle East (1995). In the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks, the interest in Lewis's work surged, especially his 1990 essay The Roots of Muslim Rage. Three of his books were published after 9/11: What Went Wrong? (written before the attacks), which explored the reasons of the Muslim world's apprehension of (and sometimes outright hostility to) modernization; The Crisis of Islam; and Islam: The Religion and the People. Abraham Udovitch described him as "certainly the most eminent and respected historian of the Arab world, of the Islamic world, of the Middle East and beyond". Armenian genocide The first two editions of Lewis's The Emergence of Modern Turkey (1961 and 1968) describe the Armenian genocide as "the terrible holocaust of 1915, when a million and a half Armenians perished". In later editions, this text is altered to "the terrible slaughter of 1915, when, according to estimates, more than a million Armenians perished, as well as an unknown number of Turks". In this passage, Lewis argues that the deaths were the result of a struggle for the same land between two competing nationalist movements. The change in Lewis's textual description of the Armenian genocide and his signing of the petition against the Congressional resolution was controversial among some Armenian historians as well as journalists, who suggested that Lewis was engaging in historical revisionism to serve his own political and personal interests. Lewis called the label "genocide" the "Armenian version of this history" in a November 1993 interview with Le Monde, for which he faced a civil proceeding in a French court. In a subsequent exchange on the pages of Le Monde, Lewis wrote that while "terrible atrocities" did occur, "there exists no serious proof of a decision and of a plan of the Ottoman government aiming to exterminate the Armenian nation". He was ordered to pay one franc as damages for his statements on the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey. Three other court cases against Bernard Lewis failed in the Paris tribunal, including one filed by the Armenian National Committee of France and two filed by Jacques Trémollet de Villers. Lewis's views on the Armenian genocide were criticized by a number of historians and sociologists, among them Alain Finkielkraut, Yves Ternon, Richard G. Hovannisian, Robert Melson, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Finkelstein|first1=Norman G.|title=The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering|date=2003|publisher=Verso|location=London|isbn=978-1859844885|page=69}}</ref> Lewis has argued for his denial stance that: Lewis has been labelled a "genocide denier" by Stephen Zunes, Israel Charny, David B. MacDonald and the Armenian National Committee of America. Israeli historian Yair Auron suggested that "Lewis' stature provided a lofty cover for the Turkish national agenda of obfuscating academic research on the Armenian Genocide". Israel Charny wrote that Lewis's "seemingly scholarly concern ... of Armenians constituting a threat to the Turks as a rebellious force who together with the Russians threatened the Ottoman Empire, and the insistence that only a policy of deportations was executed, barely conceal the fact that the organized deportations constituted systematic mass murder". Charny compares the "logical structures" employed by Lewis in his denial of the genocide to those employed by Ernst Nolte in his Holocaust negationism. Views and influence on contemporary politics In the mid-1960s, Lewis emerged as a commentator on the issues of the modern Middle East and his analysis of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the rise of militant Islam brought him publicity and aroused significant controversy. American historian Joel Beinin has called him "perhaps the most articulate and learned Zionist advocate in the North American Middle East academic community". Lewis's policy advice has particular weight thanks to this scholarly authority. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney remarked "in this new century, his wisdom is sought daily by policymakers, diplomats, fellow academics, and the news media". A harsh critic of the Soviet Union, Lewis continued the liberal tradition in Islamic historical studies. Although his early Marxist views had a bearing on his first book The Origins of Ismailism, Lewis subsequently discarded Marxism. His later works are a reaction against the left-wing current of Third-worldism which came to be a significant current in Middle Eastern studies. During his career Lewis developed ties with governments around the world: during her time as Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir assigned Lewis's articles as reading to her cabinet members, and during the Presidency of George W. Bush, he advised administration members including Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Bush himself. He was also close to King Hussein of Jordan and his brother, Prince Hassan bin Talal. He also had ties to the regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, the Turkish military dictatorship led by Kenan Evren, and the Egyptian government of Anwar Sadat: he acted as a go-between between the Sadat administration and Israel in 1971 when he relayed a message to the Israeli government regarding the possibility of a peace agreement at the request of Sadat's spokesman Tahasin Bashir. Lewis advocated closer Western ties with Israel and Turkey, which he saw as especially important in light of the extension of the Soviet influence in the Middle East. Modern Turkey holds a special place in Lewis's view of the region due to the country's efforts to become a part of the West. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Turkish Studies, an honor which is given "on the basis of generally recognized scholarly distinction and ... long and devoted service to the field of Turkish Studies." Lewis views Christendom and Islam as civilizations that have been in perpetual collision since the advent of Islam in the 7th century. In his essay The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990), he argued that the struggle between the West and Islam was gathering strength. According to one source, this essay (and Lewis's 1990 Jefferson Lecture on which the article was based) first introduced the term "Islamic fundamentalism" to North America. This essay has been credited with coining the phrase "clash of civilizations", which received prominence in the eponymous book by Samuel Huntington. However, another source indicates that Lewis first used the phrase "clash of civilizations" at a 1957 meeting in Washington where it was recorded in the transcript. In 1998, Lewis read in a London-based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi a declaration of war on the United States by Osama bin Laden. In his essay "A License to Kill", Lewis indicated he considered bin Laden's language as the "ideology of jihad" and warned that bin Laden would be a danger to the West. The essay was published after the Clinton administration and the US intelligence community had begun its hunt for bin Laden in Sudan and then in Afghanistan. Jihad Lewis writes of jihad as a distinct religious obligation, but suggests that it is a pity that people engaging in terrorist activities are not more aware of their own religion:The fanatical warrior offering his victims the choice of the Koran or the sword is not only untrue, it is impossible. The alleged choice - conversion or death - is also, with rare and atypical exceptions, untrue. Muslim tolerance of unbelievers and misbelievers was far better than anything available in Christendom until the rise of secularism in the 17th century. Muslim fighters are commanded not to kill women, children, or the aged unless they attack first; not to torture or otherwise ill-treat prisoners; to give fair warnings of the opening of hostilities or their resumption after a truce; and to honor agreements. At no time did the classical jurists offer any approval or legitimacy to what we nowdays call terrorism. Nor indeed is there any evidence of the use of terrorism as it is practiced nowadays. The emergence of the by now widespread terrorism practice of suicide bombing is a development of the 20th century. It has no antecedents in Islamic history, and no justification in the terms of Islamic theology, law, or tradition.As'ad AbuKhalil, has criticized this view and stated: "Methodologically, [Lewis] insists that terrorism by individual Muslims should be considered Islamic terrorism, while terrorism by individual Jews or Christians is never considered Jewish or Christian terrorism." He also criticised Lewis's understanding of Osama bin Laden, seeing Lewis's interpretation of bin Laden "as some kind of influential Muslim theologian" along the lines of classical theologians like Al-Ghazali, rather than "the terrorist fanatic that he is". AbuKhalil has also criticized the place of Islam in Lewis's worldview more generally, arguing that the most prominent feature of his work was its "theologocentrism" (borrowing a term from Maxime Rodinson) - that Lewis interprets all aspects of behavior among Muslims solely through the lens of Islamic theology, subsuming the study of Muslim peoples, their languages, the geographical areas where Muslims predominate, Islamic governments, the governments of Arab countries and Sharia under the label of "Islam". Debates with Edward Said Lewis was known for his literary debates with Edward Said, the Palestinian American literary theorist whose aim was to deconstruct what he called Orientalist scholarship. Said, who was a professor at Columbia University, characterized Lewis's work as a prime example of Orientalism in his 1978 book Orientalism and in his later book Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (1981). Said asserted that the field of Orientalism was political intellectualism bent on self-affirmation rather than objective study, a form of racism, and a tool of imperialist domination. He further questioned the scientific neutrality of some leading Middle East scholars, including Lewis, on the Arab World. In an interview with Al-Ahram weekly, Said suggested that Lewis's knowledge of the Middle East was so biased that it could not be taken seriously and claimed "Bernard Lewis hasn't set foot in the Middle East, in the Arab world, for at least 40 years. He knows something about Turkey, I'm told, but he knows nothing about the Arab world." Said considered that Lewis treats Islam as a monolithic entity without the nuance of its plurality, internal dynamics, and historical complexities, and accused him of "demagogy and downright ignorance". In Covering Islam, Said argued that "Lewis simply cannot deal with the diversity of Muslim, much less human life, because it is closed to him as something foreign, radically different, and other," and he criticised Lewis's "inability to grant that the Islamic peoples are entitled to their own cultural, political, and historical practices, free from Lewis's calculated attempt to show that because they are not Western... they can't be good." Rejecting the view that Western scholarship was biased against the Middle East, Lewis responded that Orientalism developed as a facet of European humanism, independently of the past European imperial expansion. He noted the French and English pursued the study of Islam in the 16th and 17th centuries, yet not in an organized way, but long before they had any control or hope of control in the Middle East; and that much of Orientalist study did nothing to advance the cause of imperialism. In his 1993 book Islam and the West, Lewis wrote "What imperial purpose was served by deciphering the ancient Egyptian language, for example, and then restoring to the Egyptians knowledge of and pride in their forgotten, ancient past?" Furthermore, Lewis accused Said of politicizing the scientific study of the Middle East (and Arabic studies in particular); neglecting to critique the scholarly findings of the Orientalists; and giving "free rein" to his biases. Stance on the Iraq War In 2002, Lewis wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal regarding the buildup to the Iraq War entitled "Time for Toppling", where he stated his opinion that "a regime change may well be dangerous, but sometimes the dangers of inaction are greater than those of action". In 2007, Jacob Weisberg described Lewis as "perhaps the most significant intellectual influence behind the invasion of Iraq". Michael Hirsh attributed to Lewis the view that regime change in Iraq would provide a jolt that would "modernize the Middle East" and suggested that Lewis's allegedly 'orientalist' theories about "what went wrong" in the Middle East, and other writings, formed the intellectual basis of the push towards war in Iraq. Hirsch reported that Lewis had told him in an interview that he viewed the 11 September attacks as "the opening salvo of the final battle" between Western and Islamic civilisations: Lewis believed that a forceful response was necessary. In the run up to the Iraq War, he met with Vice President Dick Cheney several times: Hirsch quoted an unnamed official who was present at a number of these meetings, who summarised Lewis's view of Iraq as "Get on with it. Don't dither". Brent Scowcroft quoted Lewis as stating that he believed "that one of the things you’ve got to do to Arabs is hit them between the eyes with a big stick. They respect power". As'ad AbuKhalil has claimed that Lewis assured Cheney that American troops would be welcomed by Iraqis and Arabs, relying on the opinion of his colleague Fouad Ajami. Hirsch also drew parallels between the Bush administration's plans for post-invasion Iraq and Lewis's views, in particular his admiration for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's secularist and Westernising reforms in the new Republic of Turkey which emerged from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Writing in 2008, Lewis did not advocate imposing freedom and democracy on Islamic nations. "There are things you can't impose. Freedom, for example. Or democracy. Democracy is a very strong medicine which has to be administered to the patient in small, gradually increasing doses. Otherwise, you risk killing the patient. In the main, the Muslims have to do it themselves." Ian Buruma, writing for The New Yorker in an article subtitled "The two Minds of Bernard Lewis", finds Lewis's stance on the war difficult to reconcile with Lewis's past statements cautioning democracy enforcement in the world at large. Buruma ultimately rejects suggestions by his peers that Lewis promotes war with Iraq to safeguard Israel, but instead concludes "perhaps he loves it [the Arab world] too much": Hamid Dabashi, writing on 28 May 2018, in an article subtitled "On Bernard Lewis and 'his extraordinary capacity for getting everything wrong'", asked: "Just imagine: What sort of a person would spend a lifetime studying people he loathes? It is quite a bizarre proposition. But there you have it: the late Bernard Lewis did precisely that." Similarly, Richard Bulliet described Lewis as "...a person who does not like the people he is purporting to have expertise about...he doesn’t respect them, he considers them to be good and worthy only to the degree they follow a Western path". According to As'ad AbuKhalil, "Lewis has poisoned the Middle East academic field more than any other Orientalist and his influence has been both academic and political. But there is a new generation of Middle East experts in the West who now see clearly the political agenda of Bernard Lewis. It was fully exposed in the Bush years." Alleged nuclear threat from Iran In 2006, Lewis wrote that Iran had been working on a nuclear weapon for fifteen years. In August 2006, in an article about whether the world can rely on the concept of mutual assured destruction as a deterrent in its dealings with Iran, Lewis wrote in The Wall Street Journal about the significance of 22 August 2006 in the Islamic calendar. The Iranian president had indicated he would respond by that date to U.S. demands regarding Iran's development of nuclear power. Lewis wrote that the date corresponded to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427, the day Muslims commemorate the night flight of Muhammad from Jerusalem to heaven and back. Lewis wrote that it would be "an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and, if necessary, of the world". According to Lewis, mutual assured destruction is not an effective deterrent in the case of Iran, because of what Lewis describes as the Iranian leadership's "apocalyptic worldview" and the "suicide or martyrdom complex that plagues parts of the Islamic world today". Lewis's article received significant press coverage. However, the day passed without any incident. Death Bernard Lewis died on 19 May 2018 at the age of 101, at an assisted-living care facility in Voorhees Township, New Jersey, twelve days before his 102nd birthday. He is buried in Trumpeldor Cemetery in Tel Aviv. Bibliography Awards and honors 1963: Elected as a Fellow of the British Academy 1978: The Harvey Prize, from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, for "his profound insight into the life and mores of the peoples of the Middle East through his writings" 1983: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1990: Selected for the Jefferson Lecture by the National Endowment for the Humanities 1996: Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction, for The Middle East (Scribner) 1999: National Jewish Book Award in the Israel category for The Multiple Identities of the Middle East 2002: The Thomas Jefferson Medal, awarded by the American Philosophical Society 2002: Atatürk International Peace Prize on grounds that he contributed extensively to history scholarship with his accurate analysis of Turkey’s and in particular of Atatürk’s positive impact on Middle Eastern history. 2004: Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement 2006: National Humanities Medal, from the National Endowment for the Humanities 2007: Irving Kristol Award, from the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research 2007: The Scholar-Statesman Award from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy See also Bernard Lewis bibliography List of Princeton University people References External links Lewis's page at Princeton University Revered and Reviled – Lewis's profile on Moment Magazine'' The Legacy and Fallacies of Bernard Lewis by As`ad AbuKhalil 1916 births 2018 deaths 20th-century American historians 20th-century British historians 20th-century British writers 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers 21st-century British historians 21st-century British writers Academics of SOAS University of London Alumni of SOAS University of London American centenarians American historians American male non-fiction writers American people of English-Jewish descent Deniers of the Armenian genocide British Army personnel of World War II English centenarians British emigrants to the United States English historians English Jews Fellows of the British Academy Historians of Islam Historians of the Ottoman Empire Honorary members of the Turkish Academy of Sciences Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars Intelligence Corps soldiers Islam and antisemitism Islam and politics Jewish American historians Jewish scholars Jewish scholars of Islam Men centenarians Middle Eastern studies in the United States National Humanities Medal recipients Neoconservatism People from Stoke Newington British political commentators Princeton University faculty Royal Armoured Corps soldiers Scholars of antisemitism University of Paris alumni Cornell University faculty Foreign Policy Research Institute Historians of the Middle East Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs Middle Eastern studies scholars Burials at Trumpeldor Cemetery 21st-century American Jews
true
[ "\"Be Someone Else\" is a song by Slimmy, released in 2010 as the lead single from his second studio album Be Someone Else. The single wasn't particularly successful, charting anywhere.\nA music video was also made for \"Be Someone Else\", produced by Riot Films. It premiered on 27 June 2010 on YouTube.\n\nBackground\n\"Be Someone Else\" was unveiled as the album's lead single. The song was written by Fernandes and produced by Quico Serrano and Mark J Turner. It was released to MySpace on 1 January 2010.\n\nMusic video\nA music video was also made for \"Be Someone Else\", produced by Riot Films. It premiered on 27 June 2010 on YouTube. The music video features two different scenes which alternate with each other many times during the video. The first scene features Slimmy performing the song with an electric guitar and the second scene features Slimmy performing with the band in the background.\n\nChart performance\nThe single wasn't particularly successful, charting anywhere.\n\nLive performances\n A Very Slimmy Tour\n Be Someone Else Tour\n\nTrack listing\n\nDigital single\n\"Be Someone Else\" (album version) - 3:22\n\nPersonnel\nTaken from the album's booklet.\n\nPaulo Fernandes – main vocals, guitar\nPaulo Garim – bass\nTó-Zé – drums\n\nRelease history\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nOfficial music video at YouTube.\n\n2010 singles\nEnglish-language Portuguese songs\n2009 songs", "Grouvellina radama is a species of ground beetle in the subfamily Rhysodinae. It was described by R.T. & J.R. Bell in 1979.\nIt is native to Madagascar and it is unknown whether it lives anywhere else.\n\nReferences\n\nGrouvellina\nBeetles described in 1979" ]
[ "Bernard Lewis", "Academic career", "Where did he go to school?", "University of London", "What did he study?", "graduated from the School of Oriental Studies", "Did he study anywhere else?", "He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris," ]
C_ec17aa9fcd4345f3848566410f6c0500_1
When was that?
4
When did Bernard Lewis attended the University of Paris?
Bernard Lewis
In 1936, Lewis graduated from the School of Oriental Studies (now School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS) at the University of London with a BA in history with special reference to the Near and Middle East. He earned his PhD three years later, also from SOAS, specializing in the history of Islam. Lewis also studied law, going part of the way toward becoming a solicitor, but returned to study Middle Eastern history. He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, where he studied with the orientalist Louis Massignon and earned the "Diplome des Etudes Semitiques" in 1937. He returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History. During the Second World War, Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and as a Corporal in the Intelligence Corps in 1940-41 before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to SOAS. In 1949, at the age of 33, he was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History. In 1974, aged 57, Lewis accepted a joint position at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, also located in Princeton, New Jersey. The terms of his appointment were such that Lewis taught only one semester per year, and being free from administrative responsibilities, he could devote more time to research than previously. Consequently, Lewis's arrival at Princeton marked the beginning of the most prolific period in his research career during which he published numerous books and articles based on previously accumulated materials. After retiring from Princeton in 1986, Lewis served at Cornell University until 1990. In 1966, Lewis was a founding member of the learned society, Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), but in 2007 he broke away and founded Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) to challenge MESA, which the New York Sun noted as "dominated by academics who have been critical of Israel and of America's role in the Middle East." The organization was formed as an academic society dedicated to promoting high standards of research and teaching in Middle Eastern and African studies and other related fields, with Lewis as Chairman of its academic council. In 1990, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Lewis for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. His lecture, entitled "Western Civilization: A View from the East", was revised and reprinted in The Atlantic Monthly under the title "The Roots of Muslim Rage." His 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture, given to the American Enterprise Institute, was published as Europe and Islam. CANNOTANSWER
1937.
Bernard Lewis, (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Lewis's expertise was in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West. Lewis served as a soldier in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and Intelligence Corps during the Second World War before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern history. In 2007 Lewis was called "the West's leading interpreter of the Middle East". Others have argued Lewis's approach is essentialist and generalizing to the Muslim world, as well as his tendency to restate hypotheses that were challenged by more recent research. On a political level, Lewis is accused by his detractors with having revived the image of the cultural inferiority of Islam and of emphasizing the dangers of jihad. His advice was frequently sought by neoconservative policymakers, including the Bush administration. However, his active support of the Iraq War and neoconservative ideals have since come under scrutiny. Lewis was also notable for his public debates with Edward Said, who accused Lewis and other orientalists of misrepresenting Islam and serving the purposes of Western imperialist domination, to which Lewis responded by defending Orientalism as a facet of humanism and accusing Said of politicizing the subject. Furthermore, Lewis notoriously denied the Armenian genocide. He argued that the deaths of the mass killings resulted from a struggle between two nationalistic movements, claiming that there is no proof of intent by the Ottoman government to exterminate the Armenian nation. Family and personal life Bernard Lewis was born on 31 May 1916 to middle-class British Jewish parents, Harry Lewis and the former Jane Levy, in Stoke Newington, London. He became interested in languages and history while preparing for his bar mitzvah. In 1947 he married Ruth Hélène Oppenhejm, with whom he had a daughter and a son. Their marriage was dissolved in 1974. Lewis became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1982. Academic career In 1936, Lewis graduated from the School of Oriental Studies (now School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS) at the University of London with a BA in history with special reference to the Near and Middle East. He earned his PhD three years later, also from SOAS, specializing in the history of Islam. Lewis also studied law, going part of the way toward becoming a solicitor, but returned to study Middle Eastern history. He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, where he studied with the orientalist Louis Massignon and earned the "Diplôme des Études Sémitiques" in 1937. He returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History. During the Second World War, Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and as a Corporal in the Intelligence Corps in 1940–41 before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to SOAS, where he would remain for the next 25 years. In 1949, at the age of 33, he was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History. In 1963, Lewis was granted fellowship of the British Academy. In 1974, aged 57, Lewis accepted a joint position at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, also located in Princeton, New Jersey. The terms of his appointment were such that Lewis taught only one semester per year, and being free from administrative responsibilities, he could devote more time to research than previously. Consequently, Lewis's arrival at Princeton marked the beginning of the most prolific period in his research career during which he published numerous books and articles based on previously accumulated materials. After retiring from Princeton in 1986, Lewis served at Cornell University until 1990. In 1966, Lewis was a founding member of the learned society, Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), but in 2007 he broke away and founded Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) to challenge MESA, which the New York Sun noted as "dominated by academics who have been critical of Israel and of America's role in the Middle East". The organization was formed as an academic society dedicated to promoting high standards of research and teaching in Middle Eastern and African studies and other related fields, with Lewis as Chairman of its academic council. In 1990, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Lewis for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. His lecture, entitled "Western Civilization: A View from the East", was revised and reprinted in The Atlantic Monthly under the title "The Roots of Muslim Rage." His 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture, given to the American Enterprise Institute, was published as Europe and Islam. Research Lewis's influence extends beyond academia to the general public. He began his research career with the study of medieval Arab, especially Syrian, history. His first article, dedicated to professional guilds of medieval Islam, had been widely regarded as the most authoritative work on the subject for about thirty years. However, after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, scholars of Jewish origin found it more and more difficult to conduct archival and field research in Arab countries, where they were suspected of espionage. Therefore, Lewis switched to the study of the Ottoman Empire, while continuing to research Arab history through the Ottoman archives which had only recently been opened to Western researchers. A series of articles that Lewis published over the next several years revolutionized the history of the Middle East by giving a broad picture of Islamic society, including its government, economy, and demographics. Lewis argued that the Middle East is currently backward and its decline was a largely self-inflicted condition resulting from both culture and religion, as opposed to the post-colonialist view which posits the problems of the region as economic and political maldevelopment mainly due to the 19th-century European colonization. In his 1982 work Muslim Discovery of Europe, Lewis argues that Muslim societies could not keep pace with the West and that "Crusader successes were due in no small part to Muslim weakness." Further, he suggested that as early as the 11th century Islamic societies were decaying, primarily the byproduct of internal problems like "cultural arrogance," which was a barrier to creative borrowing, rather than external pressures like the Crusades. In the wake of Soviet and Arab attempts to delegitimize Israel as a racist country, Lewis wrote a study of anti-Semitism, Semites and Anti-Semites (1986). In other works he argued Arab rage against Israel was disproportionate to other tragedies or injustices in the Muslim world, such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and control of Muslim-majority land in Central Asia, the bloody and destructive fighting during the Hama uprising in Syria (1982), the Algerian Civil War (1992–1998), and the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988). In addition to his scholarly works, Lewis wrote several influential books accessible to the general public: The Arabs in History (1950), The Middle East and the West (1964), and The Middle East (1995). In the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks, the interest in Lewis's work surged, especially his 1990 essay The Roots of Muslim Rage. Three of his books were published after 9/11: What Went Wrong? (written before the attacks), which explored the reasons of the Muslim world's apprehension of (and sometimes outright hostility to) modernization; The Crisis of Islam; and Islam: The Religion and the People. Abraham Udovitch described him as "certainly the most eminent and respected historian of the Arab world, of the Islamic world, of the Middle East and beyond". Armenian genocide The first two editions of Lewis's The Emergence of Modern Turkey (1961 and 1968) describe the Armenian genocide as "the terrible holocaust of 1915, when a million and a half Armenians perished". In later editions, this text is altered to "the terrible slaughter of 1915, when, according to estimates, more than a million Armenians perished, as well as an unknown number of Turks". In this passage, Lewis argues that the deaths were the result of a struggle for the same land between two competing nationalist movements. The change in Lewis's textual description of the Armenian genocide and his signing of the petition against the Congressional resolution was controversial among some Armenian historians as well as journalists, who suggested that Lewis was engaging in historical revisionism to serve his own political and personal interests. Lewis called the label "genocide" the "Armenian version of this history" in a November 1993 interview with Le Monde, for which he faced a civil proceeding in a French court. In a subsequent exchange on the pages of Le Monde, Lewis wrote that while "terrible atrocities" did occur, "there exists no serious proof of a decision and of a plan of the Ottoman government aiming to exterminate the Armenian nation". He was ordered to pay one franc as damages for his statements on the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey. Three other court cases against Bernard Lewis failed in the Paris tribunal, including one filed by the Armenian National Committee of France and two filed by Jacques Trémollet de Villers. Lewis's views on the Armenian genocide were criticized by a number of historians and sociologists, among them Alain Finkielkraut, Yves Ternon, Richard G. Hovannisian, Robert Melson, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Finkelstein|first1=Norman G.|title=The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering|date=2003|publisher=Verso|location=London|isbn=978-1859844885|page=69}}</ref> Lewis has argued for his denial stance that: Lewis has been labelled a "genocide denier" by Stephen Zunes, Israel Charny, David B. MacDonald and the Armenian National Committee of America. Israeli historian Yair Auron suggested that "Lewis' stature provided a lofty cover for the Turkish national agenda of obfuscating academic research on the Armenian Genocide". Israel Charny wrote that Lewis's "seemingly scholarly concern ... of Armenians constituting a threat to the Turks as a rebellious force who together with the Russians threatened the Ottoman Empire, and the insistence that only a policy of deportations was executed, barely conceal the fact that the organized deportations constituted systematic mass murder". Charny compares the "logical structures" employed by Lewis in his denial of the genocide to those employed by Ernst Nolte in his Holocaust negationism. Views and influence on contemporary politics In the mid-1960s, Lewis emerged as a commentator on the issues of the modern Middle East and his analysis of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the rise of militant Islam brought him publicity and aroused significant controversy. American historian Joel Beinin has called him "perhaps the most articulate and learned Zionist advocate in the North American Middle East academic community". Lewis's policy advice has particular weight thanks to this scholarly authority. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney remarked "in this new century, his wisdom is sought daily by policymakers, diplomats, fellow academics, and the news media". A harsh critic of the Soviet Union, Lewis continued the liberal tradition in Islamic historical studies. Although his early Marxist views had a bearing on his first book The Origins of Ismailism, Lewis subsequently discarded Marxism. His later works are a reaction against the left-wing current of Third-worldism which came to be a significant current in Middle Eastern studies. During his career Lewis developed ties with governments around the world: during her time as Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir assigned Lewis's articles as reading to her cabinet members, and during the Presidency of George W. Bush, he advised administration members including Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Bush himself. He was also close to King Hussein of Jordan and his brother, Prince Hassan bin Talal. He also had ties to the regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, the Turkish military dictatorship led by Kenan Evren, and the Egyptian government of Anwar Sadat: he acted as a go-between between the Sadat administration and Israel in 1971 when he relayed a message to the Israeli government regarding the possibility of a peace agreement at the request of Sadat's spokesman Tahasin Bashir. Lewis advocated closer Western ties with Israel and Turkey, which he saw as especially important in light of the extension of the Soviet influence in the Middle East. Modern Turkey holds a special place in Lewis's view of the region due to the country's efforts to become a part of the West. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Turkish Studies, an honor which is given "on the basis of generally recognized scholarly distinction and ... long and devoted service to the field of Turkish Studies." Lewis views Christendom and Islam as civilizations that have been in perpetual collision since the advent of Islam in the 7th century. In his essay The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990), he argued that the struggle between the West and Islam was gathering strength. According to one source, this essay (and Lewis's 1990 Jefferson Lecture on which the article was based) first introduced the term "Islamic fundamentalism" to North America. This essay has been credited with coining the phrase "clash of civilizations", which received prominence in the eponymous book by Samuel Huntington. However, another source indicates that Lewis first used the phrase "clash of civilizations" at a 1957 meeting in Washington where it was recorded in the transcript. In 1998, Lewis read in a London-based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi a declaration of war on the United States by Osama bin Laden. In his essay "A License to Kill", Lewis indicated he considered bin Laden's language as the "ideology of jihad" and warned that bin Laden would be a danger to the West. The essay was published after the Clinton administration and the US intelligence community had begun its hunt for bin Laden in Sudan and then in Afghanistan. Jihad Lewis writes of jihad as a distinct religious obligation, but suggests that it is a pity that people engaging in terrorist activities are not more aware of their own religion:The fanatical warrior offering his victims the choice of the Koran or the sword is not only untrue, it is impossible. The alleged choice - conversion or death - is also, with rare and atypical exceptions, untrue. Muslim tolerance of unbelievers and misbelievers was far better than anything available in Christendom until the rise of secularism in the 17th century. Muslim fighters are commanded not to kill women, children, or the aged unless they attack first; not to torture or otherwise ill-treat prisoners; to give fair warnings of the opening of hostilities or their resumption after a truce; and to honor agreements. At no time did the classical jurists offer any approval or legitimacy to what we nowdays call terrorism. Nor indeed is there any evidence of the use of terrorism as it is practiced nowadays. The emergence of the by now widespread terrorism practice of suicide bombing is a development of the 20th century. It has no antecedents in Islamic history, and no justification in the terms of Islamic theology, law, or tradition.As'ad AbuKhalil, has criticized this view and stated: "Methodologically, [Lewis] insists that terrorism by individual Muslims should be considered Islamic terrorism, while terrorism by individual Jews or Christians is never considered Jewish or Christian terrorism." He also criticised Lewis's understanding of Osama bin Laden, seeing Lewis's interpretation of bin Laden "as some kind of influential Muslim theologian" along the lines of classical theologians like Al-Ghazali, rather than "the terrorist fanatic that he is". AbuKhalil has also criticized the place of Islam in Lewis's worldview more generally, arguing that the most prominent feature of his work was its "theologocentrism" (borrowing a term from Maxime Rodinson) - that Lewis interprets all aspects of behavior among Muslims solely through the lens of Islamic theology, subsuming the study of Muslim peoples, their languages, the geographical areas where Muslims predominate, Islamic governments, the governments of Arab countries and Sharia under the label of "Islam". Debates with Edward Said Lewis was known for his literary debates with Edward Said, the Palestinian American literary theorist whose aim was to deconstruct what he called Orientalist scholarship. Said, who was a professor at Columbia University, characterized Lewis's work as a prime example of Orientalism in his 1978 book Orientalism and in his later book Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (1981). Said asserted that the field of Orientalism was political intellectualism bent on self-affirmation rather than objective study, a form of racism, and a tool of imperialist domination. He further questioned the scientific neutrality of some leading Middle East scholars, including Lewis, on the Arab World. In an interview with Al-Ahram weekly, Said suggested that Lewis's knowledge of the Middle East was so biased that it could not be taken seriously and claimed "Bernard Lewis hasn't set foot in the Middle East, in the Arab world, for at least 40 years. He knows something about Turkey, I'm told, but he knows nothing about the Arab world." Said considered that Lewis treats Islam as a monolithic entity without the nuance of its plurality, internal dynamics, and historical complexities, and accused him of "demagogy and downright ignorance". In Covering Islam, Said argued that "Lewis simply cannot deal with the diversity of Muslim, much less human life, because it is closed to him as something foreign, radically different, and other," and he criticised Lewis's "inability to grant that the Islamic peoples are entitled to their own cultural, political, and historical practices, free from Lewis's calculated attempt to show that because they are not Western... they can't be good." Rejecting the view that Western scholarship was biased against the Middle East, Lewis responded that Orientalism developed as a facet of European humanism, independently of the past European imperial expansion. He noted the French and English pursued the study of Islam in the 16th and 17th centuries, yet not in an organized way, but long before they had any control or hope of control in the Middle East; and that much of Orientalist study did nothing to advance the cause of imperialism. In his 1993 book Islam and the West, Lewis wrote "What imperial purpose was served by deciphering the ancient Egyptian language, for example, and then restoring to the Egyptians knowledge of and pride in their forgotten, ancient past?" Furthermore, Lewis accused Said of politicizing the scientific study of the Middle East (and Arabic studies in particular); neglecting to critique the scholarly findings of the Orientalists; and giving "free rein" to his biases. Stance on the Iraq War In 2002, Lewis wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal regarding the buildup to the Iraq War entitled "Time for Toppling", where he stated his opinion that "a regime change may well be dangerous, but sometimes the dangers of inaction are greater than those of action". In 2007, Jacob Weisberg described Lewis as "perhaps the most significant intellectual influence behind the invasion of Iraq". Michael Hirsh attributed to Lewis the view that regime change in Iraq would provide a jolt that would "modernize the Middle East" and suggested that Lewis's allegedly 'orientalist' theories about "what went wrong" in the Middle East, and other writings, formed the intellectual basis of the push towards war in Iraq. Hirsch reported that Lewis had told him in an interview that he viewed the 11 September attacks as "the opening salvo of the final battle" between Western and Islamic civilisations: Lewis believed that a forceful response was necessary. In the run up to the Iraq War, he met with Vice President Dick Cheney several times: Hirsch quoted an unnamed official who was present at a number of these meetings, who summarised Lewis's view of Iraq as "Get on with it. Don't dither". Brent Scowcroft quoted Lewis as stating that he believed "that one of the things you’ve got to do to Arabs is hit them between the eyes with a big stick. They respect power". As'ad AbuKhalil has claimed that Lewis assured Cheney that American troops would be welcomed by Iraqis and Arabs, relying on the opinion of his colleague Fouad Ajami. Hirsch also drew parallels between the Bush administration's plans for post-invasion Iraq and Lewis's views, in particular his admiration for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's secularist and Westernising reforms in the new Republic of Turkey which emerged from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Writing in 2008, Lewis did not advocate imposing freedom and democracy on Islamic nations. "There are things you can't impose. Freedom, for example. Or democracy. Democracy is a very strong medicine which has to be administered to the patient in small, gradually increasing doses. Otherwise, you risk killing the patient. In the main, the Muslims have to do it themselves." Ian Buruma, writing for The New Yorker in an article subtitled "The two Minds of Bernard Lewis", finds Lewis's stance on the war difficult to reconcile with Lewis's past statements cautioning democracy enforcement in the world at large. Buruma ultimately rejects suggestions by his peers that Lewis promotes war with Iraq to safeguard Israel, but instead concludes "perhaps he loves it [the Arab world] too much": Hamid Dabashi, writing on 28 May 2018, in an article subtitled "On Bernard Lewis and 'his extraordinary capacity for getting everything wrong'", asked: "Just imagine: What sort of a person would spend a lifetime studying people he loathes? It is quite a bizarre proposition. But there you have it: the late Bernard Lewis did precisely that." Similarly, Richard Bulliet described Lewis as "...a person who does not like the people he is purporting to have expertise about...he doesn’t respect them, he considers them to be good and worthy only to the degree they follow a Western path". According to As'ad AbuKhalil, "Lewis has poisoned the Middle East academic field more than any other Orientalist and his influence has been both academic and political. But there is a new generation of Middle East experts in the West who now see clearly the political agenda of Bernard Lewis. It was fully exposed in the Bush years." Alleged nuclear threat from Iran In 2006, Lewis wrote that Iran had been working on a nuclear weapon for fifteen years. In August 2006, in an article about whether the world can rely on the concept of mutual assured destruction as a deterrent in its dealings with Iran, Lewis wrote in The Wall Street Journal about the significance of 22 August 2006 in the Islamic calendar. The Iranian president had indicated he would respond by that date to U.S. demands regarding Iran's development of nuclear power. Lewis wrote that the date corresponded to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427, the day Muslims commemorate the night flight of Muhammad from Jerusalem to heaven and back. Lewis wrote that it would be "an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and, if necessary, of the world". According to Lewis, mutual assured destruction is not an effective deterrent in the case of Iran, because of what Lewis describes as the Iranian leadership's "apocalyptic worldview" and the "suicide or martyrdom complex that plagues parts of the Islamic world today". Lewis's article received significant press coverage. However, the day passed without any incident. Death Bernard Lewis died on 19 May 2018 at the age of 101, at an assisted-living care facility in Voorhees Township, New Jersey, twelve days before his 102nd birthday. He is buried in Trumpeldor Cemetery in Tel Aviv. Bibliography Awards and honors 1963: Elected as a Fellow of the British Academy 1978: The Harvey Prize, from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, for "his profound insight into the life and mores of the peoples of the Middle East through his writings" 1983: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1990: Selected for the Jefferson Lecture by the National Endowment for the Humanities 1996: Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction, for The Middle East (Scribner) 1999: National Jewish Book Award in the Israel category for The Multiple Identities of the Middle East 2002: The Thomas Jefferson Medal, awarded by the American Philosophical Society 2002: Atatürk International Peace Prize on grounds that he contributed extensively to history scholarship with his accurate analysis of Turkey’s and in particular of Atatürk’s positive impact on Middle Eastern history. 2004: Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement 2006: National Humanities Medal, from the National Endowment for the Humanities 2007: Irving Kristol Award, from the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research 2007: The Scholar-Statesman Award from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy See also Bernard Lewis bibliography List of Princeton University people References External links Lewis's page at Princeton University Revered and Reviled – Lewis's profile on Moment Magazine'' The Legacy and Fallacies of Bernard Lewis by As`ad AbuKhalil 1916 births 2018 deaths 20th-century American historians 20th-century British historians 20th-century British writers 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers 21st-century British historians 21st-century British writers Academics of SOAS University of London Alumni of SOAS University of London American centenarians American historians American male non-fiction writers American people of English-Jewish descent Deniers of the Armenian genocide British Army personnel of World War II English centenarians British emigrants to the United States English historians English Jews Fellows of the British Academy Historians of Islam Historians of the Ottoman Empire Honorary members of the Turkish Academy of Sciences Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars Intelligence Corps soldiers Islam and antisemitism Islam and politics Jewish American historians Jewish scholars Jewish scholars of Islam Men centenarians Middle Eastern studies in the United States National Humanities Medal recipients Neoconservatism People from Stoke Newington British political commentators Princeton University faculty Royal Armoured Corps soldiers Scholars of antisemitism University of Paris alumni Cornell University faculty Foreign Policy Research Institute Historians of the Middle East Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs Middle Eastern studies scholars Burials at Trumpeldor Cemetery 21st-century American Jews
true
[ "That Was Then This Is Now may refer to:\n\nThat Was Then, This Is Now, a 1971 novel by S. E. Hinton\nThat Was Then... This Is Now, a 1985 film based on Hinton's novel\nThat Was Then, This Is Now (radio series), a BBC Radio 2 comedy sketch series\n\nMusic \nThat Was Then, This Is Now (Tha Dogg Pound album), 2009\n\"That Was Then, This Is Now\" (The James Cleaver Quintet album), 2011\nThat Was Then This Is Now (Wain McFarlane album), 2001\nThat Was Then, This Is Now, Vol. 1 (1999) and That Was Then, This Is Now, Vol. 2 (2000), studio albums by American rapper Frost\nThat Was Then, This Is Now (Andy Timmons album), an album by Andy Timmons\n\"That Was Then, This Is Now\" (song), a 1986 song by The Mosquitos, also covered by The Monkees\nThat Was Then, This Is Now, an album by Chasen\nThat Was Then, This Is Now (Josh Wilson album), 2015\n\nSee also\n\"That Was Then but This Is Now\", a 1983 song by ABC\nIf Not Now Then When?, an album by Ethan Johns\nIf Not Now Then When, an album by The Motels\nIf Not Now, When? (disambiguation)", "When I Was Young may refer to:\n\"When I Was Young\" (song), a 1967 song by Eric Burdon and The Animals\n\"When I Was Young\", a traditional song arranged by Julie Driscoll performed with Brian Auger and the Trinity from the 1969 album Streetnoise\n\"When I Was Young\", a jazz composition by Dave Brubek from the 1956 album Brubeck Plays Brubeck\n\"When I Was Young\", a song by the Kingston Trio from the 1960 album String Along\n\"When I Was Young\", a song by Nada Surf from the 2012 album The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy\n\"When I Was Young\", a song Akron/Family from the 2013 album Sub Verses\n\"When I Was Young\", a 1991 single by the River City People\n\"When I Was Young\", a song by punk/alt-country band Lucero from the 2012 album Women & Work\nWhen I Was Young (EP), a 2017 EP by MØ\nWhen I Was Young (album), a 1997 album by Len Graham, Garry Ó Briain and Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin" ]
[ "Bernard Lewis", "Academic career", "Where did he go to school?", "University of London", "What did he study?", "graduated from the School of Oriental Studies", "Did he study anywhere else?", "He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris,", "When was that?", "1937." ]
C_ec17aa9fcd4345f3848566410f6c0500_1
Was that the last place he went?
5
What was the last place Bernard Lewis went to?
Bernard Lewis
In 1936, Lewis graduated from the School of Oriental Studies (now School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS) at the University of London with a BA in history with special reference to the Near and Middle East. He earned his PhD three years later, also from SOAS, specializing in the history of Islam. Lewis also studied law, going part of the way toward becoming a solicitor, but returned to study Middle Eastern history. He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, where he studied with the orientalist Louis Massignon and earned the "Diplome des Etudes Semitiques" in 1937. He returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History. During the Second World War, Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and as a Corporal in the Intelligence Corps in 1940-41 before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to SOAS. In 1949, at the age of 33, he was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History. In 1974, aged 57, Lewis accepted a joint position at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, also located in Princeton, New Jersey. The terms of his appointment were such that Lewis taught only one semester per year, and being free from administrative responsibilities, he could devote more time to research than previously. Consequently, Lewis's arrival at Princeton marked the beginning of the most prolific period in his research career during which he published numerous books and articles based on previously accumulated materials. After retiring from Princeton in 1986, Lewis served at Cornell University until 1990. In 1966, Lewis was a founding member of the learned society, Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), but in 2007 he broke away and founded Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) to challenge MESA, which the New York Sun noted as "dominated by academics who have been critical of Israel and of America's role in the Middle East." The organization was formed as an academic society dedicated to promoting high standards of research and teaching in Middle Eastern and African studies and other related fields, with Lewis as Chairman of its academic council. In 1990, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Lewis for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. His lecture, entitled "Western Civilization: A View from the East", was revised and reprinted in The Atlantic Monthly under the title "The Roots of Muslim Rage." His 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture, given to the American Enterprise Institute, was published as Europe and Islam. CANNOTANSWER
He returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History.
Bernard Lewis, (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Lewis's expertise was in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West. Lewis served as a soldier in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and Intelligence Corps during the Second World War before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern history. In 2007 Lewis was called "the West's leading interpreter of the Middle East". Others have argued Lewis's approach is essentialist and generalizing to the Muslim world, as well as his tendency to restate hypotheses that were challenged by more recent research. On a political level, Lewis is accused by his detractors with having revived the image of the cultural inferiority of Islam and of emphasizing the dangers of jihad. His advice was frequently sought by neoconservative policymakers, including the Bush administration. However, his active support of the Iraq War and neoconservative ideals have since come under scrutiny. Lewis was also notable for his public debates with Edward Said, who accused Lewis and other orientalists of misrepresenting Islam and serving the purposes of Western imperialist domination, to which Lewis responded by defending Orientalism as a facet of humanism and accusing Said of politicizing the subject. Furthermore, Lewis notoriously denied the Armenian genocide. He argued that the deaths of the mass killings resulted from a struggle between two nationalistic movements, claiming that there is no proof of intent by the Ottoman government to exterminate the Armenian nation. Family and personal life Bernard Lewis was born on 31 May 1916 to middle-class British Jewish parents, Harry Lewis and the former Jane Levy, in Stoke Newington, London. He became interested in languages and history while preparing for his bar mitzvah. In 1947 he married Ruth Hélène Oppenhejm, with whom he had a daughter and a son. Their marriage was dissolved in 1974. Lewis became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1982. Academic career In 1936, Lewis graduated from the School of Oriental Studies (now School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS) at the University of London with a BA in history with special reference to the Near and Middle East. He earned his PhD three years later, also from SOAS, specializing in the history of Islam. Lewis also studied law, going part of the way toward becoming a solicitor, but returned to study Middle Eastern history. He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, where he studied with the orientalist Louis Massignon and earned the "Diplôme des Études Sémitiques" in 1937. He returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History. During the Second World War, Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and as a Corporal in the Intelligence Corps in 1940–41 before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to SOAS, where he would remain for the next 25 years. In 1949, at the age of 33, he was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History. In 1963, Lewis was granted fellowship of the British Academy. In 1974, aged 57, Lewis accepted a joint position at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, also located in Princeton, New Jersey. The terms of his appointment were such that Lewis taught only one semester per year, and being free from administrative responsibilities, he could devote more time to research than previously. Consequently, Lewis's arrival at Princeton marked the beginning of the most prolific period in his research career during which he published numerous books and articles based on previously accumulated materials. After retiring from Princeton in 1986, Lewis served at Cornell University until 1990. In 1966, Lewis was a founding member of the learned society, Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), but in 2007 he broke away and founded Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) to challenge MESA, which the New York Sun noted as "dominated by academics who have been critical of Israel and of America's role in the Middle East". The organization was formed as an academic society dedicated to promoting high standards of research and teaching in Middle Eastern and African studies and other related fields, with Lewis as Chairman of its academic council. In 1990, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Lewis for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. His lecture, entitled "Western Civilization: A View from the East", was revised and reprinted in The Atlantic Monthly under the title "The Roots of Muslim Rage." His 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture, given to the American Enterprise Institute, was published as Europe and Islam. Research Lewis's influence extends beyond academia to the general public. He began his research career with the study of medieval Arab, especially Syrian, history. His first article, dedicated to professional guilds of medieval Islam, had been widely regarded as the most authoritative work on the subject for about thirty years. However, after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, scholars of Jewish origin found it more and more difficult to conduct archival and field research in Arab countries, where they were suspected of espionage. Therefore, Lewis switched to the study of the Ottoman Empire, while continuing to research Arab history through the Ottoman archives which had only recently been opened to Western researchers. A series of articles that Lewis published over the next several years revolutionized the history of the Middle East by giving a broad picture of Islamic society, including its government, economy, and demographics. Lewis argued that the Middle East is currently backward and its decline was a largely self-inflicted condition resulting from both culture and religion, as opposed to the post-colonialist view which posits the problems of the region as economic and political maldevelopment mainly due to the 19th-century European colonization. In his 1982 work Muslim Discovery of Europe, Lewis argues that Muslim societies could not keep pace with the West and that "Crusader successes were due in no small part to Muslim weakness." Further, he suggested that as early as the 11th century Islamic societies were decaying, primarily the byproduct of internal problems like "cultural arrogance," which was a barrier to creative borrowing, rather than external pressures like the Crusades. In the wake of Soviet and Arab attempts to delegitimize Israel as a racist country, Lewis wrote a study of anti-Semitism, Semites and Anti-Semites (1986). In other works he argued Arab rage against Israel was disproportionate to other tragedies or injustices in the Muslim world, such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and control of Muslim-majority land in Central Asia, the bloody and destructive fighting during the Hama uprising in Syria (1982), the Algerian Civil War (1992–1998), and the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988). In addition to his scholarly works, Lewis wrote several influential books accessible to the general public: The Arabs in History (1950), The Middle East and the West (1964), and The Middle East (1995). In the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks, the interest in Lewis's work surged, especially his 1990 essay The Roots of Muslim Rage. Three of his books were published after 9/11: What Went Wrong? (written before the attacks), which explored the reasons of the Muslim world's apprehension of (and sometimes outright hostility to) modernization; The Crisis of Islam; and Islam: The Religion and the People. Abraham Udovitch described him as "certainly the most eminent and respected historian of the Arab world, of the Islamic world, of the Middle East and beyond". Armenian genocide The first two editions of Lewis's The Emergence of Modern Turkey (1961 and 1968) describe the Armenian genocide as "the terrible holocaust of 1915, when a million and a half Armenians perished". In later editions, this text is altered to "the terrible slaughter of 1915, when, according to estimates, more than a million Armenians perished, as well as an unknown number of Turks". In this passage, Lewis argues that the deaths were the result of a struggle for the same land between two competing nationalist movements. The change in Lewis's textual description of the Armenian genocide and his signing of the petition against the Congressional resolution was controversial among some Armenian historians as well as journalists, who suggested that Lewis was engaging in historical revisionism to serve his own political and personal interests. Lewis called the label "genocide" the "Armenian version of this history" in a November 1993 interview with Le Monde, for which he faced a civil proceeding in a French court. In a subsequent exchange on the pages of Le Monde, Lewis wrote that while "terrible atrocities" did occur, "there exists no serious proof of a decision and of a plan of the Ottoman government aiming to exterminate the Armenian nation". He was ordered to pay one franc as damages for his statements on the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey. Three other court cases against Bernard Lewis failed in the Paris tribunal, including one filed by the Armenian National Committee of France and two filed by Jacques Trémollet de Villers. Lewis's views on the Armenian genocide were criticized by a number of historians and sociologists, among them Alain Finkielkraut, Yves Ternon, Richard G. Hovannisian, Robert Melson, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Finkelstein|first1=Norman G.|title=The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering|date=2003|publisher=Verso|location=London|isbn=978-1859844885|page=69}}</ref> Lewis has argued for his denial stance that: Lewis has been labelled a "genocide denier" by Stephen Zunes, Israel Charny, David B. MacDonald and the Armenian National Committee of America. Israeli historian Yair Auron suggested that "Lewis' stature provided a lofty cover for the Turkish national agenda of obfuscating academic research on the Armenian Genocide". Israel Charny wrote that Lewis's "seemingly scholarly concern ... of Armenians constituting a threat to the Turks as a rebellious force who together with the Russians threatened the Ottoman Empire, and the insistence that only a policy of deportations was executed, barely conceal the fact that the organized deportations constituted systematic mass murder". Charny compares the "logical structures" employed by Lewis in his denial of the genocide to those employed by Ernst Nolte in his Holocaust negationism. Views and influence on contemporary politics In the mid-1960s, Lewis emerged as a commentator on the issues of the modern Middle East and his analysis of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the rise of militant Islam brought him publicity and aroused significant controversy. American historian Joel Beinin has called him "perhaps the most articulate and learned Zionist advocate in the North American Middle East academic community". Lewis's policy advice has particular weight thanks to this scholarly authority. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney remarked "in this new century, his wisdom is sought daily by policymakers, diplomats, fellow academics, and the news media". A harsh critic of the Soviet Union, Lewis continued the liberal tradition in Islamic historical studies. Although his early Marxist views had a bearing on his first book The Origins of Ismailism, Lewis subsequently discarded Marxism. His later works are a reaction against the left-wing current of Third-worldism which came to be a significant current in Middle Eastern studies. During his career Lewis developed ties with governments around the world: during her time as Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir assigned Lewis's articles as reading to her cabinet members, and during the Presidency of George W. Bush, he advised administration members including Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Bush himself. He was also close to King Hussein of Jordan and his brother, Prince Hassan bin Talal. He also had ties to the regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, the Turkish military dictatorship led by Kenan Evren, and the Egyptian government of Anwar Sadat: he acted as a go-between between the Sadat administration and Israel in 1971 when he relayed a message to the Israeli government regarding the possibility of a peace agreement at the request of Sadat's spokesman Tahasin Bashir. Lewis advocated closer Western ties with Israel and Turkey, which he saw as especially important in light of the extension of the Soviet influence in the Middle East. Modern Turkey holds a special place in Lewis's view of the region due to the country's efforts to become a part of the West. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Turkish Studies, an honor which is given "on the basis of generally recognized scholarly distinction and ... long and devoted service to the field of Turkish Studies." Lewis views Christendom and Islam as civilizations that have been in perpetual collision since the advent of Islam in the 7th century. In his essay The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990), he argued that the struggle between the West and Islam was gathering strength. According to one source, this essay (and Lewis's 1990 Jefferson Lecture on which the article was based) first introduced the term "Islamic fundamentalism" to North America. This essay has been credited with coining the phrase "clash of civilizations", which received prominence in the eponymous book by Samuel Huntington. However, another source indicates that Lewis first used the phrase "clash of civilizations" at a 1957 meeting in Washington where it was recorded in the transcript. In 1998, Lewis read in a London-based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi a declaration of war on the United States by Osama bin Laden. In his essay "A License to Kill", Lewis indicated he considered bin Laden's language as the "ideology of jihad" and warned that bin Laden would be a danger to the West. The essay was published after the Clinton administration and the US intelligence community had begun its hunt for bin Laden in Sudan and then in Afghanistan. Jihad Lewis writes of jihad as a distinct religious obligation, but suggests that it is a pity that people engaging in terrorist activities are not more aware of their own religion:The fanatical warrior offering his victims the choice of the Koran or the sword is not only untrue, it is impossible. The alleged choice - conversion or death - is also, with rare and atypical exceptions, untrue. Muslim tolerance of unbelievers and misbelievers was far better than anything available in Christendom until the rise of secularism in the 17th century. Muslim fighters are commanded not to kill women, children, or the aged unless they attack first; not to torture or otherwise ill-treat prisoners; to give fair warnings of the opening of hostilities or their resumption after a truce; and to honor agreements. At no time did the classical jurists offer any approval or legitimacy to what we nowdays call terrorism. Nor indeed is there any evidence of the use of terrorism as it is practiced nowadays. The emergence of the by now widespread terrorism practice of suicide bombing is a development of the 20th century. It has no antecedents in Islamic history, and no justification in the terms of Islamic theology, law, or tradition.As'ad AbuKhalil, has criticized this view and stated: "Methodologically, [Lewis] insists that terrorism by individual Muslims should be considered Islamic terrorism, while terrorism by individual Jews or Christians is never considered Jewish or Christian terrorism." He also criticised Lewis's understanding of Osama bin Laden, seeing Lewis's interpretation of bin Laden "as some kind of influential Muslim theologian" along the lines of classical theologians like Al-Ghazali, rather than "the terrorist fanatic that he is". AbuKhalil has also criticized the place of Islam in Lewis's worldview more generally, arguing that the most prominent feature of his work was its "theologocentrism" (borrowing a term from Maxime Rodinson) - that Lewis interprets all aspects of behavior among Muslims solely through the lens of Islamic theology, subsuming the study of Muslim peoples, their languages, the geographical areas where Muslims predominate, Islamic governments, the governments of Arab countries and Sharia under the label of "Islam". Debates with Edward Said Lewis was known for his literary debates with Edward Said, the Palestinian American literary theorist whose aim was to deconstruct what he called Orientalist scholarship. Said, who was a professor at Columbia University, characterized Lewis's work as a prime example of Orientalism in his 1978 book Orientalism and in his later book Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (1981). Said asserted that the field of Orientalism was political intellectualism bent on self-affirmation rather than objective study, a form of racism, and a tool of imperialist domination. He further questioned the scientific neutrality of some leading Middle East scholars, including Lewis, on the Arab World. In an interview with Al-Ahram weekly, Said suggested that Lewis's knowledge of the Middle East was so biased that it could not be taken seriously and claimed "Bernard Lewis hasn't set foot in the Middle East, in the Arab world, for at least 40 years. He knows something about Turkey, I'm told, but he knows nothing about the Arab world." Said considered that Lewis treats Islam as a monolithic entity without the nuance of its plurality, internal dynamics, and historical complexities, and accused him of "demagogy and downright ignorance". In Covering Islam, Said argued that "Lewis simply cannot deal with the diversity of Muslim, much less human life, because it is closed to him as something foreign, radically different, and other," and he criticised Lewis's "inability to grant that the Islamic peoples are entitled to their own cultural, political, and historical practices, free from Lewis's calculated attempt to show that because they are not Western... they can't be good." Rejecting the view that Western scholarship was biased against the Middle East, Lewis responded that Orientalism developed as a facet of European humanism, independently of the past European imperial expansion. He noted the French and English pursued the study of Islam in the 16th and 17th centuries, yet not in an organized way, but long before they had any control or hope of control in the Middle East; and that much of Orientalist study did nothing to advance the cause of imperialism. In his 1993 book Islam and the West, Lewis wrote "What imperial purpose was served by deciphering the ancient Egyptian language, for example, and then restoring to the Egyptians knowledge of and pride in their forgotten, ancient past?" Furthermore, Lewis accused Said of politicizing the scientific study of the Middle East (and Arabic studies in particular); neglecting to critique the scholarly findings of the Orientalists; and giving "free rein" to his biases. Stance on the Iraq War In 2002, Lewis wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal regarding the buildup to the Iraq War entitled "Time for Toppling", where he stated his opinion that "a regime change may well be dangerous, but sometimes the dangers of inaction are greater than those of action". In 2007, Jacob Weisberg described Lewis as "perhaps the most significant intellectual influence behind the invasion of Iraq". Michael Hirsh attributed to Lewis the view that regime change in Iraq would provide a jolt that would "modernize the Middle East" and suggested that Lewis's allegedly 'orientalist' theories about "what went wrong" in the Middle East, and other writings, formed the intellectual basis of the push towards war in Iraq. Hirsch reported that Lewis had told him in an interview that he viewed the 11 September attacks as "the opening salvo of the final battle" between Western and Islamic civilisations: Lewis believed that a forceful response was necessary. In the run up to the Iraq War, he met with Vice President Dick Cheney several times: Hirsch quoted an unnamed official who was present at a number of these meetings, who summarised Lewis's view of Iraq as "Get on with it. Don't dither". Brent Scowcroft quoted Lewis as stating that he believed "that one of the things you’ve got to do to Arabs is hit them between the eyes with a big stick. They respect power". As'ad AbuKhalil has claimed that Lewis assured Cheney that American troops would be welcomed by Iraqis and Arabs, relying on the opinion of his colleague Fouad Ajami. Hirsch also drew parallels between the Bush administration's plans for post-invasion Iraq and Lewis's views, in particular his admiration for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's secularist and Westernising reforms in the new Republic of Turkey which emerged from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Writing in 2008, Lewis did not advocate imposing freedom and democracy on Islamic nations. "There are things you can't impose. Freedom, for example. Or democracy. Democracy is a very strong medicine which has to be administered to the patient in small, gradually increasing doses. Otherwise, you risk killing the patient. In the main, the Muslims have to do it themselves." Ian Buruma, writing for The New Yorker in an article subtitled "The two Minds of Bernard Lewis", finds Lewis's stance on the war difficult to reconcile with Lewis's past statements cautioning democracy enforcement in the world at large. Buruma ultimately rejects suggestions by his peers that Lewis promotes war with Iraq to safeguard Israel, but instead concludes "perhaps he loves it [the Arab world] too much": Hamid Dabashi, writing on 28 May 2018, in an article subtitled "On Bernard Lewis and 'his extraordinary capacity for getting everything wrong'", asked: "Just imagine: What sort of a person would spend a lifetime studying people he loathes? It is quite a bizarre proposition. But there you have it: the late Bernard Lewis did precisely that." Similarly, Richard Bulliet described Lewis as "...a person who does not like the people he is purporting to have expertise about...he doesn’t respect them, he considers them to be good and worthy only to the degree they follow a Western path". According to As'ad AbuKhalil, "Lewis has poisoned the Middle East academic field more than any other Orientalist and his influence has been both academic and political. But there is a new generation of Middle East experts in the West who now see clearly the political agenda of Bernard Lewis. It was fully exposed in the Bush years." Alleged nuclear threat from Iran In 2006, Lewis wrote that Iran had been working on a nuclear weapon for fifteen years. In August 2006, in an article about whether the world can rely on the concept of mutual assured destruction as a deterrent in its dealings with Iran, Lewis wrote in The Wall Street Journal about the significance of 22 August 2006 in the Islamic calendar. The Iranian president had indicated he would respond by that date to U.S. demands regarding Iran's development of nuclear power. Lewis wrote that the date corresponded to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427, the day Muslims commemorate the night flight of Muhammad from Jerusalem to heaven and back. Lewis wrote that it would be "an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and, if necessary, of the world". According to Lewis, mutual assured destruction is not an effective deterrent in the case of Iran, because of what Lewis describes as the Iranian leadership's "apocalyptic worldview" and the "suicide or martyrdom complex that plagues parts of the Islamic world today". Lewis's article received significant press coverage. However, the day passed without any incident. Death Bernard Lewis died on 19 May 2018 at the age of 101, at an assisted-living care facility in Voorhees Township, New Jersey, twelve days before his 102nd birthday. He is buried in Trumpeldor Cemetery in Tel Aviv. Bibliography Awards and honors 1963: Elected as a Fellow of the British Academy 1978: The Harvey Prize, from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, for "his profound insight into the life and mores of the peoples of the Middle East through his writings" 1983: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1990: Selected for the Jefferson Lecture by the National Endowment for the Humanities 1996: Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction, for The Middle East (Scribner) 1999: National Jewish Book Award in the Israel category for The Multiple Identities of the Middle East 2002: The Thomas Jefferson Medal, awarded by the American Philosophical Society 2002: Atatürk International Peace Prize on grounds that he contributed extensively to history scholarship with his accurate analysis of Turkey’s and in particular of Atatürk’s positive impact on Middle Eastern history. 2004: Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement 2006: National Humanities Medal, from the National Endowment for the Humanities 2007: Irving Kristol Award, from the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research 2007: The Scholar-Statesman Award from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy See also Bernard Lewis bibliography List of Princeton University people References External links Lewis's page at Princeton University Revered and Reviled – Lewis's profile on Moment Magazine'' The Legacy and Fallacies of Bernard Lewis by As`ad AbuKhalil 1916 births 2018 deaths 20th-century American historians 20th-century British historians 20th-century British writers 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers 21st-century British historians 21st-century British writers Academics of SOAS University of London Alumni of SOAS University of London American centenarians American historians American male non-fiction writers American people of English-Jewish descent Deniers of the Armenian genocide British Army personnel of World War II English centenarians British emigrants to the United States English historians English Jews Fellows of the British Academy Historians of Islam Historians of the Ottoman Empire Honorary members of the Turkish Academy of Sciences Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars Intelligence Corps soldiers Islam and antisemitism Islam and politics Jewish American historians Jewish scholars Jewish scholars of Islam Men centenarians Middle Eastern studies in the United States National Humanities Medal recipients Neoconservatism People from Stoke Newington British political commentators Princeton University faculty Royal Armoured Corps soldiers Scholars of antisemitism University of Paris alumni Cornell University faculty Foreign Policy Research Institute Historians of the Middle East Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs Middle Eastern studies scholars Burials at Trumpeldor Cemetery 21st-century American Jews
true
[ "William Lawrence \"Seattle Bill\" James (March 12, 1892 – March 10, 1971) was a Major League Baseball pitcher. He was given a nickname to differentiate him from his contemporary, \"Big\" Bill James.\n\nThe Braves purchased James in from the Seattle Giants of the Northwestern League. In 1914, James was an integral member of the \"Miracle Braves\" team that went from last place to first place in two months, becoming the first team to win a pennant after being in last place on the Fourth of July. In his only full season, James posted a record of 26 wins against 7 losses. The Braves then went on to defeat Connie Mack's heavily favored Philadelphia Athletics in the 1914 World Series. James was 2–0 in the World Series as the Braves recorded the first sweep in Series history. His victory in Game Two was a 1-0 shutout.\n\nDuring World War I, James was an instructor at bomb-throwing for the US Army. He pitched in the minor leagues until 1925.\n\nSources\n\n1892 births\n1971 deaths\nBoston Braves players\nMajor League Baseball pitchers\nBaseball players from California\nSeattle Giants players\nPortland Beavers players\nGalveston Pirates players\nBeaumont Oilers players\nSaint Mary's Gaels baseball players\nSeattle Rainiers players\nBeaumont Exporters players\nSacramento Senators players\nChattanooga Lookouts players", "George Albert \"Lefty\" Tyler (December 14, 1889 – September 29, 1953) was a professional baseball pitcher from 1910 to 1921.\n\nFrom 1910 to 1917, Tyler played with the Boston Doves/Braves. He performed well, having an earned run average (ERA) under 3 in all but two years. In 1918, Tyler was traded to the Chicago Cubs for Larry Doyle, Art Wilson, and $15,000. Tyler did well in Chicago as well, having ERA's under 4.\n\nTyler's career earned run average was 2.95. His brother, Fred Tyler, played in the major leagues in 1914 as a catcher.\n\nIn 1914, Tyler was a member of the Braves team that went from last place to first place in two months, becoming the first team to win a pennant after being in last place on the Fourth of July. The team then went on to defeat Connie Mack's heavily favored Philadelphia Athletics in the 1914 World Series.\n\nIn 1916, the New York Giants set the current record of 26 consecutive wins without a defeat: Tyler beat them to end the streak on September 30, 1916.\n\nHe was the winning pitcher in Game 2 of the 1918 World Series for the Cubs, as well as the hard-luck loser of a 2-1 decision in Game 6, the last game of the Series; it was the last win for the opposing Boston Red Sox until 2004.\n\nTyler was a better than average hitting pitcher in his 12-year major league career, compiling a .217 batting average (189-for-870) with 85 runs, 4 home runs and 73 RBI. He recorded a career-high 20 RBI as a member of the 1916 Boston Braves.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nBaseball-Reference\n\n1889 births\n1953 deaths\nMajor League Baseball pitchers\nBoston Doves players\nBoston Rustlers players\nBoston Braves players\nChicago Cubs players\nBaseball players from New Hampshire\nMinor league baseball managers\nLowell Tigers players\nRochester Colts players\nLawrence Merry Macks players\nPeople from Derry, New Hampshire\nSportspeople from Rockingham County, New Hampshire" ]
[ "Bernard Lewis", "Academic career", "Where did he go to school?", "University of London", "What did he study?", "graduated from the School of Oriental Studies", "Did he study anywhere else?", "He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris,", "When was that?", "1937.", "Was that the last place he went?", "He returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History." ]
C_ec17aa9fcd4345f3848566410f6c0500_1
How long was he there for?
6
How long was did Bernard Lewis at SOAS?
Bernard Lewis
In 1936, Lewis graduated from the School of Oriental Studies (now School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS) at the University of London with a BA in history with special reference to the Near and Middle East. He earned his PhD three years later, also from SOAS, specializing in the history of Islam. Lewis also studied law, going part of the way toward becoming a solicitor, but returned to study Middle Eastern history. He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, where he studied with the orientalist Louis Massignon and earned the "Diplome des Etudes Semitiques" in 1937. He returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History. During the Second World War, Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and as a Corporal in the Intelligence Corps in 1940-41 before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to SOAS. In 1949, at the age of 33, he was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History. In 1974, aged 57, Lewis accepted a joint position at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, also located in Princeton, New Jersey. The terms of his appointment were such that Lewis taught only one semester per year, and being free from administrative responsibilities, he could devote more time to research than previously. Consequently, Lewis's arrival at Princeton marked the beginning of the most prolific period in his research career during which he published numerous books and articles based on previously accumulated materials. After retiring from Princeton in 1986, Lewis served at Cornell University until 1990. In 1966, Lewis was a founding member of the learned society, Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), but in 2007 he broke away and founded Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) to challenge MESA, which the New York Sun noted as "dominated by academics who have been critical of Israel and of America's role in the Middle East." The organization was formed as an academic society dedicated to promoting high standards of research and teaching in Middle Eastern and African studies and other related fields, with Lewis as Chairman of its academic council. In 1990, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Lewis for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. His lecture, entitled "Western Civilization: A View from the East", was revised and reprinted in The Atlantic Monthly under the title "The Roots of Muslim Rage." His 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture, given to the American Enterprise Institute, was published as Europe and Islam. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
Bernard Lewis, (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Lewis's expertise was in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West. Lewis served as a soldier in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and Intelligence Corps during the Second World War before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern history. In 2007 Lewis was called "the West's leading interpreter of the Middle East". Others have argued Lewis's approach is essentialist and generalizing to the Muslim world, as well as his tendency to restate hypotheses that were challenged by more recent research. On a political level, Lewis is accused by his detractors with having revived the image of the cultural inferiority of Islam and of emphasizing the dangers of jihad. His advice was frequently sought by neoconservative policymakers, including the Bush administration. However, his active support of the Iraq War and neoconservative ideals have since come under scrutiny. Lewis was also notable for his public debates with Edward Said, who accused Lewis and other orientalists of misrepresenting Islam and serving the purposes of Western imperialist domination, to which Lewis responded by defending Orientalism as a facet of humanism and accusing Said of politicizing the subject. Furthermore, Lewis notoriously denied the Armenian genocide. He argued that the deaths of the mass killings resulted from a struggle between two nationalistic movements, claiming that there is no proof of intent by the Ottoman government to exterminate the Armenian nation. Family and personal life Bernard Lewis was born on 31 May 1916 to middle-class British Jewish parents, Harry Lewis and the former Jane Levy, in Stoke Newington, London. He became interested in languages and history while preparing for his bar mitzvah. In 1947 he married Ruth Hélène Oppenhejm, with whom he had a daughter and a son. Their marriage was dissolved in 1974. Lewis became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1982. Academic career In 1936, Lewis graduated from the School of Oriental Studies (now School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS) at the University of London with a BA in history with special reference to the Near and Middle East. He earned his PhD three years later, also from SOAS, specializing in the history of Islam. Lewis also studied law, going part of the way toward becoming a solicitor, but returned to study Middle Eastern history. He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, where he studied with the orientalist Louis Massignon and earned the "Diplôme des Études Sémitiques" in 1937. He returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History. During the Second World War, Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and as a Corporal in the Intelligence Corps in 1940–41 before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to SOAS, where he would remain for the next 25 years. In 1949, at the age of 33, he was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History. In 1963, Lewis was granted fellowship of the British Academy. In 1974, aged 57, Lewis accepted a joint position at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, also located in Princeton, New Jersey. The terms of his appointment were such that Lewis taught only one semester per year, and being free from administrative responsibilities, he could devote more time to research than previously. Consequently, Lewis's arrival at Princeton marked the beginning of the most prolific period in his research career during which he published numerous books and articles based on previously accumulated materials. After retiring from Princeton in 1986, Lewis served at Cornell University until 1990. In 1966, Lewis was a founding member of the learned society, Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), but in 2007 he broke away and founded Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) to challenge MESA, which the New York Sun noted as "dominated by academics who have been critical of Israel and of America's role in the Middle East". The organization was formed as an academic society dedicated to promoting high standards of research and teaching in Middle Eastern and African studies and other related fields, with Lewis as Chairman of its academic council. In 1990, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Lewis for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. His lecture, entitled "Western Civilization: A View from the East", was revised and reprinted in The Atlantic Monthly under the title "The Roots of Muslim Rage." His 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture, given to the American Enterprise Institute, was published as Europe and Islam. Research Lewis's influence extends beyond academia to the general public. He began his research career with the study of medieval Arab, especially Syrian, history. His first article, dedicated to professional guilds of medieval Islam, had been widely regarded as the most authoritative work on the subject for about thirty years. However, after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, scholars of Jewish origin found it more and more difficult to conduct archival and field research in Arab countries, where they were suspected of espionage. Therefore, Lewis switched to the study of the Ottoman Empire, while continuing to research Arab history through the Ottoman archives which had only recently been opened to Western researchers. A series of articles that Lewis published over the next several years revolutionized the history of the Middle East by giving a broad picture of Islamic society, including its government, economy, and demographics. Lewis argued that the Middle East is currently backward and its decline was a largely self-inflicted condition resulting from both culture and religion, as opposed to the post-colonialist view which posits the problems of the region as economic and political maldevelopment mainly due to the 19th-century European colonization. In his 1982 work Muslim Discovery of Europe, Lewis argues that Muslim societies could not keep pace with the West and that "Crusader successes were due in no small part to Muslim weakness." Further, he suggested that as early as the 11th century Islamic societies were decaying, primarily the byproduct of internal problems like "cultural arrogance," which was a barrier to creative borrowing, rather than external pressures like the Crusades. In the wake of Soviet and Arab attempts to delegitimize Israel as a racist country, Lewis wrote a study of anti-Semitism, Semites and Anti-Semites (1986). In other works he argued Arab rage against Israel was disproportionate to other tragedies or injustices in the Muslim world, such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and control of Muslim-majority land in Central Asia, the bloody and destructive fighting during the Hama uprising in Syria (1982), the Algerian Civil War (1992–1998), and the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988). In addition to his scholarly works, Lewis wrote several influential books accessible to the general public: The Arabs in History (1950), The Middle East and the West (1964), and The Middle East (1995). In the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks, the interest in Lewis's work surged, especially his 1990 essay The Roots of Muslim Rage. Three of his books were published after 9/11: What Went Wrong? (written before the attacks), which explored the reasons of the Muslim world's apprehension of (and sometimes outright hostility to) modernization; The Crisis of Islam; and Islam: The Religion and the People. Abraham Udovitch described him as "certainly the most eminent and respected historian of the Arab world, of the Islamic world, of the Middle East and beyond". Armenian genocide The first two editions of Lewis's The Emergence of Modern Turkey (1961 and 1968) describe the Armenian genocide as "the terrible holocaust of 1915, when a million and a half Armenians perished". In later editions, this text is altered to "the terrible slaughter of 1915, when, according to estimates, more than a million Armenians perished, as well as an unknown number of Turks". In this passage, Lewis argues that the deaths were the result of a struggle for the same land between two competing nationalist movements. The change in Lewis's textual description of the Armenian genocide and his signing of the petition against the Congressional resolution was controversial among some Armenian historians as well as journalists, who suggested that Lewis was engaging in historical revisionism to serve his own political and personal interests. Lewis called the label "genocide" the "Armenian version of this history" in a November 1993 interview with Le Monde, for which he faced a civil proceeding in a French court. In a subsequent exchange on the pages of Le Monde, Lewis wrote that while "terrible atrocities" did occur, "there exists no serious proof of a decision and of a plan of the Ottoman government aiming to exterminate the Armenian nation". He was ordered to pay one franc as damages for his statements on the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey. Three other court cases against Bernard Lewis failed in the Paris tribunal, including one filed by the Armenian National Committee of France and two filed by Jacques Trémollet de Villers. Lewis's views on the Armenian genocide were criticized by a number of historians and sociologists, among them Alain Finkielkraut, Yves Ternon, Richard G. Hovannisian, Robert Melson, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Finkelstein|first1=Norman G.|title=The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering|date=2003|publisher=Verso|location=London|isbn=978-1859844885|page=69}}</ref> Lewis has argued for his denial stance that: Lewis has been labelled a "genocide denier" by Stephen Zunes, Israel Charny, David B. MacDonald and the Armenian National Committee of America. Israeli historian Yair Auron suggested that "Lewis' stature provided a lofty cover for the Turkish national agenda of obfuscating academic research on the Armenian Genocide". Israel Charny wrote that Lewis's "seemingly scholarly concern ... of Armenians constituting a threat to the Turks as a rebellious force who together with the Russians threatened the Ottoman Empire, and the insistence that only a policy of deportations was executed, barely conceal the fact that the organized deportations constituted systematic mass murder". Charny compares the "logical structures" employed by Lewis in his denial of the genocide to those employed by Ernst Nolte in his Holocaust negationism. Views and influence on contemporary politics In the mid-1960s, Lewis emerged as a commentator on the issues of the modern Middle East and his analysis of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the rise of militant Islam brought him publicity and aroused significant controversy. American historian Joel Beinin has called him "perhaps the most articulate and learned Zionist advocate in the North American Middle East academic community". Lewis's policy advice has particular weight thanks to this scholarly authority. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney remarked "in this new century, his wisdom is sought daily by policymakers, diplomats, fellow academics, and the news media". A harsh critic of the Soviet Union, Lewis continued the liberal tradition in Islamic historical studies. Although his early Marxist views had a bearing on his first book The Origins of Ismailism, Lewis subsequently discarded Marxism. His later works are a reaction against the left-wing current of Third-worldism which came to be a significant current in Middle Eastern studies. During his career Lewis developed ties with governments around the world: during her time as Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir assigned Lewis's articles as reading to her cabinet members, and during the Presidency of George W. Bush, he advised administration members including Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Bush himself. He was also close to King Hussein of Jordan and his brother, Prince Hassan bin Talal. He also had ties to the regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, the Turkish military dictatorship led by Kenan Evren, and the Egyptian government of Anwar Sadat: he acted as a go-between between the Sadat administration and Israel in 1971 when he relayed a message to the Israeli government regarding the possibility of a peace agreement at the request of Sadat's spokesman Tahasin Bashir. Lewis advocated closer Western ties with Israel and Turkey, which he saw as especially important in light of the extension of the Soviet influence in the Middle East. Modern Turkey holds a special place in Lewis's view of the region due to the country's efforts to become a part of the West. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Turkish Studies, an honor which is given "on the basis of generally recognized scholarly distinction and ... long and devoted service to the field of Turkish Studies." Lewis views Christendom and Islam as civilizations that have been in perpetual collision since the advent of Islam in the 7th century. In his essay The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990), he argued that the struggle between the West and Islam was gathering strength. According to one source, this essay (and Lewis's 1990 Jefferson Lecture on which the article was based) first introduced the term "Islamic fundamentalism" to North America. This essay has been credited with coining the phrase "clash of civilizations", which received prominence in the eponymous book by Samuel Huntington. However, another source indicates that Lewis first used the phrase "clash of civilizations" at a 1957 meeting in Washington where it was recorded in the transcript. In 1998, Lewis read in a London-based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi a declaration of war on the United States by Osama bin Laden. In his essay "A License to Kill", Lewis indicated he considered bin Laden's language as the "ideology of jihad" and warned that bin Laden would be a danger to the West. The essay was published after the Clinton administration and the US intelligence community had begun its hunt for bin Laden in Sudan and then in Afghanistan. Jihad Lewis writes of jihad as a distinct religious obligation, but suggests that it is a pity that people engaging in terrorist activities are not more aware of their own religion:The fanatical warrior offering his victims the choice of the Koran or the sword is not only untrue, it is impossible. The alleged choice - conversion or death - is also, with rare and atypical exceptions, untrue. Muslim tolerance of unbelievers and misbelievers was far better than anything available in Christendom until the rise of secularism in the 17th century. Muslim fighters are commanded not to kill women, children, or the aged unless they attack first; not to torture or otherwise ill-treat prisoners; to give fair warnings of the opening of hostilities or their resumption after a truce; and to honor agreements. At no time did the classical jurists offer any approval or legitimacy to what we nowdays call terrorism. Nor indeed is there any evidence of the use of terrorism as it is practiced nowadays. The emergence of the by now widespread terrorism practice of suicide bombing is a development of the 20th century. It has no antecedents in Islamic history, and no justification in the terms of Islamic theology, law, or tradition.As'ad AbuKhalil, has criticized this view and stated: "Methodologically, [Lewis] insists that terrorism by individual Muslims should be considered Islamic terrorism, while terrorism by individual Jews or Christians is never considered Jewish or Christian terrorism." He also criticised Lewis's understanding of Osama bin Laden, seeing Lewis's interpretation of bin Laden "as some kind of influential Muslim theologian" along the lines of classical theologians like Al-Ghazali, rather than "the terrorist fanatic that he is". AbuKhalil has also criticized the place of Islam in Lewis's worldview more generally, arguing that the most prominent feature of his work was its "theologocentrism" (borrowing a term from Maxime Rodinson) - that Lewis interprets all aspects of behavior among Muslims solely through the lens of Islamic theology, subsuming the study of Muslim peoples, their languages, the geographical areas where Muslims predominate, Islamic governments, the governments of Arab countries and Sharia under the label of "Islam". Debates with Edward Said Lewis was known for his literary debates with Edward Said, the Palestinian American literary theorist whose aim was to deconstruct what he called Orientalist scholarship. Said, who was a professor at Columbia University, characterized Lewis's work as a prime example of Orientalism in his 1978 book Orientalism and in his later book Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (1981). Said asserted that the field of Orientalism was political intellectualism bent on self-affirmation rather than objective study, a form of racism, and a tool of imperialist domination. He further questioned the scientific neutrality of some leading Middle East scholars, including Lewis, on the Arab World. In an interview with Al-Ahram weekly, Said suggested that Lewis's knowledge of the Middle East was so biased that it could not be taken seriously and claimed "Bernard Lewis hasn't set foot in the Middle East, in the Arab world, for at least 40 years. He knows something about Turkey, I'm told, but he knows nothing about the Arab world." Said considered that Lewis treats Islam as a monolithic entity without the nuance of its plurality, internal dynamics, and historical complexities, and accused him of "demagogy and downright ignorance". In Covering Islam, Said argued that "Lewis simply cannot deal with the diversity of Muslim, much less human life, because it is closed to him as something foreign, radically different, and other," and he criticised Lewis's "inability to grant that the Islamic peoples are entitled to their own cultural, political, and historical practices, free from Lewis's calculated attempt to show that because they are not Western... they can't be good." Rejecting the view that Western scholarship was biased against the Middle East, Lewis responded that Orientalism developed as a facet of European humanism, independently of the past European imperial expansion. He noted the French and English pursued the study of Islam in the 16th and 17th centuries, yet not in an organized way, but long before they had any control or hope of control in the Middle East; and that much of Orientalist study did nothing to advance the cause of imperialism. In his 1993 book Islam and the West, Lewis wrote "What imperial purpose was served by deciphering the ancient Egyptian language, for example, and then restoring to the Egyptians knowledge of and pride in their forgotten, ancient past?" Furthermore, Lewis accused Said of politicizing the scientific study of the Middle East (and Arabic studies in particular); neglecting to critique the scholarly findings of the Orientalists; and giving "free rein" to his biases. Stance on the Iraq War In 2002, Lewis wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal regarding the buildup to the Iraq War entitled "Time for Toppling", where he stated his opinion that "a regime change may well be dangerous, but sometimes the dangers of inaction are greater than those of action". In 2007, Jacob Weisberg described Lewis as "perhaps the most significant intellectual influence behind the invasion of Iraq". Michael Hirsh attributed to Lewis the view that regime change in Iraq would provide a jolt that would "modernize the Middle East" and suggested that Lewis's allegedly 'orientalist' theories about "what went wrong" in the Middle East, and other writings, formed the intellectual basis of the push towards war in Iraq. Hirsch reported that Lewis had told him in an interview that he viewed the 11 September attacks as "the opening salvo of the final battle" between Western and Islamic civilisations: Lewis believed that a forceful response was necessary. In the run up to the Iraq War, he met with Vice President Dick Cheney several times: Hirsch quoted an unnamed official who was present at a number of these meetings, who summarised Lewis's view of Iraq as "Get on with it. Don't dither". Brent Scowcroft quoted Lewis as stating that he believed "that one of the things you’ve got to do to Arabs is hit them between the eyes with a big stick. They respect power". As'ad AbuKhalil has claimed that Lewis assured Cheney that American troops would be welcomed by Iraqis and Arabs, relying on the opinion of his colleague Fouad Ajami. Hirsch also drew parallels between the Bush administration's plans for post-invasion Iraq and Lewis's views, in particular his admiration for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's secularist and Westernising reforms in the new Republic of Turkey which emerged from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Writing in 2008, Lewis did not advocate imposing freedom and democracy on Islamic nations. "There are things you can't impose. Freedom, for example. Or democracy. Democracy is a very strong medicine which has to be administered to the patient in small, gradually increasing doses. Otherwise, you risk killing the patient. In the main, the Muslims have to do it themselves." Ian Buruma, writing for The New Yorker in an article subtitled "The two Minds of Bernard Lewis", finds Lewis's stance on the war difficult to reconcile with Lewis's past statements cautioning democracy enforcement in the world at large. Buruma ultimately rejects suggestions by his peers that Lewis promotes war with Iraq to safeguard Israel, but instead concludes "perhaps he loves it [the Arab world] too much": Hamid Dabashi, writing on 28 May 2018, in an article subtitled "On Bernard Lewis and 'his extraordinary capacity for getting everything wrong'", asked: "Just imagine: What sort of a person would spend a lifetime studying people he loathes? It is quite a bizarre proposition. But there you have it: the late Bernard Lewis did precisely that." Similarly, Richard Bulliet described Lewis as "...a person who does not like the people he is purporting to have expertise about...he doesn’t respect them, he considers them to be good and worthy only to the degree they follow a Western path". According to As'ad AbuKhalil, "Lewis has poisoned the Middle East academic field more than any other Orientalist and his influence has been both academic and political. But there is a new generation of Middle East experts in the West who now see clearly the political agenda of Bernard Lewis. It was fully exposed in the Bush years." Alleged nuclear threat from Iran In 2006, Lewis wrote that Iran had been working on a nuclear weapon for fifteen years. In August 2006, in an article about whether the world can rely on the concept of mutual assured destruction as a deterrent in its dealings with Iran, Lewis wrote in The Wall Street Journal about the significance of 22 August 2006 in the Islamic calendar. The Iranian president had indicated he would respond by that date to U.S. demands regarding Iran's development of nuclear power. Lewis wrote that the date corresponded to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427, the day Muslims commemorate the night flight of Muhammad from Jerusalem to heaven and back. Lewis wrote that it would be "an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and, if necessary, of the world". According to Lewis, mutual assured destruction is not an effective deterrent in the case of Iran, because of what Lewis describes as the Iranian leadership's "apocalyptic worldview" and the "suicide or martyrdom complex that plagues parts of the Islamic world today". Lewis's article received significant press coverage. However, the day passed without any incident. Death Bernard Lewis died on 19 May 2018 at the age of 101, at an assisted-living care facility in Voorhees Township, New Jersey, twelve days before his 102nd birthday. He is buried in Trumpeldor Cemetery in Tel Aviv. Bibliography Awards and honors 1963: Elected as a Fellow of the British Academy 1978: The Harvey Prize, from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, for "his profound insight into the life and mores of the peoples of the Middle East through his writings" 1983: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1990: Selected for the Jefferson Lecture by the National Endowment for the Humanities 1996: Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction, for The Middle East (Scribner) 1999: National Jewish Book Award in the Israel category for The Multiple Identities of the Middle East 2002: The Thomas Jefferson Medal, awarded by the American Philosophical Society 2002: Atatürk International Peace Prize on grounds that he contributed extensively to history scholarship with his accurate analysis of Turkey’s and in particular of Atatürk’s positive impact on Middle Eastern history. 2004: Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement 2006: National Humanities Medal, from the National Endowment for the Humanities 2007: Irving Kristol Award, from the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research 2007: The Scholar-Statesman Award from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy See also Bernard Lewis bibliography List of Princeton University people References External links Lewis's page at Princeton University Revered and Reviled – Lewis's profile on Moment Magazine'' The Legacy and Fallacies of Bernard Lewis by As`ad AbuKhalil 1916 births 2018 deaths 20th-century American historians 20th-century British historians 20th-century British writers 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers 21st-century British historians 21st-century British writers Academics of SOAS University of London Alumni of SOAS University of London American centenarians American historians American male non-fiction writers American people of English-Jewish descent Deniers of the Armenian genocide British Army personnel of World War II English centenarians British emigrants to the United States English historians English Jews Fellows of the British Academy Historians of Islam Historians of the Ottoman Empire Honorary members of the Turkish Academy of Sciences Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars Intelligence Corps soldiers Islam and antisemitism Islam and politics Jewish American historians Jewish scholars Jewish scholars of Islam Men centenarians Middle Eastern studies in the United States National Humanities Medal recipients Neoconservatism People from Stoke Newington British political commentators Princeton University faculty Royal Armoured Corps soldiers Scholars of antisemitism University of Paris alumni Cornell University faculty Foreign Policy Research Institute Historians of the Middle East Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs Middle Eastern studies scholars Burials at Trumpeldor Cemetery 21st-century American Jews
false
[ "\"How Long, How Long Blues\" (also known as \"How Long Blues\" or \"How Long How Long\") is a blues song recorded by the American blues duo Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell in 1928. It became an early blues standard and its melody inspired many later songs.\n\nOriginal song\n\"How Long, How Long Blues\" is based on \"How Long Daddy\", recorded in 1925 by Ida Cox with Papa Charlie Jackson. On June 19, 1928, Leroy Carr, who sang and played piano, and guitarist Scrapper Blackwell recorded the song in Indianapolis, Indiana, for Vocalion Records, shortly after they began performing together. It is a moderately slow-tempo blues with an eight-bar structure. Carr is credited with the lyrics and music for the song, which uses a departed train as a metaphor for a lover who has left:\n\nCarr's and Blackwell's songs reflected a more urban and sophisticated blues, in contrast to the music of rural bluesmen of the time. Carr's blues were \"expressive and evocative\", although his vocals have also been described as emotionally detached, high-pitched and smooth, with clear diction.\n\n\"How Long, How Long Blues\" was Carr and Scrapwell's biggest hit. They subsequently recorded six more versions of the song (two of them, unissued at the time), as \"How Long, How Long Blues, Part 2\", \"Part 3\", \"How Long Has That Evening Train Been Gone\", \"The New How Long, How Long Blues\", etc. There are considerable variations in the lyrics, but most versions begin with the lyric \"How long, how long, has that evening train been gone?\"\n\nLegacy\n\"How Long, How Long Blues\" became an early blues standard and \"its lilting melody inspired hundreds of later compositions\", including the Mississippi Sheiks' \"Sitting on Top of the World\" and Robert Johnson's \"Come On in My Kitchen\". Although his later style would not suggest it, Muddy Waters recalled that it was the first song he learned to play \"off the Leroy Carr record\".\n\nIn 1988, Carr's \"How Long, How Long Blues\" was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in the category \"Classics of Blues Recordings – Singles or Album Tracks\". Blues historian Jim O'Neal commented in the induction statement, \"'How Long, How Long Blues' was a massive hit in the prewar blues era, a song that every blues singer and piano player had to know, and one that has continued to inspire dozens of cover versions.\" In 2012, the song received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award, which \"honor[s] recordings of lasting qualitative or historical significance\".\n\nSee also\nList of train songs\n\nReferences\n\nBlues songs\n1928 songs\nGrammy Hall of Fame Award recipients\nVocalion Records singles\nSongs about trains", "Valerius Wilezogerzosi was a Roman Catholic prelate who served as Auxiliary Bishop of Włocławek (1652–?).\n\nBiography\nOn 13 May 1652, Valerius Wilezogerzosi was appointed during the papacy of Pope Innocent X as Auxiliary Bishop of Włocławek and Titular Bishop of Margarita.\nIn 1652, he was consecrated bishop by Nicolas Albert Gniewosz de Olexow, Bishop of Włocławek. \nIt is uncertain how long he served; the next auxiliary bishop of record was Stanisław Domaniewski who was appointed in 1653.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links and additional sources\n (for Chronology of Bishops) \n (for Chronology of Bishops) \n (for Chronology of Bishops) \n (for Chronology of Bishops) \n\n17th-century Roman Catholic bishops in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth\nBishops appointed by Pope Innocent X" ]
[ "Macaulay Culkin", "1990-1994: Breakthrough" ]
C_1b38612e9c364bec9d07835790b31f3f_1
What was his breakthrough?
1
What was Macaulay Culkin's breakthrough?
Macaulay Culkin
Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the highly successful blockbuster Christmas film, Home Alone (1990), where he was reunited with Uncle Buck writer and director John Hughes and Uncle Buck co-star John Candy, who played the role of Polka band member, Gus Polinski. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award for his role as Kevin McCallister. In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series, Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's "Black or White" music video. He starred as Thomas J. Sennett in the film, My Girl (1991), for which he was nominated for Best On-Screen Duo and won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, with Anna Chlumsky. He reprised his role of Kevin McCallister in the sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), for which he was nominated for a Kids' Choice Award. He played the role of Henry in the drama-thriller film, The Good Son (1993), which only did reasonably well (although he was nominated for MTV Movie Award in the category for Best Villain for his performance). He also appeared, while a student at the School of American Ballet, in a filmed version of The Nutcracker as the title role in 1993, which was staged by Peter Martins from the 1954 George Balanchine New York City Ballet version of the work. He was in the films, Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994) and Richie Rich (1994), which were all only mildly successful at the box office. CANNOTANSWER
Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the highly successful blockbuster Christmas film, Home Alone
Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin (born Macaulay Carson Culkin; ) is an American actor and musician. Often regarded as one of the most successful child actors of the 1990s, he was placed 2nd on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Kid-Stars". Culkin rose to prominence as a child actor starring as Kevin McCallister in the first two films of the Home Alone film series (1990 and 1992), for which he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. He also starred in the films My Girl (1991), The Good Son (1993), The Nutcracker (1993), Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994), and Richie Rich (1994). Culkin took a break from acting in 1994. He returned in 2003 with a guest appearance on the television show Will & Grace and a role in the film Party Monster. He wrote an autobiography, Junior, which was published in 2006. In 2021, he starred in American Horror Story: Double Feature, the tenth season of the anthology series American Horror Story. In 2013, Culkin co-founded the New York comedy rock band the Pizza Underground, of which he was the vocalist; in 2016, Culkin stated that the Pizza Underground was splitting up and their next album would be their last. He is currently the publisher and CEO of Bunny Ears, a satirical pop culture website and podcast. He has also received an MTV Movie Award from three nominations, and a Young Artist Award. Early life Macaulay Carson Culkin was born on August 26, 1980, in New York City to Christopher Cornelius "Kit" Culkin, a former stage actor, and Patricia Brentrup, a native of North Dakota who met Kit in 1974 while working as a road traffic controller in Sundance, Wyoming. The couple soon relocated to Kit's native New York City, and gave birth to a total of seven children: Culkin's siblings include Shane ( 1976), Dakota (1979–2008), Kieran ( 1982), Quinn ( 1984), Christian ( 1987), and Rory ( 1989). He also had a paternal half-sister, Jennifer (born 1970), who died in 2000. His paternal aunt is actress Bonnie Bedelia. Culkin is of part-Irish descent. During Culkin's early childhood, the family lived together in a small apartment in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan, and struggled financially. His mother worked as a telephone operator and his father was a sacristan at a local Catholic church. Culkin was raised Roman Catholic and attended St. Joseph's School of Yorkville for five years before transferring to the Professional Children's School. Career 1980s Culkin began acting at age four. His early roles included a stage production of Bach Babies at the New York Philharmonic. He continued appearing in roles on stage, television and films throughout the 1980s. He made an appearance in the TV movie The Midnight Hour (1985). In 1988, he appeared in an episode of the popular action television series The Equalizer, in which he played a kidnapping victim, Paul Gephardt. Culkin made his film debut as Cy Blue Black in the drama Rocket Gibraltar (1988). He played the role of Billy Livingstone in the romantic comedy film See You in the Morning (1989), starring Jeff Bridges, Alice Krige, Farrah Fawcett and Drew Barrymore. He starred as Miles Russell alongside actor John Candy in the comedy film Uncle Buck (1989). 1990s Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the blockbuster comedy film Home Alone (1990). The film reunited him with Uncle Buck writer and director John Hughes and Uncle Buck co-star John Candy, who played the role of Polka band member Gus Polinski. For his performance, Culkin was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award. In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series titled Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's "Black or White" music video. He starred as Thomas J. Sennett in the film My Girl (1991), for which he was nominated for Best On-Screen Duo, and won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, with Anna Chlumsky. Culkin was paid $4.5 million (compared to $110,000 for the original) for Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992). He played the role of Henry in the drama thriller film The Good Son (1993), which only did reasonably well, although he was nominated for an MTV Movie Award in the category for Best Villain for his performance. He was also a student at the School of American Ballet and appeared in a filmed version of The Nutcracker as the title role in 1993, which was staged by Peter Martins from the 1954 George Balanchine New York City Ballet version of the work. He was also in the films Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994) and Richie Rich (1994), which all performed poorly at the box office. Culkin grew tired of acting and retired after Richie Rich. Wanting a "normal life", he went to a private high school in Manhattan. In 1998, he appeared in the music video for the song "Sunday" by the rock band Sonic Youth. 2000s In 2000, Culkin returned to acting with a role in the play Madame Melville, which was staged in London's West End. In early 2003, he made a guest appearance on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace. His role as Karen Walker's deceptively immature divorce lawyer won him favorable reviews. Culkin headed back into motion pictures in 2003 with Party Monster, in which he played a role very different from those he was known for, that of party promoter Michael Alig, a drug user and murderer. He quickly followed that with a supporting part in Saved!, as a cynical wheelchair-using, non-Christian student in a conservative Christian high school. Though Saved! only had modest success at the box office, Culkin received positive reviews for his role in the film and its implications for a career as an adult actor. Culkin began doing voice-over work, with appearances in Seth Green's Robot Chicken. In 2006, he published an experimental, semi-autobiographical novel titled Junior, which talked about Culkin's stardom and his shaky relationship with his father. Culkin starred in Sex and Breakfast, a dark comedy written and directed by Miles Brandman. Alexis Dziena, Kuno Becker and Eliza Dushku also star in this story of a couple whose therapist recommends they engage in group sex. Shooting for the film, Culkin's first since Saved!, took place in September 2006. The film opened in Los Angeles on November 30, 2007, and was released on DVD on January 22, 2008, by First Look Pictures. Culkin's next project was a role in the thirteen-episode NBC television series Kings as Andrew Cross. In 2009, Culkin appeared in a UK-based commercial for Aviva Insurance (formerly Norwich Union) to help promote their company's rebranding. Culkin stared into the camera stating, "Remember me." On August 17, 2009, Culkin made a brief cameo appearance on WWE Raw at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri, following a "falls count anywhere" match between Hornswoggle and Chavo Guerrero Jr., in which Guerrero was defeated by the classic Home Alone gag of rigging a swinging paint can to hit him upon opening a door. Culkin appeared in the doorway and said, "That's not funny." In February 2010, Culkin appeared in an episode of Poppy de Villeneuve's online series for The New York Times, The Park. On March 7 of the same year, he appeared alongside actors Matthew Broderick, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, and Jon Cryer in a tribute to the late John Hughes at the Oscars. 2010s In April 2011, Culkin was featured in musician Adam Green's experimental film The Wrong Ferarri, which was entirely shot on an iPhone. In the same month, he also appeared in the music video for "Stamp Your Name on It" performed by Green's former bandmate Jack Dishel/Only Son. In September 2012, he appeared in a video on YouTube explaining how he turned his apartment in New York into a painting workshop. In December 2013, a viral video that Culkin co-produced and directed himself eating a cheese pizza was uploaded to YouTube, co-starring Phoebe Kreutz. He was parodying Andy Warhol consuming a Burger King Whopper in Jørgen Leth's documentary 66 Scenes from America. Culkin was promoting the debut of his New York-based, pizza-themed comedy rock band The Pizza Underground. Their tour began in Brooklyn on January 24, 2014. In late May 2014, Culkin stormed off stage at Rock City during his kazoo solo after fans began booing and throwing pints of beer at the band. They subsequently cancelled the remaining UK shows, though they claimed the cancellation had nothing to do with the Rock City performance. On July 10, 2016, Culkin announced that The Pizza Underground was splitting up and their next album would be the last. In July 2016, Culkin appeared in a television advertisement for Compare the Market. In January 2018, Culkin launched a comedy website and podcast called Bunny Ears that parodied other celebrity-owned websites such as Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop. Since 2018, Culkin has been a frequent guest of RedLetterMedia, appearing in multiple episodes of their Best of the Worst, re:View, and Half in the Bag webseries, as well as Angry Video Game Nerd, where he appears as either himself, a character, or a parody of himself. In an advertisement for Google Assistant published on December 19, 2018, Culkin reprised his Home Alone role as Kevin McCallister after 28 years. It recreated scenes from the movie where McCallister shaved his face, jumped on the bed, and decorated the Christmas tree, all while asking Google Assistant to set reminders for him. The advertisement quickly went viral. In 2019, he had a role in Seth Green's movie Changeland with Brenda Song, which was released on June 7, 2019. 2020s Since 2021 Culkin is part of the starring cast of the series' tenth season, American Horror Story: Double Feature. His role in the season was critically praised. Personal life Culkin said his father, Kit Culkin, was cruel and violent in his childhood. He said he felt his father was jealous, because "everything he tried to do in his life I excelled at before I was 10 years old". Culkin's parents were never married; they split when Culkin was in his teens, and his mother filed for custody. Culkin took his parents to court to block them from controlling his trust fund, reportedly worth between $15 and 20 million. The media reported that Culkin had divorced or emancipated himself from his parents. In 2018, Culkin denied this, saying he had instead removed his parents' name from his trust fund and found an executor. He has been estranged from his father since. On May 10, 2000, Culkin's half-sister, Jennifer Adamson, died of a drug overdose. On December 10, 2008, his older sister, Dakota, died after being hit by a car. On September 17, 2004, Culkin was arrested in Oklahoma City for the possession of of marijuana and two controlled substances, of Alprazolam (Xanax) and of Clonazepam (Klonopin), for which he was briefly jailed and then released on $4,000 bail. After being arraigned in court for misdemeanor drug offenses, he pleaded not guilty at the trial (October 15, 2004 to June 9, 2005), but later reversed the plea to guilty. He received three one-year suspended prison sentences and was ordered to pay $540 in fees. In December 2018, Culkin announced that he would legally change his name to "Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin" after holding a vote through his website to choose a new middle name, with "Macaulay Culkin" winning the vote over four other candidates. In August 2020, on his 40th birthday, Culkin tweeted, "Hey guys, wanna feel old? I'm 40. You're welcome." The tweet became the ninth most-liked tweet of all time. Romantic relationships Culkin stated in a May 27, 2004 interview on Larry King Live that he tends to refrain from disclosing aspects of his personal life, though he discussed his life as a child actor, the conflict in his family life, including his estrangement from his father, and how he retired from acting at age 14. Culkin married actress Rachel Miner in 1998 when they were both 18, but they separated in 2000 and divorced in 2002. Culkin began dating actress Mila Kunis in May 2002. By 2006, he was living in New York, while Kunis was living in Los Angeles. On January 3, 2011, Kunis's publicist confirmed reports that Culkin and Kunis had ended their relationship several months previously, saying, "The split was amicable, and they remain close friends." Since 2013, Culkin has lived in Paris. As of October 2017, Culkin has been in a relationship with his Changeland co-star Brenda Song. On April 5, 2021, Song gave birth to the couple's son, named Dakota Song Culkin after Culkin's deceased sister. Shortly after his son's birth, comments Culkin made on a 2018 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience about his relationship with Song resurfaced, which were criticized for stereotyping Asians. In the interview, Culkin joked about the shape of Song's eyes, their interracial relationship, and the appearance of their potential future children. He argued that he was entitled to make Asian jokes because of his relationship with Song, and because of his future fatherhood to multiracial children, stating that he would "understand the struggle". Friendship with Michael Jackson Around the time of the first Home Alone movie, Culkin became friends with pop singer Michael Jackson and appeared in Jackson's 1991 "Black or White" music video. In 2005, at Jackson's trial for sexual child abuse, Culkin testified that he had slept in bed with Jackson but that he was never molested. Culkin dismissed the allegations against Jackson as "absolutely ridiculous". Culkin attended Jackson's burial on September 3, 2009. Culkin is also the godfather of Jackson's children Paris Jackson, Prince and Michael Jr. Culkin has consistently defended Jackson against allegations of child molestation, saying in a 2020 interview with Esquire magazine: "I never saw anything; he never did anything". Awards and nominations Notes References Bibliography Holmstrom, John. The Moving Picture Boy: An International Encyclopaedia from 1895 to 1995, Norwich, Michael Russell, 1996, p. 398. External links 1980 births Living people 20th-century American male actors 21st-century American male actors 21st-century American male musicians American male ballet dancers American male child actors American male film actors American male stage actors American male television actors American male voice actors American male web series actors American men podcasters American podcasters American people of Irish descent Catholics from New York (state) Male actors from New York (state) Male actors from New York City Musicians from New York City Theatre World Award winners
false
[ "The year 1999 is the seventh year in the history of Pancrase, a mixed martial arts promotion based in Japan. In 1999 Pancrase held 14 events beginning with Pancrase: Breakthrough 1.\n\nTitle fights\n\nEvents list\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 1\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 1 was an event held on January 19, 1999, at Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, Japan.\n\nResults\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 2\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 2 was an event held on February 11, 1999, at Umeda Stella Hall in Osaka, Osaka, Japan.\n\nResults\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 3\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 3 was an event held on March 9, 1999, at Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, Japan.\n\nResults\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 4\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 4 was an event held on April 18, 1999, at the Yokohama Cultural Gymnasium in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan.\n\nResults\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 5\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 5 was an event held on May 23, 1999, at Chikusa Sport Center in Nagoya, Aichi, Japan.\n\nResults\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 6\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 6 was an event held on June 11, 1999, at Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, Japan.\n\nResults\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 7\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 7 was an event held on July 6, 1999, at Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, Japan.\n\nResults\n\nPancrase: 1999 Neo-Blood Tournament Opening Round\n\nPancrase: 1999 Neo-Blood Tournament Opening Round was an event held on August 1, 1999, at Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, Japan.\n\nResults\n\nPancrase: 1999 Neo-Blood Tournament Second Round\n\nPancrase: 1999 Neo-Blood Tournament Second Round was an event held on August 1, 1999, at Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, Japan.\n\nResults\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 8\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 8 was an event held on September 4, 1999, at the Sendai Spring General Gymnasium in Sendai, Miyagi, Japan.\n\nResults\n\nPancrase: 1999 Anniversary Show\n\nPancrase: 1999 Anniversary Show was an event held on September 18, 1999, at the Tokyo Bay NK Hall in Urayasu, Chiba, Japan.\n\nResults\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 9\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 9 was an event held on October 25, 1999, at Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, Japan.\n\nResults\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 10\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 10 was an event held on November 28, 1999, at the Namihaya Dome in Kadoma, Osaka, Japan.\n\nResults\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 11\n\nPancrase: Breakthrough 11 was an event held on December 18, 1999, at the Yokohama Cultural Gymnasium in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan.\n\nResults\n\nSee also \n Pancrase\n List of Pancrase champions\n List of Pancrase events\n\nReferences\n\nPancrase events\n1999 in mixed martial arts", "Olga Paterova (Cyrillic: Ольга Патерова) is a politician in Transnistria. She was born in Tiraspol, today the capital of Transnistria, in 1984 in what was then part of the Moldovan SSR. She is the press secretary for the political youth organization Breakthrough (Russian: Proriv).\n\nAlong with fellow Breakthrough-leader Alena Arshinova, she was interviewed in December 2005 by Der Spiegel, a German news magazine.\n\nExternal links \n Olga Paterova webpage\n Open mike: Youth activists speak out\n\nYouth activists\n1984 births\nLiving people\nPeople from Tiraspol" ]
[ "Macaulay Culkin", "1990-1994: Breakthrough", "What was his breakthrough?", "Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the highly successful blockbuster Christmas film, Home Alone" ]
C_1b38612e9c364bec9d07835790b31f3f_1
Did he win any awards for the role?
2
Did Culkin win any awards for the role of Kevin McCallister in the highly successful blockbuster Christmas film, Home Alone?
Macaulay Culkin
Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the highly successful blockbuster Christmas film, Home Alone (1990), where he was reunited with Uncle Buck writer and director John Hughes and Uncle Buck co-star John Candy, who played the role of Polka band member, Gus Polinski. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award for his role as Kevin McCallister. In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series, Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's "Black or White" music video. He starred as Thomas J. Sennett in the film, My Girl (1991), for which he was nominated for Best On-Screen Duo and won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, with Anna Chlumsky. He reprised his role of Kevin McCallister in the sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), for which he was nominated for a Kids' Choice Award. He played the role of Henry in the drama-thriller film, The Good Son (1993), which only did reasonably well (although he was nominated for MTV Movie Award in the category for Best Villain for his performance). He also appeared, while a student at the School of American Ballet, in a filmed version of The Nutcracker as the title role in 1993, which was staged by Peter Martins from the 1954 George Balanchine New York City Ballet version of the work. He was in the films, Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994) and Richie Rich (1994), which were all only mildly successful at the box office. CANNOTANSWER
He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award for his role as Kevin McCallister.
Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin (born Macaulay Carson Culkin; ) is an American actor and musician. Often regarded as one of the most successful child actors of the 1990s, he was placed 2nd on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Kid-Stars". Culkin rose to prominence as a child actor starring as Kevin McCallister in the first two films of the Home Alone film series (1990 and 1992), for which he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. He also starred in the films My Girl (1991), The Good Son (1993), The Nutcracker (1993), Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994), and Richie Rich (1994). Culkin took a break from acting in 1994. He returned in 2003 with a guest appearance on the television show Will & Grace and a role in the film Party Monster. He wrote an autobiography, Junior, which was published in 2006. In 2021, he starred in American Horror Story: Double Feature, the tenth season of the anthology series American Horror Story. In 2013, Culkin co-founded the New York comedy rock band the Pizza Underground, of which he was the vocalist; in 2016, Culkin stated that the Pizza Underground was splitting up and their next album would be their last. He is currently the publisher and CEO of Bunny Ears, a satirical pop culture website and podcast. He has also received an MTV Movie Award from three nominations, and a Young Artist Award. Early life Macaulay Carson Culkin was born on August 26, 1980, in New York City to Christopher Cornelius "Kit" Culkin, a former stage actor, and Patricia Brentrup, a native of North Dakota who met Kit in 1974 while working as a road traffic controller in Sundance, Wyoming. The couple soon relocated to Kit's native New York City, and gave birth to a total of seven children: Culkin's siblings include Shane ( 1976), Dakota (1979–2008), Kieran ( 1982), Quinn ( 1984), Christian ( 1987), and Rory ( 1989). He also had a paternal half-sister, Jennifer (born 1970), who died in 2000. His paternal aunt is actress Bonnie Bedelia. Culkin is of part-Irish descent. During Culkin's early childhood, the family lived together in a small apartment in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan, and struggled financially. His mother worked as a telephone operator and his father was a sacristan at a local Catholic church. Culkin was raised Roman Catholic and attended St. Joseph's School of Yorkville for five years before transferring to the Professional Children's School. Career 1980s Culkin began acting at age four. His early roles included a stage production of Bach Babies at the New York Philharmonic. He continued appearing in roles on stage, television and films throughout the 1980s. He made an appearance in the TV movie The Midnight Hour (1985). In 1988, he appeared in an episode of the popular action television series The Equalizer, in which he played a kidnapping victim, Paul Gephardt. Culkin made his film debut as Cy Blue Black in the drama Rocket Gibraltar (1988). He played the role of Billy Livingstone in the romantic comedy film See You in the Morning (1989), starring Jeff Bridges, Alice Krige, Farrah Fawcett and Drew Barrymore. He starred as Miles Russell alongside actor John Candy in the comedy film Uncle Buck (1989). 1990s Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the blockbuster comedy film Home Alone (1990). The film reunited him with Uncle Buck writer and director John Hughes and Uncle Buck co-star John Candy, who played the role of Polka band member Gus Polinski. For his performance, Culkin was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award. In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series titled Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's "Black or White" music video. He starred as Thomas J. Sennett in the film My Girl (1991), for which he was nominated for Best On-Screen Duo, and won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, with Anna Chlumsky. Culkin was paid $4.5 million (compared to $110,000 for the original) for Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992). He played the role of Henry in the drama thriller film The Good Son (1993), which only did reasonably well, although he was nominated for an MTV Movie Award in the category for Best Villain for his performance. He was also a student at the School of American Ballet and appeared in a filmed version of The Nutcracker as the title role in 1993, which was staged by Peter Martins from the 1954 George Balanchine New York City Ballet version of the work. He was also in the films Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994) and Richie Rich (1994), which all performed poorly at the box office. Culkin grew tired of acting and retired after Richie Rich. Wanting a "normal life", he went to a private high school in Manhattan. In 1998, he appeared in the music video for the song "Sunday" by the rock band Sonic Youth. 2000s In 2000, Culkin returned to acting with a role in the play Madame Melville, which was staged in London's West End. In early 2003, he made a guest appearance on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace. His role as Karen Walker's deceptively immature divorce lawyer won him favorable reviews. Culkin headed back into motion pictures in 2003 with Party Monster, in which he played a role very different from those he was known for, that of party promoter Michael Alig, a drug user and murderer. He quickly followed that with a supporting part in Saved!, as a cynical wheelchair-using, non-Christian student in a conservative Christian high school. Though Saved! only had modest success at the box office, Culkin received positive reviews for his role in the film and its implications for a career as an adult actor. Culkin began doing voice-over work, with appearances in Seth Green's Robot Chicken. In 2006, he published an experimental, semi-autobiographical novel titled Junior, which talked about Culkin's stardom and his shaky relationship with his father. Culkin starred in Sex and Breakfast, a dark comedy written and directed by Miles Brandman. Alexis Dziena, Kuno Becker and Eliza Dushku also star in this story of a couple whose therapist recommends they engage in group sex. Shooting for the film, Culkin's first since Saved!, took place in September 2006. The film opened in Los Angeles on November 30, 2007, and was released on DVD on January 22, 2008, by First Look Pictures. Culkin's next project was a role in the thirteen-episode NBC television series Kings as Andrew Cross. In 2009, Culkin appeared in a UK-based commercial for Aviva Insurance (formerly Norwich Union) to help promote their company's rebranding. Culkin stared into the camera stating, "Remember me." On August 17, 2009, Culkin made a brief cameo appearance on WWE Raw at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri, following a "falls count anywhere" match between Hornswoggle and Chavo Guerrero Jr., in which Guerrero was defeated by the classic Home Alone gag of rigging a swinging paint can to hit him upon opening a door. Culkin appeared in the doorway and said, "That's not funny." In February 2010, Culkin appeared in an episode of Poppy de Villeneuve's online series for The New York Times, The Park. On March 7 of the same year, he appeared alongside actors Matthew Broderick, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, and Jon Cryer in a tribute to the late John Hughes at the Oscars. 2010s In April 2011, Culkin was featured in musician Adam Green's experimental film The Wrong Ferarri, which was entirely shot on an iPhone. In the same month, he also appeared in the music video for "Stamp Your Name on It" performed by Green's former bandmate Jack Dishel/Only Son. In September 2012, he appeared in a video on YouTube explaining how he turned his apartment in New York into a painting workshop. In December 2013, a viral video that Culkin co-produced and directed himself eating a cheese pizza was uploaded to YouTube, co-starring Phoebe Kreutz. He was parodying Andy Warhol consuming a Burger King Whopper in Jørgen Leth's documentary 66 Scenes from America. Culkin was promoting the debut of his New York-based, pizza-themed comedy rock band The Pizza Underground. Their tour began in Brooklyn on January 24, 2014. In late May 2014, Culkin stormed off stage at Rock City during his kazoo solo after fans began booing and throwing pints of beer at the band. They subsequently cancelled the remaining UK shows, though they claimed the cancellation had nothing to do with the Rock City performance. On July 10, 2016, Culkin announced that The Pizza Underground was splitting up and their next album would be the last. In July 2016, Culkin appeared in a television advertisement for Compare the Market. In January 2018, Culkin launched a comedy website and podcast called Bunny Ears that parodied other celebrity-owned websites such as Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop. Since 2018, Culkin has been a frequent guest of RedLetterMedia, appearing in multiple episodes of their Best of the Worst, re:View, and Half in the Bag webseries, as well as Angry Video Game Nerd, where he appears as either himself, a character, or a parody of himself. In an advertisement for Google Assistant published on December 19, 2018, Culkin reprised his Home Alone role as Kevin McCallister after 28 years. It recreated scenes from the movie where McCallister shaved his face, jumped on the bed, and decorated the Christmas tree, all while asking Google Assistant to set reminders for him. The advertisement quickly went viral. In 2019, he had a role in Seth Green's movie Changeland with Brenda Song, which was released on June 7, 2019. 2020s Since 2021 Culkin is part of the starring cast of the series' tenth season, American Horror Story: Double Feature. His role in the season was critically praised. Personal life Culkin said his father, Kit Culkin, was cruel and violent in his childhood. He said he felt his father was jealous, because "everything he tried to do in his life I excelled at before I was 10 years old". Culkin's parents were never married; they split when Culkin was in his teens, and his mother filed for custody. Culkin took his parents to court to block them from controlling his trust fund, reportedly worth between $15 and 20 million. The media reported that Culkin had divorced or emancipated himself from his parents. In 2018, Culkin denied this, saying he had instead removed his parents' name from his trust fund and found an executor. He has been estranged from his father since. On May 10, 2000, Culkin's half-sister, Jennifer Adamson, died of a drug overdose. On December 10, 2008, his older sister, Dakota, died after being hit by a car. On September 17, 2004, Culkin was arrested in Oklahoma City for the possession of of marijuana and two controlled substances, of Alprazolam (Xanax) and of Clonazepam (Klonopin), for which he was briefly jailed and then released on $4,000 bail. After being arraigned in court for misdemeanor drug offenses, he pleaded not guilty at the trial (October 15, 2004 to June 9, 2005), but later reversed the plea to guilty. He received three one-year suspended prison sentences and was ordered to pay $540 in fees. In December 2018, Culkin announced that he would legally change his name to "Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin" after holding a vote through his website to choose a new middle name, with "Macaulay Culkin" winning the vote over four other candidates. In August 2020, on his 40th birthday, Culkin tweeted, "Hey guys, wanna feel old? I'm 40. You're welcome." The tweet became the ninth most-liked tweet of all time. Romantic relationships Culkin stated in a May 27, 2004 interview on Larry King Live that he tends to refrain from disclosing aspects of his personal life, though he discussed his life as a child actor, the conflict in his family life, including his estrangement from his father, and how he retired from acting at age 14. Culkin married actress Rachel Miner in 1998 when they were both 18, but they separated in 2000 and divorced in 2002. Culkin began dating actress Mila Kunis in May 2002. By 2006, he was living in New York, while Kunis was living in Los Angeles. On January 3, 2011, Kunis's publicist confirmed reports that Culkin and Kunis had ended their relationship several months previously, saying, "The split was amicable, and they remain close friends." Since 2013, Culkin has lived in Paris. As of October 2017, Culkin has been in a relationship with his Changeland co-star Brenda Song. On April 5, 2021, Song gave birth to the couple's son, named Dakota Song Culkin after Culkin's deceased sister. Shortly after his son's birth, comments Culkin made on a 2018 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience about his relationship with Song resurfaced, which were criticized for stereotyping Asians. In the interview, Culkin joked about the shape of Song's eyes, their interracial relationship, and the appearance of their potential future children. He argued that he was entitled to make Asian jokes because of his relationship with Song, and because of his future fatherhood to multiracial children, stating that he would "understand the struggle". Friendship with Michael Jackson Around the time of the first Home Alone movie, Culkin became friends with pop singer Michael Jackson and appeared in Jackson's 1991 "Black or White" music video. In 2005, at Jackson's trial for sexual child abuse, Culkin testified that he had slept in bed with Jackson but that he was never molested. Culkin dismissed the allegations against Jackson as "absolutely ridiculous". Culkin attended Jackson's burial on September 3, 2009. Culkin is also the godfather of Jackson's children Paris Jackson, Prince and Michael Jr. Culkin has consistently defended Jackson against allegations of child molestation, saying in a 2020 interview with Esquire magazine: "I never saw anything; he never did anything". Awards and nominations Notes References Bibliography Holmstrom, John. The Moving Picture Boy: An International Encyclopaedia from 1895 to 1995, Norwich, Michael Russell, 1996, p. 398. External links 1980 births Living people 20th-century American male actors 21st-century American male actors 21st-century American male musicians American male ballet dancers American male child actors American male film actors American male stage actors American male television actors American male voice actors American male web series actors American men podcasters American podcasters American people of Irish descent Catholics from New York (state) Male actors from New York (state) Male actors from New York City Musicians from New York City Theatre World Award winners
false
[ "The Filmfare Award for Best Film is given by the Filmfare magazine as part of its annual Filmfare Awards for Hindi films.\n\nThe award was first given in 1954. Here is a list of the award winners and the nominees of the respective years. Each individual entry shows the title followed by the production company and the producer.\n\nYash Raj Films has produced 18 films that have been nominated, the most for any production house. It also shares the most wins at 4 along with Bimal Roy Productions and UTV Motion Pictures. While Yash Chopra has been the producer of most of the nominated and all the winning films of Yash Raj Films, Bimal Roy has been the producer of all the nominated films of Bimal Roy Productions, thus making them the producer with the most wins. Bimal Roy, Yash Chopra, and Sanjay Leela Bhansali have each directed 4 winning films, the most for any director. Aamir Khan has starred in 9 winning films which is the most for any actor in a leading role.\n\nWinners and nominees\n\n1950s\n\n1960s\n\n1970s\n\n1980s\n\n1990s\n\n2000s\n\n2010s\n\n2020s\n\nSpecial 50 Year Award\n\nIn 2005, Filmfare announced the best movie of the last 50 years as Sholay, although the film did not win the Filmfare Award for Best Film in its year of release.\n\nSee also\n Filmfare Critics Award for Best Movie\n Filmfare Awards\n Bollywood\n Cinema of India\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nFilmfare Awards Best Film\n\nF\nAwards for best film", "The Star Awards for Best Actor is an award presented annually at the Star Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1994.\n\nThe category was introduced in 1995, at the 2nd Star Awards ceremony; Li Nanxing received the award for his role in Wounded Tracks and it is given in honour of a Mediacorp actor who has delivered an outstanding performance in a leading role. The nominees are determined by a team of judges employed by Mediacorp; winners are selected by a majority vote from the entire judging panel.\n\nSince its inception, the award has been given to 11 actors. Qi Yuwu is the most recent winner in this category for his role in A Quest to Heal. Since the ceremony held in 2019, Chen Hanwei remains as the only actor to win in this category six times, surpassing Xie Shaoguang who has five wins. Chen and Christopher Lee have been nominated on 14 occasions, more than any other actor. Terence Cao holds the record for the most nominations without a win, with six.\n\nRecipients\n\n Each year is linked to the article about the Star Awards held that year.\n\nMultiple awards and nominations\n\nThe following individuals received two or more Best Actor awards:\n\nThe following individuals received two or more Best Actor nominations:\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n\nStar Awards" ]
[ "Macaulay Culkin", "1990-1994: Breakthrough", "What was his breakthrough?", "Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the highly successful blockbuster Christmas film, Home Alone", "Did he win any awards for the role?", "He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award for his role as Kevin McCallister." ]
C_1b38612e9c364bec9d07835790b31f3f_1
Did he have any other movies during this time?
3
Besides the film Home Alone, did Culkin have any other movies during the time Culkin played the role of Kevin McCallister in the film Home Alone?
Macaulay Culkin
Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the highly successful blockbuster Christmas film, Home Alone (1990), where he was reunited with Uncle Buck writer and director John Hughes and Uncle Buck co-star John Candy, who played the role of Polka band member, Gus Polinski. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award for his role as Kevin McCallister. In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series, Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's "Black or White" music video. He starred as Thomas J. Sennett in the film, My Girl (1991), for which he was nominated for Best On-Screen Duo and won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, with Anna Chlumsky. He reprised his role of Kevin McCallister in the sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), for which he was nominated for a Kids' Choice Award. He played the role of Henry in the drama-thriller film, The Good Son (1993), which only did reasonably well (although he was nominated for MTV Movie Award in the category for Best Villain for his performance). He also appeared, while a student at the School of American Ballet, in a filmed version of The Nutcracker as the title role in 1993, which was staged by Peter Martins from the 1954 George Balanchine New York City Ballet version of the work. He was in the films, Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994) and Richie Rich (1994), which were all only mildly successful at the box office. CANNOTANSWER
In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series, Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's "Black or White" music video.
Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin (born Macaulay Carson Culkin; ) is an American actor and musician. Often regarded as one of the most successful child actors of the 1990s, he was placed 2nd on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Kid-Stars". Culkin rose to prominence as a child actor starring as Kevin McCallister in the first two films of the Home Alone film series (1990 and 1992), for which he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. He also starred in the films My Girl (1991), The Good Son (1993), The Nutcracker (1993), Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994), and Richie Rich (1994). Culkin took a break from acting in 1994. He returned in 2003 with a guest appearance on the television show Will & Grace and a role in the film Party Monster. He wrote an autobiography, Junior, which was published in 2006. In 2021, he starred in American Horror Story: Double Feature, the tenth season of the anthology series American Horror Story. In 2013, Culkin co-founded the New York comedy rock band the Pizza Underground, of which he was the vocalist; in 2016, Culkin stated that the Pizza Underground was splitting up and their next album would be their last. He is currently the publisher and CEO of Bunny Ears, a satirical pop culture website and podcast. He has also received an MTV Movie Award from three nominations, and a Young Artist Award. Early life Macaulay Carson Culkin was born on August 26, 1980, in New York City to Christopher Cornelius "Kit" Culkin, a former stage actor, and Patricia Brentrup, a native of North Dakota who met Kit in 1974 while working as a road traffic controller in Sundance, Wyoming. The couple soon relocated to Kit's native New York City, and gave birth to a total of seven children: Culkin's siblings include Shane ( 1976), Dakota (1979–2008), Kieran ( 1982), Quinn ( 1984), Christian ( 1987), and Rory ( 1989). He also had a paternal half-sister, Jennifer (born 1970), who died in 2000. His paternal aunt is actress Bonnie Bedelia. Culkin is of part-Irish descent. During Culkin's early childhood, the family lived together in a small apartment in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan, and struggled financially. His mother worked as a telephone operator and his father was a sacristan at a local Catholic church. Culkin was raised Roman Catholic and attended St. Joseph's School of Yorkville for five years before transferring to the Professional Children's School. Career 1980s Culkin began acting at age four. His early roles included a stage production of Bach Babies at the New York Philharmonic. He continued appearing in roles on stage, television and films throughout the 1980s. He made an appearance in the TV movie The Midnight Hour (1985). In 1988, he appeared in an episode of the popular action television series The Equalizer, in which he played a kidnapping victim, Paul Gephardt. Culkin made his film debut as Cy Blue Black in the drama Rocket Gibraltar (1988). He played the role of Billy Livingstone in the romantic comedy film See You in the Morning (1989), starring Jeff Bridges, Alice Krige, Farrah Fawcett and Drew Barrymore. He starred as Miles Russell alongside actor John Candy in the comedy film Uncle Buck (1989). 1990s Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the blockbuster comedy film Home Alone (1990). The film reunited him with Uncle Buck writer and director John Hughes and Uncle Buck co-star John Candy, who played the role of Polka band member Gus Polinski. For his performance, Culkin was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award. In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series titled Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's "Black or White" music video. He starred as Thomas J. Sennett in the film My Girl (1991), for which he was nominated for Best On-Screen Duo, and won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, with Anna Chlumsky. Culkin was paid $4.5 million (compared to $110,000 for the original) for Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992). He played the role of Henry in the drama thriller film The Good Son (1993), which only did reasonably well, although he was nominated for an MTV Movie Award in the category for Best Villain for his performance. He was also a student at the School of American Ballet and appeared in a filmed version of The Nutcracker as the title role in 1993, which was staged by Peter Martins from the 1954 George Balanchine New York City Ballet version of the work. He was also in the films Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994) and Richie Rich (1994), which all performed poorly at the box office. Culkin grew tired of acting and retired after Richie Rich. Wanting a "normal life", he went to a private high school in Manhattan. In 1998, he appeared in the music video for the song "Sunday" by the rock band Sonic Youth. 2000s In 2000, Culkin returned to acting with a role in the play Madame Melville, which was staged in London's West End. In early 2003, he made a guest appearance on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace. His role as Karen Walker's deceptively immature divorce lawyer won him favorable reviews. Culkin headed back into motion pictures in 2003 with Party Monster, in which he played a role very different from those he was known for, that of party promoter Michael Alig, a drug user and murderer. He quickly followed that with a supporting part in Saved!, as a cynical wheelchair-using, non-Christian student in a conservative Christian high school. Though Saved! only had modest success at the box office, Culkin received positive reviews for his role in the film and its implications for a career as an adult actor. Culkin began doing voice-over work, with appearances in Seth Green's Robot Chicken. In 2006, he published an experimental, semi-autobiographical novel titled Junior, which talked about Culkin's stardom and his shaky relationship with his father. Culkin starred in Sex and Breakfast, a dark comedy written and directed by Miles Brandman. Alexis Dziena, Kuno Becker and Eliza Dushku also star in this story of a couple whose therapist recommends they engage in group sex. Shooting for the film, Culkin's first since Saved!, took place in September 2006. The film opened in Los Angeles on November 30, 2007, and was released on DVD on January 22, 2008, by First Look Pictures. Culkin's next project was a role in the thirteen-episode NBC television series Kings as Andrew Cross. In 2009, Culkin appeared in a UK-based commercial for Aviva Insurance (formerly Norwich Union) to help promote their company's rebranding. Culkin stared into the camera stating, "Remember me." On August 17, 2009, Culkin made a brief cameo appearance on WWE Raw at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri, following a "falls count anywhere" match between Hornswoggle and Chavo Guerrero Jr., in which Guerrero was defeated by the classic Home Alone gag of rigging a swinging paint can to hit him upon opening a door. Culkin appeared in the doorway and said, "That's not funny." In February 2010, Culkin appeared in an episode of Poppy de Villeneuve's online series for The New York Times, The Park. On March 7 of the same year, he appeared alongside actors Matthew Broderick, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, and Jon Cryer in a tribute to the late John Hughes at the Oscars. 2010s In April 2011, Culkin was featured in musician Adam Green's experimental film The Wrong Ferarri, which was entirely shot on an iPhone. In the same month, he also appeared in the music video for "Stamp Your Name on It" performed by Green's former bandmate Jack Dishel/Only Son. In September 2012, he appeared in a video on YouTube explaining how he turned his apartment in New York into a painting workshop. In December 2013, a viral video that Culkin co-produced and directed himself eating a cheese pizza was uploaded to YouTube, co-starring Phoebe Kreutz. He was parodying Andy Warhol consuming a Burger King Whopper in Jørgen Leth's documentary 66 Scenes from America. Culkin was promoting the debut of his New York-based, pizza-themed comedy rock band The Pizza Underground. Their tour began in Brooklyn on January 24, 2014. In late May 2014, Culkin stormed off stage at Rock City during his kazoo solo after fans began booing and throwing pints of beer at the band. They subsequently cancelled the remaining UK shows, though they claimed the cancellation had nothing to do with the Rock City performance. On July 10, 2016, Culkin announced that The Pizza Underground was splitting up and their next album would be the last. In July 2016, Culkin appeared in a television advertisement for Compare the Market. In January 2018, Culkin launched a comedy website and podcast called Bunny Ears that parodied other celebrity-owned websites such as Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop. Since 2018, Culkin has been a frequent guest of RedLetterMedia, appearing in multiple episodes of their Best of the Worst, re:View, and Half in the Bag webseries, as well as Angry Video Game Nerd, where he appears as either himself, a character, or a parody of himself. In an advertisement for Google Assistant published on December 19, 2018, Culkin reprised his Home Alone role as Kevin McCallister after 28 years. It recreated scenes from the movie where McCallister shaved his face, jumped on the bed, and decorated the Christmas tree, all while asking Google Assistant to set reminders for him. The advertisement quickly went viral. In 2019, he had a role in Seth Green's movie Changeland with Brenda Song, which was released on June 7, 2019. 2020s Since 2021 Culkin is part of the starring cast of the series' tenth season, American Horror Story: Double Feature. His role in the season was critically praised. Personal life Culkin said his father, Kit Culkin, was cruel and violent in his childhood. He said he felt his father was jealous, because "everything he tried to do in his life I excelled at before I was 10 years old". Culkin's parents were never married; they split when Culkin was in his teens, and his mother filed for custody. Culkin took his parents to court to block them from controlling his trust fund, reportedly worth between $15 and 20 million. The media reported that Culkin had divorced or emancipated himself from his parents. In 2018, Culkin denied this, saying he had instead removed his parents' name from his trust fund and found an executor. He has been estranged from his father since. On May 10, 2000, Culkin's half-sister, Jennifer Adamson, died of a drug overdose. On December 10, 2008, his older sister, Dakota, died after being hit by a car. On September 17, 2004, Culkin was arrested in Oklahoma City for the possession of of marijuana and two controlled substances, of Alprazolam (Xanax) and of Clonazepam (Klonopin), for which he was briefly jailed and then released on $4,000 bail. After being arraigned in court for misdemeanor drug offenses, he pleaded not guilty at the trial (October 15, 2004 to June 9, 2005), but later reversed the plea to guilty. He received three one-year suspended prison sentences and was ordered to pay $540 in fees. In December 2018, Culkin announced that he would legally change his name to "Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin" after holding a vote through his website to choose a new middle name, with "Macaulay Culkin" winning the vote over four other candidates. In August 2020, on his 40th birthday, Culkin tweeted, "Hey guys, wanna feel old? I'm 40. You're welcome." The tweet became the ninth most-liked tweet of all time. Romantic relationships Culkin stated in a May 27, 2004 interview on Larry King Live that he tends to refrain from disclosing aspects of his personal life, though he discussed his life as a child actor, the conflict in his family life, including his estrangement from his father, and how he retired from acting at age 14. Culkin married actress Rachel Miner in 1998 when they were both 18, but they separated in 2000 and divorced in 2002. Culkin began dating actress Mila Kunis in May 2002. By 2006, he was living in New York, while Kunis was living in Los Angeles. On January 3, 2011, Kunis's publicist confirmed reports that Culkin and Kunis had ended their relationship several months previously, saying, "The split was amicable, and they remain close friends." Since 2013, Culkin has lived in Paris. As of October 2017, Culkin has been in a relationship with his Changeland co-star Brenda Song. On April 5, 2021, Song gave birth to the couple's son, named Dakota Song Culkin after Culkin's deceased sister. Shortly after his son's birth, comments Culkin made on a 2018 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience about his relationship with Song resurfaced, which were criticized for stereotyping Asians. In the interview, Culkin joked about the shape of Song's eyes, their interracial relationship, and the appearance of their potential future children. He argued that he was entitled to make Asian jokes because of his relationship with Song, and because of his future fatherhood to multiracial children, stating that he would "understand the struggle". Friendship with Michael Jackson Around the time of the first Home Alone movie, Culkin became friends with pop singer Michael Jackson and appeared in Jackson's 1991 "Black or White" music video. In 2005, at Jackson's trial for sexual child abuse, Culkin testified that he had slept in bed with Jackson but that he was never molested. Culkin dismissed the allegations against Jackson as "absolutely ridiculous". Culkin attended Jackson's burial on September 3, 2009. Culkin is also the godfather of Jackson's children Paris Jackson, Prince and Michael Jr. Culkin has consistently defended Jackson against allegations of child molestation, saying in a 2020 interview with Esquire magazine: "I never saw anything; he never did anything". Awards and nominations Notes References Bibliography Holmstrom, John. The Moving Picture Boy: An International Encyclopaedia from 1895 to 1995, Norwich, Michael Russell, 1996, p. 398. External links 1980 births Living people 20th-century American male actors 21st-century American male actors 21st-century American male musicians American male ballet dancers American male child actors American male film actors American male stage actors American male television actors American male voice actors American male web series actors American men podcasters American podcasters American people of Irish descent Catholics from New York (state) Male actors from New York (state) Male actors from New York City Musicians from New York City Theatre World Award winners
false
[ "Mark Buntzman (July 31, 1949 – June 8, 2018) was the film director, writer, producer and actor of the cult classic movie Exterminator 2. He was also the producer of its predecessor The Exterminator. Other than those two movies, he hasn't produced, directed, or written any other prominent films. He did, though, have a cameo in the 1993 movie Posse as Deputy Buntzman, as well as playing a reporter in the 1995 movie Panther. Both movies starred Mario Van Peebles, who also played a large role in Exterminator 2.\n\nFilmography\n Standing Knockdown (1999) [Producer]\n Love Kills (1998) [Producer] [Actor....The Accountant]\n Panther (1995) [Actor....Pushy reporter]\n Posse (1993) [Actor....Deputy Buntzman]\n Exterminator 2 (1984) [Producer] [Director] [Writer]\n The Exterminator (1980) [Producer] [Actor...Burping Ghoul]\n Suicide Cult (1975) [Producer] [Actor....Kajerste]\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n1949 births\n2018 deaths\nAmerican film producers\nAmerican film directors\nAmerican male film actors\nAmerican male screenwriters", "Gokulan is an Indian actor who appears in Malayalam films. He made his acting debut through the 2013 Malayalam movie Punyalan Agarbattis by doing the character of Jimbroottan, which became popular. As of 2021, he has so far acted in more than 30 Malayalam movies.\n\nCareer\nGokulan made his acting debut in 2013 with the film Punyalan Agarbattis. Even though he did a minor comedy role called Jimbrootan in the movie, which also had a less screen time, the character became very popular. Gokulan later did different minor roles in some movies. He also appeared in few character roles during this time. He went on to act in the films like Thoppil Joppan, Vaarikkuzhiyile Kolapathakam, Ente Ummante Peru, Punyalan Private Limited, Sapthamashree Thaskaraha, Pathemari, Ramante Edantottam and several others. But, it was the 2019 movie Unda (film) that gave him a new turn on his film career. Gokulan had a major character role in this movie. His performance in the 2020 movie Love was critically acclaimed. Gokulan then did the notable roles in the movies Innu Mudhal and Randu which was released in March and April 2021 respectively.\n\nPersonal life\nHe married his long time girlfriend Dhanya in May 2020.\n\nReferences\n\nIndian male film actors\nLiving people\nMale actors in Malayalam cinema\n20th-century Indian male actors\nFilm people from Kerala\nYear of birth missing (living people)" ]
[ "Macaulay Culkin", "1990-1994: Breakthrough", "What was his breakthrough?", "Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the highly successful blockbuster Christmas film, Home Alone", "Did he win any awards for the role?", "He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award for his role as Kevin McCallister.", "Did he have any other movies during this time?", "In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series, Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's \"Black or White\" music video." ]
C_1b38612e9c364bec9d07835790b31f3f_1
Did he work with any other celebrities?
4
In addition to starring in Michael Jackson's music video "Black or White", did Culkin work with any other celebrities?
Macaulay Culkin
Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the highly successful blockbuster Christmas film, Home Alone (1990), where he was reunited with Uncle Buck writer and director John Hughes and Uncle Buck co-star John Candy, who played the role of Polka band member, Gus Polinski. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award for his role as Kevin McCallister. In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series, Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's "Black or White" music video. He starred as Thomas J. Sennett in the film, My Girl (1991), for which he was nominated for Best On-Screen Duo and won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, with Anna Chlumsky. He reprised his role of Kevin McCallister in the sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), for which he was nominated for a Kids' Choice Award. He played the role of Henry in the drama-thriller film, The Good Son (1993), which only did reasonably well (although he was nominated for MTV Movie Award in the category for Best Villain for his performance). He also appeared, while a student at the School of American Ballet, in a filmed version of The Nutcracker as the title role in 1993, which was staged by Peter Martins from the 1954 George Balanchine New York City Ballet version of the work. He was in the films, Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994) and Richie Rich (1994), which were all only mildly successful at the box office. CANNOTANSWER
My Girl (1991), for which he was nominated for Best On-Screen Duo and won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, with Anna Chlumsky.
Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin (born Macaulay Carson Culkin; ) is an American actor and musician. Often regarded as one of the most successful child actors of the 1990s, he was placed 2nd on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Kid-Stars". Culkin rose to prominence as a child actor starring as Kevin McCallister in the first two films of the Home Alone film series (1990 and 1992), for which he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. He also starred in the films My Girl (1991), The Good Son (1993), The Nutcracker (1993), Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994), and Richie Rich (1994). Culkin took a break from acting in 1994. He returned in 2003 with a guest appearance on the television show Will & Grace and a role in the film Party Monster. He wrote an autobiography, Junior, which was published in 2006. In 2021, he starred in American Horror Story: Double Feature, the tenth season of the anthology series American Horror Story. In 2013, Culkin co-founded the New York comedy rock band the Pizza Underground, of which he was the vocalist; in 2016, Culkin stated that the Pizza Underground was splitting up and their next album would be their last. He is currently the publisher and CEO of Bunny Ears, a satirical pop culture website and podcast. He has also received an MTV Movie Award from three nominations, and a Young Artist Award. Early life Macaulay Carson Culkin was born on August 26, 1980, in New York City to Christopher Cornelius "Kit" Culkin, a former stage actor, and Patricia Brentrup, a native of North Dakota who met Kit in 1974 while working as a road traffic controller in Sundance, Wyoming. The couple soon relocated to Kit's native New York City, and gave birth to a total of seven children: Culkin's siblings include Shane ( 1976), Dakota (1979–2008), Kieran ( 1982), Quinn ( 1984), Christian ( 1987), and Rory ( 1989). He also had a paternal half-sister, Jennifer (born 1970), who died in 2000. His paternal aunt is actress Bonnie Bedelia. Culkin is of part-Irish descent. During Culkin's early childhood, the family lived together in a small apartment in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan, and struggled financially. His mother worked as a telephone operator and his father was a sacristan at a local Catholic church. Culkin was raised Roman Catholic and attended St. Joseph's School of Yorkville for five years before transferring to the Professional Children's School. Career 1980s Culkin began acting at age four. His early roles included a stage production of Bach Babies at the New York Philharmonic. He continued appearing in roles on stage, television and films throughout the 1980s. He made an appearance in the TV movie The Midnight Hour (1985). In 1988, he appeared in an episode of the popular action television series The Equalizer, in which he played a kidnapping victim, Paul Gephardt. Culkin made his film debut as Cy Blue Black in the drama Rocket Gibraltar (1988). He played the role of Billy Livingstone in the romantic comedy film See You in the Morning (1989), starring Jeff Bridges, Alice Krige, Farrah Fawcett and Drew Barrymore. He starred as Miles Russell alongside actor John Candy in the comedy film Uncle Buck (1989). 1990s Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the blockbuster comedy film Home Alone (1990). The film reunited him with Uncle Buck writer and director John Hughes and Uncle Buck co-star John Candy, who played the role of Polka band member Gus Polinski. For his performance, Culkin was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award. In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series titled Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's "Black or White" music video. He starred as Thomas J. Sennett in the film My Girl (1991), for which he was nominated for Best On-Screen Duo, and won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, with Anna Chlumsky. Culkin was paid $4.5 million (compared to $110,000 for the original) for Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992). He played the role of Henry in the drama thriller film The Good Son (1993), which only did reasonably well, although he was nominated for an MTV Movie Award in the category for Best Villain for his performance. He was also a student at the School of American Ballet and appeared in a filmed version of The Nutcracker as the title role in 1993, which was staged by Peter Martins from the 1954 George Balanchine New York City Ballet version of the work. He was also in the films Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994) and Richie Rich (1994), which all performed poorly at the box office. Culkin grew tired of acting and retired after Richie Rich. Wanting a "normal life", he went to a private high school in Manhattan. In 1998, he appeared in the music video for the song "Sunday" by the rock band Sonic Youth. 2000s In 2000, Culkin returned to acting with a role in the play Madame Melville, which was staged in London's West End. In early 2003, he made a guest appearance on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace. His role as Karen Walker's deceptively immature divorce lawyer won him favorable reviews. Culkin headed back into motion pictures in 2003 with Party Monster, in which he played a role very different from those he was known for, that of party promoter Michael Alig, a drug user and murderer. He quickly followed that with a supporting part in Saved!, as a cynical wheelchair-using, non-Christian student in a conservative Christian high school. Though Saved! only had modest success at the box office, Culkin received positive reviews for his role in the film and its implications for a career as an adult actor. Culkin began doing voice-over work, with appearances in Seth Green's Robot Chicken. In 2006, he published an experimental, semi-autobiographical novel titled Junior, which talked about Culkin's stardom and his shaky relationship with his father. Culkin starred in Sex and Breakfast, a dark comedy written and directed by Miles Brandman. Alexis Dziena, Kuno Becker and Eliza Dushku also star in this story of a couple whose therapist recommends they engage in group sex. Shooting for the film, Culkin's first since Saved!, took place in September 2006. The film opened in Los Angeles on November 30, 2007, and was released on DVD on January 22, 2008, by First Look Pictures. Culkin's next project was a role in the thirteen-episode NBC television series Kings as Andrew Cross. In 2009, Culkin appeared in a UK-based commercial for Aviva Insurance (formerly Norwich Union) to help promote their company's rebranding. Culkin stared into the camera stating, "Remember me." On August 17, 2009, Culkin made a brief cameo appearance on WWE Raw at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri, following a "falls count anywhere" match between Hornswoggle and Chavo Guerrero Jr., in which Guerrero was defeated by the classic Home Alone gag of rigging a swinging paint can to hit him upon opening a door. Culkin appeared in the doorway and said, "That's not funny." In February 2010, Culkin appeared in an episode of Poppy de Villeneuve's online series for The New York Times, The Park. On March 7 of the same year, he appeared alongside actors Matthew Broderick, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, and Jon Cryer in a tribute to the late John Hughes at the Oscars. 2010s In April 2011, Culkin was featured in musician Adam Green's experimental film The Wrong Ferarri, which was entirely shot on an iPhone. In the same month, he also appeared in the music video for "Stamp Your Name on It" performed by Green's former bandmate Jack Dishel/Only Son. In September 2012, he appeared in a video on YouTube explaining how he turned his apartment in New York into a painting workshop. In December 2013, a viral video that Culkin co-produced and directed himself eating a cheese pizza was uploaded to YouTube, co-starring Phoebe Kreutz. He was parodying Andy Warhol consuming a Burger King Whopper in Jørgen Leth's documentary 66 Scenes from America. Culkin was promoting the debut of his New York-based, pizza-themed comedy rock band The Pizza Underground. Their tour began in Brooklyn on January 24, 2014. In late May 2014, Culkin stormed off stage at Rock City during his kazoo solo after fans began booing and throwing pints of beer at the band. They subsequently cancelled the remaining UK shows, though they claimed the cancellation had nothing to do with the Rock City performance. On July 10, 2016, Culkin announced that The Pizza Underground was splitting up and their next album would be the last. In July 2016, Culkin appeared in a television advertisement for Compare the Market. In January 2018, Culkin launched a comedy website and podcast called Bunny Ears that parodied other celebrity-owned websites such as Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop. Since 2018, Culkin has been a frequent guest of RedLetterMedia, appearing in multiple episodes of their Best of the Worst, re:View, and Half in the Bag webseries, as well as Angry Video Game Nerd, where he appears as either himself, a character, or a parody of himself. In an advertisement for Google Assistant published on December 19, 2018, Culkin reprised his Home Alone role as Kevin McCallister after 28 years. It recreated scenes from the movie where McCallister shaved his face, jumped on the bed, and decorated the Christmas tree, all while asking Google Assistant to set reminders for him. The advertisement quickly went viral. In 2019, he had a role in Seth Green's movie Changeland with Brenda Song, which was released on June 7, 2019. 2020s Since 2021 Culkin is part of the starring cast of the series' tenth season, American Horror Story: Double Feature. His role in the season was critically praised. Personal life Culkin said his father, Kit Culkin, was cruel and violent in his childhood. He said he felt his father was jealous, because "everything he tried to do in his life I excelled at before I was 10 years old". Culkin's parents were never married; they split when Culkin was in his teens, and his mother filed for custody. Culkin took his parents to court to block them from controlling his trust fund, reportedly worth between $15 and 20 million. The media reported that Culkin had divorced or emancipated himself from his parents. In 2018, Culkin denied this, saying he had instead removed his parents' name from his trust fund and found an executor. He has been estranged from his father since. On May 10, 2000, Culkin's half-sister, Jennifer Adamson, died of a drug overdose. On December 10, 2008, his older sister, Dakota, died after being hit by a car. On September 17, 2004, Culkin was arrested in Oklahoma City for the possession of of marijuana and two controlled substances, of Alprazolam (Xanax) and of Clonazepam (Klonopin), for which he was briefly jailed and then released on $4,000 bail. After being arraigned in court for misdemeanor drug offenses, he pleaded not guilty at the trial (October 15, 2004 to June 9, 2005), but later reversed the plea to guilty. He received three one-year suspended prison sentences and was ordered to pay $540 in fees. In December 2018, Culkin announced that he would legally change his name to "Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin" after holding a vote through his website to choose a new middle name, with "Macaulay Culkin" winning the vote over four other candidates. In August 2020, on his 40th birthday, Culkin tweeted, "Hey guys, wanna feel old? I'm 40. You're welcome." The tweet became the ninth most-liked tweet of all time. Romantic relationships Culkin stated in a May 27, 2004 interview on Larry King Live that he tends to refrain from disclosing aspects of his personal life, though he discussed his life as a child actor, the conflict in his family life, including his estrangement from his father, and how he retired from acting at age 14. Culkin married actress Rachel Miner in 1998 when they were both 18, but they separated in 2000 and divorced in 2002. Culkin began dating actress Mila Kunis in May 2002. By 2006, he was living in New York, while Kunis was living in Los Angeles. On January 3, 2011, Kunis's publicist confirmed reports that Culkin and Kunis had ended their relationship several months previously, saying, "The split was amicable, and they remain close friends." Since 2013, Culkin has lived in Paris. As of October 2017, Culkin has been in a relationship with his Changeland co-star Brenda Song. On April 5, 2021, Song gave birth to the couple's son, named Dakota Song Culkin after Culkin's deceased sister. Shortly after his son's birth, comments Culkin made on a 2018 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience about his relationship with Song resurfaced, which were criticized for stereotyping Asians. In the interview, Culkin joked about the shape of Song's eyes, their interracial relationship, and the appearance of their potential future children. He argued that he was entitled to make Asian jokes because of his relationship with Song, and because of his future fatherhood to multiracial children, stating that he would "understand the struggle". Friendship with Michael Jackson Around the time of the first Home Alone movie, Culkin became friends with pop singer Michael Jackson and appeared in Jackson's 1991 "Black or White" music video. In 2005, at Jackson's trial for sexual child abuse, Culkin testified that he had slept in bed with Jackson but that he was never molested. Culkin dismissed the allegations against Jackson as "absolutely ridiculous". Culkin attended Jackson's burial on September 3, 2009. Culkin is also the godfather of Jackson's children Paris Jackson, Prince and Michael Jr. Culkin has consistently defended Jackson against allegations of child molestation, saying in a 2020 interview with Esquire magazine: "I never saw anything; he never did anything". Awards and nominations Notes References Bibliography Holmstrom, John. The Moving Picture Boy: An International Encyclopaedia from 1895 to 1995, Norwich, Michael Russell, 1996, p. 398. External links 1980 births Living people 20th-century American male actors 21st-century American male actors 21st-century American male musicians American male ballet dancers American male child actors American male film actors American male stage actors American male television actors American male voice actors American male web series actors American men podcasters American podcasters American people of Irish descent Catholics from New York (state) Male actors from New York (state) Male actors from New York City Musicians from New York City Theatre World Award winners
false
[ "A gift suite is a location where companies give products to celebrities in exchange for the celebrity taking a photo with the product or on a red carpet while standing in front of a press wall displaying company logos\n\nCompanies that are trying to build brand recognition or maintain a premier position in the market like to be associated with celebrities and other persons with significant social status. Fans of a celebrity are likely to look favorably on products or services associated with that person. The concept of the gifting suite dates back to the 1990s, created to service presenters and performers backstage at award shows.\n\nMost gifting suites take place in Hollywood during award weeks. During the week before these shows, there are often up to ten gifting suites operating independently from the event itself. During other award weeks like the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild Awards and the VMAs there will also be gifting suites, but they are typically fewer.\n\nOfficial gifting suites are contracted by award shows and Hollywood events and exist in a location on-site and backstage. They work in an official capacity with the show's production and talent. Events like the Oscars, Screen Actors Guild Awards, and Golden Globes do not currently host any official gifting suites at their events.\n\nReferences\n\nPromotion and marketing communications", "The third season of Australia's I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here, which was commissioned by Network Ten on 1 August 2016, premiered on 29 January 2017. Casey Donovan won the series, beating Natalie Bassingthwaighte and footballer Dane Swan, and was crowned the first ever \"Queen of the Jungle\", the $100,000 prize money, was won for her selected charity, the Starlight Children's Foundation .\n\nCelebrities\n\nCelebrity guests\n\nResults and elimination\n Indicates that the celebrity received the most votes from the public\n Indicates that the celebrity was immune from the vote\n Indicates that the celebrity was named as being in the bottom 2, 3\n Indicates that the celebrity received the fewest votes and was eliminated immediately (no bottom three)\n\nTucker Trials\n\nThe contestants take part in daily trials to earn food. These trials aim to test both physical and mental abilities. Success is usually determined by the number of stars collected during the trial, with each star representing a meal earned by the winning contestant for their camp mates.\n\n The public voted for who they wanted to face the trial\n The contestants decided who did which trial\n The trial was compulsory and neither the public nor celebrities decided who took part \n The contestants were chosen by the evicted celebrities\n The voting for the trial was of dual origin - see note for details.\n\nNotes\nThe winning team of this tucker trial received; the quickest way into camp, their choice of bed in the camp & a pillow.\nTom was voted by Australia to do this Tucker Trial but was told six people are involved in it and he had to choose the other five to join him.\nCasey & Ash had to decide which celebrities would be involved in this Tucker Trial.\nThis trial was used in the second season of the show with Laurina Fleure also winning 12/12 stars, however, this time two celebrities competed with double the number of snakes.\nDuring the trial, they failed one meal but succeeded in the rest giving them 10/11 stars, but were given the option to have Chris Brown & Osher Günsberg to have an extra meal, they accepted and Chris & Osher succeeded in this, which gave them the 11th star.\nAs a new celebrity, Keira was automatically placed in the trial. Voting took place for a second celebrity to join her in the trial. Australia voted for Dane to be a part of the trial.\nThe trial involved 2 celebrities versing each other throughout 6 rounds, the celebrity who wins went into the winners circle and the celebrity that lost went into the losers circle, ending with 6 celebrities in each group. The winners received a share in a family meat pie with tomato sauce & quickest way into camp, whilst the losers only received beans and rice.\nKeira & Steve got to choose a celebrity to join them as support (Steve chose Ash, Keira chose Lisa). In the trial, Steve & Keira would face-off against each other. The winner would return to camp with 10 stars while the celebrity that loses the trial, and their supporter, would be exiled to Skull Cave.\nEven though they won six stars during this trial, the stars became null and void after their dinner was provided by fast food restaurant KFC.\nThis was the first trial to be done at night.\nThis trial was a quiz, it did not involve the remaining celebrities but the evicted celebrities instead, each of the celebrities had to individually give an answer to a question from a category (e.g. Sport, Movies etc.), if the answer was correct the remaining celebrities would receive half a star. five out of nine celebrities answered correctly.\nthis was Nazeem's 14th tucker trial, making him the current world record holder for the most bushtucker trials competed by a person.\n\nCelebrity Chest Challenges\n\nTwo or more celebrities are chosen to take part in the \"Celebrity Chest\" challenge to win luxuries for camp. Each challenge involves completing a task to win a chest to take back to camp. However, to win the luxury item in the chest, the campmates must correctly answer a question. If they fail to answer correctly, the luxury item is forfeited and a joke prize is won. The luxury item is \"donated\" by a celebrity from the outside.\n\n The celebrities got the question correct\n The celebrities got the question wrong\n\nSkull Cave\nTwo or more celebrities are chosen to spend the night in the \"Skull Cave\", where they have no bed, bean & rice rations only and no contact with the other celebrities. If the celebrities successfully spend the entire night in the cave they will win a prize for the camp.\n\n The celebrities stayed the entire night\n The celebrities did not stay the night\n Saved from staying in the cave\n\nIn the first trial, there were two teams, in the trial the prize included pillows for the winning teams celebrities, Ash & Casey's team did not win and this was their second chance to win pillows for their team\n As a result, for losing the twentieth trial, Steve & his supporter Ash were exiled to Skull Cave. However, in a twist, the 10 campers were told they could save Ash & Steve from the Skull Cave but forfeit the 10 stars or let them stay there and receive them. The celebrities saved Ash & Steve from Skull Cave and forfeited their stars.\n\nCamp Leader\nEach celebrity in camp must vote for who they want to be Camp Leader, the celebrity who receives the most votes becomes the new Camp Leader\n Voted in as Camp Leader\n\nRatings\n\nRatings data is from OzTAM and represents the live and same day average viewership from the 5 largest Australian metropolitan centres (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide).\n\nReferences\n\n03\n2017 Australian television seasons" ]
[ "Macaulay Culkin", "1990-1994: Breakthrough", "What was his breakthrough?", "Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the highly successful blockbuster Christmas film, Home Alone", "Did he win any awards for the role?", "He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award for his role as Kevin McCallister.", "Did he have any other movies during this time?", "In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series, Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's \"Black or White\" music video.", "Did he work with any other celebrities?", "My Girl (1991), for which he was nominated for Best On-Screen Duo and won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, with Anna Chlumsky." ]
C_1b38612e9c364bec9d07835790b31f3f_1
Is there anything else interesting?
5
In addition to Culkin's work with different celebrities, is there anything else interesting about Culkin's career?
Macaulay Culkin
Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the highly successful blockbuster Christmas film, Home Alone (1990), where he was reunited with Uncle Buck writer and director John Hughes and Uncle Buck co-star John Candy, who played the role of Polka band member, Gus Polinski. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award for his role as Kevin McCallister. In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series, Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's "Black or White" music video. He starred as Thomas J. Sennett in the film, My Girl (1991), for which he was nominated for Best On-Screen Duo and won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, with Anna Chlumsky. He reprised his role of Kevin McCallister in the sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), for which he was nominated for a Kids' Choice Award. He played the role of Henry in the drama-thriller film, The Good Son (1993), which only did reasonably well (although he was nominated for MTV Movie Award in the category for Best Villain for his performance). He also appeared, while a student at the School of American Ballet, in a filmed version of The Nutcracker as the title role in 1993, which was staged by Peter Martins from the 1954 George Balanchine New York City Ballet version of the work. He was in the films, Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994) and Richie Rich (1994), which were all only mildly successful at the box office. CANNOTANSWER
He reprised his role of Kevin McCallister in the sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992
Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin (born Macaulay Carson Culkin; ) is an American actor and musician. Often regarded as one of the most successful child actors of the 1990s, he was placed 2nd on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Kid-Stars". Culkin rose to prominence as a child actor starring as Kevin McCallister in the first two films of the Home Alone film series (1990 and 1992), for which he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. He also starred in the films My Girl (1991), The Good Son (1993), The Nutcracker (1993), Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994), and Richie Rich (1994). Culkin took a break from acting in 1994. He returned in 2003 with a guest appearance on the television show Will & Grace and a role in the film Party Monster. He wrote an autobiography, Junior, which was published in 2006. In 2021, he starred in American Horror Story: Double Feature, the tenth season of the anthology series American Horror Story. In 2013, Culkin co-founded the New York comedy rock band the Pizza Underground, of which he was the vocalist; in 2016, Culkin stated that the Pizza Underground was splitting up and their next album would be their last. He is currently the publisher and CEO of Bunny Ears, a satirical pop culture website and podcast. He has also received an MTV Movie Award from three nominations, and a Young Artist Award. Early life Macaulay Carson Culkin was born on August 26, 1980, in New York City to Christopher Cornelius "Kit" Culkin, a former stage actor, and Patricia Brentrup, a native of North Dakota who met Kit in 1974 while working as a road traffic controller in Sundance, Wyoming. The couple soon relocated to Kit's native New York City, and gave birth to a total of seven children: Culkin's siblings include Shane ( 1976), Dakota (1979–2008), Kieran ( 1982), Quinn ( 1984), Christian ( 1987), and Rory ( 1989). He also had a paternal half-sister, Jennifer (born 1970), who died in 2000. His paternal aunt is actress Bonnie Bedelia. Culkin is of part-Irish descent. During Culkin's early childhood, the family lived together in a small apartment in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan, and struggled financially. His mother worked as a telephone operator and his father was a sacristan at a local Catholic church. Culkin was raised Roman Catholic and attended St. Joseph's School of Yorkville for five years before transferring to the Professional Children's School. Career 1980s Culkin began acting at age four. His early roles included a stage production of Bach Babies at the New York Philharmonic. He continued appearing in roles on stage, television and films throughout the 1980s. He made an appearance in the TV movie The Midnight Hour (1985). In 1988, he appeared in an episode of the popular action television series The Equalizer, in which he played a kidnapping victim, Paul Gephardt. Culkin made his film debut as Cy Blue Black in the drama Rocket Gibraltar (1988). He played the role of Billy Livingstone in the romantic comedy film See You in the Morning (1989), starring Jeff Bridges, Alice Krige, Farrah Fawcett and Drew Barrymore. He starred as Miles Russell alongside actor John Candy in the comedy film Uncle Buck (1989). 1990s Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the blockbuster comedy film Home Alone (1990). The film reunited him with Uncle Buck writer and director John Hughes and Uncle Buck co-star John Candy, who played the role of Polka band member Gus Polinski. For his performance, Culkin was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award. In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series titled Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's "Black or White" music video. He starred as Thomas J. Sennett in the film My Girl (1991), for which he was nominated for Best On-Screen Duo, and won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, with Anna Chlumsky. Culkin was paid $4.5 million (compared to $110,000 for the original) for Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992). He played the role of Henry in the drama thriller film The Good Son (1993), which only did reasonably well, although he was nominated for an MTV Movie Award in the category for Best Villain for his performance. He was also a student at the School of American Ballet and appeared in a filmed version of The Nutcracker as the title role in 1993, which was staged by Peter Martins from the 1954 George Balanchine New York City Ballet version of the work. He was also in the films Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994) and Richie Rich (1994), which all performed poorly at the box office. Culkin grew tired of acting and retired after Richie Rich. Wanting a "normal life", he went to a private high school in Manhattan. In 1998, he appeared in the music video for the song "Sunday" by the rock band Sonic Youth. 2000s In 2000, Culkin returned to acting with a role in the play Madame Melville, which was staged in London's West End. In early 2003, he made a guest appearance on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace. His role as Karen Walker's deceptively immature divorce lawyer won him favorable reviews. Culkin headed back into motion pictures in 2003 with Party Monster, in which he played a role very different from those he was known for, that of party promoter Michael Alig, a drug user and murderer. He quickly followed that with a supporting part in Saved!, as a cynical wheelchair-using, non-Christian student in a conservative Christian high school. Though Saved! only had modest success at the box office, Culkin received positive reviews for his role in the film and its implications for a career as an adult actor. Culkin began doing voice-over work, with appearances in Seth Green's Robot Chicken. In 2006, he published an experimental, semi-autobiographical novel titled Junior, which talked about Culkin's stardom and his shaky relationship with his father. Culkin starred in Sex and Breakfast, a dark comedy written and directed by Miles Brandman. Alexis Dziena, Kuno Becker and Eliza Dushku also star in this story of a couple whose therapist recommends they engage in group sex. Shooting for the film, Culkin's first since Saved!, took place in September 2006. The film opened in Los Angeles on November 30, 2007, and was released on DVD on January 22, 2008, by First Look Pictures. Culkin's next project was a role in the thirteen-episode NBC television series Kings as Andrew Cross. In 2009, Culkin appeared in a UK-based commercial for Aviva Insurance (formerly Norwich Union) to help promote their company's rebranding. Culkin stared into the camera stating, "Remember me." On August 17, 2009, Culkin made a brief cameo appearance on WWE Raw at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri, following a "falls count anywhere" match between Hornswoggle and Chavo Guerrero Jr., in which Guerrero was defeated by the classic Home Alone gag of rigging a swinging paint can to hit him upon opening a door. Culkin appeared in the doorway and said, "That's not funny." In February 2010, Culkin appeared in an episode of Poppy de Villeneuve's online series for The New York Times, The Park. On March 7 of the same year, he appeared alongside actors Matthew Broderick, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, and Jon Cryer in a tribute to the late John Hughes at the Oscars. 2010s In April 2011, Culkin was featured in musician Adam Green's experimental film The Wrong Ferarri, which was entirely shot on an iPhone. In the same month, he also appeared in the music video for "Stamp Your Name on It" performed by Green's former bandmate Jack Dishel/Only Son. In September 2012, he appeared in a video on YouTube explaining how he turned his apartment in New York into a painting workshop. In December 2013, a viral video that Culkin co-produced and directed himself eating a cheese pizza was uploaded to YouTube, co-starring Phoebe Kreutz. He was parodying Andy Warhol consuming a Burger King Whopper in Jørgen Leth's documentary 66 Scenes from America. Culkin was promoting the debut of his New York-based, pizza-themed comedy rock band The Pizza Underground. Their tour began in Brooklyn on January 24, 2014. In late May 2014, Culkin stormed off stage at Rock City during his kazoo solo after fans began booing and throwing pints of beer at the band. They subsequently cancelled the remaining UK shows, though they claimed the cancellation had nothing to do with the Rock City performance. On July 10, 2016, Culkin announced that The Pizza Underground was splitting up and their next album would be the last. In July 2016, Culkin appeared in a television advertisement for Compare the Market. In January 2018, Culkin launched a comedy website and podcast called Bunny Ears that parodied other celebrity-owned websites such as Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop. Since 2018, Culkin has been a frequent guest of RedLetterMedia, appearing in multiple episodes of their Best of the Worst, re:View, and Half in the Bag webseries, as well as Angry Video Game Nerd, where he appears as either himself, a character, or a parody of himself. In an advertisement for Google Assistant published on December 19, 2018, Culkin reprised his Home Alone role as Kevin McCallister after 28 years. It recreated scenes from the movie where McCallister shaved his face, jumped on the bed, and decorated the Christmas tree, all while asking Google Assistant to set reminders for him. The advertisement quickly went viral. In 2019, he had a role in Seth Green's movie Changeland with Brenda Song, which was released on June 7, 2019. 2020s Since 2021 Culkin is part of the starring cast of the series' tenth season, American Horror Story: Double Feature. His role in the season was critically praised. Personal life Culkin said his father, Kit Culkin, was cruel and violent in his childhood. He said he felt his father was jealous, because "everything he tried to do in his life I excelled at before I was 10 years old". Culkin's parents were never married; they split when Culkin was in his teens, and his mother filed for custody. Culkin took his parents to court to block them from controlling his trust fund, reportedly worth between $15 and 20 million. The media reported that Culkin had divorced or emancipated himself from his parents. In 2018, Culkin denied this, saying he had instead removed his parents' name from his trust fund and found an executor. He has been estranged from his father since. On May 10, 2000, Culkin's half-sister, Jennifer Adamson, died of a drug overdose. On December 10, 2008, his older sister, Dakota, died after being hit by a car. On September 17, 2004, Culkin was arrested in Oklahoma City for the possession of of marijuana and two controlled substances, of Alprazolam (Xanax) and of Clonazepam (Klonopin), for which he was briefly jailed and then released on $4,000 bail. After being arraigned in court for misdemeanor drug offenses, he pleaded not guilty at the trial (October 15, 2004 to June 9, 2005), but later reversed the plea to guilty. He received three one-year suspended prison sentences and was ordered to pay $540 in fees. In December 2018, Culkin announced that he would legally change his name to "Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin" after holding a vote through his website to choose a new middle name, with "Macaulay Culkin" winning the vote over four other candidates. In August 2020, on his 40th birthday, Culkin tweeted, "Hey guys, wanna feel old? I'm 40. You're welcome." The tweet became the ninth most-liked tweet of all time. Romantic relationships Culkin stated in a May 27, 2004 interview on Larry King Live that he tends to refrain from disclosing aspects of his personal life, though he discussed his life as a child actor, the conflict in his family life, including his estrangement from his father, and how he retired from acting at age 14. Culkin married actress Rachel Miner in 1998 when they were both 18, but they separated in 2000 and divorced in 2002. Culkin began dating actress Mila Kunis in May 2002. By 2006, he was living in New York, while Kunis was living in Los Angeles. On January 3, 2011, Kunis's publicist confirmed reports that Culkin and Kunis had ended their relationship several months previously, saying, "The split was amicable, and they remain close friends." Since 2013, Culkin has lived in Paris. As of October 2017, Culkin has been in a relationship with his Changeland co-star Brenda Song. On April 5, 2021, Song gave birth to the couple's son, named Dakota Song Culkin after Culkin's deceased sister. Shortly after his son's birth, comments Culkin made on a 2018 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience about his relationship with Song resurfaced, which were criticized for stereotyping Asians. In the interview, Culkin joked about the shape of Song's eyes, their interracial relationship, and the appearance of their potential future children. He argued that he was entitled to make Asian jokes because of his relationship with Song, and because of his future fatherhood to multiracial children, stating that he would "understand the struggle". Friendship with Michael Jackson Around the time of the first Home Alone movie, Culkin became friends with pop singer Michael Jackson and appeared in Jackson's 1991 "Black or White" music video. In 2005, at Jackson's trial for sexual child abuse, Culkin testified that he had slept in bed with Jackson but that he was never molested. Culkin dismissed the allegations against Jackson as "absolutely ridiculous". Culkin attended Jackson's burial on September 3, 2009. Culkin is also the godfather of Jackson's children Paris Jackson, Prince and Michael Jr. Culkin has consistently defended Jackson against allegations of child molestation, saying in a 2020 interview with Esquire magazine: "I never saw anything; he never did anything". Awards and nominations Notes References Bibliography Holmstrom, John. The Moving Picture Boy: An International Encyclopaedia from 1895 to 1995, Norwich, Michael Russell, 1996, p. 398. External links 1980 births Living people 20th-century American male actors 21st-century American male actors 21st-century American male musicians American male ballet dancers American male child actors American male film actors American male stage actors American male television actors American male voice actors American male web series actors American men podcasters American podcasters American people of Irish descent Catholics from New York (state) Male actors from New York (state) Male actors from New York City Musicians from New York City Theatre World Award winners
false
[ "\"How Interesting: A Tiny Man\" is a 2010 science fiction/magical realism short story by American writer Harlan Ellison. It was first published in Realms of Fantasy.\n\nPlot summary\nA scientist creates a tiny man. The tiny man is initially very popular, but then draws the hatred of the world, and so the tiny man must flee, together with the scientist (who is now likewise hated, for having created the tiny man).\n\nReception\n\"How Interesting: A Tiny Man\" won the 2010 Nebula Award for Best Short Story, tied with Kij Johnson's \"Ponies\". It was Ellison's final Nebula nomination and win, of his record-setting eight nominations and three wins.\n\nTor.com calls the story \"deceptively simple\", with \"execution (that) is flawless\" and a \"Geppetto-like\" narrator, while Publishers Weekly describes it as \"memorably depict(ing) humanity's smallness of spirit\". The SF Site, however, felt it was \"contrived and less than profound\".\n\nNick Mamatas compared \"How Interesting: A Tiny Man\" negatively to Ellison's other Nebula-winning short stories, and stated that the story's two mutually exclusive endings (in one, the tiny man is killed; in the other, he becomes God) are evocative of the process of writing short stories. Ben Peek considered it to be \"more allegory than (...) anything else\", and interpreted it as being about how the media \"give(s) everyone a voice\", and also about how Ellison was treated by science fiction fandom.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nAudio version of ''How Interesting: A Tiny Man, at StarShipSofa\nHow Interesting: A Tiny Man, at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database\n\nNebula Award for Best Short Story-winning works\nShort stories by Harlan Ellison", "In baseball, a fair ball is a batted ball that entitles the batter to attempt to reach first base. By contrast, a foul ball is a batted ball that does not entitle the batter to attempt to reach first base. Whether a batted ball is fair or foul is determined by the location of the ball at the appropriate reference point, as follows:\n\n if the ball leaves the playing field without touching anything, the point where the ball leaves the field;\n else, if the ball first lands past first or third base without touching anything, the point where the ball lands;\n else, if the ball rolls or bounces past first or third base without touching anything other than the ground, the point where the ball passes the base;\n else, if the ball touches anything other than the ground (such as an umpire, a player, or any equipment left on the field) before any of the above happens, the point of such touching;\n else (the ball comes to a rest before reaching first or third base), the point where the ball comes to a rest.\n\nIf any part of the ball is on or above fair territory at the appropriate reference point, it is fair; else it is foul. Fair territory or fair ground is defined as the area of the playing field between the two foul lines, and includes the foul lines themselves and the foul poles. However, certain exceptions exist:\n\n A ball that touches first, second, or third base is always fair.\n Under Rule 5.09(a)(7)-(8), if a batted ball touches the batter or his bat while the batter is in the batter's box and not intentionally interfering with the course of the ball, the ball is foul.\n A ball that hits the foul pole without first having touched anything else off the bat is fair.\n Ground rules may provide whether a ball hitting specific objects (e.g. roof, overhead speaker) is fair or foul.\n\nOn a fair ball, the batter attempts to reach first base or any subsequent base, runners attempt to advance and fielders try to record outs. A fair ball is considered a live ball until the ball becomes dead by leaving the field or any other method.\n\nReferences\n\nBaseball rules" ]
[ "Macaulay Culkin", "1990-1994: Breakthrough", "What was his breakthrough?", "Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the highly successful blockbuster Christmas film, Home Alone", "Did he win any awards for the role?", "He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award for his role as Kevin McCallister.", "Did he have any other movies during this time?", "In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series, Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's \"Black or White\" music video.", "Did he work with any other celebrities?", "My Girl (1991), for which he was nominated for Best On-Screen Duo and won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, with Anna Chlumsky.", "Is there anything else interesting?", "He reprised his role of Kevin McCallister in the sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992" ]
C_1b38612e9c364bec9d07835790b31f3f_1
Was that movie successful?
6
Was the movie Home Alone 2: Lost in New York successful?
Macaulay Culkin
Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the highly successful blockbuster Christmas film, Home Alone (1990), where he was reunited with Uncle Buck writer and director John Hughes and Uncle Buck co-star John Candy, who played the role of Polka band member, Gus Polinski. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award for his role as Kevin McCallister. In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series, Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's "Black or White" music video. He starred as Thomas J. Sennett in the film, My Girl (1991), for which he was nominated for Best On-Screen Duo and won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, with Anna Chlumsky. He reprised his role of Kevin McCallister in the sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), for which he was nominated for a Kids' Choice Award. He played the role of Henry in the drama-thriller film, The Good Son (1993), which only did reasonably well (although he was nominated for MTV Movie Award in the category for Best Villain for his performance). He also appeared, while a student at the School of American Ballet, in a filmed version of The Nutcracker as the title role in 1993, which was staged by Peter Martins from the 1954 George Balanchine New York City Ballet version of the work. He was in the films, Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994) and Richie Rich (1994), which were all only mildly successful at the box office. CANNOTANSWER
he was nominated for a Kids' Choice Award.
Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin (born Macaulay Carson Culkin; ) is an American actor and musician. Often regarded as one of the most successful child actors of the 1990s, he was placed 2nd on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Kid-Stars". Culkin rose to prominence as a child actor starring as Kevin McCallister in the first two films of the Home Alone film series (1990 and 1992), for which he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. He also starred in the films My Girl (1991), The Good Son (1993), The Nutcracker (1993), Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994), and Richie Rich (1994). Culkin took a break from acting in 1994. He returned in 2003 with a guest appearance on the television show Will & Grace and a role in the film Party Monster. He wrote an autobiography, Junior, which was published in 2006. In 2021, he starred in American Horror Story: Double Feature, the tenth season of the anthology series American Horror Story. In 2013, Culkin co-founded the New York comedy rock band the Pizza Underground, of which he was the vocalist; in 2016, Culkin stated that the Pizza Underground was splitting up and their next album would be their last. He is currently the publisher and CEO of Bunny Ears, a satirical pop culture website and podcast. He has also received an MTV Movie Award from three nominations, and a Young Artist Award. Early life Macaulay Carson Culkin was born on August 26, 1980, in New York City to Christopher Cornelius "Kit" Culkin, a former stage actor, and Patricia Brentrup, a native of North Dakota who met Kit in 1974 while working as a road traffic controller in Sundance, Wyoming. The couple soon relocated to Kit's native New York City, and gave birth to a total of seven children: Culkin's siblings include Shane ( 1976), Dakota (1979–2008), Kieran ( 1982), Quinn ( 1984), Christian ( 1987), and Rory ( 1989). He also had a paternal half-sister, Jennifer (born 1970), who died in 2000. His paternal aunt is actress Bonnie Bedelia. Culkin is of part-Irish descent. During Culkin's early childhood, the family lived together in a small apartment in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan, and struggled financially. His mother worked as a telephone operator and his father was a sacristan at a local Catholic church. Culkin was raised Roman Catholic and attended St. Joseph's School of Yorkville for five years before transferring to the Professional Children's School. Career 1980s Culkin began acting at age four. His early roles included a stage production of Bach Babies at the New York Philharmonic. He continued appearing in roles on stage, television and films throughout the 1980s. He made an appearance in the TV movie The Midnight Hour (1985). In 1988, he appeared in an episode of the popular action television series The Equalizer, in which he played a kidnapping victim, Paul Gephardt. Culkin made his film debut as Cy Blue Black in the drama Rocket Gibraltar (1988). He played the role of Billy Livingstone in the romantic comedy film See You in the Morning (1989), starring Jeff Bridges, Alice Krige, Farrah Fawcett and Drew Barrymore. He starred as Miles Russell alongside actor John Candy in the comedy film Uncle Buck (1989). 1990s Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the blockbuster comedy film Home Alone (1990). The film reunited him with Uncle Buck writer and director John Hughes and Uncle Buck co-star John Candy, who played the role of Polka band member Gus Polinski. For his performance, Culkin was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award. In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series titled Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's "Black or White" music video. He starred as Thomas J. Sennett in the film My Girl (1991), for which he was nominated for Best On-Screen Duo, and won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, with Anna Chlumsky. Culkin was paid $4.5 million (compared to $110,000 for the original) for Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992). He played the role of Henry in the drama thriller film The Good Son (1993), which only did reasonably well, although he was nominated for an MTV Movie Award in the category for Best Villain for his performance. He was also a student at the School of American Ballet and appeared in a filmed version of The Nutcracker as the title role in 1993, which was staged by Peter Martins from the 1954 George Balanchine New York City Ballet version of the work. He was also in the films Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994) and Richie Rich (1994), which all performed poorly at the box office. Culkin grew tired of acting and retired after Richie Rich. Wanting a "normal life", he went to a private high school in Manhattan. In 1998, he appeared in the music video for the song "Sunday" by the rock band Sonic Youth. 2000s In 2000, Culkin returned to acting with a role in the play Madame Melville, which was staged in London's West End. In early 2003, he made a guest appearance on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace. His role as Karen Walker's deceptively immature divorce lawyer won him favorable reviews. Culkin headed back into motion pictures in 2003 with Party Monster, in which he played a role very different from those he was known for, that of party promoter Michael Alig, a drug user and murderer. He quickly followed that with a supporting part in Saved!, as a cynical wheelchair-using, non-Christian student in a conservative Christian high school. Though Saved! only had modest success at the box office, Culkin received positive reviews for his role in the film and its implications for a career as an adult actor. Culkin began doing voice-over work, with appearances in Seth Green's Robot Chicken. In 2006, he published an experimental, semi-autobiographical novel titled Junior, which talked about Culkin's stardom and his shaky relationship with his father. Culkin starred in Sex and Breakfast, a dark comedy written and directed by Miles Brandman. Alexis Dziena, Kuno Becker and Eliza Dushku also star in this story of a couple whose therapist recommends they engage in group sex. Shooting for the film, Culkin's first since Saved!, took place in September 2006. The film opened in Los Angeles on November 30, 2007, and was released on DVD on January 22, 2008, by First Look Pictures. Culkin's next project was a role in the thirteen-episode NBC television series Kings as Andrew Cross. In 2009, Culkin appeared in a UK-based commercial for Aviva Insurance (formerly Norwich Union) to help promote their company's rebranding. Culkin stared into the camera stating, "Remember me." On August 17, 2009, Culkin made a brief cameo appearance on WWE Raw at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri, following a "falls count anywhere" match between Hornswoggle and Chavo Guerrero Jr., in which Guerrero was defeated by the classic Home Alone gag of rigging a swinging paint can to hit him upon opening a door. Culkin appeared in the doorway and said, "That's not funny." In February 2010, Culkin appeared in an episode of Poppy de Villeneuve's online series for The New York Times, The Park. On March 7 of the same year, he appeared alongside actors Matthew Broderick, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, and Jon Cryer in a tribute to the late John Hughes at the Oscars. 2010s In April 2011, Culkin was featured in musician Adam Green's experimental film The Wrong Ferarri, which was entirely shot on an iPhone. In the same month, he also appeared in the music video for "Stamp Your Name on It" performed by Green's former bandmate Jack Dishel/Only Son. In September 2012, he appeared in a video on YouTube explaining how he turned his apartment in New York into a painting workshop. In December 2013, a viral video that Culkin co-produced and directed himself eating a cheese pizza was uploaded to YouTube, co-starring Phoebe Kreutz. He was parodying Andy Warhol consuming a Burger King Whopper in Jørgen Leth's documentary 66 Scenes from America. Culkin was promoting the debut of his New York-based, pizza-themed comedy rock band The Pizza Underground. Their tour began in Brooklyn on January 24, 2014. In late May 2014, Culkin stormed off stage at Rock City during his kazoo solo after fans began booing and throwing pints of beer at the band. They subsequently cancelled the remaining UK shows, though they claimed the cancellation had nothing to do with the Rock City performance. On July 10, 2016, Culkin announced that The Pizza Underground was splitting up and their next album would be the last. In July 2016, Culkin appeared in a television advertisement for Compare the Market. In January 2018, Culkin launched a comedy website and podcast called Bunny Ears that parodied other celebrity-owned websites such as Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop. Since 2018, Culkin has been a frequent guest of RedLetterMedia, appearing in multiple episodes of their Best of the Worst, re:View, and Half in the Bag webseries, as well as Angry Video Game Nerd, where he appears as either himself, a character, or a parody of himself. In an advertisement for Google Assistant published on December 19, 2018, Culkin reprised his Home Alone role as Kevin McCallister after 28 years. It recreated scenes from the movie where McCallister shaved his face, jumped on the bed, and decorated the Christmas tree, all while asking Google Assistant to set reminders for him. The advertisement quickly went viral. In 2019, he had a role in Seth Green's movie Changeland with Brenda Song, which was released on June 7, 2019. 2020s Since 2021 Culkin is part of the starring cast of the series' tenth season, American Horror Story: Double Feature. His role in the season was critically praised. Personal life Culkin said his father, Kit Culkin, was cruel and violent in his childhood. He said he felt his father was jealous, because "everything he tried to do in his life I excelled at before I was 10 years old". Culkin's parents were never married; they split when Culkin was in his teens, and his mother filed for custody. Culkin took his parents to court to block them from controlling his trust fund, reportedly worth between $15 and 20 million. The media reported that Culkin had divorced or emancipated himself from his parents. In 2018, Culkin denied this, saying he had instead removed his parents' name from his trust fund and found an executor. He has been estranged from his father since. On May 10, 2000, Culkin's half-sister, Jennifer Adamson, died of a drug overdose. On December 10, 2008, his older sister, Dakota, died after being hit by a car. On September 17, 2004, Culkin was arrested in Oklahoma City for the possession of of marijuana and two controlled substances, of Alprazolam (Xanax) and of Clonazepam (Klonopin), for which he was briefly jailed and then released on $4,000 bail. After being arraigned in court for misdemeanor drug offenses, he pleaded not guilty at the trial (October 15, 2004 to June 9, 2005), but later reversed the plea to guilty. He received three one-year suspended prison sentences and was ordered to pay $540 in fees. In December 2018, Culkin announced that he would legally change his name to "Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin" after holding a vote through his website to choose a new middle name, with "Macaulay Culkin" winning the vote over four other candidates. In August 2020, on his 40th birthday, Culkin tweeted, "Hey guys, wanna feel old? I'm 40. You're welcome." The tweet became the ninth most-liked tweet of all time. Romantic relationships Culkin stated in a May 27, 2004 interview on Larry King Live that he tends to refrain from disclosing aspects of his personal life, though he discussed his life as a child actor, the conflict in his family life, including his estrangement from his father, and how he retired from acting at age 14. Culkin married actress Rachel Miner in 1998 when they were both 18, but they separated in 2000 and divorced in 2002. Culkin began dating actress Mila Kunis in May 2002. By 2006, he was living in New York, while Kunis was living in Los Angeles. On January 3, 2011, Kunis's publicist confirmed reports that Culkin and Kunis had ended their relationship several months previously, saying, "The split was amicable, and they remain close friends." Since 2013, Culkin has lived in Paris. As of October 2017, Culkin has been in a relationship with his Changeland co-star Brenda Song. On April 5, 2021, Song gave birth to the couple's son, named Dakota Song Culkin after Culkin's deceased sister. Shortly after his son's birth, comments Culkin made on a 2018 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience about his relationship with Song resurfaced, which were criticized for stereotyping Asians. In the interview, Culkin joked about the shape of Song's eyes, their interracial relationship, and the appearance of their potential future children. He argued that he was entitled to make Asian jokes because of his relationship with Song, and because of his future fatherhood to multiracial children, stating that he would "understand the struggle". Friendship with Michael Jackson Around the time of the first Home Alone movie, Culkin became friends with pop singer Michael Jackson and appeared in Jackson's 1991 "Black or White" music video. In 2005, at Jackson's trial for sexual child abuse, Culkin testified that he had slept in bed with Jackson but that he was never molested. Culkin dismissed the allegations against Jackson as "absolutely ridiculous". Culkin attended Jackson's burial on September 3, 2009. Culkin is also the godfather of Jackson's children Paris Jackson, Prince and Michael Jr. Culkin has consistently defended Jackson against allegations of child molestation, saying in a 2020 interview with Esquire magazine: "I never saw anything; he never did anything". Awards and nominations Notes References Bibliography Holmstrom, John. The Moving Picture Boy: An International Encyclopaedia from 1895 to 1995, Norwich, Michael Russell, 1996, p. 398. External links 1980 births Living people 20th-century American male actors 21st-century American male actors 21st-century American male musicians American male ballet dancers American male child actors American male film actors American male stage actors American male television actors American male voice actors American male web series actors American men podcasters American podcasters American people of Irish descent Catholics from New York (state) Male actors from New York (state) Male actors from New York City Musicians from New York City Theatre World Award winners
false
[ "Venu Thottempudi (born 4 June 1976) is an Indian film actor who primarily works in Telugu cinema. He has appeared in several successful Telugu films as a lead actor.\n\nCareer\nAfter finishing his engineering from Dharwad Engineering College, Thottempudi started pursuing acting as his career. For his first acting job, he was cast as the main lead in a movie directed by Bharathiraja. After a brief period of shooting, the movie was stalled and later cancelled due to production problems. To promote Thottempudi , his friend Venkata Shyamprasad formed S. P. Entertainments. Under this banner, in 1999 Thottempudi started his career with the movie Swayamvaram, directed by K. Vijaya Bhaskar. Co-starring Laya, the movie was very successful at the box-office and Thottempudi won a Nandi Special Jury Award for the movie. Thottempudi became well known for his dialogue delivery, timing, expressions and clear portrayal of emotions. In 2000, Thottempudi won at the boxoffice once again with Chiru Navvuto. G. Ramprasad, who earlier worked with B. Gopal as an assistant director, was roped in as the director for this movie. This movie co-starring Shaheen Khan was produced once again by S. P. Entertainments. Chiru Navvuto became one of the milestones in Thottempudi 's career.\n\nAfter a couple of successful films, Thottempudi received several offers. Later he appeared in a few unsuccessful films like Manasu Paddanu Kaani directed by Veeru and Veedekkadi Mogudandi? directed by E. V. V. Satyanarayana. He later bounced back with a couple of hits like Hanuman Junction directed by M. Raja and Pellam Oorelithe directed by S. V. Krishna Reddy. In 2003, his movie Kalyana Ramudu, co-starring Prabhu Deva and Nikita Thukral, was directed by G. Ram Prasad. He also starred in Cheppave Chirugali, directed by noted Tamil director, Vikraman. His next releases were Sadaa Mee Sevalo (2005) directed by Neelakanta, Bahumati directed by S. V. Krishna Reddy and Allare Allari directed by Muppalaneni Siva.\n\nIn 2007, his movie Yamagola Malli Modalayindi co-starring Srikanth, Meera Jasmine and Reemma Sen was released. This movie was successful at the box-office. In 2008, he was seen in a small yet vital role in the movie Chintakayala Ravi starring Venkatesh. In 2009 he was seen in Gopi Gopika Godavari directed by Vamsy and co-starring Kamalinee Mukherjee. In 2011, Thottempudi was seen in Dileep Polan's Mayagadu opposite Charmy Kaur. His next release was titled Ramachari and directed by Eshawar. He is paired with Kamalinee Mukherjee in this movie. Thottempudi was also seen in N. T. Rama Rao Jr.'s movie Dammu, directed by Boyapati Srinu. After 9 years Venu will be Seen in Ravi Teja's movie Ramarao on Duty, directed by Sarath Mandava.\n\nFilmography\n\nAwards and nominations\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nLiving people\nTelugu people\nTelugu male actors\nIndian male film actors\nMale actors from Hyderabad, India\n1976 births\nTelugu comedians\nIndian male comedians\nMale actors in Telugu cinema\n21st-century Indian male actors", "Sampan, also known as San-Ban, is a 1968 film which was the first feature directed, written and co-produced by Terry Bourke. The film was successful at the box office.\n\nPlot\nIn Hong Kong, the owner of a sampan has two sons, one good and one bad. One son falls in love with his stepmother.\n\nProduction\nThe script was written by Bourke, who was working as a journalist in Hong Kong, He met Gordon Mailloux who agreed to produce.\n\nRelease\nAccording to Mailoux, the film was the most successful movie made in Hong Kong that year. Bourke claimed the movie contained the first naked scene in Chinese cinema. It was banned in Taiwan.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n1968 films\nHong Kong films" ]
[ "Macaulay Culkin", "1990-1994: Breakthrough", "What was his breakthrough?", "Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the highly successful blockbuster Christmas film, Home Alone", "Did he win any awards for the role?", "He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award for his role as Kevin McCallister.", "Did he have any other movies during this time?", "In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series, Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's \"Black or White\" music video.", "Did he work with any other celebrities?", "My Girl (1991), for which he was nominated for Best On-Screen Duo and won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, with Anna Chlumsky.", "Is there anything else interesting?", "He reprised his role of Kevin McCallister in the sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992", "Was that movie successful?", "he was nominated for a Kids' Choice Award." ]
C_1b38612e9c364bec9d07835790b31f3f_1
What was his biggest role?
7
What was Culkin's biggest role?
Macaulay Culkin
Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the highly successful blockbuster Christmas film, Home Alone (1990), where he was reunited with Uncle Buck writer and director John Hughes and Uncle Buck co-star John Candy, who played the role of Polka band member, Gus Polinski. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award for his role as Kevin McCallister. In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series, Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's "Black or White" music video. He starred as Thomas J. Sennett in the film, My Girl (1991), for which he was nominated for Best On-Screen Duo and won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, with Anna Chlumsky. He reprised his role of Kevin McCallister in the sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), for which he was nominated for a Kids' Choice Award. He played the role of Henry in the drama-thriller film, The Good Son (1993), which only did reasonably well (although he was nominated for MTV Movie Award in the category for Best Villain for his performance). He also appeared, while a student at the School of American Ballet, in a filmed version of The Nutcracker as the title role in 1993, which was staged by Peter Martins from the 1954 George Balanchine New York City Ballet version of the work. He was in the films, Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994) and Richie Rich (1994), which were all only mildly successful at the box office. CANNOTANSWER
Kevin McCallister in the highly successful blockbuster Christmas film, Home Alone (1990),
Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin (born Macaulay Carson Culkin; ) is an American actor and musician. Often regarded as one of the most successful child actors of the 1990s, he was placed 2nd on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Kid-Stars". Culkin rose to prominence as a child actor starring as Kevin McCallister in the first two films of the Home Alone film series (1990 and 1992), for which he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. He also starred in the films My Girl (1991), The Good Son (1993), The Nutcracker (1993), Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994), and Richie Rich (1994). Culkin took a break from acting in 1994. He returned in 2003 with a guest appearance on the television show Will & Grace and a role in the film Party Monster. He wrote an autobiography, Junior, which was published in 2006. In 2021, he starred in American Horror Story: Double Feature, the tenth season of the anthology series American Horror Story. In 2013, Culkin co-founded the New York comedy rock band the Pizza Underground, of which he was the vocalist; in 2016, Culkin stated that the Pizza Underground was splitting up and their next album would be their last. He is currently the publisher and CEO of Bunny Ears, a satirical pop culture website and podcast. He has also received an MTV Movie Award from three nominations, and a Young Artist Award. Early life Macaulay Carson Culkin was born on August 26, 1980, in New York City to Christopher Cornelius "Kit" Culkin, a former stage actor, and Patricia Brentrup, a native of North Dakota who met Kit in 1974 while working as a road traffic controller in Sundance, Wyoming. The couple soon relocated to Kit's native New York City, and gave birth to a total of seven children: Culkin's siblings include Shane ( 1976), Dakota (1979–2008), Kieran ( 1982), Quinn ( 1984), Christian ( 1987), and Rory ( 1989). He also had a paternal half-sister, Jennifer (born 1970), who died in 2000. His paternal aunt is actress Bonnie Bedelia. Culkin is of part-Irish descent. During Culkin's early childhood, the family lived together in a small apartment in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan, and struggled financially. His mother worked as a telephone operator and his father was a sacristan at a local Catholic church. Culkin was raised Roman Catholic and attended St. Joseph's School of Yorkville for five years before transferring to the Professional Children's School. Career 1980s Culkin began acting at age four. His early roles included a stage production of Bach Babies at the New York Philharmonic. He continued appearing in roles on stage, television and films throughout the 1980s. He made an appearance in the TV movie The Midnight Hour (1985). In 1988, he appeared in an episode of the popular action television series The Equalizer, in which he played a kidnapping victim, Paul Gephardt. Culkin made his film debut as Cy Blue Black in the drama Rocket Gibraltar (1988). He played the role of Billy Livingstone in the romantic comedy film See You in the Morning (1989), starring Jeff Bridges, Alice Krige, Farrah Fawcett and Drew Barrymore. He starred as Miles Russell alongside actor John Candy in the comedy film Uncle Buck (1989). 1990s Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the blockbuster comedy film Home Alone (1990). The film reunited him with Uncle Buck writer and director John Hughes and Uncle Buck co-star John Candy, who played the role of Polka band member Gus Polinski. For his performance, Culkin was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award. In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series titled Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's "Black or White" music video. He starred as Thomas J. Sennett in the film My Girl (1991), for which he was nominated for Best On-Screen Duo, and won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, with Anna Chlumsky. Culkin was paid $4.5 million (compared to $110,000 for the original) for Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992). He played the role of Henry in the drama thriller film The Good Son (1993), which only did reasonably well, although he was nominated for an MTV Movie Award in the category for Best Villain for his performance. He was also a student at the School of American Ballet and appeared in a filmed version of The Nutcracker as the title role in 1993, which was staged by Peter Martins from the 1954 George Balanchine New York City Ballet version of the work. He was also in the films Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994) and Richie Rich (1994), which all performed poorly at the box office. Culkin grew tired of acting and retired after Richie Rich. Wanting a "normal life", he went to a private high school in Manhattan. In 1998, he appeared in the music video for the song "Sunday" by the rock band Sonic Youth. 2000s In 2000, Culkin returned to acting with a role in the play Madame Melville, which was staged in London's West End. In early 2003, he made a guest appearance on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace. His role as Karen Walker's deceptively immature divorce lawyer won him favorable reviews. Culkin headed back into motion pictures in 2003 with Party Monster, in which he played a role very different from those he was known for, that of party promoter Michael Alig, a drug user and murderer. He quickly followed that with a supporting part in Saved!, as a cynical wheelchair-using, non-Christian student in a conservative Christian high school. Though Saved! only had modest success at the box office, Culkin received positive reviews for his role in the film and its implications for a career as an adult actor. Culkin began doing voice-over work, with appearances in Seth Green's Robot Chicken. In 2006, he published an experimental, semi-autobiographical novel titled Junior, which talked about Culkin's stardom and his shaky relationship with his father. Culkin starred in Sex and Breakfast, a dark comedy written and directed by Miles Brandman. Alexis Dziena, Kuno Becker and Eliza Dushku also star in this story of a couple whose therapist recommends they engage in group sex. Shooting for the film, Culkin's first since Saved!, took place in September 2006. The film opened in Los Angeles on November 30, 2007, and was released on DVD on January 22, 2008, by First Look Pictures. Culkin's next project was a role in the thirteen-episode NBC television series Kings as Andrew Cross. In 2009, Culkin appeared in a UK-based commercial for Aviva Insurance (formerly Norwich Union) to help promote their company's rebranding. Culkin stared into the camera stating, "Remember me." On August 17, 2009, Culkin made a brief cameo appearance on WWE Raw at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri, following a "falls count anywhere" match between Hornswoggle and Chavo Guerrero Jr., in which Guerrero was defeated by the classic Home Alone gag of rigging a swinging paint can to hit him upon opening a door. Culkin appeared in the doorway and said, "That's not funny." In February 2010, Culkin appeared in an episode of Poppy de Villeneuve's online series for The New York Times, The Park. On March 7 of the same year, he appeared alongside actors Matthew Broderick, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, and Jon Cryer in a tribute to the late John Hughes at the Oscars. 2010s In April 2011, Culkin was featured in musician Adam Green's experimental film The Wrong Ferarri, which was entirely shot on an iPhone. In the same month, he also appeared in the music video for "Stamp Your Name on It" performed by Green's former bandmate Jack Dishel/Only Son. In September 2012, he appeared in a video on YouTube explaining how he turned his apartment in New York into a painting workshop. In December 2013, a viral video that Culkin co-produced and directed himself eating a cheese pizza was uploaded to YouTube, co-starring Phoebe Kreutz. He was parodying Andy Warhol consuming a Burger King Whopper in Jørgen Leth's documentary 66 Scenes from America. Culkin was promoting the debut of his New York-based, pizza-themed comedy rock band The Pizza Underground. Their tour began in Brooklyn on January 24, 2014. In late May 2014, Culkin stormed off stage at Rock City during his kazoo solo after fans began booing and throwing pints of beer at the band. They subsequently cancelled the remaining UK shows, though they claimed the cancellation had nothing to do with the Rock City performance. On July 10, 2016, Culkin announced that The Pizza Underground was splitting up and their next album would be the last. In July 2016, Culkin appeared in a television advertisement for Compare the Market. In January 2018, Culkin launched a comedy website and podcast called Bunny Ears that parodied other celebrity-owned websites such as Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop. Since 2018, Culkin has been a frequent guest of RedLetterMedia, appearing in multiple episodes of their Best of the Worst, re:View, and Half in the Bag webseries, as well as Angry Video Game Nerd, where he appears as either himself, a character, or a parody of himself. In an advertisement for Google Assistant published on December 19, 2018, Culkin reprised his Home Alone role as Kevin McCallister after 28 years. It recreated scenes from the movie where McCallister shaved his face, jumped on the bed, and decorated the Christmas tree, all while asking Google Assistant to set reminders for him. The advertisement quickly went viral. In 2019, he had a role in Seth Green's movie Changeland with Brenda Song, which was released on June 7, 2019. 2020s Since 2021 Culkin is part of the starring cast of the series' tenth season, American Horror Story: Double Feature. His role in the season was critically praised. Personal life Culkin said his father, Kit Culkin, was cruel and violent in his childhood. He said he felt his father was jealous, because "everything he tried to do in his life I excelled at before I was 10 years old". Culkin's parents were never married; they split when Culkin was in his teens, and his mother filed for custody. Culkin took his parents to court to block them from controlling his trust fund, reportedly worth between $15 and 20 million. The media reported that Culkin had divorced or emancipated himself from his parents. In 2018, Culkin denied this, saying he had instead removed his parents' name from his trust fund and found an executor. He has been estranged from his father since. On May 10, 2000, Culkin's half-sister, Jennifer Adamson, died of a drug overdose. On December 10, 2008, his older sister, Dakota, died after being hit by a car. On September 17, 2004, Culkin was arrested in Oklahoma City for the possession of of marijuana and two controlled substances, of Alprazolam (Xanax) and of Clonazepam (Klonopin), for which he was briefly jailed and then released on $4,000 bail. After being arraigned in court for misdemeanor drug offenses, he pleaded not guilty at the trial (October 15, 2004 to June 9, 2005), but later reversed the plea to guilty. He received three one-year suspended prison sentences and was ordered to pay $540 in fees. In December 2018, Culkin announced that he would legally change his name to "Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin" after holding a vote through his website to choose a new middle name, with "Macaulay Culkin" winning the vote over four other candidates. In August 2020, on his 40th birthday, Culkin tweeted, "Hey guys, wanna feel old? I'm 40. You're welcome." The tweet became the ninth most-liked tweet of all time. Romantic relationships Culkin stated in a May 27, 2004 interview on Larry King Live that he tends to refrain from disclosing aspects of his personal life, though he discussed his life as a child actor, the conflict in his family life, including his estrangement from his father, and how he retired from acting at age 14. Culkin married actress Rachel Miner in 1998 when they were both 18, but they separated in 2000 and divorced in 2002. Culkin began dating actress Mila Kunis in May 2002. By 2006, he was living in New York, while Kunis was living in Los Angeles. On January 3, 2011, Kunis's publicist confirmed reports that Culkin and Kunis had ended their relationship several months previously, saying, "The split was amicable, and they remain close friends." Since 2013, Culkin has lived in Paris. As of October 2017, Culkin has been in a relationship with his Changeland co-star Brenda Song. On April 5, 2021, Song gave birth to the couple's son, named Dakota Song Culkin after Culkin's deceased sister. Shortly after his son's birth, comments Culkin made on a 2018 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience about his relationship with Song resurfaced, which were criticized for stereotyping Asians. In the interview, Culkin joked about the shape of Song's eyes, their interracial relationship, and the appearance of their potential future children. He argued that he was entitled to make Asian jokes because of his relationship with Song, and because of his future fatherhood to multiracial children, stating that he would "understand the struggle". Friendship with Michael Jackson Around the time of the first Home Alone movie, Culkin became friends with pop singer Michael Jackson and appeared in Jackson's 1991 "Black or White" music video. In 2005, at Jackson's trial for sexual child abuse, Culkin testified that he had slept in bed with Jackson but that he was never molested. Culkin dismissed the allegations against Jackson as "absolutely ridiculous". Culkin attended Jackson's burial on September 3, 2009. Culkin is also the godfather of Jackson's children Paris Jackson, Prince and Michael Jr. Culkin has consistently defended Jackson against allegations of child molestation, saying in a 2020 interview with Esquire magazine: "I never saw anything; he never did anything". Awards and nominations Notes References Bibliography Holmstrom, John. The Moving Picture Boy: An International Encyclopaedia from 1895 to 1995, Norwich, Michael Russell, 1996, p. 398. External links 1980 births Living people 20th-century American male actors 21st-century American male actors 21st-century American male musicians American male ballet dancers American male child actors American male film actors American male stage actors American male television actors American male voice actors American male web series actors American men podcasters American podcasters American people of Irish descent Catholics from New York (state) Male actors from New York (state) Male actors from New York City Musicians from New York City Theatre World Award winners
false
[ "Mlađa Veselinović (21 April 1915 – 27 December 2012) was a Serbian actor and translator.\n\nBiography \nVeselinovic was born in Kragujevac, Serbia. He was a member of the Yugoslav Drama Theatre from its founding in 1947, and made his début in the theater play \"King Betajnove\". He has collaborated with the biggest names and directing made about what the role on the stage of the Yugoslav Drama Theater. He acted in the films The Magic Sword (1950), La tempesta (1950), Professor Kosta Vujic's Hat (1972), Otpisani (1974). He died, aged 97, in Belgrade.\n\nVeselinović married fellow Serbian actress Branka Veselinović in 1948, and they remained married until his death in 2012.\n\nSources\n\nExternal links \n \n\n1915 births\n2012 deaths\n20th-century Serbian male actors\nSerbian translators\nActors from Kragujevac\nSerbian male stage actors\nSerbian male film actors\n20th-century translators", "Dale Alan Midkiff (born July 1, 1959) is an American actor, best known for playing Louis Creed in the horror film Pet Sematary (1989) and Captain Darien Lambert in the TV series Time Trax.\n\nCareer\n\nMidkiff acted in off-Broadway plays like Mark Medoff's The Wager. His first movie role was in Roger Corman's Streetwalkin' playing a pimp named Duke. Dale's acting was called \"grittily impressive\" in what some consider a B-movie classic. He has said in interviews that while his family never quite understood his interest in acting, they never discouraged him: \"I love them for allowing a kid to believe in his dreams.\"\n\nHis first major break came when he landed the role of the young Jock Ewing in Dallas: The Early Years. That was followed by what many consider his biggest role to date, Elvis Presley, in the four-hour miniseries, Elvis and Me, and by Dream Street, a short-lived \"blue collar\" series set in New Jersey. Midkiff's roles have run the gamut from the wife beater in A Cry For Help: The Tracey Thurman Story, to the \"good old boy\" cop who discovers his partner/best friend is a murderer in Vigilante Cop, to the heroic time-traveling fugitive retrieval cop in Time Trax, to the amiable ladies' man and town protector in The Magnificent Seven. He is also well known for having played the lead role of Louis Creed in the 1989 film version of Stephen King's Pet Sematary.\n\nFilmography\n\nVideo games\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n1959 births\nAmerican male film actors\nAmerican male musical theatre actors\nAmerican male television actors\nLiving people\nMale actors from Maryland\n20th-century American male actors" ]
[ "Macaulay Culkin", "1990-1994: Breakthrough", "What was his breakthrough?", "Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the highly successful blockbuster Christmas film, Home Alone", "Did he win any awards for the role?", "He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award for his role as Kevin McCallister.", "Did he have any other movies during this time?", "In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series, Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's \"Black or White\" music video.", "Did he work with any other celebrities?", "My Girl (1991), for which he was nominated for Best On-Screen Duo and won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, with Anna Chlumsky.", "Is there anything else interesting?", "He reprised his role of Kevin McCallister in the sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992", "Was that movie successful?", "he was nominated for a Kids' Choice Award.", "What was his biggest role?", "Kevin McCallister in the highly successful blockbuster Christmas film, Home Alone (1990)," ]
C_1b38612e9c364bec9d07835790b31f3f_1
What was Home Alone about?
8
What was the film Home Alone (1990) about?
Macaulay Culkin
Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the highly successful blockbuster Christmas film, Home Alone (1990), where he was reunited with Uncle Buck writer and director John Hughes and Uncle Buck co-star John Candy, who played the role of Polka band member, Gus Polinski. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award for his role as Kevin McCallister. In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series, Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's "Black or White" music video. He starred as Thomas J. Sennett in the film, My Girl (1991), for which he was nominated for Best On-Screen Duo and won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, with Anna Chlumsky. He reprised his role of Kevin McCallister in the sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), for which he was nominated for a Kids' Choice Award. He played the role of Henry in the drama-thriller film, The Good Son (1993), which only did reasonably well (although he was nominated for MTV Movie Award in the category for Best Villain for his performance). He also appeared, while a student at the School of American Ballet, in a filmed version of The Nutcracker as the title role in 1993, which was staged by Peter Martins from the 1954 George Balanchine New York City Ballet version of the work. He was in the films, Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994) and Richie Rich (1994), which were all only mildly successful at the box office. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin (born Macaulay Carson Culkin; ) is an American actor and musician. Often regarded as one of the most successful child actors of the 1990s, he was placed 2nd on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Kid-Stars". Culkin rose to prominence as a child actor starring as Kevin McCallister in the first two films of the Home Alone film series (1990 and 1992), for which he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. He also starred in the films My Girl (1991), The Good Son (1993), The Nutcracker (1993), Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994), and Richie Rich (1994). Culkin took a break from acting in 1994. He returned in 2003 with a guest appearance on the television show Will & Grace and a role in the film Party Monster. He wrote an autobiography, Junior, which was published in 2006. In 2021, he starred in American Horror Story: Double Feature, the tenth season of the anthology series American Horror Story. In 2013, Culkin co-founded the New York comedy rock band the Pizza Underground, of which he was the vocalist; in 2016, Culkin stated that the Pizza Underground was splitting up and their next album would be their last. He is currently the publisher and CEO of Bunny Ears, a satirical pop culture website and podcast. He has also received an MTV Movie Award from three nominations, and a Young Artist Award. Early life Macaulay Carson Culkin was born on August 26, 1980, in New York City to Christopher Cornelius "Kit" Culkin, a former stage actor, and Patricia Brentrup, a native of North Dakota who met Kit in 1974 while working as a road traffic controller in Sundance, Wyoming. The couple soon relocated to Kit's native New York City, and gave birth to a total of seven children: Culkin's siblings include Shane ( 1976), Dakota (1979–2008), Kieran ( 1982), Quinn ( 1984), Christian ( 1987), and Rory ( 1989). He also had a paternal half-sister, Jennifer (born 1970), who died in 2000. His paternal aunt is actress Bonnie Bedelia. Culkin is of part-Irish descent. During Culkin's early childhood, the family lived together in a small apartment in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan, and struggled financially. His mother worked as a telephone operator and his father was a sacristan at a local Catholic church. Culkin was raised Roman Catholic and attended St. Joseph's School of Yorkville for five years before transferring to the Professional Children's School. Career 1980s Culkin began acting at age four. His early roles included a stage production of Bach Babies at the New York Philharmonic. He continued appearing in roles on stage, television and films throughout the 1980s. He made an appearance in the TV movie The Midnight Hour (1985). In 1988, he appeared in an episode of the popular action television series The Equalizer, in which he played a kidnapping victim, Paul Gephardt. Culkin made his film debut as Cy Blue Black in the drama Rocket Gibraltar (1988). He played the role of Billy Livingstone in the romantic comedy film See You in the Morning (1989), starring Jeff Bridges, Alice Krige, Farrah Fawcett and Drew Barrymore. He starred as Miles Russell alongside actor John Candy in the comedy film Uncle Buck (1989). 1990s Culkin rose to fame with his lead role of Kevin McCallister in the blockbuster comedy film Home Alone (1990). The film reunited him with Uncle Buck writer and director John Hughes and Uncle Buck co-star John Candy, who played the role of Polka band member Gus Polinski. For his performance, Culkin was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and won an American Comedy Award and a Young Artist Award. In 1991, Culkin starred in an animated Saturday morning cartoon television series titled Wish Kid, hosted Saturday Night Live and starred in Michael Jackson's "Black or White" music video. He starred as Thomas J. Sennett in the film My Girl (1991), for which he was nominated for Best On-Screen Duo, and won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, with Anna Chlumsky. Culkin was paid $4.5 million (compared to $110,000 for the original) for Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992). He played the role of Henry in the drama thriller film The Good Son (1993), which only did reasonably well, although he was nominated for an MTV Movie Award in the category for Best Villain for his performance. He was also a student at the School of American Ballet and appeared in a filmed version of The Nutcracker as the title role in 1993, which was staged by Peter Martins from the 1954 George Balanchine New York City Ballet version of the work. He was also in the films Getting Even with Dad (1994), The Pagemaster (1994) and Richie Rich (1994), which all performed poorly at the box office. Culkin grew tired of acting and retired after Richie Rich. Wanting a "normal life", he went to a private high school in Manhattan. In 1998, he appeared in the music video for the song "Sunday" by the rock band Sonic Youth. 2000s In 2000, Culkin returned to acting with a role in the play Madame Melville, which was staged in London's West End. In early 2003, he made a guest appearance on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace. His role as Karen Walker's deceptively immature divorce lawyer won him favorable reviews. Culkin headed back into motion pictures in 2003 with Party Monster, in which he played a role very different from those he was known for, that of party promoter Michael Alig, a drug user and murderer. He quickly followed that with a supporting part in Saved!, as a cynical wheelchair-using, non-Christian student in a conservative Christian high school. Though Saved! only had modest success at the box office, Culkin received positive reviews for his role in the film and its implications for a career as an adult actor. Culkin began doing voice-over work, with appearances in Seth Green's Robot Chicken. In 2006, he published an experimental, semi-autobiographical novel titled Junior, which talked about Culkin's stardom and his shaky relationship with his father. Culkin starred in Sex and Breakfast, a dark comedy written and directed by Miles Brandman. Alexis Dziena, Kuno Becker and Eliza Dushku also star in this story of a couple whose therapist recommends they engage in group sex. Shooting for the film, Culkin's first since Saved!, took place in September 2006. The film opened in Los Angeles on November 30, 2007, and was released on DVD on January 22, 2008, by First Look Pictures. Culkin's next project was a role in the thirteen-episode NBC television series Kings as Andrew Cross. In 2009, Culkin appeared in a UK-based commercial for Aviva Insurance (formerly Norwich Union) to help promote their company's rebranding. Culkin stared into the camera stating, "Remember me." On August 17, 2009, Culkin made a brief cameo appearance on WWE Raw at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri, following a "falls count anywhere" match between Hornswoggle and Chavo Guerrero Jr., in which Guerrero was defeated by the classic Home Alone gag of rigging a swinging paint can to hit him upon opening a door. Culkin appeared in the doorway and said, "That's not funny." In February 2010, Culkin appeared in an episode of Poppy de Villeneuve's online series for The New York Times, The Park. On March 7 of the same year, he appeared alongside actors Matthew Broderick, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, and Jon Cryer in a tribute to the late John Hughes at the Oscars. 2010s In April 2011, Culkin was featured in musician Adam Green's experimental film The Wrong Ferarri, which was entirely shot on an iPhone. In the same month, he also appeared in the music video for "Stamp Your Name on It" performed by Green's former bandmate Jack Dishel/Only Son. In September 2012, he appeared in a video on YouTube explaining how he turned his apartment in New York into a painting workshop. In December 2013, a viral video that Culkin co-produced and directed himself eating a cheese pizza was uploaded to YouTube, co-starring Phoebe Kreutz. He was parodying Andy Warhol consuming a Burger King Whopper in Jørgen Leth's documentary 66 Scenes from America. Culkin was promoting the debut of his New York-based, pizza-themed comedy rock band The Pizza Underground. Their tour began in Brooklyn on January 24, 2014. In late May 2014, Culkin stormed off stage at Rock City during his kazoo solo after fans began booing and throwing pints of beer at the band. They subsequently cancelled the remaining UK shows, though they claimed the cancellation had nothing to do with the Rock City performance. On July 10, 2016, Culkin announced that The Pizza Underground was splitting up and their next album would be the last. In July 2016, Culkin appeared in a television advertisement for Compare the Market. In January 2018, Culkin launched a comedy website and podcast called Bunny Ears that parodied other celebrity-owned websites such as Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop. Since 2018, Culkin has been a frequent guest of RedLetterMedia, appearing in multiple episodes of their Best of the Worst, re:View, and Half in the Bag webseries, as well as Angry Video Game Nerd, where he appears as either himself, a character, or a parody of himself. In an advertisement for Google Assistant published on December 19, 2018, Culkin reprised his Home Alone role as Kevin McCallister after 28 years. It recreated scenes from the movie where McCallister shaved his face, jumped on the bed, and decorated the Christmas tree, all while asking Google Assistant to set reminders for him. The advertisement quickly went viral. In 2019, he had a role in Seth Green's movie Changeland with Brenda Song, which was released on June 7, 2019. 2020s Since 2021 Culkin is part of the starring cast of the series' tenth season, American Horror Story: Double Feature. His role in the season was critically praised. Personal life Culkin said his father, Kit Culkin, was cruel and violent in his childhood. He said he felt his father was jealous, because "everything he tried to do in his life I excelled at before I was 10 years old". Culkin's parents were never married; they split when Culkin was in his teens, and his mother filed for custody. Culkin took his parents to court to block them from controlling his trust fund, reportedly worth between $15 and 20 million. The media reported that Culkin had divorced or emancipated himself from his parents. In 2018, Culkin denied this, saying he had instead removed his parents' name from his trust fund and found an executor. He has been estranged from his father since. On May 10, 2000, Culkin's half-sister, Jennifer Adamson, died of a drug overdose. On December 10, 2008, his older sister, Dakota, died after being hit by a car. On September 17, 2004, Culkin was arrested in Oklahoma City for the possession of of marijuana and two controlled substances, of Alprazolam (Xanax) and of Clonazepam (Klonopin), for which he was briefly jailed and then released on $4,000 bail. After being arraigned in court for misdemeanor drug offenses, he pleaded not guilty at the trial (October 15, 2004 to June 9, 2005), but later reversed the plea to guilty. He received three one-year suspended prison sentences and was ordered to pay $540 in fees. In December 2018, Culkin announced that he would legally change his name to "Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin" after holding a vote through his website to choose a new middle name, with "Macaulay Culkin" winning the vote over four other candidates. In August 2020, on his 40th birthday, Culkin tweeted, "Hey guys, wanna feel old? I'm 40. You're welcome." The tweet became the ninth most-liked tweet of all time. Romantic relationships Culkin stated in a May 27, 2004 interview on Larry King Live that he tends to refrain from disclosing aspects of his personal life, though he discussed his life as a child actor, the conflict in his family life, including his estrangement from his father, and how he retired from acting at age 14. Culkin married actress Rachel Miner in 1998 when they were both 18, but they separated in 2000 and divorced in 2002. Culkin began dating actress Mila Kunis in May 2002. By 2006, he was living in New York, while Kunis was living in Los Angeles. On January 3, 2011, Kunis's publicist confirmed reports that Culkin and Kunis had ended their relationship several months previously, saying, "The split was amicable, and they remain close friends." Since 2013, Culkin has lived in Paris. As of October 2017, Culkin has been in a relationship with his Changeland co-star Brenda Song. On April 5, 2021, Song gave birth to the couple's son, named Dakota Song Culkin after Culkin's deceased sister. Shortly after his son's birth, comments Culkin made on a 2018 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience about his relationship with Song resurfaced, which were criticized for stereotyping Asians. In the interview, Culkin joked about the shape of Song's eyes, their interracial relationship, and the appearance of their potential future children. He argued that he was entitled to make Asian jokes because of his relationship with Song, and because of his future fatherhood to multiracial children, stating that he would "understand the struggle". Friendship with Michael Jackson Around the time of the first Home Alone movie, Culkin became friends with pop singer Michael Jackson and appeared in Jackson's 1991 "Black or White" music video. In 2005, at Jackson's trial for sexual child abuse, Culkin testified that he had slept in bed with Jackson but that he was never molested. Culkin dismissed the allegations against Jackson as "absolutely ridiculous". Culkin attended Jackson's burial on September 3, 2009. Culkin is also the godfather of Jackson's children Paris Jackson, Prince and Michael Jr. Culkin has consistently defended Jackson against allegations of child molestation, saying in a 2020 interview with Esquire magazine: "I never saw anything; he never did anything". Awards and nominations Notes References Bibliography Holmstrom, John. The Moving Picture Boy: An International Encyclopaedia from 1895 to 1995, Norwich, Michael Russell, 1996, p. 398. External links 1980 births Living people 20th-century American male actors 21st-century American male actors 21st-century American male musicians American male ballet dancers American male child actors American male film actors American male stage actors American male television actors American male voice actors American male web series actors American men podcasters American podcasters American people of Irish descent Catholics from New York (state) Male actors from New York (state) Male actors from New York City Musicians from New York City Theatre World Award winners
false
[ "Yes Yes Vindictive is the debut studio album from Australian indie rock/pop-punk band, Operator Please. It was released on 10 November 2007, and on 17 March 2008 in the UK under Virgin/EMI. The album features the singles \"Just a Song About Ping Pong\", \"Get What You Want\", \"Leave It Alone\" and \"Two for My Seconds\". The album was recorded in the Grove Studios on the New South Wales Central Coast with UK producer Simon Barnicott. It debuted and peaked at No. 28 on the Australian ARIA Albums Chart.\n\nAt the ARIA Music Awards of 2008, the album was nominated for two awards; ARIA Award for Breakthrough Artist – Album and ARIA Award for Best Pop Release.\n\nPromotion and touring\nThe album was released after the band had played some of the UK's biggest music festivals, including Leeds and Reading, which followed and Australian and New Zealand tours. Ashley McConnell said Operator Please were introduced to distortion pedals and synths during the making of the album.\n\nSingles\nThe lead single from the album was \"Just a Song About Ping Pong\", which was released in Australia on 28 July 2007. It debuted at number 15 on the Australian ARIA Singles Chart, before reaching its peak of 12. The song won the ARIA Award for Breakthrough Artist – Single at the ARIA Music Awards of 2007.\n\n\"Get What You Want\" was released on 27 October 2007 as the second single. The song peaked at number 27 in Australia.\n\n\"Leave It Alone\" was released as the third single on 19 November 2007 in the UK and on 25 February 2008 in Australia. The song peaked at number 62 in Australia.\n\n\"Two for My Seconds\", was released on 21 June 2008 as the fourth and final single. It debuted at No. 93 on the ARIA Singles Chart on 7 July based on downloads alone.\n\nTrack listing\n\nAustralian edition\n \"Zero! Zero!\" – 3:06\n \"Get What You Want\" – 3:49\n \"Leave It Alone\" – 3:38\n \"Cringe\" – 3:22\n \"Just a Song About Ping Pong\" – 2:18\n \"Two for My Seconds\" – 4:00\n \"6/8\" – 3:30\n \"Yes Yes\" – 2:54\n \"Other Song\" – 3:19\n \"Terminal Disease\" – 1:56\n \"Ghost\" – 3:21\n \"Pantomime\" – 4:28\n \"Rockinghorse\" (Australian physical album download bonus track) – 3:44\n \"One Yellow Button\" (iTunes bonus track)\n\nJapanese edition\n \"Zero Zero\"\n \"Get What You Want\"\n \"ピンポン!\" (Pinpon; \"Just a Song About Ping Pong\")\n \"Cringe\"\n \"Two for My Seconds\"\n \"Terminal Disease\"\n \"6/8\"\n \"Yes Yes Vindictive\"\n \"Other Song\"\n \"Ghost\"\n \"Leave It Alone\"\n \"Pantomime\"\n \"Crash Tragic\"\n \"Icicle\"\n \"One Yellow Button\"\n \"In Motion\"\n \"Leave It Alone\" (New Young Pony Club Remix)\n \"Leave It Alone\" (David E. Sugar Mix)\n \"ピンポン!\" (Pinpon; \"Just a Song About Ping Pong\" Kissy Sell Out's White Stallion Radio Edit)\n \"ピンポン!\" (Pinpon; \"Just a Song About Ping Pong\" music video)\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n2007 debut albums\nOperator Please albums", "\"Alone\" is a song by Norwegian record producer and DJ Alan Walker. Incorporating uncredited vocals provided by Swedish singer Noonie Bao, it was released commercially for digital download on 2 December 2016. A second part, a collaboration with Ava Max titled \"Alone, Pt. II\", was released on 27 December 2019.\n\nBackground\nIn a press release on 2 December, Walker stated: \"For me, Alone is about cohesion. A song that praises the feeling and comfort of solidarity. When I started making music it was never about to be any [particular], but about creating something for others who could enjoy it with me. What I have experienced by making music and sharing it with [others] are stunning.\"\n\nMusic video\nThe release of the music video for \"Alone\" was published on Walker's YouTube channel on 2 December 2016. It has over 1.2 billion views as of October 2021.\n\nThe music video explores themes of being alone yet quickly evolves into what seems to be a group effort by Walkers to meet up.\n\nMost of the video was filmed in Norway, focusing on Walker's hometown Bergen, and included panoramic shots of nearby tourist attractions such as Ulriken and Trolltunga in Odda. Some parts were also filmed at prominent locations in Europe, including Berlin, London and Paris.\n\nIn connection with the release of his third official single, he recorded the music video at Ulriken mountain in mid-October. For that, he sought and used over 100 Bergen citizens to supernumerary roles in the production, which was made by the Swedish production company Bror Bror.\n\nAlone (Restrung)\nOn 10 February 2017, Alan Walker published an acoustic version of \"Alone\", called \"Alone (Restrung)\", exactly one year after he published \"Faded (Restrung)\". The official lyric video to \"Restrung\" was released 16 February.\n\nTrack listing\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nCertifications\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\n2016 songs\n2016 singles\nNumber-one singles in Finland\nNumber-one singles in Norway\nMusic videos shot in Norway\nNumber-one singles in Austria\nSongs containing the I–V-vi-IV progression\nSongs written by Gunnar Greve\nSongs written by Jesper Borgen\nSongs written by Alan Walker (music producer)\nSongs written by Noonie Bao\nAlan Walker (music producer) songs\nSongs about loneliness\nSongs written by Mood Melodies" ]
[ "P.O.D.", "Murdered Love (2010-2013)" ]
C_90f470d2620e491f9950476e828090d1_0
What is Murdered Love?
1
What is Murdered Love by P.O.D.?
P.O.D.
The band headlined the first annual Spring Jam Fest in May 2011. They appeared on the Rock of Allegiance tour later that summer. On July 25, 2011, the band released a demo of the song "On Fire" as a free download on their official website. In October 2011, P.O.D. announced a multi-album artist deal with Razor & Tie. On April 5, 2012, the song "Eyez" became a free download on the band's website for a limited time. Shortly after, an article on their website stated that "Lost in Forever" would be the first single from the new album, entitled Murdered Love. Murdered Love was originally going to be released in June 2012, but was instead pushed back to July 10. The album was produced by Howard Benson, who also produced Satellite and The Fundamental Elements of Southtown. It was described by Curiel as "Back to our roots. A little bit of hip hop, a little bit of punk rock, or reggae". The band went on tour with Shinedown and Three Days Grace as an opening act. In a 2012 interview with Broken Records Magazine, Sandoval said that the band had to get their lives back in order and take care of personal needs before getting back into music, but was extremely happy about the response the band was getting from fans. On October 22, 2013, P.O.D. released a deluxe edition of Murdered Love. The album contains the original songs, slightly remixed, along with bonus tracks "Find a Way", "Burn It Down", acoustic versions of "Beautiful" and "West Coast Rock Steady", a remixed version of "On Fire", and music videos for "Murdered Love", "Beautiful", "Higher", and "Lost In Forever". Multiple behind the scenes videos were also on the track list. CANNOTANSWER
Murdered Love was originally going to be released in June 2012, but was instead pushed back to July 10.
Payable on Death is an American Christian metal band formed in 1992 and based in San Diego, California. The band's line-up consists of drummer and rhythm guitarist Wuv Bernardo, vocalist Sonny Sandoval, bassist Traa Daniels, and lead guitarist Marcos Curiel. They have sold over 12 million records worldwide. Over the course of their career, the band has received three Grammy Award nominations, contributed to numerous motion picture soundtracks and toured internationally. With their third studio album, The Fundamental Elements of Southtown, they achieved their initial mainstream success; the album was certified platinum by the RIAA in 2000. Their following studio album, Satellite, continued the band's success with the singles, "Alive" and "Youth of the Nation", pushing it to go triple platinum. History Early years (1991–1993) In 1991, friends Wuv Bernardo and Marcos Curiel engaged in jam sessions, with Bernardo playing the drums and Curiel covering guitar with no vocalist. Calling themselves Eschatos, they started playing at keg parties doing Metallica and Slayer cover songs. After his mother's fatal illness, Sonny Sandoval converted to Christianity and was asked by Bernardo, his cousin, to join the band as a way to keep his mind straight as mentioned on their DVD, Still Payin' Dues. They then recruited bassist Gabe Portillo and eventually changed their name to P.O.D. Snuff the Punk and Brown (1994–1998) After recording a demo tape, Traa Daniels joined the band in 1994 when they needed a bassist for some shows to replace Portillo. P.O.D. signed with Rescue Records, a label created by Bernardo's father, Noah Bernardo Sr., who was also the band's first manager. Between 1994 and 1997, they released three albums under the label, Snuff the Punk, Brown and Payable on Death Live. Longtime manager Tim Cook was first introduced to the band when he booked them to play his club The Where-House in Bartlesville, Oklahoma following strong local word of mouth support. He later described their performance by saying: "I stood at the back of the venue with tears in my eyes – it was the greatest thing I had ever seen." By that point, Bernardo Sr. was looking for someone else to take P.O.D.'s career further and so Cook took over as manager. Shortly after the release of Payable on Death Live, Essential Records offered P.O.D. a $100,000 recording contract, but on behalf of the band Sandoval told band manager Tim Cook to decline the offer because, "God has a bigger plan for P.O.D." When, in 1998, Atlantic Records A&R John Rubeli first came across P.O.D.'s demo he "didn't quite get it", as he later told HitQuarters. It was only when he saw them play live at The Roxy on the Sunset Strip and witnessed not just an enthusiastic audience singing every word but the center of a vibrant youth movement that he became convinced by the band. The band was quickly signed to a major-label deal. P.O.D. soon released The Warriors EP, a tribute EP to their loyal fans as a transitional album from Rescue Records to Atlantic Records. The Fundamental Elements of Southtown and Satellite (1999–2002) P.O.D.'s third studio album, 1999's The Fundamental Elements of Southtown, spawned the hits "Southtown" and "Rock the Party (Off the Hook)", which was their first video to reach No. 1 on MTV's Total Request Live. The song "School of Hard Knocks" was featured on the soundtrack for Little Nicky while both "Southtown" and "Rock the Party" appeared in the movie. All three music videos endured heavy play on MTV2 and the songs were rock radio hits. The album went on to become RIAA certified platinum. On September 11, 2001 P.O.D. released their fourth studio album, Satellite. The album's first single, "Alive", went on to become one of MTV's and MTV2's top played videos of the year. The video's popularity, as well as the song's positive message, helped the song become a huge modern rock radio hit and it was Grammy nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance in 2002. Also in 2002, the band contributed the song "America" to Santana's album Shaman. The album's second single, "Youth of the Nation", was influenced in part by the school shootings at Santana High School, Columbine High School, and Granite Hills High School. It was Grammy nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance in 2003. The 2002 singles, "Boom" and "Satellite", also became quite popular. In addition, the concluding track of the album, "Portrait," was Grammy nominated for Best Metal Performance in 2003. It was used in the comedy film Here Comes the Boom, starring Kevin James. Satellite went on to become RIAA-certified triple platinum. The author of Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music has described P.O.D. as "One of the biggest success stories in recent Christian music." Payable on Death and Testify (2003–2006) On February 19, 2003, guitarist Curiel left the band due to his side project, The Accident Experiment, and "spiritual differences." However, Curiel claimed that he was actually kicked out of the band. Curiel was replaced by Jason Truby, former member of Christian metal band Living Sacrifice, and assisted with the recording of "Sleeping Awake", from The Matrix Reloaded soundtrack. In an interview with Yahoo! Music, Sandoval stated that Truby is the reason why the group is still together. On November 4, 2003, P.O.D. released their fifth studio album, Payable on Death, which saw the group shift from their well-known rapcore sound to a darker, more melodic metal sound. The album was hit with controversy due to its "occult" cover, which led as many as 85% of Christian bookstores across the United States to ban the album. With the help of the album's hit single "Will You" and "Change the World", it went on to sell over 520,000 copies and was certified Gold. Sometime after the tsunami in Asia, many singers, musicians, and actors/actresses, including Sandoval and Bernardo, participated in the recording of, "Forever in Our Hearts", with all proceeds going to benefit the tsunami relief. P.O.D.'s sixth studio album Testify was slated for a December 2005 release, but was pushed back to January 24, 2006. On November 15, 2005, P.O.D. released The Warriors EP, Volume 2, which featured demos from the upcoming album, to help build up the fans' anticipation for the pending January release. The album's first single, "Goodbye for Now" (with a vocal tag by a then-unknown Katy Perry) went on to become a No. 1 video on MTV's TRL, along with having a solid radio presence, it also became the band's unprecedented 4th number one video on Total Request Live. The second single off the album, "Lights Out" was a minor hit, but was featured as the official theme song to WWE's Survivor Series 2005. In another contribution to WWE, they performed fellow San Diego native Rey Mysterio's theme song "Booyaka 619" at WrestleMania 22. To promote their latest album, P.O.D. went on a nationwide tour called the "Warriors Tour 2: Guilty by Association", which began in April, and included the bands Pillar, The Chariot and Maylene and the Sons of Disaster. On August 11, 2006, P.O.D. announced in their online newsletter that they had left Atlantic Records. On September 16, 2006, P.O.D. announced that they had teamed up with Rhino Records to release a greatest hits record simply titled, Greatest Hits: The Atlantic Years, which was released on November 21, 2006. They shot a music video for their single "Going In Blind", one of the two new songs they included in the tenth album, and they had meetings with various record labels to begin working on new material for an album they hoped to release in mid-2007. When Angels & Serpents Dance (2007–2009) In a statement made by the band's manager on their MySpace page, it was officially announced, on December 30, 2006, that Jason Truby had left the band. They had said "God worked it out because Truby decided to leave the band the same day Curiel asked to rejoin." Curiel performed with the band for the first time since his departure on the 2006 New Year's Eve episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!. On February 2, 2007, the band made a new record deal with INO Records. On June 1, 2007, at the Rockbox in San Diego, the band performed and revealed a new song entitled "Condescending", along with another new song performed on June 16, 2007, at the Journeys Backyard BBQ tour entitled "Addicted". They also revealed the title of their new album to be When Angels & Serpents Dance. On August 4, 2007, the band played at Angel Stadium of Anaheim's annual Harvest Crusade for a crowd of 42,000, where they revealed a new song, "I'll Be Ready", originally thought to be titled "When Babylon Come for I". The album cover was officially revealed on December 10, 2007. The title track was released for free download on their site in January 2008. The first single "Addicted" was released on February 19 and peaked at No. 30 on the Mainstream Rock chart. The album was released on April 8, 2008, entitled When Angels & Serpents Dance. On July 28, 2008, the group played a free public performance at the Orange County Choppers headquarters in Newburgh, NY, with OCC The Band opening. The band also played on August 16, 2008, at the Angel Stadium of Anaheim's annual Harvest Crusade. During September 2008 P.O.D played alongside Redline, Behind Crimson Eyes, Alter Bridge, and Disturbed as part of the Music As a Weapon tour 2008 in Australia. Murdered Love (2010–2013) The band headlined the first annual Spring Jam Fest in May 2011. They appeared on the Rock of Allegiance tour later that summer. On July 25, 2011, the band released a demo of the song "On Fire" as a free download on their official website. In October 2011, P.O.D. announced a multi-album artist deal with Razor & Tie. On April 5, 2012, the song "Eyez" became a free download on the band's website for a limited time. Shortly after, an article on their website stated that "Lost in Forever" would be the first single from the new album, entitled Murdered Love. Murdered Love was originally going to be released in June 2012, but was instead pushed back to July 10. The album was produced by Howard Benson, who also produced Satellite and The Fundamental Elements of Southtown. It was described by Curiel as "Back to our roots. A little bit of hip hop, a little bit of punk rock, or reggae". The album caused controversy concerning its eleventh track, "I Am", which uses the word "fuck" (albeit backmasked). Sandoval, explaining the purpose of the song, said, "being up close and personal with these kids, that's what came out in that song. I'm a man of faith and I'm a follower and a believer of Jesus Christ, and in talking to these kids, and even in talking to people just throughout my career in P.O.D., a lot of these bands and athletes and all these people that you meet, they don't have a problem with Jesus. They have a problem with people that are religious and claim to know Jesus, but aren't living it or acting it and aren't loving the way Jesus did. In my faith, if I believe that Jesus paid for the sins of the world, and I'm all these things, this is what's going on in the real world, and do you still love someone like me? And even though I know you do, and I believe in you, I believe in your forgiveness and your grace and your mercy, there's still so much confusion around me that everybody's getting in the way and trying to take your place. Everything gets in my way from seeing who Jesus was...We had that song for almost a year, and I didn't take it lightly. I'd been praying on it for over a year. I'd actually took counsel and let people hear it. And it was 50/50. Some people are like, you know what, go for it. Because my heart is like, I don't write music for Christians. I don't write music for people that I believe are saved and going to heaven. If it's a breath of you and encourages you and gives you a sense of power to go balls out for what you believe in, then by all means. But ultimately we're trying to reach people fed up with religion that are sick and tired of it, and people that are in the real world that really are lost and confused. Our music has always been a tool to bring hope to those people. I'm sorry we can't please everybody in the church, but ultimately in our faith, I believe you're taken care of. There are a lot of people that live in the real world that are out on the streets, that are prostituting themselves, that are being sexually abused, that are being murdered and killed, and it's an evil world. And sometimes you've got to just give them the truth flat out. And it might offend some people. Might offend a lot of people. But at the end of the day, if they understand it and they get it, and they allow God to speak straight into their soul, then I think it's worth the slap on the hand." The band went on tour with Shinedown and Three Days Grace as an opening act. In a 2012 interview with Broken Records Magazine, Sandoval said that the band had to get their lives back in order and take care of personal needs before getting back into music, but was extremely happy about the response the band was getting from fans. On October 22, 2013, P.O.D. released a deluxe edition of Murdered Love. The album contains the original songs, slightly remixed, along with bonus tracks "Find a Way", "Burn It Down", acoustic versions of "Beautiful" and "West Coast Rock Steady", a remixed version of "On Fire", and music videos for "Murdered Love", "Beautiful", "Higher", and "Lost In Forever". Multiple behind the scenes videos were also on the track list. SoCal Sessions, The Awakening and Circles (2014–present) In mid-2014, P.O.D. announced an acoustic album to be released toward the end of the year. The album was crowd-funded on the website PledgeMusic. On October 20, 2014, P.O.D. announced a new record deal with T-Boy Records along with a new acoustic album. SoCal Sessions was released on November 17, 2014, and contained songs such as "Alive" and "Youth of the Nation". The band followed that release with another studio album, The Awakening, released on August 21, 2015, which was produced by Howard Benson, with guest vocalists such as Maria Brink of In This Moment and Lou Koller of Sick of It All. On May 17, 2016, the band announced that they would be taking part in the Make America Rock Again super tour throughout the summer and fall 2016. The tour featured a number of artists who had success throughout the 2000s. On August 18, 2017, the band released a new song, "Soundboy Killa", and embarked on a fall tour promoting the song. In January 2018, it was announced that the band had signed a new record deal with Mascot Records. They toured alongside Alien Ant Farm, Lit, and Buckcherry on the "Gen-X Tour" in 2018. Their tenth studio album, Circles, was released on November 16, 2018. Their band were scheduled to start their Satellite Album 20th Anniversary tour in Sturgis, South Dakota at Buffalo Chip on August 14, 2021, and end on October 7, 2021, at the House of Blues in San Diego, California. Musical style and influences The band's name, Payable on Death (P.O.D.), derives itself from the banking term "Payable on Death". The band chose this name to be a direct tie in with the Christian theology that explains that since Jesus died on the Cross, Christians' debts to God have been paid for; in other words all believers, in their acceptance that Jesus was sacrificed for them on God's behalf, have inherited eternal life. P.O.D.'s style has evolved over the years, from the rap metal sound on their early albums to the nu metal and reggae-infused alternative metal styles for which they're most well known. The band's seventh album, When Angels & Serpents Dance, is a combination of alternative rock, reggae rock and Latin-influenced metal with almost none of the rap metal or nu metal sound of their older releases. P.O.D.'s influences include Boogie Down Productions, Run-DMC, U2, the Police, Bad Brains, Santana, Metallica, AC/DC, Suicidal Tendencies, Bob Marley, Primus, Earth, Wind & Fire, 24-7 Spyz, and Steel Pulse. Band members Current members Wuv Bernardo − drums, rhythm guitar, backing vocals (1992–present) Sonny Sandoval − lead vocals (1992–present) Traa Daniels − bass, backing vocals (1993–present) Marcos Curiel − lead guitar, programming, backing vocals (1992–2003, 2006–present) Former members Gabe Portillo − bass, backing vocals (1992–1993) Jason Truby − lead guitar, backing vocals <small>(Living Sacrifice) (2003–2006) Former touring musicians Tim Pacheco – backing vocals, percussion, trumpet, keyboards (2006) Luis Castillo – keyboards, backing vocals, percussion (2011–2016) Sameer Bhattacharya – keyboards, backing vocals (2016–2018) Jonny Beats – drums (February – March 2019, October – November 2019) Timeline Discography Snuff the Punk (1994) Brown (1996) The Fundamental Elements of Southtown (1999) Satellite (2001) Payable on Death (2003) Testify (2006) When Angels & Serpents Dance (2008) Murdered Love (2012) SoCal Sessions (2014) The Awakening (2015) Circles (2018) Awards American Music Awards 2003 - Favorite Contemporary Inspirational Artist (nomination) Echo Awards 2003 - International Alternative Group of the Year San Diego Music Awards 1999 - Best Hard Rock Artist 2000 - Best Hard Rock Artist Note: Album- and single-specific awards and nominations are listed under their respective articles. References External links American alternative metal musical groups American Christian metal musical groups Atlantic Records artists Christian alternative metal groups Christian rock groups from California Hard rock musical groups from California Musical groups established in 1992 Musical groups from San Diego Musical quartets Nu metal musical groups from California Rapcore groups P.O.D. Razor & Tie artists
true
[ "\"What Is Love\" is a song by Haddaway. \n\nWhat Is Love may also refer to:\n\nBooks\nWhat Is Love?, 1928 novel by E. M. Delafield\n What Is Love? (picture book), a 2021 picture book written by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Carson Ellis\n\nFilm and television\n Nishwartha Bhalobasa (What Is Love), a 2013 Bangladeshi film directed by Ananta Jalil\n What Is Love (TV series), 2012 Taiwanese series\n Just Only Love, a 2018 Japanese film also known as What Is Love?\n\nMusic\n\nAlbums\n What Is Love? (Andrea Marcovicci album), 1992\n What Is Love? (Never Shout Never album), 2010\n What Is Love? (Clean Bandit album), 2018\n What Is Love? (EP) by Twice, 2018\n\nSongs\n \"What Is Love?\", a song recorded by The Playmates, 1959\n \"What Is Love?\" (Howard Jones song), 1983\n \"What Is Love\" (En Vogue song), 1993\n \"What Is Love\", a song by Exo from the 2012 EP Mama\n \"What Is Love?\", a song by Irving Berlin\n \"(What Is) Love?\", a song by Jennifer Lopez from the 2011 album Love?\n \"What Is Love?\", a song by Dr. Nathaniel Irvin III and Roman Irvin, Janelle Monáe from soundtrack of Rio 2\n \"What Is Love\", a song by Take That from the 2008 album The Circus\n \"What Is Love?\", a song by Johnny \"Guitar\" Watson\n \"What Is Love?\", a song by Debbie Harry\n \"What Is Love?\", a song by Sound Tribe Sector 9\n \"What Is Love\", a single by Miriam Makeba from the 1967 album Pata Pata\n \"What Is Love?\" (Twice song), 2018\n \"What Is Love\" (V. Bozeman song), 2015\n\nSee also\n What's Love (disambiguation)", "\"The Night You Murdered Love\" is a song by English band ABC, released as the second single from their fourth studio album, Alphabet City (1987). It peaked at No. 31 on the UK Singles Chart.\n\nThe music video shows a homicidal fashion model carrying a slingshot and a skateboard stalking the band across the city of Paris.\n\nTrack listing\n\n7\" single\n\"The Night You Murdered Love\" – 4:53\n\"Minneapolis\" – 2:57\n\nUS 12\" single\nA1 \"The Night You Murdered Love\" (Sheer Chic Mix) – 6:31\nMixed by – The Funky Sisters, Pete Hammond\nA2 \"Minneapolis\" – 2:57\nB1 \"The Night You Murdered Love\" (The Whole Story) – 8:14\nRap [Featuring] – Contessa Lady V\nB2 \"The Night You Murdered Love\" (The Reply) – 4:50\nRap [Featuring] – Contessa Lady V\nB3 \"The Night You Murdered Love\" (Bonus Beats) – 4:53\n\nChart performance\n\nReferences\n\nABC (band) songs\n1987 singles\nSongs written by Mark White (musician)\nSongs written by Martin Fry\n1987 songs\nMercury Records singles" ]
[ "P.O.D.", "Murdered Love (2010-2013)", "What is Murdered Love?", "Murdered Love was originally going to be released in June 2012, but was instead pushed back to July 10." ]
C_90f470d2620e491f9950476e828090d1_0
Why was it pushed back?
2
Why was Murdered Love pushed back?
P.O.D.
The band headlined the first annual Spring Jam Fest in May 2011. They appeared on the Rock of Allegiance tour later that summer. On July 25, 2011, the band released a demo of the song "On Fire" as a free download on their official website. In October 2011, P.O.D. announced a multi-album artist deal with Razor & Tie. On April 5, 2012, the song "Eyez" became a free download on the band's website for a limited time. Shortly after, an article on their website stated that "Lost in Forever" would be the first single from the new album, entitled Murdered Love. Murdered Love was originally going to be released in June 2012, but was instead pushed back to July 10. The album was produced by Howard Benson, who also produced Satellite and The Fundamental Elements of Southtown. It was described by Curiel as "Back to our roots. A little bit of hip hop, a little bit of punk rock, or reggae". The band went on tour with Shinedown and Three Days Grace as an opening act. In a 2012 interview with Broken Records Magazine, Sandoval said that the band had to get their lives back in order and take care of personal needs before getting back into music, but was extremely happy about the response the band was getting from fans. On October 22, 2013, P.O.D. released a deluxe edition of Murdered Love. The album contains the original songs, slightly remixed, along with bonus tracks "Find a Way", "Burn It Down", acoustic versions of "Beautiful" and "West Coast Rock Steady", a remixed version of "On Fire", and music videos for "Murdered Love", "Beautiful", "Higher", and "Lost In Forever". Multiple behind the scenes videos were also on the track list. CANNOTANSWER
In a 2012 interview with Broken Records Magazine, Sandoval said that the band had to get their lives back in order and take care of personal needs
Payable on Death is an American Christian metal band formed in 1992 and based in San Diego, California. The band's line-up consists of drummer and rhythm guitarist Wuv Bernardo, vocalist Sonny Sandoval, bassist Traa Daniels, and lead guitarist Marcos Curiel. They have sold over 12 million records worldwide. Over the course of their career, the band has received three Grammy Award nominations, contributed to numerous motion picture soundtracks and toured internationally. With their third studio album, The Fundamental Elements of Southtown, they achieved their initial mainstream success; the album was certified platinum by the RIAA in 2000. Their following studio album, Satellite, continued the band's success with the singles, "Alive" and "Youth of the Nation", pushing it to go triple platinum. History Early years (1991–1993) In 1991, friends Wuv Bernardo and Marcos Curiel engaged in jam sessions, with Bernardo playing the drums and Curiel covering guitar with no vocalist. Calling themselves Eschatos, they started playing at keg parties doing Metallica and Slayer cover songs. After his mother's fatal illness, Sonny Sandoval converted to Christianity and was asked by Bernardo, his cousin, to join the band as a way to keep his mind straight as mentioned on their DVD, Still Payin' Dues. They then recruited bassist Gabe Portillo and eventually changed their name to P.O.D. Snuff the Punk and Brown (1994–1998) After recording a demo tape, Traa Daniels joined the band in 1994 when they needed a bassist for some shows to replace Portillo. P.O.D. signed with Rescue Records, a label created by Bernardo's father, Noah Bernardo Sr., who was also the band's first manager. Between 1994 and 1997, they released three albums under the label, Snuff the Punk, Brown and Payable on Death Live. Longtime manager Tim Cook was first introduced to the band when he booked them to play his club The Where-House in Bartlesville, Oklahoma following strong local word of mouth support. He later described their performance by saying: "I stood at the back of the venue with tears in my eyes – it was the greatest thing I had ever seen." By that point, Bernardo Sr. was looking for someone else to take P.O.D.'s career further and so Cook took over as manager. Shortly after the release of Payable on Death Live, Essential Records offered P.O.D. a $100,000 recording contract, but on behalf of the band Sandoval told band manager Tim Cook to decline the offer because, "God has a bigger plan for P.O.D." When, in 1998, Atlantic Records A&R John Rubeli first came across P.O.D.'s demo he "didn't quite get it", as he later told HitQuarters. It was only when he saw them play live at The Roxy on the Sunset Strip and witnessed not just an enthusiastic audience singing every word but the center of a vibrant youth movement that he became convinced by the band. The band was quickly signed to a major-label deal. P.O.D. soon released The Warriors EP, a tribute EP to their loyal fans as a transitional album from Rescue Records to Atlantic Records. The Fundamental Elements of Southtown and Satellite (1999–2002) P.O.D.'s third studio album, 1999's The Fundamental Elements of Southtown, spawned the hits "Southtown" and "Rock the Party (Off the Hook)", which was their first video to reach No. 1 on MTV's Total Request Live. The song "School of Hard Knocks" was featured on the soundtrack for Little Nicky while both "Southtown" and "Rock the Party" appeared in the movie. All three music videos endured heavy play on MTV2 and the songs were rock radio hits. The album went on to become RIAA certified platinum. On September 11, 2001 P.O.D. released their fourth studio album, Satellite. The album's first single, "Alive", went on to become one of MTV's and MTV2's top played videos of the year. The video's popularity, as well as the song's positive message, helped the song become a huge modern rock radio hit and it was Grammy nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance in 2002. Also in 2002, the band contributed the song "America" to Santana's album Shaman. The album's second single, "Youth of the Nation", was influenced in part by the school shootings at Santana High School, Columbine High School, and Granite Hills High School. It was Grammy nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance in 2003. The 2002 singles, "Boom" and "Satellite", also became quite popular. In addition, the concluding track of the album, "Portrait," was Grammy nominated for Best Metal Performance in 2003. It was used in the comedy film Here Comes the Boom, starring Kevin James. Satellite went on to become RIAA-certified triple platinum. The author of Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music has described P.O.D. as "One of the biggest success stories in recent Christian music." Payable on Death and Testify (2003–2006) On February 19, 2003, guitarist Curiel left the band due to his side project, The Accident Experiment, and "spiritual differences." However, Curiel claimed that he was actually kicked out of the band. Curiel was replaced by Jason Truby, former member of Christian metal band Living Sacrifice, and assisted with the recording of "Sleeping Awake", from The Matrix Reloaded soundtrack. In an interview with Yahoo! Music, Sandoval stated that Truby is the reason why the group is still together. On November 4, 2003, P.O.D. released their fifth studio album, Payable on Death, which saw the group shift from their well-known rapcore sound to a darker, more melodic metal sound. The album was hit with controversy due to its "occult" cover, which led as many as 85% of Christian bookstores across the United States to ban the album. With the help of the album's hit single "Will You" and "Change the World", it went on to sell over 520,000 copies and was certified Gold. Sometime after the tsunami in Asia, many singers, musicians, and actors/actresses, including Sandoval and Bernardo, participated in the recording of, "Forever in Our Hearts", with all proceeds going to benefit the tsunami relief. P.O.D.'s sixth studio album Testify was slated for a December 2005 release, but was pushed back to January 24, 2006. On November 15, 2005, P.O.D. released The Warriors EP, Volume 2, which featured demos from the upcoming album, to help build up the fans' anticipation for the pending January release. The album's first single, "Goodbye for Now" (with a vocal tag by a then-unknown Katy Perry) went on to become a No. 1 video on MTV's TRL, along with having a solid radio presence, it also became the band's unprecedented 4th number one video on Total Request Live. The second single off the album, "Lights Out" was a minor hit, but was featured as the official theme song to WWE's Survivor Series 2005. In another contribution to WWE, they performed fellow San Diego native Rey Mysterio's theme song "Booyaka 619" at WrestleMania 22. To promote their latest album, P.O.D. went on a nationwide tour called the "Warriors Tour 2: Guilty by Association", which began in April, and included the bands Pillar, The Chariot and Maylene and the Sons of Disaster. On August 11, 2006, P.O.D. announced in their online newsletter that they had left Atlantic Records. On September 16, 2006, P.O.D. announced that they had teamed up with Rhino Records to release a greatest hits record simply titled, Greatest Hits: The Atlantic Years, which was released on November 21, 2006. They shot a music video for their single "Going In Blind", one of the two new songs they included in the tenth album, and they had meetings with various record labels to begin working on new material for an album they hoped to release in mid-2007. When Angels & Serpents Dance (2007–2009) In a statement made by the band's manager on their MySpace page, it was officially announced, on December 30, 2006, that Jason Truby had left the band. They had said "God worked it out because Truby decided to leave the band the same day Curiel asked to rejoin." Curiel performed with the band for the first time since his departure on the 2006 New Year's Eve episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!. On February 2, 2007, the band made a new record deal with INO Records. On June 1, 2007, at the Rockbox in San Diego, the band performed and revealed a new song entitled "Condescending", along with another new song performed on June 16, 2007, at the Journeys Backyard BBQ tour entitled "Addicted". They also revealed the title of their new album to be When Angels & Serpents Dance. On August 4, 2007, the band played at Angel Stadium of Anaheim's annual Harvest Crusade for a crowd of 42,000, where they revealed a new song, "I'll Be Ready", originally thought to be titled "When Babylon Come for I". The album cover was officially revealed on December 10, 2007. The title track was released for free download on their site in January 2008. The first single "Addicted" was released on February 19 and peaked at No. 30 on the Mainstream Rock chart. The album was released on April 8, 2008, entitled When Angels & Serpents Dance. On July 28, 2008, the group played a free public performance at the Orange County Choppers headquarters in Newburgh, NY, with OCC The Band opening. The band also played on August 16, 2008, at the Angel Stadium of Anaheim's annual Harvest Crusade. During September 2008 P.O.D played alongside Redline, Behind Crimson Eyes, Alter Bridge, and Disturbed as part of the Music As a Weapon tour 2008 in Australia. Murdered Love (2010–2013) The band headlined the first annual Spring Jam Fest in May 2011. They appeared on the Rock of Allegiance tour later that summer. On July 25, 2011, the band released a demo of the song "On Fire" as a free download on their official website. In October 2011, P.O.D. announced a multi-album artist deal with Razor & Tie. On April 5, 2012, the song "Eyez" became a free download on the band's website for a limited time. Shortly after, an article on their website stated that "Lost in Forever" would be the first single from the new album, entitled Murdered Love. Murdered Love was originally going to be released in June 2012, but was instead pushed back to July 10. The album was produced by Howard Benson, who also produced Satellite and The Fundamental Elements of Southtown. It was described by Curiel as "Back to our roots. A little bit of hip hop, a little bit of punk rock, or reggae". The album caused controversy concerning its eleventh track, "I Am", which uses the word "fuck" (albeit backmasked). Sandoval, explaining the purpose of the song, said, "being up close and personal with these kids, that's what came out in that song. I'm a man of faith and I'm a follower and a believer of Jesus Christ, and in talking to these kids, and even in talking to people just throughout my career in P.O.D., a lot of these bands and athletes and all these people that you meet, they don't have a problem with Jesus. They have a problem with people that are religious and claim to know Jesus, but aren't living it or acting it and aren't loving the way Jesus did. In my faith, if I believe that Jesus paid for the sins of the world, and I'm all these things, this is what's going on in the real world, and do you still love someone like me? And even though I know you do, and I believe in you, I believe in your forgiveness and your grace and your mercy, there's still so much confusion around me that everybody's getting in the way and trying to take your place. Everything gets in my way from seeing who Jesus was...We had that song for almost a year, and I didn't take it lightly. I'd been praying on it for over a year. I'd actually took counsel and let people hear it. And it was 50/50. Some people are like, you know what, go for it. Because my heart is like, I don't write music for Christians. I don't write music for people that I believe are saved and going to heaven. If it's a breath of you and encourages you and gives you a sense of power to go balls out for what you believe in, then by all means. But ultimately we're trying to reach people fed up with religion that are sick and tired of it, and people that are in the real world that really are lost and confused. Our music has always been a tool to bring hope to those people. I'm sorry we can't please everybody in the church, but ultimately in our faith, I believe you're taken care of. There are a lot of people that live in the real world that are out on the streets, that are prostituting themselves, that are being sexually abused, that are being murdered and killed, and it's an evil world. And sometimes you've got to just give them the truth flat out. And it might offend some people. Might offend a lot of people. But at the end of the day, if they understand it and they get it, and they allow God to speak straight into their soul, then I think it's worth the slap on the hand." The band went on tour with Shinedown and Three Days Grace as an opening act. In a 2012 interview with Broken Records Magazine, Sandoval said that the band had to get their lives back in order and take care of personal needs before getting back into music, but was extremely happy about the response the band was getting from fans. On October 22, 2013, P.O.D. released a deluxe edition of Murdered Love. The album contains the original songs, slightly remixed, along with bonus tracks "Find a Way", "Burn It Down", acoustic versions of "Beautiful" and "West Coast Rock Steady", a remixed version of "On Fire", and music videos for "Murdered Love", "Beautiful", "Higher", and "Lost In Forever". Multiple behind the scenes videos were also on the track list. SoCal Sessions, The Awakening and Circles (2014–present) In mid-2014, P.O.D. announced an acoustic album to be released toward the end of the year. The album was crowd-funded on the website PledgeMusic. On October 20, 2014, P.O.D. announced a new record deal with T-Boy Records along with a new acoustic album. SoCal Sessions was released on November 17, 2014, and contained songs such as "Alive" and "Youth of the Nation". The band followed that release with another studio album, The Awakening, released on August 21, 2015, which was produced by Howard Benson, with guest vocalists such as Maria Brink of In This Moment and Lou Koller of Sick of It All. On May 17, 2016, the band announced that they would be taking part in the Make America Rock Again super tour throughout the summer and fall 2016. The tour featured a number of artists who had success throughout the 2000s. On August 18, 2017, the band released a new song, "Soundboy Killa", and embarked on a fall tour promoting the song. In January 2018, it was announced that the band had signed a new record deal with Mascot Records. They toured alongside Alien Ant Farm, Lit, and Buckcherry on the "Gen-X Tour" in 2018. Their tenth studio album, Circles, was released on November 16, 2018. Their band were scheduled to start their Satellite Album 20th Anniversary tour in Sturgis, South Dakota at Buffalo Chip on August 14, 2021, and end on October 7, 2021, at the House of Blues in San Diego, California. Musical style and influences The band's name, Payable on Death (P.O.D.), derives itself from the banking term "Payable on Death". The band chose this name to be a direct tie in with the Christian theology that explains that since Jesus died on the Cross, Christians' debts to God have been paid for; in other words all believers, in their acceptance that Jesus was sacrificed for them on God's behalf, have inherited eternal life. P.O.D.'s style has evolved over the years, from the rap metal sound on their early albums to the nu metal and reggae-infused alternative metal styles for which they're most well known. The band's seventh album, When Angels & Serpents Dance, is a combination of alternative rock, reggae rock and Latin-influenced metal with almost none of the rap metal or nu metal sound of their older releases. P.O.D.'s influences include Boogie Down Productions, Run-DMC, U2, the Police, Bad Brains, Santana, Metallica, AC/DC, Suicidal Tendencies, Bob Marley, Primus, Earth, Wind & Fire, 24-7 Spyz, and Steel Pulse. Band members Current members Wuv Bernardo − drums, rhythm guitar, backing vocals (1992–present) Sonny Sandoval − lead vocals (1992–present) Traa Daniels − bass, backing vocals (1993–present) Marcos Curiel − lead guitar, programming, backing vocals (1992–2003, 2006–present) Former members Gabe Portillo − bass, backing vocals (1992–1993) Jason Truby − lead guitar, backing vocals <small>(Living Sacrifice) (2003–2006) Former touring musicians Tim Pacheco – backing vocals, percussion, trumpet, keyboards (2006) Luis Castillo – keyboards, backing vocals, percussion (2011–2016) Sameer Bhattacharya – keyboards, backing vocals (2016–2018) Jonny Beats – drums (February – March 2019, October – November 2019) Timeline Discography Snuff the Punk (1994) Brown (1996) The Fundamental Elements of Southtown (1999) Satellite (2001) Payable on Death (2003) Testify (2006) When Angels & Serpents Dance (2008) Murdered Love (2012) SoCal Sessions (2014) The Awakening (2015) Circles (2018) Awards American Music Awards 2003 - Favorite Contemporary Inspirational Artist (nomination) Echo Awards 2003 - International Alternative Group of the Year San Diego Music Awards 1999 - Best Hard Rock Artist 2000 - Best Hard Rock Artist Note: Album- and single-specific awards and nominations are listed under their respective articles. References External links American alternative metal musical groups American Christian metal musical groups Atlantic Records artists Christian alternative metal groups Christian rock groups from California Hard rock musical groups from California Musical groups established in 1992 Musical groups from San Diego Musical quartets Nu metal musical groups from California Rapcore groups P.O.D. Razor & Tie artists
true
[ "King vs. Queen is the debut album of indie rock group Brighten, released on March 20, 2007.\n\nOverview\nThe album was originally slated for a fall 2006 release, but was pushed back. However, before the album's intended release, Victory Records sued Carbon Copy Media (Brighten's then-current label). As a result of this, Brighten decided to go independent from Victory. On March 20, 2007, King vs. Queen was released to retail stores across the US without the band's knowledge, due to the printing of thousands of CDs by Carbon Copy Media prior to the lawsuit. Once Brighten was made aware of this, the CD was withdrawn from stores. Only a limited number of these CDs are now available.\n\nThis CD includes re-recorded songs from the EP Ready When You Are, \"Ready When You Are\" and \"Television\".\n\nTrack listing\n\nOriginal version\n\"More Vacations\" – 2:00\n\"A Heart Like That\" – 2:13\n\"Ready When You Are\" – 3:30\n\"Treasure Island\" – 2:57\n\"Mr. Mister\" – 2:54\n\"Darling Nicotine\" – 4:43\n\"The Better Way\" – 3:48\n\"Single Millionaires\" –2:33\n\"We Chose the King\" – 3:20\n\"Television\" – 4:21\n\"Cops and Robbers\" – 3:05\n\"Why Oh Why\" – 4:52\n\nIndependent release\nFollowing the band's fallout with Victory Records and the album's withdrawal from stores, they decided to release a shorter version independently, selling it at concerts and later online at SmartPunk. This version features slightly different artwork and only 9 tracks. The track listing is as follows:\n\"More Vacations\" – 2:00\n\"Ready When You Are\" – 3:30\n\"Treasure Island\" – 2:57\n\"Darling Nicotine\" – 4:43\n\"The Better Way\" – 3:48\n\"We Chose the King\" – 3:20\n\"Television\" – 4:21\n\"Cops and Robbers\" – 3:05\n\"Why Oh Why\" – 4:52\n\nExternal links\nOfficial Brighten Myspace\n\nBrighten albums\n2007 debut albums", "Identity Crisis is the second studio album by Christian rap artist, Tedashii. It was released on May 26, 2009 after being pushed back from its originally scheduled May 19, 2009 release date.\n\nConception\n\nBackground\nTedashii based the title of the album on 1 Corinthians 15:10.\n\n\"But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect.\"\n\nRelease and promotion\nThe album, initially intended for a May 19, 2008 release date, was pushed back to May 26, 2009 by Reach Records. In order to make up for the delay, Reach Records made two left over tracks from the album freely available online.\n\nThe album's second single, \"I'm a Believer\", featuring label mate Trip Lee and Soyé was released on iTunes on April 30, 2009.\n\nTrack listing\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n2009 albums\nTedashii albums\nReach Records albums" ]
[ "P.O.D.", "Murdered Love (2010-2013)", "What is Murdered Love?", "Murdered Love was originally going to be released in June 2012, but was instead pushed back to July 10.", "Why was it pushed back?", "In a 2012 interview with Broken Records Magazine, Sandoval said that the band had to get their lives back in order and take care of personal needs" ]
C_90f470d2620e491f9950476e828090d1_0
Did this album have any hit singles?
3
Did the album Murdered Love have any hit singles?
P.O.D.
The band headlined the first annual Spring Jam Fest in May 2011. They appeared on the Rock of Allegiance tour later that summer. On July 25, 2011, the band released a demo of the song "On Fire" as a free download on their official website. In October 2011, P.O.D. announced a multi-album artist deal with Razor & Tie. On April 5, 2012, the song "Eyez" became a free download on the band's website for a limited time. Shortly after, an article on their website stated that "Lost in Forever" would be the first single from the new album, entitled Murdered Love. Murdered Love was originally going to be released in June 2012, but was instead pushed back to July 10. The album was produced by Howard Benson, who also produced Satellite and The Fundamental Elements of Southtown. It was described by Curiel as "Back to our roots. A little bit of hip hop, a little bit of punk rock, or reggae". The band went on tour with Shinedown and Three Days Grace as an opening act. In a 2012 interview with Broken Records Magazine, Sandoval said that the band had to get their lives back in order and take care of personal needs before getting back into music, but was extremely happy about the response the band was getting from fans. On October 22, 2013, P.O.D. released a deluxe edition of Murdered Love. The album contains the original songs, slightly remixed, along with bonus tracks "Find a Way", "Burn It Down", acoustic versions of "Beautiful" and "West Coast Rock Steady", a remixed version of "On Fire", and music videos for "Murdered Love", "Beautiful", "Higher", and "Lost In Forever". Multiple behind the scenes videos were also on the track list. CANNOTANSWER
"Find a Way", "Burn It Down",
Payable on Death is an American Christian metal band formed in 1992 and based in San Diego, California. The band's line-up consists of drummer and rhythm guitarist Wuv Bernardo, vocalist Sonny Sandoval, bassist Traa Daniels, and lead guitarist Marcos Curiel. They have sold over 12 million records worldwide. Over the course of their career, the band has received three Grammy Award nominations, contributed to numerous motion picture soundtracks and toured internationally. With their third studio album, The Fundamental Elements of Southtown, they achieved their initial mainstream success; the album was certified platinum by the RIAA in 2000. Their following studio album, Satellite, continued the band's success with the singles, "Alive" and "Youth of the Nation", pushing it to go triple platinum. History Early years (1991–1993) In 1991, friends Wuv Bernardo and Marcos Curiel engaged in jam sessions, with Bernardo playing the drums and Curiel covering guitar with no vocalist. Calling themselves Eschatos, they started playing at keg parties doing Metallica and Slayer cover songs. After his mother's fatal illness, Sonny Sandoval converted to Christianity and was asked by Bernardo, his cousin, to join the band as a way to keep his mind straight as mentioned on their DVD, Still Payin' Dues. They then recruited bassist Gabe Portillo and eventually changed their name to P.O.D. Snuff the Punk and Brown (1994–1998) After recording a demo tape, Traa Daniels joined the band in 1994 when they needed a bassist for some shows to replace Portillo. P.O.D. signed with Rescue Records, a label created by Bernardo's father, Noah Bernardo Sr., who was also the band's first manager. Between 1994 and 1997, they released three albums under the label, Snuff the Punk, Brown and Payable on Death Live. Longtime manager Tim Cook was first introduced to the band when he booked them to play his club The Where-House in Bartlesville, Oklahoma following strong local word of mouth support. He later described their performance by saying: "I stood at the back of the venue with tears in my eyes – it was the greatest thing I had ever seen." By that point, Bernardo Sr. was looking for someone else to take P.O.D.'s career further and so Cook took over as manager. Shortly after the release of Payable on Death Live, Essential Records offered P.O.D. a $100,000 recording contract, but on behalf of the band Sandoval told band manager Tim Cook to decline the offer because, "God has a bigger plan for P.O.D." When, in 1998, Atlantic Records A&R John Rubeli first came across P.O.D.'s demo he "didn't quite get it", as he later told HitQuarters. It was only when he saw them play live at The Roxy on the Sunset Strip and witnessed not just an enthusiastic audience singing every word but the center of a vibrant youth movement that he became convinced by the band. The band was quickly signed to a major-label deal. P.O.D. soon released The Warriors EP, a tribute EP to their loyal fans as a transitional album from Rescue Records to Atlantic Records. The Fundamental Elements of Southtown and Satellite (1999–2002) P.O.D.'s third studio album, 1999's The Fundamental Elements of Southtown, spawned the hits "Southtown" and "Rock the Party (Off the Hook)", which was their first video to reach No. 1 on MTV's Total Request Live. The song "School of Hard Knocks" was featured on the soundtrack for Little Nicky while both "Southtown" and "Rock the Party" appeared in the movie. All three music videos endured heavy play on MTV2 and the songs were rock radio hits. The album went on to become RIAA certified platinum. On September 11, 2001 P.O.D. released their fourth studio album, Satellite. The album's first single, "Alive", went on to become one of MTV's and MTV2's top played videos of the year. The video's popularity, as well as the song's positive message, helped the song become a huge modern rock radio hit and it was Grammy nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance in 2002. Also in 2002, the band contributed the song "America" to Santana's album Shaman. The album's second single, "Youth of the Nation", was influenced in part by the school shootings at Santana High School, Columbine High School, and Granite Hills High School. It was Grammy nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance in 2003. The 2002 singles, "Boom" and "Satellite", also became quite popular. In addition, the concluding track of the album, "Portrait," was Grammy nominated for Best Metal Performance in 2003. It was used in the comedy film Here Comes the Boom, starring Kevin James. Satellite went on to become RIAA-certified triple platinum. The author of Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music has described P.O.D. as "One of the biggest success stories in recent Christian music." Payable on Death and Testify (2003–2006) On February 19, 2003, guitarist Curiel left the band due to his side project, The Accident Experiment, and "spiritual differences." However, Curiel claimed that he was actually kicked out of the band. Curiel was replaced by Jason Truby, former member of Christian metal band Living Sacrifice, and assisted with the recording of "Sleeping Awake", from The Matrix Reloaded soundtrack. In an interview with Yahoo! Music, Sandoval stated that Truby is the reason why the group is still together. On November 4, 2003, P.O.D. released their fifth studio album, Payable on Death, which saw the group shift from their well-known rapcore sound to a darker, more melodic metal sound. The album was hit with controversy due to its "occult" cover, which led as many as 85% of Christian bookstores across the United States to ban the album. With the help of the album's hit single "Will You" and "Change the World", it went on to sell over 520,000 copies and was certified Gold. Sometime after the tsunami in Asia, many singers, musicians, and actors/actresses, including Sandoval and Bernardo, participated in the recording of, "Forever in Our Hearts", with all proceeds going to benefit the tsunami relief. P.O.D.'s sixth studio album Testify was slated for a December 2005 release, but was pushed back to January 24, 2006. On November 15, 2005, P.O.D. released The Warriors EP, Volume 2, which featured demos from the upcoming album, to help build up the fans' anticipation for the pending January release. The album's first single, "Goodbye for Now" (with a vocal tag by a then-unknown Katy Perry) went on to become a No. 1 video on MTV's TRL, along with having a solid radio presence, it also became the band's unprecedented 4th number one video on Total Request Live. The second single off the album, "Lights Out" was a minor hit, but was featured as the official theme song to WWE's Survivor Series 2005. In another contribution to WWE, they performed fellow San Diego native Rey Mysterio's theme song "Booyaka 619" at WrestleMania 22. To promote their latest album, P.O.D. went on a nationwide tour called the "Warriors Tour 2: Guilty by Association", which began in April, and included the bands Pillar, The Chariot and Maylene and the Sons of Disaster. On August 11, 2006, P.O.D. announced in their online newsletter that they had left Atlantic Records. On September 16, 2006, P.O.D. announced that they had teamed up with Rhino Records to release a greatest hits record simply titled, Greatest Hits: The Atlantic Years, which was released on November 21, 2006. They shot a music video for their single "Going In Blind", one of the two new songs they included in the tenth album, and they had meetings with various record labels to begin working on new material for an album they hoped to release in mid-2007. When Angels & Serpents Dance (2007–2009) In a statement made by the band's manager on their MySpace page, it was officially announced, on December 30, 2006, that Jason Truby had left the band. They had said "God worked it out because Truby decided to leave the band the same day Curiel asked to rejoin." Curiel performed with the band for the first time since his departure on the 2006 New Year's Eve episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!. On February 2, 2007, the band made a new record deal with INO Records. On June 1, 2007, at the Rockbox in San Diego, the band performed and revealed a new song entitled "Condescending", along with another new song performed on June 16, 2007, at the Journeys Backyard BBQ tour entitled "Addicted". They also revealed the title of their new album to be When Angels & Serpents Dance. On August 4, 2007, the band played at Angel Stadium of Anaheim's annual Harvest Crusade for a crowd of 42,000, where they revealed a new song, "I'll Be Ready", originally thought to be titled "When Babylon Come for I". The album cover was officially revealed on December 10, 2007. The title track was released for free download on their site in January 2008. The first single "Addicted" was released on February 19 and peaked at No. 30 on the Mainstream Rock chart. The album was released on April 8, 2008, entitled When Angels & Serpents Dance. On July 28, 2008, the group played a free public performance at the Orange County Choppers headquarters in Newburgh, NY, with OCC The Band opening. The band also played on August 16, 2008, at the Angel Stadium of Anaheim's annual Harvest Crusade. During September 2008 P.O.D played alongside Redline, Behind Crimson Eyes, Alter Bridge, and Disturbed as part of the Music As a Weapon tour 2008 in Australia. Murdered Love (2010–2013) The band headlined the first annual Spring Jam Fest in May 2011. They appeared on the Rock of Allegiance tour later that summer. On July 25, 2011, the band released a demo of the song "On Fire" as a free download on their official website. In October 2011, P.O.D. announced a multi-album artist deal with Razor & Tie. On April 5, 2012, the song "Eyez" became a free download on the band's website for a limited time. Shortly after, an article on their website stated that "Lost in Forever" would be the first single from the new album, entitled Murdered Love. Murdered Love was originally going to be released in June 2012, but was instead pushed back to July 10. The album was produced by Howard Benson, who also produced Satellite and The Fundamental Elements of Southtown. It was described by Curiel as "Back to our roots. A little bit of hip hop, a little bit of punk rock, or reggae". The album caused controversy concerning its eleventh track, "I Am", which uses the word "fuck" (albeit backmasked). Sandoval, explaining the purpose of the song, said, "being up close and personal with these kids, that's what came out in that song. I'm a man of faith and I'm a follower and a believer of Jesus Christ, and in talking to these kids, and even in talking to people just throughout my career in P.O.D., a lot of these bands and athletes and all these people that you meet, they don't have a problem with Jesus. They have a problem with people that are religious and claim to know Jesus, but aren't living it or acting it and aren't loving the way Jesus did. In my faith, if I believe that Jesus paid for the sins of the world, and I'm all these things, this is what's going on in the real world, and do you still love someone like me? And even though I know you do, and I believe in you, I believe in your forgiveness and your grace and your mercy, there's still so much confusion around me that everybody's getting in the way and trying to take your place. Everything gets in my way from seeing who Jesus was...We had that song for almost a year, and I didn't take it lightly. I'd been praying on it for over a year. I'd actually took counsel and let people hear it. And it was 50/50. Some people are like, you know what, go for it. Because my heart is like, I don't write music for Christians. I don't write music for people that I believe are saved and going to heaven. If it's a breath of you and encourages you and gives you a sense of power to go balls out for what you believe in, then by all means. But ultimately we're trying to reach people fed up with religion that are sick and tired of it, and people that are in the real world that really are lost and confused. Our music has always been a tool to bring hope to those people. I'm sorry we can't please everybody in the church, but ultimately in our faith, I believe you're taken care of. There are a lot of people that live in the real world that are out on the streets, that are prostituting themselves, that are being sexually abused, that are being murdered and killed, and it's an evil world. And sometimes you've got to just give them the truth flat out. And it might offend some people. Might offend a lot of people. But at the end of the day, if they understand it and they get it, and they allow God to speak straight into their soul, then I think it's worth the slap on the hand." The band went on tour with Shinedown and Three Days Grace as an opening act. In a 2012 interview with Broken Records Magazine, Sandoval said that the band had to get their lives back in order and take care of personal needs before getting back into music, but was extremely happy about the response the band was getting from fans. On October 22, 2013, P.O.D. released a deluxe edition of Murdered Love. The album contains the original songs, slightly remixed, along with bonus tracks "Find a Way", "Burn It Down", acoustic versions of "Beautiful" and "West Coast Rock Steady", a remixed version of "On Fire", and music videos for "Murdered Love", "Beautiful", "Higher", and "Lost In Forever". Multiple behind the scenes videos were also on the track list. SoCal Sessions, The Awakening and Circles (2014–present) In mid-2014, P.O.D. announced an acoustic album to be released toward the end of the year. The album was crowd-funded on the website PledgeMusic. On October 20, 2014, P.O.D. announced a new record deal with T-Boy Records along with a new acoustic album. SoCal Sessions was released on November 17, 2014, and contained songs such as "Alive" and "Youth of the Nation". The band followed that release with another studio album, The Awakening, released on August 21, 2015, which was produced by Howard Benson, with guest vocalists such as Maria Brink of In This Moment and Lou Koller of Sick of It All. On May 17, 2016, the band announced that they would be taking part in the Make America Rock Again super tour throughout the summer and fall 2016. The tour featured a number of artists who had success throughout the 2000s. On August 18, 2017, the band released a new song, "Soundboy Killa", and embarked on a fall tour promoting the song. In January 2018, it was announced that the band had signed a new record deal with Mascot Records. They toured alongside Alien Ant Farm, Lit, and Buckcherry on the "Gen-X Tour" in 2018. Their tenth studio album, Circles, was released on November 16, 2018. Their band were scheduled to start their Satellite Album 20th Anniversary tour in Sturgis, South Dakota at Buffalo Chip on August 14, 2021, and end on October 7, 2021, at the House of Blues in San Diego, California. Musical style and influences The band's name, Payable on Death (P.O.D.), derives itself from the banking term "Payable on Death". The band chose this name to be a direct tie in with the Christian theology that explains that since Jesus died on the Cross, Christians' debts to God have been paid for; in other words all believers, in their acceptance that Jesus was sacrificed for them on God's behalf, have inherited eternal life. P.O.D.'s style has evolved over the years, from the rap metal sound on their early albums to the nu metal and reggae-infused alternative metal styles for which they're most well known. The band's seventh album, When Angels & Serpents Dance, is a combination of alternative rock, reggae rock and Latin-influenced metal with almost none of the rap metal or nu metal sound of their older releases. P.O.D.'s influences include Boogie Down Productions, Run-DMC, U2, the Police, Bad Brains, Santana, Metallica, AC/DC, Suicidal Tendencies, Bob Marley, Primus, Earth, Wind & Fire, 24-7 Spyz, and Steel Pulse. Band members Current members Wuv Bernardo − drums, rhythm guitar, backing vocals (1992–present) Sonny Sandoval − lead vocals (1992–present) Traa Daniels − bass, backing vocals (1993–present) Marcos Curiel − lead guitar, programming, backing vocals (1992–2003, 2006–present) Former members Gabe Portillo − bass, backing vocals (1992–1993) Jason Truby − lead guitar, backing vocals <small>(Living Sacrifice) (2003–2006) Former touring musicians Tim Pacheco – backing vocals, percussion, trumpet, keyboards (2006) Luis Castillo – keyboards, backing vocals, percussion (2011–2016) Sameer Bhattacharya – keyboards, backing vocals (2016–2018) Jonny Beats – drums (February – March 2019, October – November 2019) Timeline Discography Snuff the Punk (1994) Brown (1996) The Fundamental Elements of Southtown (1999) Satellite (2001) Payable on Death (2003) Testify (2006) When Angels & Serpents Dance (2008) Murdered Love (2012) SoCal Sessions (2014) The Awakening (2015) Circles (2018) Awards American Music Awards 2003 - Favorite Contemporary Inspirational Artist (nomination) Echo Awards 2003 - International Alternative Group of the Year San Diego Music Awards 1999 - Best Hard Rock Artist 2000 - Best Hard Rock Artist Note: Album- and single-specific awards and nominations are listed under their respective articles. References External links American alternative metal musical groups American Christian metal musical groups Atlantic Records artists Christian alternative metal groups Christian rock groups from California Hard rock musical groups from California Musical groups established in 1992 Musical groups from San Diego Musical quartets Nu metal musical groups from California Rapcore groups P.O.D. Razor & Tie artists
true
[ "Return of the 1 Hit Wonder is the fourth album by rapper, Young MC. The album was released in 1997 for Overall Records and was Young MC's first release on an independent record label. While the album did not chart on any album charts, it did have two charting singles; \"Madame Buttafly\" reached No. 25 on the Hot Rap Songs and \"On & Poppin\" reached No. 23. The title refers to Young MC's only Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hit, \"Bust A Move\".\n\nTrack listing\n\"One Hit\" \n\"Freakie\" \n\"On & Poppin'\" \n\"You Ain't Gotta Lie Ta Kick It\" \n\"Madame Buttafly\" \n\"Lingerie\" \n\"Coast 2 Coast\" \n\"Fuel to the Fire\" \n\"Bring It Home\" \n\"Intensify\" \n\"Mr. Right Now\" \n\"On & Poppin'\" (Remix)\n\nReferences\n\nYoung MC albums\n1997 albums", "Knockin' Boots 2001: A Sex Odyssey is the fifth and thus far final studio album by rapper Candyman. The album was released on February 6, 2001 for X-Ray Records and was produced by Candyman. The album was the fourth straight critical and commercial flop for Candyman and like his previous four albums, did not chart on any album charts or feature any hit singles.\n\nTrack listing\n\n2001 albums\nCandyman (rapper) albums" ]
[ "P.O.D.", "Murdered Love (2010-2013)", "What is Murdered Love?", "Murdered Love was originally going to be released in June 2012, but was instead pushed back to July 10.", "Why was it pushed back?", "In a 2012 interview with Broken Records Magazine, Sandoval said that the band had to get their lives back in order and take care of personal needs", "Did this album have any hit singles?", "\"Find a Way\", \"Burn It Down\"," ]
C_90f470d2620e491f9950476e828090d1_0
What else is notable about this album?
4
What else is notable about the album Murdered Love other than the hit singles?
P.O.D.
The band headlined the first annual Spring Jam Fest in May 2011. They appeared on the Rock of Allegiance tour later that summer. On July 25, 2011, the band released a demo of the song "On Fire" as a free download on their official website. In October 2011, P.O.D. announced a multi-album artist deal with Razor & Tie. On April 5, 2012, the song "Eyez" became a free download on the band's website for a limited time. Shortly after, an article on their website stated that "Lost in Forever" would be the first single from the new album, entitled Murdered Love. Murdered Love was originally going to be released in June 2012, but was instead pushed back to July 10. The album was produced by Howard Benson, who also produced Satellite and The Fundamental Elements of Southtown. It was described by Curiel as "Back to our roots. A little bit of hip hop, a little bit of punk rock, or reggae". The band went on tour with Shinedown and Three Days Grace as an opening act. In a 2012 interview with Broken Records Magazine, Sandoval said that the band had to get their lives back in order and take care of personal needs before getting back into music, but was extremely happy about the response the band was getting from fans. On October 22, 2013, P.O.D. released a deluxe edition of Murdered Love. The album contains the original songs, slightly remixed, along with bonus tracks "Find a Way", "Burn It Down", acoustic versions of "Beautiful" and "West Coast Rock Steady", a remixed version of "On Fire", and music videos for "Murdered Love", "Beautiful", "Higher", and "Lost In Forever". Multiple behind the scenes videos were also on the track list. CANNOTANSWER
Multiple behind the scenes videos were also on the track list.
Payable on Death is an American Christian metal band formed in 1992 and based in San Diego, California. The band's line-up consists of drummer and rhythm guitarist Wuv Bernardo, vocalist Sonny Sandoval, bassist Traa Daniels, and lead guitarist Marcos Curiel. They have sold over 12 million records worldwide. Over the course of their career, the band has received three Grammy Award nominations, contributed to numerous motion picture soundtracks and toured internationally. With their third studio album, The Fundamental Elements of Southtown, they achieved their initial mainstream success; the album was certified platinum by the RIAA in 2000. Their following studio album, Satellite, continued the band's success with the singles, "Alive" and "Youth of the Nation", pushing it to go triple platinum. History Early years (1991–1993) In 1991, friends Wuv Bernardo and Marcos Curiel engaged in jam sessions, with Bernardo playing the drums and Curiel covering guitar with no vocalist. Calling themselves Eschatos, they started playing at keg parties doing Metallica and Slayer cover songs. After his mother's fatal illness, Sonny Sandoval converted to Christianity and was asked by Bernardo, his cousin, to join the band as a way to keep his mind straight as mentioned on their DVD, Still Payin' Dues. They then recruited bassist Gabe Portillo and eventually changed their name to P.O.D. Snuff the Punk and Brown (1994–1998) After recording a demo tape, Traa Daniels joined the band in 1994 when they needed a bassist for some shows to replace Portillo. P.O.D. signed with Rescue Records, a label created by Bernardo's father, Noah Bernardo Sr., who was also the band's first manager. Between 1994 and 1997, they released three albums under the label, Snuff the Punk, Brown and Payable on Death Live. Longtime manager Tim Cook was first introduced to the band when he booked them to play his club The Where-House in Bartlesville, Oklahoma following strong local word of mouth support. He later described their performance by saying: "I stood at the back of the venue with tears in my eyes – it was the greatest thing I had ever seen." By that point, Bernardo Sr. was looking for someone else to take P.O.D.'s career further and so Cook took over as manager. Shortly after the release of Payable on Death Live, Essential Records offered P.O.D. a $100,000 recording contract, but on behalf of the band Sandoval told band manager Tim Cook to decline the offer because, "God has a bigger plan for P.O.D." When, in 1998, Atlantic Records A&R John Rubeli first came across P.O.D.'s demo he "didn't quite get it", as he later told HitQuarters. It was only when he saw them play live at The Roxy on the Sunset Strip and witnessed not just an enthusiastic audience singing every word but the center of a vibrant youth movement that he became convinced by the band. The band was quickly signed to a major-label deal. P.O.D. soon released The Warriors EP, a tribute EP to their loyal fans as a transitional album from Rescue Records to Atlantic Records. The Fundamental Elements of Southtown and Satellite (1999–2002) P.O.D.'s third studio album, 1999's The Fundamental Elements of Southtown, spawned the hits "Southtown" and "Rock the Party (Off the Hook)", which was their first video to reach No. 1 on MTV's Total Request Live. The song "School of Hard Knocks" was featured on the soundtrack for Little Nicky while both "Southtown" and "Rock the Party" appeared in the movie. All three music videos endured heavy play on MTV2 and the songs were rock radio hits. The album went on to become RIAA certified platinum. On September 11, 2001 P.O.D. released their fourth studio album, Satellite. The album's first single, "Alive", went on to become one of MTV's and MTV2's top played videos of the year. The video's popularity, as well as the song's positive message, helped the song become a huge modern rock radio hit and it was Grammy nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance in 2002. Also in 2002, the band contributed the song "America" to Santana's album Shaman. The album's second single, "Youth of the Nation", was influenced in part by the school shootings at Santana High School, Columbine High School, and Granite Hills High School. It was Grammy nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance in 2003. The 2002 singles, "Boom" and "Satellite", also became quite popular. In addition, the concluding track of the album, "Portrait," was Grammy nominated for Best Metal Performance in 2003. It was used in the comedy film Here Comes the Boom, starring Kevin James. Satellite went on to become RIAA-certified triple platinum. The author of Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music has described P.O.D. as "One of the biggest success stories in recent Christian music." Payable on Death and Testify (2003–2006) On February 19, 2003, guitarist Curiel left the band due to his side project, The Accident Experiment, and "spiritual differences." However, Curiel claimed that he was actually kicked out of the band. Curiel was replaced by Jason Truby, former member of Christian metal band Living Sacrifice, and assisted with the recording of "Sleeping Awake", from The Matrix Reloaded soundtrack. In an interview with Yahoo! Music, Sandoval stated that Truby is the reason why the group is still together. On November 4, 2003, P.O.D. released their fifth studio album, Payable on Death, which saw the group shift from their well-known rapcore sound to a darker, more melodic metal sound. The album was hit with controversy due to its "occult" cover, which led as many as 85% of Christian bookstores across the United States to ban the album. With the help of the album's hit single "Will You" and "Change the World", it went on to sell over 520,000 copies and was certified Gold. Sometime after the tsunami in Asia, many singers, musicians, and actors/actresses, including Sandoval and Bernardo, participated in the recording of, "Forever in Our Hearts", with all proceeds going to benefit the tsunami relief. P.O.D.'s sixth studio album Testify was slated for a December 2005 release, but was pushed back to January 24, 2006. On November 15, 2005, P.O.D. released The Warriors EP, Volume 2, which featured demos from the upcoming album, to help build up the fans' anticipation for the pending January release. The album's first single, "Goodbye for Now" (with a vocal tag by a then-unknown Katy Perry) went on to become a No. 1 video on MTV's TRL, along with having a solid radio presence, it also became the band's unprecedented 4th number one video on Total Request Live. The second single off the album, "Lights Out" was a minor hit, but was featured as the official theme song to WWE's Survivor Series 2005. In another contribution to WWE, they performed fellow San Diego native Rey Mysterio's theme song "Booyaka 619" at WrestleMania 22. To promote their latest album, P.O.D. went on a nationwide tour called the "Warriors Tour 2: Guilty by Association", which began in April, and included the bands Pillar, The Chariot and Maylene and the Sons of Disaster. On August 11, 2006, P.O.D. announced in their online newsletter that they had left Atlantic Records. On September 16, 2006, P.O.D. announced that they had teamed up with Rhino Records to release a greatest hits record simply titled, Greatest Hits: The Atlantic Years, which was released on November 21, 2006. They shot a music video for their single "Going In Blind", one of the two new songs they included in the tenth album, and they had meetings with various record labels to begin working on new material for an album they hoped to release in mid-2007. When Angels & Serpents Dance (2007–2009) In a statement made by the band's manager on their MySpace page, it was officially announced, on December 30, 2006, that Jason Truby had left the band. They had said "God worked it out because Truby decided to leave the band the same day Curiel asked to rejoin." Curiel performed with the band for the first time since his departure on the 2006 New Year's Eve episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!. On February 2, 2007, the band made a new record deal with INO Records. On June 1, 2007, at the Rockbox in San Diego, the band performed and revealed a new song entitled "Condescending", along with another new song performed on June 16, 2007, at the Journeys Backyard BBQ tour entitled "Addicted". They also revealed the title of their new album to be When Angels & Serpents Dance. On August 4, 2007, the band played at Angel Stadium of Anaheim's annual Harvest Crusade for a crowd of 42,000, where they revealed a new song, "I'll Be Ready", originally thought to be titled "When Babylon Come for I". The album cover was officially revealed on December 10, 2007. The title track was released for free download on their site in January 2008. The first single "Addicted" was released on February 19 and peaked at No. 30 on the Mainstream Rock chart. The album was released on April 8, 2008, entitled When Angels & Serpents Dance. On July 28, 2008, the group played a free public performance at the Orange County Choppers headquarters in Newburgh, NY, with OCC The Band opening. The band also played on August 16, 2008, at the Angel Stadium of Anaheim's annual Harvest Crusade. During September 2008 P.O.D played alongside Redline, Behind Crimson Eyes, Alter Bridge, and Disturbed as part of the Music As a Weapon tour 2008 in Australia. Murdered Love (2010–2013) The band headlined the first annual Spring Jam Fest in May 2011. They appeared on the Rock of Allegiance tour later that summer. On July 25, 2011, the band released a demo of the song "On Fire" as a free download on their official website. In October 2011, P.O.D. announced a multi-album artist deal with Razor & Tie. On April 5, 2012, the song "Eyez" became a free download on the band's website for a limited time. Shortly after, an article on their website stated that "Lost in Forever" would be the first single from the new album, entitled Murdered Love. Murdered Love was originally going to be released in June 2012, but was instead pushed back to July 10. The album was produced by Howard Benson, who also produced Satellite and The Fundamental Elements of Southtown. It was described by Curiel as "Back to our roots. A little bit of hip hop, a little bit of punk rock, or reggae". The album caused controversy concerning its eleventh track, "I Am", which uses the word "fuck" (albeit backmasked). Sandoval, explaining the purpose of the song, said, "being up close and personal with these kids, that's what came out in that song. I'm a man of faith and I'm a follower and a believer of Jesus Christ, and in talking to these kids, and even in talking to people just throughout my career in P.O.D., a lot of these bands and athletes and all these people that you meet, they don't have a problem with Jesus. They have a problem with people that are religious and claim to know Jesus, but aren't living it or acting it and aren't loving the way Jesus did. In my faith, if I believe that Jesus paid for the sins of the world, and I'm all these things, this is what's going on in the real world, and do you still love someone like me? And even though I know you do, and I believe in you, I believe in your forgiveness and your grace and your mercy, there's still so much confusion around me that everybody's getting in the way and trying to take your place. Everything gets in my way from seeing who Jesus was...We had that song for almost a year, and I didn't take it lightly. I'd been praying on it for over a year. I'd actually took counsel and let people hear it. And it was 50/50. Some people are like, you know what, go for it. Because my heart is like, I don't write music for Christians. I don't write music for people that I believe are saved and going to heaven. If it's a breath of you and encourages you and gives you a sense of power to go balls out for what you believe in, then by all means. But ultimately we're trying to reach people fed up with religion that are sick and tired of it, and people that are in the real world that really are lost and confused. Our music has always been a tool to bring hope to those people. I'm sorry we can't please everybody in the church, but ultimately in our faith, I believe you're taken care of. There are a lot of people that live in the real world that are out on the streets, that are prostituting themselves, that are being sexually abused, that are being murdered and killed, and it's an evil world. And sometimes you've got to just give them the truth flat out. And it might offend some people. Might offend a lot of people. But at the end of the day, if they understand it and they get it, and they allow God to speak straight into their soul, then I think it's worth the slap on the hand." The band went on tour with Shinedown and Three Days Grace as an opening act. In a 2012 interview with Broken Records Magazine, Sandoval said that the band had to get their lives back in order and take care of personal needs before getting back into music, but was extremely happy about the response the band was getting from fans. On October 22, 2013, P.O.D. released a deluxe edition of Murdered Love. The album contains the original songs, slightly remixed, along with bonus tracks "Find a Way", "Burn It Down", acoustic versions of "Beautiful" and "West Coast Rock Steady", a remixed version of "On Fire", and music videos for "Murdered Love", "Beautiful", "Higher", and "Lost In Forever". Multiple behind the scenes videos were also on the track list. SoCal Sessions, The Awakening and Circles (2014–present) In mid-2014, P.O.D. announced an acoustic album to be released toward the end of the year. The album was crowd-funded on the website PledgeMusic. On October 20, 2014, P.O.D. announced a new record deal with T-Boy Records along with a new acoustic album. SoCal Sessions was released on November 17, 2014, and contained songs such as "Alive" and "Youth of the Nation". The band followed that release with another studio album, The Awakening, released on August 21, 2015, which was produced by Howard Benson, with guest vocalists such as Maria Brink of In This Moment and Lou Koller of Sick of It All. On May 17, 2016, the band announced that they would be taking part in the Make America Rock Again super tour throughout the summer and fall 2016. The tour featured a number of artists who had success throughout the 2000s. On August 18, 2017, the band released a new song, "Soundboy Killa", and embarked on a fall tour promoting the song. In January 2018, it was announced that the band had signed a new record deal with Mascot Records. They toured alongside Alien Ant Farm, Lit, and Buckcherry on the "Gen-X Tour" in 2018. Their tenth studio album, Circles, was released on November 16, 2018. Their band were scheduled to start their Satellite Album 20th Anniversary tour in Sturgis, South Dakota at Buffalo Chip on August 14, 2021, and end on October 7, 2021, at the House of Blues in San Diego, California. Musical style and influences The band's name, Payable on Death (P.O.D.), derives itself from the banking term "Payable on Death". The band chose this name to be a direct tie in with the Christian theology that explains that since Jesus died on the Cross, Christians' debts to God have been paid for; in other words all believers, in their acceptance that Jesus was sacrificed for them on God's behalf, have inherited eternal life. P.O.D.'s style has evolved over the years, from the rap metal sound on their early albums to the nu metal and reggae-infused alternative metal styles for which they're most well known. The band's seventh album, When Angels & Serpents Dance, is a combination of alternative rock, reggae rock and Latin-influenced metal with almost none of the rap metal or nu metal sound of their older releases. P.O.D.'s influences include Boogie Down Productions, Run-DMC, U2, the Police, Bad Brains, Santana, Metallica, AC/DC, Suicidal Tendencies, Bob Marley, Primus, Earth, Wind & Fire, 24-7 Spyz, and Steel Pulse. Band members Current members Wuv Bernardo − drums, rhythm guitar, backing vocals (1992–present) Sonny Sandoval − lead vocals (1992–present) Traa Daniels − bass, backing vocals (1993–present) Marcos Curiel − lead guitar, programming, backing vocals (1992–2003, 2006–present) Former members Gabe Portillo − bass, backing vocals (1992–1993) Jason Truby − lead guitar, backing vocals <small>(Living Sacrifice) (2003–2006) Former touring musicians Tim Pacheco – backing vocals, percussion, trumpet, keyboards (2006) Luis Castillo – keyboards, backing vocals, percussion (2011–2016) Sameer Bhattacharya – keyboards, backing vocals (2016–2018) Jonny Beats – drums (February – March 2019, October – November 2019) Timeline Discography Snuff the Punk (1994) Brown (1996) The Fundamental Elements of Southtown (1999) Satellite (2001) Payable on Death (2003) Testify (2006) When Angels & Serpents Dance (2008) Murdered Love (2012) SoCal Sessions (2014) The Awakening (2015) Circles (2018) Awards American Music Awards 2003 - Favorite Contemporary Inspirational Artist (nomination) Echo Awards 2003 - International Alternative Group of the Year San Diego Music Awards 1999 - Best Hard Rock Artist 2000 - Best Hard Rock Artist Note: Album- and single-specific awards and nominations are listed under their respective articles. References External links American alternative metal musical groups American Christian metal musical groups Atlantic Records artists Christian alternative metal groups Christian rock groups from California Hard rock musical groups from California Musical groups established in 1992 Musical groups from San Diego Musical quartets Nu metal musical groups from California Rapcore groups P.O.D. Razor & Tie artists
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[ "\"What Else Is There?\" is the third single from the Norwegian duo Röyksopp's second album The Understanding. It features the vocals of Karin Dreijer from the Swedish electronica duo The Knife. The album was released in the UK with the help of Astralwerks.\n\nThe single was used in an O2 television advertisement in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia during 2008. It was also used in the 2006 film Cashback and the 2007 film, Meet Bill. Trentemøller's remix of \"What Else is There?\" was featured in an episode of the HBO show Entourage.\n\nThe song was covered by extreme metal band Enslaved as a bonus track for their album E.\n\nThe song was listed as the 375th best song of the 2000s by Pitchfork Media.\n\nOfficial versions\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Album Version) – 5:17\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Radio Edit) – 3:38\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Jacques Lu Cont Radio Mix) – 3:46\n\"What Else Is There?\" (The Emperor Machine Vocal Version) – 8:03\n\"What Else Is There?\" (The Emperor Machine Dub Version) – 7:51\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Mix) – 8:25\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Edit) – 4:50\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Remix) (Radio Edit) – 3:06\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Trentemøller Remix) – 7:42\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Vitalic Remix) – 5:14\n\nResponse\nThe single was officially released on 5 December 2005 in the UK. The single had a limited release on 21 November 2005 to promote the upcoming album. On the UK Singles Chart, it peaked at number 32, while on the UK Dance Chart, it reached number one.\n\nMusic video\nThe music video was directed by Martin de Thurah. It features Norwegian model Marianne Schröder who is shown lip-syncing Dreijer's voice. Schröder is depicted as a floating woman traveling across stormy landscapes and within empty houses. Dreijer makes a cameo appearance as a woman wearing an Elizabethan ruff while dining alone at a festive table.\n\nMovie spots\n\nThe song is also featured in the movie Meet Bill as characters played by Jessica Alba and Aaron Eckhart smoke marijuana while listening to it. It is also part of the end credits music of the film Cashback.\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n2005 singles\nRöyksopp songs\nAstralwerks singles\nSongs written by Svein Berge\nSongs written by Torbjørn Brundtland\n2004 songs\nSongs written by Roger Greenaway\nSongs written by Olof Dreijer\nSongs written by Karin Dreijer", "White Heat is the self titled debut album of future Switch members Gregory Williams, Bobby DeBarge and Jody Sims. The album was released in 1975 and produced by R&B notable Barry White.\n\nTrack listing\n\nSide A\n\"Take a Look at Yourself (Before You Frown on Someone Else)\"\n\"If That's the Way You Feel (Then Let's Fall in Love)\"\n\"I Love Every Little Thing About You\" originally performed by Stevie Wonder\n\"Talkin'\"\n\nSide B\n\"What a Groove\"\n\"I've Been So Lonely (Without You)\"\n\"You Can Change My Life For Me\"\n\"Funk Freak\"\n\nReferences\n\n1975 debut albums\nRCA Records albums" ]
[ "P.O.D.", "Murdered Love (2010-2013)", "What is Murdered Love?", "Murdered Love was originally going to be released in June 2012, but was instead pushed back to July 10.", "Why was it pushed back?", "In a 2012 interview with Broken Records Magazine, Sandoval said that the band had to get their lives back in order and take care of personal needs", "Did this album have any hit singles?", "\"Find a Way\", \"Burn It Down\",", "What else is notable about this album?", "Multiple behind the scenes videos were also on the track list." ]
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Where did they perform?
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Where did P.O.D. perform?
P.O.D.
The band headlined the first annual Spring Jam Fest in May 2011. They appeared on the Rock of Allegiance tour later that summer. On July 25, 2011, the band released a demo of the song "On Fire" as a free download on their official website. In October 2011, P.O.D. announced a multi-album artist deal with Razor & Tie. On April 5, 2012, the song "Eyez" became a free download on the band's website for a limited time. Shortly after, an article on their website stated that "Lost in Forever" would be the first single from the new album, entitled Murdered Love. Murdered Love was originally going to be released in June 2012, but was instead pushed back to July 10. The album was produced by Howard Benson, who also produced Satellite and The Fundamental Elements of Southtown. It was described by Curiel as "Back to our roots. A little bit of hip hop, a little bit of punk rock, or reggae". The band went on tour with Shinedown and Three Days Grace as an opening act. In a 2012 interview with Broken Records Magazine, Sandoval said that the band had to get their lives back in order and take care of personal needs before getting back into music, but was extremely happy about the response the band was getting from fans. On October 22, 2013, P.O.D. released a deluxe edition of Murdered Love. The album contains the original songs, slightly remixed, along with bonus tracks "Find a Way", "Burn It Down", acoustic versions of "Beautiful" and "West Coast Rock Steady", a remixed version of "On Fire", and music videos for "Murdered Love", "Beautiful", "Higher", and "Lost In Forever". Multiple behind the scenes videos were also on the track list. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
Payable on Death is an American Christian metal band formed in 1992 and based in San Diego, California. The band's line-up consists of drummer and rhythm guitarist Wuv Bernardo, vocalist Sonny Sandoval, bassist Traa Daniels, and lead guitarist Marcos Curiel. They have sold over 12 million records worldwide. Over the course of their career, the band has received three Grammy Award nominations, contributed to numerous motion picture soundtracks and toured internationally. With their third studio album, The Fundamental Elements of Southtown, they achieved their initial mainstream success; the album was certified platinum by the RIAA in 2000. Their following studio album, Satellite, continued the band's success with the singles, "Alive" and "Youth of the Nation", pushing it to go triple platinum. History Early years (1991–1993) In 1991, friends Wuv Bernardo and Marcos Curiel engaged in jam sessions, with Bernardo playing the drums and Curiel covering guitar with no vocalist. Calling themselves Eschatos, they started playing at keg parties doing Metallica and Slayer cover songs. After his mother's fatal illness, Sonny Sandoval converted to Christianity and was asked by Bernardo, his cousin, to join the band as a way to keep his mind straight as mentioned on their DVD, Still Payin' Dues. They then recruited bassist Gabe Portillo and eventually changed their name to P.O.D. Snuff the Punk and Brown (1994–1998) After recording a demo tape, Traa Daniels joined the band in 1994 when they needed a bassist for some shows to replace Portillo. P.O.D. signed with Rescue Records, a label created by Bernardo's father, Noah Bernardo Sr., who was also the band's first manager. Between 1994 and 1997, they released three albums under the label, Snuff the Punk, Brown and Payable on Death Live. Longtime manager Tim Cook was first introduced to the band when he booked them to play his club The Where-House in Bartlesville, Oklahoma following strong local word of mouth support. He later described their performance by saying: "I stood at the back of the venue with tears in my eyes – it was the greatest thing I had ever seen." By that point, Bernardo Sr. was looking for someone else to take P.O.D.'s career further and so Cook took over as manager. Shortly after the release of Payable on Death Live, Essential Records offered P.O.D. a $100,000 recording contract, but on behalf of the band Sandoval told band manager Tim Cook to decline the offer because, "God has a bigger plan for P.O.D." When, in 1998, Atlantic Records A&R John Rubeli first came across P.O.D.'s demo he "didn't quite get it", as he later told HitQuarters. It was only when he saw them play live at The Roxy on the Sunset Strip and witnessed not just an enthusiastic audience singing every word but the center of a vibrant youth movement that he became convinced by the band. The band was quickly signed to a major-label deal. P.O.D. soon released The Warriors EP, a tribute EP to their loyal fans as a transitional album from Rescue Records to Atlantic Records. The Fundamental Elements of Southtown and Satellite (1999–2002) P.O.D.'s third studio album, 1999's The Fundamental Elements of Southtown, spawned the hits "Southtown" and "Rock the Party (Off the Hook)", which was their first video to reach No. 1 on MTV's Total Request Live. The song "School of Hard Knocks" was featured on the soundtrack for Little Nicky while both "Southtown" and "Rock the Party" appeared in the movie. All three music videos endured heavy play on MTV2 and the songs were rock radio hits. The album went on to become RIAA certified platinum. On September 11, 2001 P.O.D. released their fourth studio album, Satellite. The album's first single, "Alive", went on to become one of MTV's and MTV2's top played videos of the year. The video's popularity, as well as the song's positive message, helped the song become a huge modern rock radio hit and it was Grammy nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance in 2002. Also in 2002, the band contributed the song "America" to Santana's album Shaman. The album's second single, "Youth of the Nation", was influenced in part by the school shootings at Santana High School, Columbine High School, and Granite Hills High School. It was Grammy nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance in 2003. The 2002 singles, "Boom" and "Satellite", also became quite popular. In addition, the concluding track of the album, "Portrait," was Grammy nominated for Best Metal Performance in 2003. It was used in the comedy film Here Comes the Boom, starring Kevin James. Satellite went on to become RIAA-certified triple platinum. The author of Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music has described P.O.D. as "One of the biggest success stories in recent Christian music." Payable on Death and Testify (2003–2006) On February 19, 2003, guitarist Curiel left the band due to his side project, The Accident Experiment, and "spiritual differences." However, Curiel claimed that he was actually kicked out of the band. Curiel was replaced by Jason Truby, former member of Christian metal band Living Sacrifice, and assisted with the recording of "Sleeping Awake", from The Matrix Reloaded soundtrack. In an interview with Yahoo! Music, Sandoval stated that Truby is the reason why the group is still together. On November 4, 2003, P.O.D. released their fifth studio album, Payable on Death, which saw the group shift from their well-known rapcore sound to a darker, more melodic metal sound. The album was hit with controversy due to its "occult" cover, which led as many as 85% of Christian bookstores across the United States to ban the album. With the help of the album's hit single "Will You" and "Change the World", it went on to sell over 520,000 copies and was certified Gold. Sometime after the tsunami in Asia, many singers, musicians, and actors/actresses, including Sandoval and Bernardo, participated in the recording of, "Forever in Our Hearts", with all proceeds going to benefit the tsunami relief. P.O.D.'s sixth studio album Testify was slated for a December 2005 release, but was pushed back to January 24, 2006. On November 15, 2005, P.O.D. released The Warriors EP, Volume 2, which featured demos from the upcoming album, to help build up the fans' anticipation for the pending January release. The album's first single, "Goodbye for Now" (with a vocal tag by a then-unknown Katy Perry) went on to become a No. 1 video on MTV's TRL, along with having a solid radio presence, it also became the band's unprecedented 4th number one video on Total Request Live. The second single off the album, "Lights Out" was a minor hit, but was featured as the official theme song to WWE's Survivor Series 2005. In another contribution to WWE, they performed fellow San Diego native Rey Mysterio's theme song "Booyaka 619" at WrestleMania 22. To promote their latest album, P.O.D. went on a nationwide tour called the "Warriors Tour 2: Guilty by Association", which began in April, and included the bands Pillar, The Chariot and Maylene and the Sons of Disaster. On August 11, 2006, P.O.D. announced in their online newsletter that they had left Atlantic Records. On September 16, 2006, P.O.D. announced that they had teamed up with Rhino Records to release a greatest hits record simply titled, Greatest Hits: The Atlantic Years, which was released on November 21, 2006. They shot a music video for their single "Going In Blind", one of the two new songs they included in the tenth album, and they had meetings with various record labels to begin working on new material for an album they hoped to release in mid-2007. When Angels & Serpents Dance (2007–2009) In a statement made by the band's manager on their MySpace page, it was officially announced, on December 30, 2006, that Jason Truby had left the band. They had said "God worked it out because Truby decided to leave the band the same day Curiel asked to rejoin." Curiel performed with the band for the first time since his departure on the 2006 New Year's Eve episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!. On February 2, 2007, the band made a new record deal with INO Records. On June 1, 2007, at the Rockbox in San Diego, the band performed and revealed a new song entitled "Condescending", along with another new song performed on June 16, 2007, at the Journeys Backyard BBQ tour entitled "Addicted". They also revealed the title of their new album to be When Angels & Serpents Dance. On August 4, 2007, the band played at Angel Stadium of Anaheim's annual Harvest Crusade for a crowd of 42,000, where they revealed a new song, "I'll Be Ready", originally thought to be titled "When Babylon Come for I". The album cover was officially revealed on December 10, 2007. The title track was released for free download on their site in January 2008. The first single "Addicted" was released on February 19 and peaked at No. 30 on the Mainstream Rock chart. The album was released on April 8, 2008, entitled When Angels & Serpents Dance. On July 28, 2008, the group played a free public performance at the Orange County Choppers headquarters in Newburgh, NY, with OCC The Band opening. The band also played on August 16, 2008, at the Angel Stadium of Anaheim's annual Harvest Crusade. During September 2008 P.O.D played alongside Redline, Behind Crimson Eyes, Alter Bridge, and Disturbed as part of the Music As a Weapon tour 2008 in Australia. Murdered Love (2010–2013) The band headlined the first annual Spring Jam Fest in May 2011. They appeared on the Rock of Allegiance tour later that summer. On July 25, 2011, the band released a demo of the song "On Fire" as a free download on their official website. In October 2011, P.O.D. announced a multi-album artist deal with Razor & Tie. On April 5, 2012, the song "Eyez" became a free download on the band's website for a limited time. Shortly after, an article on their website stated that "Lost in Forever" would be the first single from the new album, entitled Murdered Love. Murdered Love was originally going to be released in June 2012, but was instead pushed back to July 10. The album was produced by Howard Benson, who also produced Satellite and The Fundamental Elements of Southtown. It was described by Curiel as "Back to our roots. A little bit of hip hop, a little bit of punk rock, or reggae". The album caused controversy concerning its eleventh track, "I Am", which uses the word "fuck" (albeit backmasked). Sandoval, explaining the purpose of the song, said, "being up close and personal with these kids, that's what came out in that song. I'm a man of faith and I'm a follower and a believer of Jesus Christ, and in talking to these kids, and even in talking to people just throughout my career in P.O.D., a lot of these bands and athletes and all these people that you meet, they don't have a problem with Jesus. They have a problem with people that are religious and claim to know Jesus, but aren't living it or acting it and aren't loving the way Jesus did. In my faith, if I believe that Jesus paid for the sins of the world, and I'm all these things, this is what's going on in the real world, and do you still love someone like me? And even though I know you do, and I believe in you, I believe in your forgiveness and your grace and your mercy, there's still so much confusion around me that everybody's getting in the way and trying to take your place. Everything gets in my way from seeing who Jesus was...We had that song for almost a year, and I didn't take it lightly. I'd been praying on it for over a year. I'd actually took counsel and let people hear it. And it was 50/50. Some people are like, you know what, go for it. Because my heart is like, I don't write music for Christians. I don't write music for people that I believe are saved and going to heaven. If it's a breath of you and encourages you and gives you a sense of power to go balls out for what you believe in, then by all means. But ultimately we're trying to reach people fed up with religion that are sick and tired of it, and people that are in the real world that really are lost and confused. Our music has always been a tool to bring hope to those people. I'm sorry we can't please everybody in the church, but ultimately in our faith, I believe you're taken care of. There are a lot of people that live in the real world that are out on the streets, that are prostituting themselves, that are being sexually abused, that are being murdered and killed, and it's an evil world. And sometimes you've got to just give them the truth flat out. And it might offend some people. Might offend a lot of people. But at the end of the day, if they understand it and they get it, and they allow God to speak straight into their soul, then I think it's worth the slap on the hand." The band went on tour with Shinedown and Three Days Grace as an opening act. In a 2012 interview with Broken Records Magazine, Sandoval said that the band had to get their lives back in order and take care of personal needs before getting back into music, but was extremely happy about the response the band was getting from fans. On October 22, 2013, P.O.D. released a deluxe edition of Murdered Love. The album contains the original songs, slightly remixed, along with bonus tracks "Find a Way", "Burn It Down", acoustic versions of "Beautiful" and "West Coast Rock Steady", a remixed version of "On Fire", and music videos for "Murdered Love", "Beautiful", "Higher", and "Lost In Forever". Multiple behind the scenes videos were also on the track list. SoCal Sessions, The Awakening and Circles (2014–present) In mid-2014, P.O.D. announced an acoustic album to be released toward the end of the year. The album was crowd-funded on the website PledgeMusic. On October 20, 2014, P.O.D. announced a new record deal with T-Boy Records along with a new acoustic album. SoCal Sessions was released on November 17, 2014, and contained songs such as "Alive" and "Youth of the Nation". The band followed that release with another studio album, The Awakening, released on August 21, 2015, which was produced by Howard Benson, with guest vocalists such as Maria Brink of In This Moment and Lou Koller of Sick of It All. On May 17, 2016, the band announced that they would be taking part in the Make America Rock Again super tour throughout the summer and fall 2016. The tour featured a number of artists who had success throughout the 2000s. On August 18, 2017, the band released a new song, "Soundboy Killa", and embarked on a fall tour promoting the song. In January 2018, it was announced that the band had signed a new record deal with Mascot Records. They toured alongside Alien Ant Farm, Lit, and Buckcherry on the "Gen-X Tour" in 2018. Their tenth studio album, Circles, was released on November 16, 2018. Their band were scheduled to start their Satellite Album 20th Anniversary tour in Sturgis, South Dakota at Buffalo Chip on August 14, 2021, and end on October 7, 2021, at the House of Blues in San Diego, California. Musical style and influences The band's name, Payable on Death (P.O.D.), derives itself from the banking term "Payable on Death". The band chose this name to be a direct tie in with the Christian theology that explains that since Jesus died on the Cross, Christians' debts to God have been paid for; in other words all believers, in their acceptance that Jesus was sacrificed for them on God's behalf, have inherited eternal life. P.O.D.'s style has evolved over the years, from the rap metal sound on their early albums to the nu metal and reggae-infused alternative metal styles for which they're most well known. The band's seventh album, When Angels & Serpents Dance, is a combination of alternative rock, reggae rock and Latin-influenced metal with almost none of the rap metal or nu metal sound of their older releases. P.O.D.'s influences include Boogie Down Productions, Run-DMC, U2, the Police, Bad Brains, Santana, Metallica, AC/DC, Suicidal Tendencies, Bob Marley, Primus, Earth, Wind & Fire, 24-7 Spyz, and Steel Pulse. Band members Current members Wuv Bernardo − drums, rhythm guitar, backing vocals (1992–present) Sonny Sandoval − lead vocals (1992–present) Traa Daniels − bass, backing vocals (1993–present) Marcos Curiel − lead guitar, programming, backing vocals (1992–2003, 2006–present) Former members Gabe Portillo − bass, backing vocals (1992–1993) Jason Truby − lead guitar, backing vocals <small>(Living Sacrifice) (2003–2006) Former touring musicians Tim Pacheco – backing vocals, percussion, trumpet, keyboards (2006) Luis Castillo – keyboards, backing vocals, percussion (2011–2016) Sameer Bhattacharya – keyboards, backing vocals (2016–2018) Jonny Beats – drums (February – March 2019, October – November 2019) Timeline Discography Snuff the Punk (1994) Brown (1996) The Fundamental Elements of Southtown (1999) Satellite (2001) Payable on Death (2003) Testify (2006) When Angels & Serpents Dance (2008) Murdered Love (2012) SoCal Sessions (2014) The Awakening (2015) Circles (2018) Awards American Music Awards 2003 - Favorite Contemporary Inspirational Artist (nomination) Echo Awards 2003 - International Alternative Group of the Year San Diego Music Awards 1999 - Best Hard Rock Artist 2000 - Best Hard Rock Artist Note: Album- and single-specific awards and nominations are listed under their respective articles. References External links American alternative metal musical groups American Christian metal musical groups Atlantic Records artists Christian alternative metal groups Christian rock groups from California Hard rock musical groups from California Musical groups established in 1992 Musical groups from San Diego Musical quartets Nu metal musical groups from California Rapcore groups P.O.D. Razor & Tie artists
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[ "The No Sound Without Silence Tour is the third arena tour by Irish pop rock band The Script. Launched in support of their fourth studio album No Sound Without Silence (2014), the tour began in Tokyo on 16 January 2015 and visited Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and Oceania. The opening acts were American singer Phillip Phillips for the South African dates, and English singer Tinie Tempah for the European dates. Pharrell Williams served as a co-headliner for the Croke Park concert on 20 June 2015.\n\nOpening acts\nColton Avery (Europe, North America, Australia, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia)\nMary Lambert (North America)\nPhillip Phillips (South Africa)\nSilent Sanctuary (Philippines)\nTinie Tempah (Europe)\nPharrell Williams (Dublin)\nThe Wailers (Dublin)\nThe Sam Willows (Singapore)\nKensington (Band) (Europe)\n\nSetlist\nThis setlist is based on previous performances of the tour.\n\n \"Paint the Town Green\"\n \"Hail Rain or Sunshine\"\n \"Breakeven\"\n \"Before the Worst\"\n \"Superheroes\"\n \"We Cry\"\n \"If You Could See Me Now\"\n \"Man on a Wire\"\n \"Nothing\"\n \"Good Ol' Days\"\n \"Never Seen Anything (Quite Like You)\"\n \"The Man Who Can't Be Moved\"\n \"You Won't Feel A Thing\"\n \"It's Not Right For You\"\n \"Six Degrees of Separation\"\n \"The Energy Never Dies\"\n \"For the First Time\"\n \"No Good in Goodbye\"\n \"Hall of Fame\"\n\nAdditional information\nDuring the performance in Sheffield, The Script didn't perform \"We Cry\" due to a fan collapsing. Danny called for Paramedic to check on her, she was fine and they carried on.\n\nDuring the performance in Barcelona, The Script didn't perform \"The End Where I Begin\" or \"Nothing\". They also did not perform \"Six Degrees Of Separation\" and \"It's Not Right For You\".\n\nDuring the performance in Oakland, The Script didn't perform \"The End Where I Begin\", \"We Cry\", or \"Six Degrees of Separation\".\n\nDuring the performance in Toronto, The Script did not perform \"The End Where I Begin\" and \"Six Degrees of Separation\".\n\nDuring the performance im Hamburg, The Script did not perform \"Nothing\" and \"Never Seen Anything (Quite Like You)\".\n\nTour dates\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\n2015 concert tours\nThe Script concert tours", "Sonic Temple Art & Music Festival is a rock festival currently held in Columbus, Ohio, United States and is produced by Danny Wimmer Presents.\n\nHistory\n\nIn 2018 it was announced that Rock on the Range would be replaced by Danny Wimmer Presents as the Sonic Temple Art & Music Festival. The inaugural festival was held in May 2019 with sold-out crowds of 120,000.\n\nIn December 2019, the full lineup for Sonic Temple 2020 was revealed. Metallica were to headline both Friday and Saturday night, with Slipknot headlining on Saturday. Other performers were to include Deftones, Bring Me the Horizon, Evanescence, Sublime with Rome, Rancid, Dropkick Murphys, Cypress Hill, Pennywise, Royal Blood, The Pretty Reckless, Alter Bridge, Anthrax, Flatbush Zombies, Pop Evil, Hellyeah, Ghostemane, Suicidal Tendencies, Testament, Dance Gavin Dance, Ice Nine Kills, Sleeping with Sirens, The Darkness, Knocked Loose, Code Orange, Power Trip, Saint Asonia, Dirty Honey, Jinjer, City Morgue, Bones UK, Airbourne, Fire from the Gods, Dinosaur Pile-Up, Des Rocs, Counterfeit, Crobot, Cherry Bomb, DED, Goodbye June, Brutus, 3Teeth, BRKN Love, Killstation, Brass Against, Crown Lands, Ego Kill Talent, Dregg, Bloodywood, and Zero 9:36, with more to have been announced.\n\nIn February 2020, it was announced that Metallica would be replaced as headliners by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Tool, following frontman James Hetfield's entrance into a rehabilitation program for substance abuse. The following month, the festival was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In February 2021, it was announced it would once again be cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with plans to return in 2022.\n\nEvents\n\n2019 \n\nMonster Energy Stadium Stage:\n System of a Down\n Ghost\n Halestorm\n Parkway Drive\n Beartooth\n Avatar\n Badflower\n\nEcho Stage:\n Meshuggah\n Black Label Society\n Bad Wolves\n Zeal & Ardor\n Wage War\n SHVPES\n The Jacks\n\nWave Stage:\n Tom Morello\n Pussy Riot\n Ho99o99\n Cleopatrick\n Hands Like Houses\n Radattack\n\nSiriusXM Comedy & Spoken Word Tent:\n Henry Rollins\n Tom Morello\n Shapel Lacy\n Nadya\n\nMonster Energy Stadium Stage:\n Disturbed\n Papa Roach\n Lamb of God\n In This Moment\n Gojira\n Fever 333\n Black Coffee\n\nEcho Stage:\n The Cult\n Killswitch Engage\n Architects\n The Black Dahlia Murder\n While She Sleeps\n Evan Konrad\n The Plot in You\n\nWave Stage:\n Action Bronson (did not perform due to an \"unforeseen knee injury\")\n Mark Lanegan Band\n Don Broco\n Movements\n Boston Manor\n No1Cares\n\nSiriusXM Comedy & Spoken Word Tent:\n Andrew Dice Clay\n Eleanor Kerrigan\n Mark Normand\n Craig Grass\n\nMonster Energy Stadium Stage:\n Foo Fighters\n Bring Me the Horizon (did not perform due to high winds)\n Chevelle (did not perform due to high winds)\n The Distillers (did not perform due to high winds)\n The Struts\n The Glorious Sons\n Amigo the Devil\n\nEcho Stage:\n Joan Jett and the Blackhearts\n The Hives (performance ended early due to high winds)\n The Interrupters\n Yungblud\n Palaye Royale\n Dirty Honey\n Teenage Wrist\n\nWave Stage:\n Scars on Broadway (did not perform due to high winds)\n Refused (did not perform due to high winds)\n Black Pistol Fire (did not perform due to high winds)\n Basement (did not perform due to high winds)\n Scarlxrd (did not perform due to high winds)\n Demob Happy (did not perform due to high winds)\n\nSiriusXM Comedy & Spoken Word Tent:\n Pauly Shore (did not perform due to high winds)\n Carmen Lynch (did not perform due to high winds)\n Joe Deuce (did not perform due to high winds)\n Bill Squire (did not perform due to high winds)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\nHeavy metal festivals in the United States\nMusic festivals established in 2019\nMusic festivals in Ohio\nRock festivals in the United States" ]