title: Rotoscoping

text: The rotoscope technique was invented by animator Max Fleischer in 1915, and used in his groundbreaking "Out of the Inkwell" animated series (1918–1927). It was known simply as the "Fleischer Process" on the early screen credits, and was essentially exclusive to Fleischer for several years. The live-movie reference for the character, later known as Koko the Clown, was performed by his brother (Dave Fleischer) dressed in a clown costume.


title: Rotoscoping

text: Originally conceived as a shortcut to animating, the rotoscope process proved time-consuming due to the precise and laborious nature of tracing. Rotoscoping is achieved by two methods, rear projection and front surface projection. In either case, the results can have slight deviations from the true line due to the separation of the projected image and the surface used for tracing. Misinterpretations of the forms cause the line to wiggle, and the roto tracings must be reworked over an animation disc, using the tracings as a guide where consistency and solidity are important.


title: Rotoscoping

text: Fleischer ceased to depend on the rotoscope for fluid action by 1924, when Dick Huemer became the animation director and brought his animation experience from his years on the "Mutt and Jeff" series. Fleischer returned to rotoscoping in the 1930s for referencing intricate dance movements in his Popeye and Betty Boop cartoons. The most notable of these are the dance routines originating from jazz performer Cab Calloway in "Minnie the Moocher" (1932), "Snow-White" (1933), and "The Old Man of the Mountain" (1933). In these examples, the roto tracing was used as a guide for timing and positioning, while the cartoon characters of different proportions were drawn to conform to those positions.


title: Rotoscoping

text: Fleischer's last applications of rotoscope were for the realistic human animation required for the lead character—among others—in "Gulliver's Travels" (1939), and the human characters in his last feature, "Mr. Bug Goes to Town" (1941). His most effective use of rotoscoping was in the action-oriented film noir "Superman" series of the early 1940s, where realistic movement was achieved on a level unmatched by conventional cartoon animation.


title: Rotoscoping

text: Contemporary uses of the rotoscope and its inherent challenges have included surreal effects in music videos such as Elvis Costello's "Accidents Will Happen" (1978), Klaatu's "Routine Day" (1979), A-ha's "Take On Me" (1985), the live performance scenes in Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" (1985), Kansas' "All I Wanted" (1986), and the animated TV series "Delta State" (2004).


title: Rotoscoping

text: Fleischer's patent expired by 1934, and other producers could then use rotoscoping freely. Walt Disney and his animators used the technique extensively in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in order to make the human characters' motions more realistic. The film went significantly over budget due to the complexity of the animation.


title: Rotoscoping

text: Leon Schlesinger Productions, which produced the "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" cartoons for Warner Bros., occasionally used rotoscoping. The opening to the 1939 MGM cartoon "Petunia Natural Park" from "The Captain and the Kids" featured a rotoscoped version of MGM's mascot, Jackie the Lion.


title: Rotoscoping

text: Rotoscoping was used extensively in China's first animated feature film, "Princess Iron Fan" (1941), which was released under very difficult conditions during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II.


title: Rotoscoping

text: Most of the movies produced with it were adaptations of folk tales or poems—for example, "The Night Before Christmas" or "The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish". Only during the early 1960s, after the "Khrushchev Thaw", did animators start to explore very different aesthetics.


title: Rotoscoping

text: The makers of the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" used rotoscoping in the "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" sequence. Director Martin Scorsese used rotoscoping to remove a large chunk of cocaine hanging from Neil Young's nose in his rock documentary "The Last Waltz".


title: Rotoscoping

text: Ralph Bakshi used rotoscoping extensively for his animated features "Wizards" (1977), "The Lord of the Rings" (1978), "American Pop" (1981), "Fire and Ice" (1983), and "Cool World" (1992). Bakshi first used rotoscoping because 20th Century Fox refused his request for a $50,000 budget increase to finish "Wizards"; he resorted to the rotoscope technique to finish the battle sequences.


title: Rotoscoping

text: Rotoscoping was also used in "Tom Waits For No One" (1979), a short film made by John Lamb, "Heavy Metal" (1981), "What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?" (1983) and "It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown" (1984); the Dire Straits “Brothers in Arms” (1985), three of A-ha's music videos, "Take On Me" (1985), "The Sun Always Shines on T.V." (1985), and "Train of Thought" (1986); Don Bluth's "The Secret of NIMH" (1982), "An American Tail" (1986), "Harry and the Hendersons" (closing credits), "The BFG" (1989), "Titan A.E." (2000); and Nina Paley's "Sita Sings the Blues" (2008).


title: Rotoscoping

text: In 1994, Smoking Car Productions invented a digital rotoscoping process to develop its critically acclaimed adventure video game "The Last Express". The process was awarded , "Digital Cartoon and Animation Process". The game was designed by Jordan Mechner, who had used rotoscoping extensively in his previous games "Karateka" and "Prince of Persia".


title: Rotoscoping

text: During the mid-1990s, Bob Sabiston, an animator and computer scientist veteran of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, developed a computer-assisted "interpolated rotoscoping" process, which he used to make his award-winning short movie "Snack and Drink". Director Richard Linklater subsequently employed Sabiston and his proprietary Rotoshop software in the full-length feature movies "Waking Life" (2001) and "A Scanner Darkly" (2006). Linklater licensed the same proprietary rotoscoping process for the look of both movies. Linklater was the first director to use digital rotoscoping to create an entire feature movie. Additionally, a 2005–08 advertising campaign by Charles Schwab used Sabiston's rotoscoping work for a series of television commercials, with the tagline "Talk to Chuck". "The Simpsons" used rotoscope as a couch gag in the episode Barthood, with Lisa describing it as "a noble experiment that failed".


title: Rotoscoping

text: In 2013, the anime "The Flowers of Evil" used rotoscoping to produce a look that differed greatly from its manga source material. Viewers criticized the show's shortcuts in facial animation, its reuse of backgrounds, and the liberties it took with realism. Despite this, critics lauded the movie, and the website Anime News Network awarded it a perfect score for initial reactions.


title: Rotoscoping

text: In early 2015, an anime film titled "The Case of Hana & Alice" (animated prequel to the 2004 live-action film, "Hana and Alice") was entirely animated with rotoscoping, but it was far better received than "The Flowers of Evil", with critics praising its rotoscoping. In 2015, "", a short-form horror anime series using rotoscoping, aired on Japanese TV.


title: Rotoscoping

text: "The Spine of Night" (2021), a feature-length fantasy film, was rotoscope animated by Gorgonaut Studio, after a series of earlier rotoscope animated short films.


title: Next German federal election

text: The next German federal election will be held on or before 26 October 2025 to elect the members of the 21st Bundestag.


title: Next German federal election

text: The Basic Law and the Federal Election Act provide that federal elections must be held on a Sunday or on a national holiday no earlier than 46 and no later than 48 months after the first sitting of a Bundestag, unless the Bundestag is dissolved earlier. The 20th and sitting Bundestag held its first sitting on 26 October 2021. Therefore, the next election has to take place on one of the following possible dates:


title: Next German federal election

text: The exact date will be determined by the President of Germany in due course. Federal elections can be held earlier if the President of Germany dissolves the Bundestag and schedules a snap election. They may only do so under two possible scenarios described by the Basic Law.


title: Next German federal election

text: In both cases, federal elections would have to take place on a Sunday or national holiday no later than 60 days after the dissolution. Under both scenarios, a snap election is not possible during a state of defence. Federal elections can also be held later, if a state of defence is declared. If a state of defence prohibits a scheduled federal election and prolongs a legislative period, new elections have to take place no later than six months after the end of the state of defence.


title: Divya Narendra

text: Divya Narendra (; born March 18, 1982) is an American businessman. He is the CEO and co-founder of SumZero along with Harvard classmate Aalap Mahadevia. He also co-founded HarvardConnection (later renamed ConnectU) with Harvard University classmates Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss.


title: Divya Narendra

text: Divya Narendra was born in the Bronx, New York and raised in Bayside, Queens, the eldest son of immigrant doctors from India, Sudhanshu Narendra and Dharamjit Narendra Kumar, of Sands Point, New York. Narendra graduated from Townsend Harris High School in Flushing, Queens before attending Harvard University in 2000, from which he graduated in applied mathematics in 2004.


title: Divya Narendra

text: ConnectU (originally Harvard Connection) was a social networking website launched on May 21, 2004, that was founded by Harvard students Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Narendra in December 2002. Users could add people as friends, send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. In November 2003, the Winklevosses and Narendra approached Mark Zuckerberg about joining the HarvardConnection team, who later turned Harvard Connection into Facebook, leading to several lawsuits.


title: Divya Narendra

text: On February 6, 2004, the Winklevosses and Narendra first learned of thefacebook.com while reading a press release in the Harvard student newspaper "The Harvard Crimson". According to Gao, who looked at the HarvardConnection code afterward, Zuckerberg had left the HarvardConnection code incomplete and non-functional, with a registration that did not connect with the back-end connections. On February 10, 2004, the Winklevosses and Narendra sent Zuckerberg a cease and desist letter. They also asked the Harvard administration to act on what they viewed as a violation of the university’s honor code and student handbook. They lodged a complaint with the Harvard Administrative Board and university president Larry Summers; however, both viewed the matter to be outside the university's jurisdiction. President Summers advised the HarvardConnection team to take their matter to the courts.


title: Divya Narendra

text: Narendra is portrayed by Max Minghella in "The Social Network" (2010), a film directed by David Fincher about the founding of Facebook. Narendra is of Indian ancestry, while Minghella is of Italian and Chinese ancestry. Narendra said that he was "initially surprised" to see himself portrayed by a non-Indian actor but also said that "Max did a good job in pushing the dialogue forward and creating a sense of urgency in what was a very frustrating period."


title: United States Secretary of the Treasury

text: The United States secretary of the treasury is the head of the United States Department of the Treasury, and is the chief financial officer of the federal government of the United States. The secretary of the treasury serves as the principal advisor to the president of the United States on all matters pertaining to economic and fiscal policy. The secretary is a statutory member of the Cabinet of the United States, and is fifth in the presidential line of succession.


title: United States Secretary of the Treasury

text: Under the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution, the officeholder is nominated by the president of the United States, and, following a confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Finance, is confirmed by the United States Senate.


title: United States Secretary of the Treasury

text: The secretary of state, the secretary of the treasury, the secretary of defense, and the attorney general are generally regarded as the four most important Cabinet officials, due to the size and importance of their respective departments.


title: United States Secretary of the Treasury

text: The secretary along with the treasurer of the United States must sign Federal Reserve notes before they can become legal tender. The secretary also manages the United States Emergency Economic Stabilization fund.


title: United States Secretary of the Treasury

text: Most of the department's law enforcement agencies such as the U.S. Customs Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and the U.S. Secret Service were reassigned to other departments in 2003 in conjunction with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.


title: United States Secretary of the Treasury

text: The secretary of the treasury is a Level I position in the Executive Schedule and thus earns the salary prescribed for that level (US$221,400, as of January 2021).


title: Idrissa Gueye

text: Idrissa Gana Gueye (born 26 September 1989) is a Senegalese professional footballer who plays as a defensive midfielder for club Everton and the Senegal national team.


title: Idrissa Gueye

text: Starting his career at Diambars in his native Senegal, Gueye joined French club Lille's reserve side in 2008. He would go on to play for the side's first team from 2010 to 2015, winning a Ligue 1 and Coupe de France double in 2011, before moving to England with Aston Villa. A year later, he signed for fellow Premier League club Everton. In 2019, Gueye returned to France by signing for the reigning Ligue 1 champions, Paris Saint-Germain (PSG). He reached the 2020 UEFA Champions League Final with the club, but did not play in the match in which PSG lost.


title: Idrissa Gueye

text: Gueye made his debut for Senegal in 2011. He was part of the Senegalese squad at the 2012 Summer Olympics, where he played one match. He played for Senegal at two FIFA World Cup and four Africa Cup of Nations tournaments. After a defeat in the 2019 final, he helped his country win the following competition's final in 2022.


title: Idrissa Gueye

text: Born in Dakar, Gueye spent his early career in Senegal at Diambars, a football academy set up by Patrick Vieira and Bernard Lama. He joined French club Lille in August 2008. He broke through into the first team in the 2010–11 season, playing 11 games as the team won Ligue 1, and started in the 2011 Coupe de France Final win over Paris Saint-Germain. He became a regular starter in the league and the UEFA Champions League over the following four seasons. His first goal came on 17 February 2011 in a 2–2 home draw with PSV Eindhoven in the UEFA Europa League last 32 first leg, while his first league goal came on 5 October 2013 in a 3–0 win over Ajaccio at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy. He was sent off on 21 April 2012 in a 2–0 win at Dijon.


title: Idrissa Gueye

text: On 10 July 2015, Gueye joined English Premier League club Aston Villa for a £9 million transfer fee. On 8 August, he made his debut in a 1–0 away victory over AFC Bournemouth. On 19 January 2016, Gueye scored his first and only goal for Villa in a 2–0 over Wycombe Wanderers in the third round replay of the FA Cup. In total, Gueye made 35 league appearances for Villa as the club was relegated from the Premier League at the end of the season.


title: Idrissa Gueye

text: On 2 August 2016 and with Aston Villa relegated from the Premier League, Everton triggered a release clause in Gueye's contract, reported to be £7.1 million, and signed him to a four-year contract. He made the highest number of successful tackles and interceptions per match across Europe's top five leagues over the 2016 calendar year. Gueye scored his first league goal for Everton in a 2–0 victory over Sunderland at Goodison Park on 25 February 2017. He became the first player in Europe's top five leagues to win 100 tackles in the 2016–17 season.


title: Idrissa Gueye

text: Gueye scored his first goal for Everton in European competition on 17 August 2017 in the UEFA Europa League play-off round first leg against Hajduk Split. He was sent off on 22 October in a 5–2 home loss to Arsenal. In February 2018, he extended his contract with Everton until 2022.


title: Idrissa Gueye

text: In January 2019, Everton rejected an offer from French club Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) for Gueye. However, the speculation regarding PSG did not negatively impact his performances as Gueye was awarded the club's joint Player's Player of the Year for the 2018–19 season along with Lucas Digne.


title: Idrissa Gueye

text: On 30 July 2019, Gueye signed for Ligue 1 club PSG for a fee of £30 million. He made his debut on 25 August in a 4–0 victory over Toulouse. On 18 September, he produced a "brilliant" display in a 3–0 win over Real Madrid in the UEFA Champions League. His first goal for PSG came in a 4–0 win against Angers on 5 October. In his first season in Paris, Gueye won a domestic treble and finished runner-up in the Champions League, sitting on the bench for the loss to Bayern Munich in the final. In his second season, the club won the Coupe de France and made the semi-finals of the Champions League, losing to Manchester City.


title: Idrissa Gueye

text: After having been suspended for two Champions League matches due to a red card in the first leg of the semi-final against Manchester City in April 2021, Gueye made his return to European football in a 2–0 win over the same opponent on 28 September 2021. He scored the opening goal of the match, his first goal in the Champions League, and was given the Player of the Match award.


title: Idrissa Gueye

text: Gueye began talks to return to Everton in early August 2022. He signed a two-year contract with the club on 1 September 2022 for a reported fee of £2 million.


title: Idrissa Gueye

text: Gueye made his international debut for Senegal on 11 November 2011 as a half-time substitute for Deme N'Diaye in a 4–1 friendly win away to neighbours Guinea. He was part of the team at the 2012 Olympics, but was injured just before the interval in the opening game against hosts Great Britain. He was selected for the Africa Cup of Nations in 2015, and 2017.


title: Idrissa Gueye

text: On 9 June 2017, Gueye scored his first international goal to conclude a 3–0 win over Equatorial Guinea in 2019 Africa Cup of Nations qualification. He was named in Senegal's 23-man squad for the 2018 World Cup in Russia. At the 2019 African finals in Egypt, he scored the only goal of the quarter-final win over Benin for the finalists. Senegal won the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations in Cameroon, with Gueye scoring in a 3–1 semi-final win over Burkina Faso.


title: Idrissa Gueye

text: An energetic midfielder, known for his ball-winning skills, as well as his ability to press opponents and intercept passes, Gueye completed the most tackles during the 2016–17 Premier League season.


title: Idrissa Gueye

text: Gueye is married to Pauline, with whom he has two sons. He is a practising Muslim and has made the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. In May 2022, he held a charity dinner to raise €2 million in funds for African children affected by cancer and HIV/AIDS.


title: Idrissa Gueye

text: In the 37th matchday of the 2021–22 Ligue 1 season, Gueye travelled with the PSG squad for the away match against Montpellier. However, he was not included in the team sheet for what manager Mauricio Pochettino revealed to be "personal reasons", and not an injury. This brought the media spotlight on Gueye; RMC Sport reported that he had refused to play in the match due to PSG's shirts featuring the rainbow flag in support of the LGBT movement, an initiative taken by Ligue 1 for the occasion of the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia. He had also notably missed the same fixture in the previous season, with the reasoning behind his non-participation then being that he was suffering from gastroenteritis.


title: Idrissa Gueye

text: For his controversial absence against Montpellier, Gueye received backlash and calls for sanctions from Rouge Direct, an organization against homophobia, and Île-de-France regional president Valérie Pécresse, among others. The French Football Federation (FFF) asked him to confirm the reason for his absence, in order to dispel rumours.


title: Idrissa Gueye

text: Senegalese president Macky Sall expressed his support for Gueye, justifying the position by stating that Gueye's "religious beliefs must be respected". Gueye's Senegal teammates Cheikhou Kouyaté, Ismaïla Sarr, and Nampalys Mendy, who all play in England, also praised him for his actions. The hashtag #WeAreAllIdrissa, in support of Gueye, started trending over social media.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Jean Sibelius ( ; ; born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius; 8 December 186520 September 1957) was a Finnish composer of the late Romantic and early-modern periods. He is widely regarded as his country's greatest composer, and his music is often credited with having helped Finland develop a national identity during its struggle for independence from Russia.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: The core of his oeuvre is his set of seven symphonies, which, like his other major works, are regularly performed and recorded in Finland and countries around the world. His other best-known compositions are "Finlandia", the "Karelia Suite", "Valse triste", the Violin Concerto, the choral symphony "Kullervo", and "The Swan of Tuonela" (from the "Lemminkäinen Suite"). His other works include pieces inspired by nature, Nordic mythology, and the Finnish national epic, the "Kalevala;" over a hundred songs for voice and piano; incidental music for numerous plays; the one-act opera "The Maiden in the Tower"; chamber music, piano music, Masonic ritual music, and 21 publications of choral music.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Sibelius composed prolifically until the mid-1920s, but after completing his Seventh Symphony (1924), the incidental music for "The Tempest" (1926), and the tone poem "Tapiola" (1926), he stopped producing major works in his last 30 years—a stunning and perplexing decline commonly referred to as the "silence of Järvenpää", (the location of his home). Although he is reputed to have stopped composing, he attempted to continue writing, including abortive efforts on an eighth symphony. In later life, he wrote Masonic music and reedited some earlier works, while retaining an active but not always favourable interest in new developments in music.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: The Finnish 100 mark note featured his image until 2002, when the euro was adopted. Since 2011, Finland has celebrated a flag flying day on 8 December, the composer's birthday, also known as the Day of Finnish Music. In 2015, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Sibelius's birth, a number of special concerts and events were held, especially in Helsinki, the Finnish capital.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Sibelius was born on 8 December 1865 in Hämeenlinna () in the Grand Duchy of Finland, an autonomous part of the Russian Empire. He was the son of the Swedish-speaking medical doctor Christian Gustaf Sibelius and Maria Charlotta Sibelius (née Borg). The family name stems from the Sibbe estate in Eastern Uusimaa, which his paternal great-grandfather owned. Sibelius's father died of typhoid in July 1868, leaving substantial debts. As a result, his mother—who was again pregnant—had to sell their property and move the family into the home of Katarina Borg, her widowed mother, who also lived in Hämeenlinna. Sibelius was therefore brought up in a decidedly female environment, the only male influence coming from his uncle, Pehr Ferdinand Sibelius, who was interested in music, especially the violin. It was he who gave the boy a violin when he was ten years old and later encouraged him to maintain his interest in composition. For Sibelius, Uncle Pehr not only took the place of a father but acted as a musical adviser.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: From an early age, Sibelius showed a strong interest in nature, frequently walking around the countryside when the family moved to Loviisa on the coast for the summer months. In his own words: "For me, Loviisa represented sun and happiness. Hämeenlinna was where I went to school; Loviisa was freedom." It was in Hämeenlinna, when he was seven, that his aunt Julia was brought in to give him piano lessons on the family's upright instrument, rapping him on the knuckles whenever he played a wrong note. He progressed by improvising on his own, but still learned to read music. He later turned to the violin, which he preferred. He participated in trios with his elder sister Linda on piano, and his younger brother Christian on the cello. (Christian Sibelius was to become an eminent psychiatrist, still remembered for his contributions to modern psychiatry in Finland.) Furthermore, Sibelius often played in quartets with neighboring families, adding to his experience in chamber music. Fragments survive of his early compositions of the period, a trio, a piano quartet and a "Suite in D Minor" for violin and piano. Around 1881, he recorded on paper his short pizzicato piece "Vattendroppar" (Water Drops) for violin and cello, although it might just have been a musical exercise. The first reference he made to himself composing is in a letter from August 1883 in which he writes that he composed a trio and was working on another: "They are rather poor, but it is nice to have something to do on rainy days." In 1881, he started to take violin lessons from the local bandmaster, Gustaf Levander, immediately developing a particularly strong interest in the instrument. Setting his heart on a career as a great violin virtuoso, he soon succeeded in becoming quite an accomplished player, performing David's Concerto in E minor in 1886 and, the following year, the last two movements of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in Helsinki. Despite such success as an instrumentalist, he ultimately chose to become a composer.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Although his mother tongue was Swedish, in 1874 Sibelius attended Lucina Hagman's Finnish-speaking preparatory school. In 1876, he was then able to continue his education at the Finnish-language Hämeenlinna Normal Lyceum where he was a rather absent-minded pupil, although he did quite well in mathematics and botany. Despite having to repeat a year, he passed the school's final examination in 1885, which allowed him to enter a university. As a boy he was known as Janne, a colloquial form of Johan. However, during his student years, he adopted the French form Jean, inspired by the business card of his deceased seafaring uncle. Thereafter he became known as Jean Sibelius.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: After graduating from high school in 1885, Sibelius began to study law at the Imperial Alexander University in Finland but, showing far more interest in music, soon moved to the Helsinki Music Institute (now the Sibelius Academy) where he studied from 1885 to 1889.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: One of his teachers was its founder, Martin Wegelius, who did much to support the development of education in Finland. It was he who gave the self-taught Sibelius his first formal lessons in composition. Another important influence was his teacher Ferruccio Busoni, a pianist-composer with whom he enjoyed a lifelong friendship. His close circle of friends included the pianist and writer Adolf Paul and the conductor-to-be Armas Järnefelt (who introduced him to his influential family including his sister Aino who would become Sibelius's wife). The most remarkable of his works during this period was the Violin Sonata in F, rather reminiscent of Grieg.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Sibelius continued his studies in Berlin (from 1889 to 1890) with Albert Becker, and in Vienna (from 1890 to 1891) with Robert Fuchs and the Hungarian-Jewish Karl Goldmark. In Berlin, he had the opportunity to widen his musical experience by going to a variety of concerts and operas, including the premiere of Richard Strauss's "Don Juan". He also heard the Finnish composer Robert Kajanus conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in a program that included his symphonic poem "Aino", a patriotic piece that may have triggered Sibelius's later interest in using the epic poem "Kalevala" as a basis for his own compositions. While in Vienna, he became particularly interested in the music of Anton Bruckner whom, for a time, he regarded as "the greatest living composer", although he continued to show interest in the established works of Beethoven and Wagner. He enjoyed his year in Vienna, frequently partying and gambling with his new friends. It was also in Vienna that he turned to orchestral composition, working on an Overture in E major and a "Scène de Ballet". While embarking on "Kullervo", an orchestral work with chorus and soloists inspired by the "Kalevala", he fell ill but was restored to good health after gallstone-excision surgery. Shortly after returning to Helsinki, Sibelius thoroughly enjoyed conducting his Overture and the "Scène de Ballet" at a popular concert. He was also able to continue working on "Kullervo", now that he was increasingly developing an interest in all things Finnish. Premiered in Helsinki on 28 April 1892, the work was an enormous success.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: My tragedy was that I wanted to be a celebrated violinist at any price. Since the age of 15 I played my violin practically from morning to night. I hated pen and ink—unfortunately I preferred an elegant violin bow. My love for the violin lasted quite long and it was a very painful awakening when I had to admit that I had begun my training for the exacting career of a virtuoso too late.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: In addition to the long periods he spent studying in Vienna and Berlin, in 1900 he travelled to Italy, where he spent a year with his family. He composed, conducted and socialized actively in the Scandinavian countries, Britain, France and Germany and later travelled to the United States.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: While Sibelius was studying music in Helsinki in the autumn of 1888, Armas Järnefelt, a friend from the Music Institute, invited him to the family home. There he met and immediately fell in love with Aino, the 17-year-old daughter of General Alexander Järnefelt, the governor of Vaasa, and Elisabeth Clodt von Jürgensburg, a Baltic aristocrat. The wedding was held on 10 June 1892 at Maxmo. They spent their honeymoon in Karelia, the home of the "Kalevala". It served as an inspiration for Sibelius's tone poem "En saga", the Lemminkäinen legends and the "Karelia Suite".


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Their home, Ainola, was completed on Lake Tuusula, Järvenpää, in 1903. During the years at Ainola, they had six daughters: Eva, Ruth, Kirsti (who died aged one from typhoid), Katarina, Margareta and Heidi. Eva married an industrial heir, Arvi Paloheimo, and later became the CEO of the Paloheimo Corporation. was a prominent actress, Katarina Ilves married a banker and Heidi Blomstedt was a designer, wife of architect Aulis Blomstedt. Margareta married conductor Jussi Jalas, Aulis Blomstedt's brother.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: In 1892, "Kullervo" inaugurated Sibelius's focus on orchestral music. It was described by the composer as "a volcanic eruption" while Juho Ranta who sang in the choir stated, "It was "Finnish" music." At the end of that year the composer's grandmother, Katarina Borg died. Sibelius went to her funeral, visiting his Hämeenlinna home one last time before the house was sold. On 16 February 1893, the first (extended) version of "En saga" was presented in Helsinki although it was not too well received, the critics suggesting that superfluous sections should be eliminated (as they were in Sibelius's 1902 version). Even less successful were three more performances of "Kullervo" in March, which one critic found incomprehensible and lacking in vitality. Following the birth of Sibelius's first child Eva, in April the premiere of his choral work "Väinämöinen's Boat Ride" was a considerable success, receiving the support of the press.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: On 13 November 1893, the full version of "Karelia" was premiered at a student association gala at the Seurahuone in Viipuri with the collaboration of the artist Axel Gallén and the sculptor Emil Wikström who had been brought in to design the stage sets. While the first performance was difficult to appreciate over the background noise of the talkative audience, a second performance on 18 November was more successful. Furthermore, on the 19th and 23rd Sibelius presented an extended suite of the work in Helsinki, conducting the orchestra of the Philharmonic Society. Sibelius's music was increasingly presented in Helsinki's concert halls. In the 1894–95 season, works such as "En saga", "Karelia" and "Vårsång" (composed in 1894) were included in at least 16 concerts in the capital, not to mention those in Turku. When performed in a revised version on 17 April 1895, the composer Oskar Merikanto welcomed "Vårsång" (Spring Song) as "the fairest flower among Sibelius's orchestral pieces".


title: Jean Sibelius

text: For a considerable period, Sibelius worked on an opera, "Veneen luominen" (The Building of the Boat), again based on the "Kalevala". To some extent, he had come under the influence of Wagner, but subsequently turned to Liszt's tone poems as a source of compositional inspiration. Adapted from material for the opera, which he never completed, his "Lemminkäinen Suite" consisted of four legends in the form of tone poems. They were premiered in Helsinki on 13 April 1896 to a full house. In contrast to Merikanto's enthusiasm for the Finnish quality of the work, the critic Karl Flodin found the cor anglais solo in "The Swan of Tuonela" "stupendously long and boring", although he considered the first legend, "Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of the Island", as representing the peak of Sibelius's achievement to date.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: To pay his way, from 1892 Sibelius had taken on teaching assignments at the Music Institute and at Kajanus's conducting school but this left him insufficient time for composing. The situation improved considerably when in 1898 he was awarded a substantial annual grant, initially for ten years and later extended for life. He was able to complete the music for Adolf Paul's play "King Christian II". Performed on 24 February 1898, its catchy tunes appealed to the public. The scores of four popular pieces from the play were published in Germany and sold well in Finland. When the orchestral suite was successfully performed in Helsinki in November 1898, Sibelius commented: "The music sounded excellent and the tempi seem to be right. I think this is the first time that I have managed to make something complete." The work was also performed in Stockholm and Leipzig.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: In January 1899, Sibelius embarked on his First Symphony at a time when his patriotic feelings were being enhanced by the Russian emperor Nicholas II's attempt to restrict the powers of the Grand Duchy of Finland. The symphony was well received when it was premiered in Helsinki on 26 April 1899. But the program also premiered the even more compelling, blatantly patriotic "Song of the Athenians" for boys' and men's choirs. The song immediately brought Sibelius the status of a national hero. Another patriotic work followed on 4 November in the form of eight tableaux depicting episodes from Finnish history known as the "Press Celebration Music". It had been written in support of the staff of the "Päivälehti" newspaper, which had been suspended for a period after editorially criticizing Russian rule. The last tableau, "Finland Awakens", was particularly popular; after minor revisions, it became the well-known "Finlandia".


title: Jean Sibelius

text: In February 1900, the Sibeliuses' youngest daughter died. Nevertheless, in the spring Sibelius went on an international tour with Kajanus and his orchestra, presenting his recent works (including a revised version of his First Symphony) in thirteen cities including Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Berlin and Paris. The critics were highly favorable, bringing the composer international recognition with their enthusiastic reports in the "Berliner Börsen-Courier", the "Berliner Fremdenblatt" and the "Berliner Lokal Anzeiger".


title: Jean Sibelius

text: During a trip with his family to Rapallo, Italy in 1901, Sibelius began to write his Second Symphony, partly inspired by the fate of Don Juan in Mozart's "Don Giovanni". It was completed in early 1902 with its premiere in Helsinki on 8 March. The work was received with tremendous enthusiasm by the Finns. Merikanto felt it exceeded "even the boldest expectations," while Evert Katila qualified it as "an absolute masterpiece". Flodin, too, wrote of a symphonic composition "the likes of which we have never had occasion to listen to before".


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Sibelius spent the summer in Tvärminne near Hanko, where he worked on the song "Var det en dröm" (Was it a Dream) as well as on a new version of "En saga". When it was performed in Berlin with the Berlin Philharmonic in November 1902, it served to firmly establish the composer's reputation in Germany, leading shortly afterwards to the publication of his First Symphony.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: In 1903, Sibelius spent much of his time in Helsinki where he indulged excessively in wining and dining, running up considerable bills in the restaurants. But he continued to compose, one of his major successes being "Valse triste", one of six pieces of incidental music he composed for his brother-in-law Arvid Järnefelt's play "Kuolema" (Death). Short of money, he sold the piece at a low price but it quickly gained considerable popularity not only in Finland but internationally. During his long stays in Helsinki, Sibelius's wife Aino frequently wrote to him, imploring him to return home but to no avail. Even after their fourth daughter, Katarina, was born, he continued to work away from home. Early in 1904, he finished his Violin Concerto but its first public performance on 8 February was not a success. It led to a revised, condensed version that was performed in Berlin the following year.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: In November 1903, Sibelius began to build his new home Ainola (Aino's Place) near Lake Tuusula some 45 km (30 miles) north of Helsinki. To cover the construction costs, he gave concerts in Helsinki, Turku and Vaasa in early 1904 as well as in Tallinn, Estonia, and in Latvia during the summer. The family were finally able to move into the new property on 24 September 1904, making friends with the local artistic community, including the painters Eero Järnefelt and Pekka Halonen and the novelist Juhani Aho.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: In January 1905, Sibelius returned to Berlin where he conducted his Second Symphony. While the concert itself was successful, it received mixed reviews, some very positive while those in the "Allgemeine Zeitung" and the "Berliner Tageblatt" were less enthusiastic. Back in Finland, he rewrote the increasingly popular "Pelléas and Mélisande" as an orchestral suite. In November, visiting Britain for the first time, he went to Liverpool where he met Henry Wood. On 2 December, he conducted the First Symphony and "Finlandia", writing to Aino that the concert had been a great success and widely acclaimed.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: In 1906, after a short, rather uneventful stay in Paris at the beginning of the year, Sibelius spent several months composing in Ainola, his major work of the period being "Pohjola's Daughter", yet another piece based on the "Kalevala". Later in the year he composed incidental music for "Belshazzar's Feast", also adapting it as an orchestral suite. He ended the year conducting a series of concerts, the most successful being the first public performance of "Pohjola's Daughter" at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: From the beginning of 1907, Sibelius again indulged in excessive wining and dining in Helsinki, spending exorbitant amounts on champagne and lobster. His lifestyle had a disastrous effect on the health of Aino who was driven to retire to a sanatorium, suffering from exhaustion. While she was away, Sibelius resolved to give up drinking, concentrating instead on composing his Third Symphony. He completed the work for a performance in Helsinki on 25 September. Although its more classical approach surprised the audience, Flodin commented that it was "internally new and revolutionary".


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Shortly afterwards Sibelius met Gustav Mahler who was in Helsinki. The two agreed that with each new symphony, they lost those who had been attracted to their earlier works. This was demonstrated above all in St Petersburg where the Third Symphony was performed in November 1907 to dismissive reviews. Its reception in Moscow was rather more positive.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: In 1907, Sibelius underwent a serious operation for suspected throat cancer. Early in 1908, he had to spend a spell in hospital. His smoking and drinking had now become life-threatening. Although he cancelled concerts in Rome, Warsaw and Berlin, he maintained an engagement in London but there too his Third Symphony failed to attract the critics. In May 1908, Sibelius's health deteriorated further. He travelled with his wife to Berlin to have a tumour removed from his throat. After the operation, he vowed to give up smoking and drinking once and for all. The impact of this brush with death has been said to have inspired works that he composed in the following years, including "Luonnotar" and the Fourth Symphony.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: In 1909, the successful throat operation resulted in renewed happiness between Sibelius and Aino in the family home. In Britain too, his condition was well received as he conducted "En saga", "Finlandia", "Valse Triste" and "Spring Song" to enthusiastic audiences. A meeting with Claude Debussy produced further support. After another uneventful trip to Paris, he went to Berlin where he was relieved to learn that his throat operation had been entirely successful.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Sibelius started work on his Fourth Symphony in early 1910 but his dwindling funds also required him to write a number of smaller pieces and songs. In October, he conducted concerts in Kristiania (now Oslo) where "The Dryad" and "In Memoriam" were first performed. His "Valse triste" and Second Symphony were particularly well received. He then travelled to Berlin to continue work on his Fourth Symphony, writing the finale after returning to Järvenpää.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Sibelius conducted his first concerts in Sweden in early 1911 when even his Third Symphony was welcomed by the critics. He completed the Fourth Symphony in April but, as he expected, with its introspective style it was not very warmly received when first performed in Helsinki with mixed reviews. Apart from a trip to Paris where he enjoyed a performance of Richard Strauss's "Salome", the rest of the year was fairly uneventful. In 1912, he completed his short orchestral work "Scènes historiques II". It was first performed in March together with the Fourth Symphony. The concert was repeated twice to enthusiastic audiences and critics including Robert Kajanus. The Fourth Symphony was also well received in Birmingham in September. In March 1913, it was performed in New York but a large section of the audience left the hall between the movements while in October, after a concert conducted by Carl Muck, the "Boston American" labelled it "a sad failure".


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Sibelius's first significant composition of 1913 was the tone poem "The Bard", which he conducted in March to a respectful audience in Helsinki. He went on to compose "Luonnotar" (Daughter of Nature) for soprano and orchestra. With a text from the "Kalevala", it was first performed in Finnish in September 1913 by Aino Ackté (to whom it had been dedicated) at the music festival in Gloucester, England. In early 1914, Sibelius spent a month in Berlin where he was particularly drawn to Arnold Schoenberg. Back in Finland, he began work on "The Oceanides", which the American millionaire Carl Stoeckel had commissioned for the Norfolk Music Festival. After first composing the work in D-flat major, Sibelius undertook substantive revisions, presenting a D major version in Norfolk, which was well received, as were "Finlandia" and the "Valse triste". Henry Krehbiel considered "The Oceanides" one of the most beautiful pieces of sea music ever composed, while "The New York Times" commented that Sibelius's music was the most notable contribution to the music festival. While in America, Sibelius received an honorary doctorate from Yale University and, almost simultaneously, one from the University of Helsinki where he was represented by Aino.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: While travelling back from the United States, Sibelius heard about the events in Sarajevo that led to the beginning of the First World War. Although he was far away from the fighting, his royalties from abroad were interrupted. To make ends meet, he composed smaller works for publication in Finland. In March 1915, he was able to travel to Gothenburg in Sweden, where his work "The Oceanides" was widely appreciated. While working on his Fifth Symphony in April, he saw 16 swans flying by, inspiring him to write the finale. "One of the great experiences of my life!" he commented. Although there was little progress on the symphony during the summer, he was able to complete it by his 50th birthday on 8 December.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: On the evening of his birthday, Sibelius conducted the premiere of the Fifth Symphony in the hall of the Helsinki Stock Exchange. Despite high praise from Kajanus, the composer was not satisfied with his work and soon began to revise it. Around this time, Sibelius was running ever deeper into debt. The grand piano he had received as a present was about to be confiscated by the bailiffs when the singer Ida Ekman paid off a large proportion of his debt after a successful fund-raising campaign.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: A year later, on 8 December 1916, Sibelius presented the revised version of his Fifth Symphony in Turku, combining the first two movements and simplifying the finale. When it was performed a week later in Helsinki, Katila was very favourable but Wasenius frowned on the changes, leading the composer to rewrite it once again.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: From the beginning of 1917, Sibelius started drinking again, triggering arguments with Aino. Their relationship improved with the excitement resulting from the start of the Russian Revolution. By the end of the year, Sibelius had composed his "Jäger March". The piece proved particularly popular after the Finnish parliament accepted the Senate's declaration of independence from Russia in December 1917. The "Jäger March", first played on 19 January 1918, delighted the Helsinki elite for a short time until the start of the Finnish Civil War on 27 January. Sibelius naturally supported the Whites, but as a Tolstoyan, Aino Sibelius had some sympathies for the Reds too.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: In February, his house (Ainola) was searched twice by the local Red Guard looking for weapons. During the first weeks of the war, some of his acquaintances were killed in the violence, and his brother, the psychiatrist Christian Sibelius, was arrested because he refused to reserve beds for the Red soldiers who had suffered shell shock at the front. Sibelius's friends in Helsinki were now worried about his safety. The composer Robert Kajanus negotiated with the Red Guard commander-in-chief Eero Haapalainen, who guaranteed Sibelius a safe journey from Ainola to the capital. On 20 February, a group of Red Guard fighters escorted the family to Helsinki. Finally, from 12 to 13 April, the German troops occupied the city and the Red period was over. A week later, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra gave a concert in homage to the German commander Rüdiger von der Goltz. Sibelius finished off the event by conducting the "Jäger March".


title: Jean Sibelius

text: In early 1919, Sibelius enthusiastically decided to change his image, shaving off what remained of his thinning hair. In June, together with Aino, he visited Copenhagen on his first trip outside Finland since 1915, successfully presenting his Second Symphony. In November he conducted the final version of his Fifth Symphony, receiving repeated ovations from the audience. By the end of the year, he was already working on the Sixth.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: In 1920, despite a growing tremor in his hands, Sibelius composed the "Hymn of the Earth" to a text by the poet Eino Leino for the Suomen Laulu Choir and orchestrated his "Valse lyrique", helped along by drinking wine. On his birthday in December 1920, Sibelius received a donation of 63,000 marks, a substantial sum the tenor had raised from Finnish businesses. Although he used some of the money to reduce his debts, he also spent a week celebrating to excess in Helsinki.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: At this time, Sibelius held detailed negotiations with George Eastman, inventor of the Kodak camera and founder of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. Eastman offered $20,000 salary to teach for a single year, and before Sibelius declined, negotiations were so firm that the "New York Times" published Sibelius's arrival as fact.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Sibelius enjoyed a highly successful trip to England in early 1921—conducting several concerts around the country, including the Fourth and Fifth symphonies, "The Oceanides", the ever-popular "Finlandia", and "Valse triste". Immediately afterwards, he conducted the Second Symphony and "Valse triste" in Norway. He was beginning to suffer from exhaustion, but the critics remained positive. On his return to Finland in April, he presented "Lemminkäinen's Return" and the Fifth Symphony at the Nordic Music Days.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Early in 1922, after suffering from headaches Sibelius decided to acquire spectacles although he never wore them for photographs. In July, he was saddened by the death of his brother Christian. In August, he joined the Finnish Freemasons and composed ritual music for them. In February 1923, he premiered his Sixth Symphony. Evert Katila highly praised it as "pure idyll." Before the year ended he had also conducted concerts in Stockholm and Rome, the first to considerable acclaim, the second to mixed reviews. He then proceeded to Gothenburg where he enjoyed an ecstatic reception despite arriving at the concert hall suffering from over-indulgence in food and drink. Despite continuing to drink, to Aino's dismay, Sibelius managed to complete his Seventh Symphony in early 1924. In March, under the title of "Fantasia sinfonica" it received its first public performance in Stockholm where it was a success. It was even more highly appreciated at a series of concerts in Copenhagen in late September. Sibelius was honoured with the Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: He spent most of the rest of the year resting as his recent spate of activity was straining his heart and nerves. Composing a few small pieces, he relied increasingly on alcohol. In May 1925, his Danish publisher Wilhelm Hansen and the Royal Danish Theatre invited him to compose incidental music for a production of Shakespeare's "The Tempest". He completed the work well in advance of its premiere in March 1926. It was well received in Copenhagen although Sibelius was not there himself.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: The music journalist Vesa Sirén has found evidence that Sibelius perhaps suffered from essential tremor since a young age and that he reduced the symptoms by drinking alcohol. This self medication is common and effective but discouraged by doctors due to the risks outweighing the benefits. Sirén's research is supported by several medical experts. The tremor presumably prevented writing and impaired his social life.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: The year 1926 saw a sharp and lasting decline in Sibelius's output: after his Seventh Symphony, he produced only a few major works during the rest of his life. Arguably the two most significant of these were the incidental music for "The Tempest" and the tone poem "Tapiola". For most of the last thirty years of his life, Sibelius even avoided talking publicly about his music.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: There is substantial evidence that Sibelius worked on an eighth symphony. He promised the premiere of this symphony to Serge Koussevitzky in 1931 and 1932, and a London performance in 1933 under Basil Cameron was even advertised to the public. The only concrete evidence of the symphony's existence on paper is a 1933 bill for a fair copy of the first movement and short draft fragments first published and played in 2011. Sibelius had always been quite self-critical; he remarked to his close friends, "If I cannot write a better symphony than my Seventh, then it shall be my last." Since no manuscript survives, sources consider it likely that Sibelius destroyed most traces of the score, probably in 1945, during which year he certainly consigned a great many papers to the flames. His wife Aino recalled,


title: Jean Sibelius

text: In the 1940s there was a great auto da fé at Ainola. My husband collected a number of the manuscripts in a laundry basket and burned them on the open fire in the dining room. Parts of the "Karelia Suite" were destroyed – I later saw remains of the pages which had been torn out – and many other things. I did not have the strength to be present and left the room. I therefore do not know what he threw on to the fire. But after this my husband became calmer and gradually lighter in mood.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: On Sibelius's 70th birthday (8 December 1935), the German Nazi regime awarded him the Goethe-Medal with a certificate signed by Adolf Hitler. After the attempted Soviet invasion of Finland in late 1939–40 (the Winter War) which, though initially repelled, forced Finland to cede territory to the Soviet Union after the later defeat of the Finnish military, the Sibelius family returned for good to Ainola in the summer of 1941, after a long absence. Anxious about Bolshevism, Sibelius advocated that Finnish soldiers march alongside German forces after Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. Sibelius did not make any utterances about the genocide of the Jews although, in a diary entry in 1943, he wondered why he had signed the Aryan certificate.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: On 1 January 1939, Sibelius had participated in an international radio broadcast during which he conducted his "Andante Festivo". The performance was preserved on transcription discs and later issued on CD. This is probably the only surviving example of Sibelius interpreting his own music.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: From 1903 and for many years thereafter Sibelius lived in the countryside. From 1939 he and Aino again had a home in Helsinki, but they moved back to Ainola in 1941, only occasionally visiting the city. After the war he returned to Helsinki only a couple of times. The so-called "silence of Järvenpää" became something of a myth, as in addition to countless official visitors and colleagues, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren also spent their holidays there.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Sibelius avoided public statements about other composers, but Erik W. Tawaststjerna and Sibelius's secretary Santeri Levas have documented private conversations in which he admired Richard Strauss and considered Béla Bartók and Dmitri Shostakovich the most talented composers of the younger generation. In the 1950s he promoted the young Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: His 90th birthday, in 1955, was widely celebrated, and both the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Thomas Beecham gave special performances of his music.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: [He] was returning from his customary morning walk. Exhilarated, he told his wife Aino that he had seen a flock of cranes approaching. "There they come, the birds of my youth," he exclaimed. Suddenly, one of the birds broke away from the formation and circled once above Ainola. It then rejoined the flock to continue its journey.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Two days later in Ainola, on the evening of 20 September 1957, Sibelius died of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 91. At the time of his death, his Fifth Symphony, conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent, was being broadcast by radio from Helsinki. At the same time, the United Nations General Assembly was in session, and the then President of the Assembly, Sir Leslie Munro of New Zealand, called for a moment of silence and delivered a eulogy: "Sibelius belonged to the whole world. He enriched the life of the entire human race with his music". Another well-known Finnish composer, Heino Kaski, died on the same day, but his death was overshadowed by that of Sibelius. Sibelius was honoured with a state funeral and is buried in the garden at Ainola.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Aino Sibelius continued to live in Ainola for the next 12 years until her death on 8 June 1969 at the age of 97. She is buried next to her husband.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Sibelius is widely known for his symphonies and his tone poems, especially "Finlandia" and the "Karelia suite". His reputation in Finland grew in the 1890s with the choral symphony "Kullervo", which like many subsequent pieces drew on the epic poem "Kalevala". His First Symphony was first performed to an enthusiastic audience in 1899 at a time when Finnish nationalism was evolving. In addition to six more symphonies, he gained popularity at home and abroad with incidental music and more tone poems, especially "En saga", "The Swan of Tuonela" and "Valse triste". Sibelius also composed a series of works for violin and orchestra including a Violin Concerto, the opera "Jungfrun i tornet", many shorter orchestral pieces, chamber music, works for piano and violin, choral works and numerous songs.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: In the mid-1920s, after his Sixth and Seventh Symphonies, he composed the symphonic poem "Tapiola" and incidental music for "The Tempest". Thereafter, although he lived until 1957, he did not publish any further works of note. For several years, he worked on an Eighth Symphony, which he later burned.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: As for his musical style, hints of Tchaikovsky's music are particularly evident in early works such as his First Symphony and his Violin Concerto. For a period, he was nevertheless overwhelmed by Wagner, particularly while composing his opera. More lasting influences included Ferruccio Busoni and Anton Bruckner. But for his tone poems, he was above all inspired by Liszt. The similarities to Bruckner can be seen in the brass contributions to his orchestral works and the generally slow tempo of his music.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Sibelius progressively stripped away formal markers of sonata form in his work and, instead of contrasting multiple themes, focused on the idea of continuously evolving cells and fragments culminating in a grand statement. His later works are remarkable for their sense of unbroken development, progressing by means of thematic permutations and derivations. The completeness and organic feel of this synthesis has prompted some to suggest that Sibelius began his works with a finished statement and worked backwards, although analyses showing these predominantly three- and four-note cells and melodic fragments as they are developed and expanded into the larger "themes" effectively prove the opposite.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: This self-contained structure stood in stark contrast to the symphonic style of Gustav Mahler, Sibelius's primary rival in symphonic composition. While thematic variation played a major role in the works of both composers, Mahler's style made use of disjunct, abruptly changing and contrasting themes, while Sibelius sought to slowly transform thematic elements. In November 1907 Mahler undertook a conducting tour of Finland, and the two composers were able to take a lengthy walk together, leading Sibelius to comment:


title: Jean Sibelius

text: I said that I admired [the symphony's] severity of style and the profound logic that created an inner connection between all the motifs ... Mahler's opinion was just the reverse. "No, a symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything."


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Sibelius started work on his Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39, in 1898 and completed it in early 1899, when he was 33. The work was first performed on 26 April 1899 by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by the composer, in an original, well received version that has not survived. After the premiere, Sibelius made some revisions, resulting in the version performed today. The revision was completed in the spring and summer of 1900, and was first performed in Berlin by the Helsinki Philharmonic, conducted by Robert Kajanus on 18 July 1900. The symphony begins with a highly original, rather forlorn clarinet solo backed by subdued timpani.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: His Second Symphony, the most popular and most frequently recorded of his symphonies, was first performed by the Helsinki Philharmonic Society on 8 March 1902, with the composer conducting. The opening chords with their rising progression provide a motif for the whole work. The heroic theme of the finale with the three-tone motif is interpreted by the trumpets rather than the original woodwinds. During a period of Russian oppression, it consolidated Sibelius's reputation as a national hero. After the first performance, Sibelius made some changes, leading to a revised version first performed by Armas Järnefelt on 10 November 1903 in Stockholm.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: The Third Symphony is a good-natured, triumphal, and deceptively simple-sounding piece. The symphony's first performance was given by the Helsinki Philharmonic Society, conducted by the composer, on 25 September 1907. There are themes from Finnish folk music in the work's early chords. Composed just after his move to Ainola, it contrasts sharply with the first two symphonies, with its clear mode of expression developing into the marching tones of the finale. His Fourth Symphony was premiered in Helsinki on 3 April 1911 by the Philharmonia Society, with Sibelius conducting. It was written while Sibelius was undergoing a series of operations to remove a tumour from his throat. Its grimness can perhaps be explained as a reaction from his (temporary) decision to give up drinking. The opening bars, with cellos, basses and bassoons, convey a new approach to timing. It then develops into melancholic sketches based on the composer's setting of Poe's "The Raven". The waning finale is perhaps a premonition of the silence Sibelius would experience twenty years later. In contrast to the usual assertive finales of the times, the work ends simply with a "leaden thud".


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Symphony No. 5 was premiered in Helsinki to great acclaim by Sibelius himself on 8 December 1915, his 50th birthday. The version most commonly performed today is the final revision, consisting of three movements, presented in 1919. The Fifth is Sibelius's only symphony in a major key throughout. From its soft opening played by the horns, the work develops into rotational repetitions of its various themes with considerable transformations, building up to the trumpeted swan hymn in the final movement. While the Fifth had already started to veer away from the sonata form, the Sixth, conducted by the composer at its premiere in February 1923, is even further removed from the traditional norms. Tawaststjerna comments that "the [finale's] structure follows no familiar pattern". Composed in the Dorian mode, it draws on some of the themes developed while Sibelius was working on the Fifth as well as from material intended for a lyrical violin concerto. Now taking a purified approach, Sibelius sought to offer "spring water" rather than cocktails, making use of lighter flutes and strings rather than the heavy brass of the Fifth.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Symphony No. 7 in C major was his last published symphony. Completed in 1924, it is notable for having only one movement. It has been described as "completely original in form, subtle in its handling of tempi, individual in its treatment of key and wholly organic in growth". It has also been called "Sibelius's most remarkable compositional achievement". Initially titled "Fantasia sinfonica", it was first performed in Stockholm in March 1924, conducted by Sibelius. It was based on an adagio movement he had sketched almost ten years earlier. While the strings dominate, there is also a distinctive trombone theme.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: After the seven symphonies and the violin concerto, Sibelius's thirteen symphonic poems are his most important works for orchestra and, along with the tone poems of Richard Strauss, represent some of the most important contributions to the genre since Franz Liszt. As a group, the symphonic poems span the entirety of Sibelius's artistic career (the first was composed in 1892, while the last appeared in 1925), display the composer's fascination with nature and Finnish mythology (particularly the "Kalevala"), and provide a comprehensive portrait of his stylistic maturation over time.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: "En saga" (meaning "A Fairy Tale" in Swedish) was first presented in February 1893 with Sibelius conducting. The single-movement tone poem was possibly inspired by the Icelandic mythological work "Edda" although Sibelius simply described it as "an expression of [his] state of mind". Beginning with a dreamy theme from the strings, it evolves into the tones of the woodwinds, then the horns and the violas, demonstrating Sibelius's ability to handle an orchestra. The composer's first significant orchestral piece, it was revised in 1902 when Ferruccio Busoni invited Sibelius to conduct his work in Berlin. Its successful reception encouraged him to write to Aino: "I have been acknowledged as an accomplished 'artist.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: "The Wood Nymph", a single-movement tone poem for orchestra, was written in 1894. Premiered in April 1895 in Helsinki with Sibelius conducting, it is inspired by the Swedish poet Viktor Rydberg's work of the same name. Organizationally, it consists of four informal sections, each corresponding to one of the poem's four stanzas and evoking the mood of a particular episode: first, heroic vigour; second, frenetic activity; third, sensual love; and fourth, inconsolable grief. Despite the music's beauty, many critics have faulted Sibelius for his "over-reliance" on the source material's narrative structure.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: The "Lemminkäinen Suite" was composed in the early 1890s. Originally conceived as a mythological opera, "Veneen luominen" ("The Building of the Boat"), on a scale matching those by Richard Wagner, Sibelius later changed his musical goals and the work became an orchestral piece in four movements. The suite is based on the character Lemminkäinen from the Finnish national epic, the "Kalevala". It can also be considered a collection of symphonic poems. The second/third section, "The Swan of Tuonela", is often heard separately.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: "Finlandia", probably the best known of all Sibelius's works, is a highly patriotic piece first performed in November 1899 as one of the tableaux for the Finnish Press Celebrations. It had its public premiere in revised form in July 1900. The current title only emerged later, first for the piano version, then in 1901 when Kajanus conducted the orchestral version under the name "Finlandia". Although Sibelius insisted it was primarily an orchestral piece, it became a world favourite for choirs too, especially for the hymn episode. Finally the composer consented and in 1937 and 1940 agreed to words for the hymn, first for the Freemasons and later for more general use.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: "The Oceanides" is a single-movement tone poem for orchestra written in 1913–14. The piece, which refers to the nymphs in Greek mythology who inhabited the Mediterranean Sea, premiered on 4 June 1914 at the Norfolk Music Festival in Connecticut with Sibelius himself conducting. The work (in D major), praised upon its premiere as "the finest evocation of the sea ever produced in music", consists of two subjects Sibelius gradually develops in three informal stages: first, a placid ocean; second, a gathering storm; and third, a thunderous wave-crash climax. As the tempest subsides, a final chord sounds, symbolizing the mighty power and limitless expanse of the sea.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: "Tapiola", Sibelius's last major orchestral work, was commissioned by Walter Damrosch for the New York Philharmonic Society where it was premiered on 26 December 1926. It is inspired by Tapio, a forest spirit from the "Kalevala". To quote the American critic Alex Ross, it "turned out to be Sibelius's most severe and concentrated musical statement." Even more emphatically, the composer and biographer Cecil Gray asserts: "Even if Sibelius had written nothing else, this one work would entitle him to a place among the greatest masters of all time."


title: Jean Sibelius

text: The "Karelia Music", one of the composer's earlier works, written for the Vyborg Students' Association, was first performed on 13 November 1893 to a noisy audience. The "Suite" emerged from a concert on 23 November consisting of the overture and the three movements, which were published as Op. 11, the "Karelia Suite". It remains one of Sibelius's most popular pieces.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: "Valse triste" is a short orchestral work that was originally part of the incidental music Sibelius composed for his brother-in-law Arvid Järnefelt's 1903 play "Kuolema" ("Death"). It is now far better known as a separate concert piece. Sibelius wrote six pieces for the 2 December 1903 production of "Kuolema". The waltz accompanied a sequence in which a woman rises from her deathbed to dance with ghosts. In 1904, Sibelius revised the piece for a performance in Helsinki on 25 April where it was presented as "Valse triste". An instant success, it took on a life of its own, and remains one of Sibelius's signature pieces.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: The Violin Concerto in D minor was first performed on 8 February 1904 with Victor Nováček as soloist. As Sibelius had barely completed the piece in time for the premiere, Nováček had insufficient time to prepare, with the result that the performance was a disaster. After substantial revisions, a new version was premiered on 19 October 1905 with Richard Strauss conducting the Berlin Court Orchestra. With Karel Halíř, the orchestra's leader, as soloist it was a tremendous success. The piece has become increasingly popular and is now the most frequently recorded of all the violin concertos composed in the 20th century.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: "Kullervo", one of Sibelius's early works, is sometimes referred to as a choral symphony but is better described as a suite of five symphonic movements resembling tone poems. Based on the character Kullervo from the "Kalevala", it was premiered on 28 April 1892 with Emmy Achté and Abraham Ojanperä as soloists and Sibelius conducting the chorus and orchestra of the recently founded Helsinki Orchestra Society. Although the work was only performed five times during the composer's lifetime, since the 1990s it has become increasingly popular both for live performances and recordings.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: When Freemasonry in Finland was revived, having been forbidden under the Russian reign, Sibelius was one of the founding members of Suomi Lodge No. 1 in 1922 and later became the Grand Organist of the Grand Lodge of Finland. He composed the ritual music used in Finland (Op. 113) in 1927 and added two new pieces composed in 1946. The new revision of the ritual music of 1948 is one of his last works.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Sibelius loved nature, and the Finnish landscape often served as material for his music. He once said of his Sixth Symphony, "[It] always reminds me of the scent of the first snow." The forests surrounding Ainola are often said to have inspired his composition of Tapiola. On the subject of Sibelius's ties to nature, his biographer, Tawaststjerna, wrote:


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Even by Nordic standards, Sibelius responded with exceptional intensity to the moods of nature and the changes in the seasons: he scanned the skies with his binoculars for the geese flying over the lake ice, listened to the screech of the cranes, and heard the cries of the curlew echo over the marshy grounds just below Ainola. He savoured the spring blossoms every bit as much as he did autumnal scents and colours.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Sibelius exerted considerable influence on symphonic composers and musical life, at least in English-speaking and Nordic countries. The Finnish symphonist Leevi Madetoja was a pupil of Sibelius (for more on their relationship, see Relationship with Sibelius). In Britain, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Arnold Bax both dedicated their fifth symphonies to Sibelius. Furthermore, "Tapiola" is prominently echoed in both Bax's Sixth Symphony and Ernest John Moeran's Symphony in G minor. The influence of Sibelius's compositional procedures is also strongly felt in the First Symphony of William Walton. When these and several other major British symphonic essays were being written in and around the 1930s, Sibelius's music was very much in vogue, with conductors like Thomas Beecham and John Barbirolli championing its cause both in the concert hall and on record. Walton's composer friend Constant Lambert even asserted that Sibelius was "the first great composer since Beethoven whose mind thinks naturally in terms of symphonic form". Earlier, Granville Bantock had championed Sibelius (the esteem was mutual: Sibelius dedicated his Third Symphony to the English composer, and in 1946 he became the first President of the Bantock Society). More recently, Sibelius was also one of the composers championed by Robert Simpson. Malcolm Arnold acknowledged his influence, and Arthur Butterworth also saw Sibelius's music as a source of inspiration in his work.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: New Zealand's most accomplished 20th century composer, Douglas Lilburn, wrote of the inspiration he derived from Sibelius's work, particularly for his earlier compositions.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Eugene Ormandy and, to a lesser extent, his predecessor with the Philadelphia Orchestra Leopold Stokowski, were instrumental in bringing Sibelius's music to American audiences by frequently programming his works; the former developed a friendly relationship with Sibelius throughout his life. Later in life, Sibelius was championed by the American critic Olin Downes, who wrote a biography of the composer.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: In 1938 Theodor Adorno wrote a critical essay, notoriously charging that "If Sibelius is good, this invalidates the standards of musical quality that have persisted from Bach to Schoenberg: the richness of inter-connectedness, articulation, unity in diversity, the 'multi-faceted' in 'the one'." Adorno sent his essay to Virgil Thomson, then music critic of the "New York Herald Tribune", who was also critical of Sibelius; Thomson, while agreeing with the essay's sentiment, declared to Adorno that "the tone of it [was] more apt to create antagonism toward [Adorno] than toward Sibelius". Later, the composer, theorist and conductor René Leibowitz went so far as to describe Sibelius as "the worst composer in the world" in the title of a 1955 pamphlet.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Perhaps one reason Sibelius has attracted both the praise and the ire of critics is that in each of his seven symphonies he approached the basic problems of form, tonality, and architecture in unique, individual ways. On the one hand, his symphonic (and tonal) creativity was novel, while others thought that music should be taking a different route. Sibelius's response to criticism was dismissive: "Pay no attention to what critics say. No statue has ever been put up to a critic."


title: Jean Sibelius

text: In the latter decades of the twentieth century, Sibelius became seen more favourably: Milan Kundera said the composer's approach was that of "antimodern modernism," standing outside the perpetual progression of the status quo. In a similar vein, the philosopher Slavoj Žižek contrasts Sibelius to the "modernist" approach of Schoenberg and the "post-modernist" one of Stravinsky; for Žižek, Sibelius represents the alternative of "persistent traditionalism", of continuing in the inherited tradition but with artistic integrity, not as a "phony conservative". In 1990, the composer Thea Musgrave was commissioned by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra to write a piece in honour of the 125th anniversary of Sibelius's birth: "Song of the Enchanter" premiered on 14 February 1991. In 1984, the American avant-garde composer Morton Feldman gave a lecture in Darmstadt, Germany, wherein he stated that "the people you think are radicals might really be conservatives – the people you think are conservatives might really be radical," whereupon he began to hum Sibelius's Fifth Symphony.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Writing in 1996, the Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Tim Page stated, "There are two things to be said straightaway about Sibelius. First, he is terribly uneven (much of his chamber music, a lot of his songs and most of his piano music might have been churned out by a second-rate salon composer from the 19th century on an off afternoon). Second, at his very best, he is often weird." Pianist Leif Ove Andsnes offers a counterweight to Page's assessment of Sibelius's piano music. Acknowledging that this body of work is uneven in quality, Andsnes believes that the common critical dismissal is unwarranted. In performing selected piano works, Andsnes finds that audiences were "astonished that there could be a major composer out there with such beautiful, accessible music that people don't know."


title: Jean Sibelius

text: For the 150th anniversary of Sibelius's birth, the Helsinki Music Centre planned an illustrated and narrated "Sibelius Finland Experience Show" every day during the summer of 2015. The production was also planned to extend over 2016 and 2017. On 8 December itself, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by John Storgårds planned a commemorative concert featuring "En Saga", "Luonnotar" and the Seventh Symphony.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: In 1972, Sibelius's surviving daughters sold Ainola to the Finnish state. The Ministry of Education and the Sibelius Society of Finland opened it as a museum in 1974. Sibelius has been memorialized by art, stamps, and currency; the Finnish 100 mark bill featured his image until 2002 when the euro was adopted. Since 2011, Finland has celebrated a flag flying day on 8 December, the composer's birthday, also known as the "Day of Finnish Music". The year 2015, the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth, featured a number of special concerts and events, especially in the city of Helsinki.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: The quinquennial International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition, instituted in 1965, the Sibelius Monument, unveiled in 1967 in Helsinki's Sibelius Park, the Sibelius Museum, opened in Turku in 1968, and the Sibelius Hall concert hall in Lahti, opened in 2000, were all named in his honour, as was the asteroid 1405 Sibelius.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: The complete edition of Sibelius's œuvre has been in preparation in Finland since 1996. It is a joint venture between the National Library of Finland, the Sibelius Society of Finland, and Breitkopf & Härtel publishers. When finished, this critical edition will comprise 60 volumes.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Sibelius kept a diary from 1909 to 1944, and his family allowed it to be published, unabridged, in 2005. The diary was edited by and published in the Swedish language in 2005. To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the composer, the entire diary was also published in the Finnish language in 2015. Several volumes of Sibelius's correspondence have also been edited and published in Swedish, Finnish and English.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Parts of the literary estate of Sibelius—correspondence and manuscripts—are preserved at the National Archives of Finland and National Library of Finland, but several items are in foreign private collections, even as investments, only partially accessible for scholars.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: In 1970, a lot of 50 music manuscript items was acquired by the National Library with aid from the government of Finland, banks and foundations. Sibelius's personal music archive was donated to the National Library in 1982 by the heirs of the composer.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Another lot of 50 items was procured in 1997, with aid from the Ministry of Education. In 2018, the Italian-Finnish collector and benefactor Rolando Pieraccini donated a collection of Sibelius's letters and other materials to the National Museum of Finland. On the other hand, in 2016 the manuscript of "Pohjola's Daughter" was sold to an anonymous buyer for 290,000 euros, and it is no longer available to scholars.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: In early 2020, the current owner of the Robert Lienau collection offered for sale 1,200 pages of manuscripts, including the scores of "Voces intimae", "Joutsikki", and "Pelléas and Mélisande", and the material was not available to scholars during negotiations. The original price tag was said to be over one million euros for the lot as a whole. At the end of the year, the National Library was able to acquire this collection with aid from foundations and donators. The final price was "considerably below one million euros."


title: Jean Sibelius

text: Nowadays, it is not legally possible to export Sibelius's manuscripts from Finland without permission, and, according to "Hufvudstadsbladet", such permission would probably not be given.


title: Jean Sibelius

text: In 2021, the music manuscripts of Sibelius were included in the Memory of the World Programme by the UNESCO.


title: Gigabyte

text: The gigabyte () is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix "giga" means 10 in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one gigabyte is one billion bytes. The unit symbol for the gigabyte is GB.


title: Gigabyte

text: This definition is used in all contexts of science (especially data science), engineering, business, and many areas of computing, including storage capacities of hard drives, solid state drives, and tapes, as well as data transmission speeds. However, the term is also used in some fields of computer science and information technology to denote (1024 or 2) bytes, particularly for sizes of RAM. Thus, prior to 1998, some usage of "gigabyte" has been ambiguous. To resolve this difficulty, IEC 80000-13 clarifies that a "gigabyte" (GB) is 10 bytes and specifies the term "gibibyte" (GiB) to denote 2 bytes. These differences are still readily seen for example, when a 400 GB drive's capacity is displayed by Microsoft Windows as 372 GB instead of 372 GiB. Analogously, a memory module that is labeled as having the size "" has one gibibyte () of storage capacity.


title: Gigabyte

text: In response to litigation over whether the makers of electronic storage devices must conform to Microsoft Windows' use of a binary definition of "GB" instead of the metric/decimal definition, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California rejected that argument, ruling that "the U.S. Congress has deemed the decimal definition of gigabyte to be the 'preferred' one for the purposes of 'U.S. trade and commerce.'"


title: Gigabyte

text: The term "gigabyte" has a standard definition of 1000 bytes, as well as a discouraged meaning of 1024 bytes. The latter binary usage originated as compromise technical jargon for byte multiples that needed to be expressed in a power of 2, but lacked a convenient name. As 1024 (2) is approximately 1000 (10), roughly corresponding to SI multiples, it was used for binary multiples as well.


title: Gigabyte

text: In 1998 the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) published standards for binary prefixes, requiring that the gigabyte strictly denote 1000 bytes and gibibyte denote 1024 bytes. By the end of 2007, the IEC Standard had been adopted by the IEEE, EU, and NIST, and in 2009 it was incorporated in the International System of Quantities. Nevertheless, the term gigabyte continues to be widely used with the following two different meanings:


title: Gigabyte

text: Based on powers of 10, this definition uses the prefix giga- as defined in the International System of Units (SI). This is the recommended definition by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). This definition is used in networking contexts and most storage media, particularly hard drives, flash-based storage, and DVDs, and is also consistent with the other uses of the SI prefix in computing, such as CPU clock speeds or measures of performance. The file manager of Mac OS X version 10.6 and later versions are a notable example of this usage in software, which report files sizes in decimal units.


title: Gigabyte

text: The binary definition uses powers of the base 2, as does the architectural principle of binary computers.


title: Gigabyte

text: Since the first disk drive, the IBM 350, disk drive manufacturers expressed hard drive capacities using decimal prefixes. With the advent of gigabyte-range drive capacities, manufacturers based most consumer hard drive capacities in certain size classes expressed in decimal gigabytes, such as "500 GB". The exact capacity of a given drive model is usually slightly larger than the class designation. Practically all manufacturers of hard disk drives and flash-memory disk devices continue to define one gigabyte as , which is displayed on the packaging. Some operating systems such as OS X express hard drive capacity or file size using decimal multipliers, while others such as Microsoft Windows report size using binary multipliers. This discrepancy causes confusion, as a disk with an advertised capacity of, for example, (meaning , equal to 372 GiB) might be reported by the operating system as "".


title: Gigabyte

text: The difference between units based on decimal and binary prefixes increases as a semi-logarithmic (linear-log) function—for example, the decimal kilobyte value is nearly 98% of the kibibyte, a megabyte is under 96% of a mebibyte, and a gigabyte is just over 93% of a gibibyte value. This means that a 300 GB (279 GiB) hard disk might be indicated variously as "300 GB", "279 GB" or "279 GiB", depending on the operating system. As storage sizes increase and larger units are used, these differences become more pronounced.


title: Gigabyte

text: A lawsuit decided in 2019 that arose from alleged breach of contract and other claims over the binary and decimal definitions used for "gigabyte" have ended in favor of the manufacturers, with courts holding that the legal definition of gigabyte or GB is 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 (10) bytes (the decimal definition). Specifically, the courts held that "the U.S. Congress has deemed the decimal definition of gigabyte to be the 'preferred' one for the purposes of 'U.S. trade and commerce' ... The California Legislature has likewise adopted the decimal system for all 'transactions in this state'."


title: Gigabyte

text: Earlier lawsuits had ended in settlement with no court ruling on the question, such as a lawsuit against drive manufacturer Western Digital. Western Digital settled the challenge and added explicit disclaimers to products that the usable capacity may differ from the advertised capacity.


title: Gigabyte

text: Because of their physical design, the capacity of modern computer random access memory devices, such as DIMM modules, is always a multiple of a power of 1024. It is thus convenient to use prefixes denoting powers of 1024, known as binary prefixes, in describing them. For example, a memory capacity of is conveniently expressed as 1 GiB rather than as 1.074 GB. The former specification is, however, often quoted as "1 GB" when applied to random access memory.


title: Gigabyte

text: Software allocates memory in varying degrees of granularity as needed to fulfill data structure requirements and binary multiples are usually not required. Other computer capacities and rates, like storage hardware size, data transfer rates, clock speeds, operations per second, etc., do not depend on an inherent base, and are usually presented in decimal units. For example, the manufacturer of a "300 GB" hard drive is claiming a capacity of , not 300 × 1024 (which would be ) bytes.


title: Nerd

text: A nerd is a person seen as overly intellectual, obsessive, introverted or lacking social skills. Such a person may spend inordinate amounts of time on unpopular, little known, or non-mainstream activities, which are generally either highly technical, abstract, or relating to topics of science fiction or fantasy, to the exclusion of more mainstream activities. Additionally, many so-called nerds are described as being shy, quirky, pedantic, and unattractive.


title: Nerd

text: Originally derogatory, the term "nerd" was a stereotype, but as with other pejoratives, it has been reclaimed and redefined by some as a term of pride and group identity.


title: Nerd

text: The first documented appearance of the word "nerd" is as the name of a creature in Dr. Seuss's book "If I Ran the Zoo" (1950), in which the narrator Gerald McGrew claims that he would collect "a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too" for his imaginary zoo. The slang meaning of the term dates to 1951. That year, "Newsweek" magazine reported on its popular use as a synonym for "drip" or "square" in Detroit, Michigan. By the early 1960s, usage of the term had spread throughout the United States, and even as far as Scotland. At some point, the word took on connotations of bookishness and social ineptitude.


title: Nerd

text: An alternate spelling, as "nurd" or "gnurd", also began to appear in the mid-1960s, or early 1970s. Author Philip K. Dick claimed to have coined the "nurd" spelling in 1973, but its first recorded use appeared in a 1965 student publication at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). Oral tradition there holds that the word is derived from "knurd" ("drunk" spelled backwards), which was used to describe people who studied rather than partied. The term "gnurd" (spelled with the "g") was in use at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) by the year 1965. The term "nurd" was also in use at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as early as 1971.


title: Nerd

text: According to "Online Etymology Dictionary", the word is an alteration of the 1940s term ""nert "" (meaning "stupid or crazy person"), which is in itself an alteration of "nut" (nutcase).


title: Nerd

text: Because of the nerd stereotype, many smart people are often thought of as nerdy. This belief can be harmful, as it can cause high-school students to "switch off their lights" out of fear of being branded as a nerd, and cause otherwise appealing people to be considered nerdy simply for their intellect. It was once thought that intellectuals were nerdy because they were envied. However, Paul Graham stated in his essay, "Why Nerds are Unpopular", that intellect is neutral, meaning that you are neither loved nor despised for it. He also states that it is only the correlation that makes smart teens automatically seem nerdy, and that a nerd is someone that is not socially adept enough. Additionally, he says that the reason why many smart kids are unpopular is that they "don't have time for the activities required for popularity."


title: Nerd

text: Stereotypical nerd appearance, often lampooned in caricatures, can include very large glasses, braces, buck teeth, severe acne and pants worn high at the waist. Following suit of popular use in emoticons, Unicode released in 2015 its "Nerd Face" character, featuring some of those stereotypes: 🤓 (code point U+1F913). In the media, many nerds are males, portrayed as being physically unfit, either overweight or skinny due to lack of physical exercise. It has been suggested by some, such as linguist Mary Bucholtz, that being a nerd may be a state of being "hyperwhite" and rejecting African-American culture and slang that "cool" white children use. However, after the "Revenge of the Nerds" movie franchise (with multicultural nerds), and the introduction of the Steve Urkel character on the television series "Family Matters", nerds have been seen in all races and colors as well as more recently being a frequent young East Asian or Indian male stereotype in North America. Portrayal of "nerd girls", in films such as "She's Out of Control", "Welcome to the Dollhouse" and "She's All That" depicts that smart but nerdy women might suffer later in life if they do not focus on improving their physical attractiveness.


title: Nerd

text: In the United States, a 2010 study published in the "Journal of International and Intercultural Communication" indicated that Asian Americans are perceived as most likely to be nerds, followed by White Americans, while non-White Hispanics and African Americans were perceived as least likely to be nerds. These stereotypes stem from concepts of Orientalism and Primitivism, as discussed in Ron Eglash's essay "Race, Sex, and Nerds: From Black Geeks to Asian American Hipsters".


title: Nerd

text: Some of the stereotypical behaviors associated with the "nerd" stereotype have correlations with the traits of Asperger syndrome or other autism spectrum conditions.


title: Nerd

text: The rise of Silicon Valley and the American computer industry at large has allowed many so-called "nerdy people" to accumulate large fortunes and influence media culture. Many stereotypically nerdy interests, such as superhero, fantasy and science fiction works, are now international popular culture hits. Some measures of nerdiness are now allegedly considered desirable, as, to some, it suggests a person who is intelligent, respectful, interesting, and able to earn a large salary. Stereotypical nerd qualities are evolving, going from awkwardness and social ostracism to an allegedly more widespread acceptance and sometimes even celebration of their differences.


title: Nerd

text: Johannes Grenzfurthner, researcher, self-proclaimed nerd and director of nerd documentary "Traceroute", reflects on the emergence of nerds and nerd culture:


title: Nerd

text: In the 1984 film "Revenge of the Nerds", Robert Carradine worked to embody the nerd stereotype; in doing so, he helped create a definitive image of nerds. Additionally, the storyline presaged, and may have helped inspire, the "nerd pride" that emerged in the late 1990s. "American Splendor" regular Toby Radloff claims this was the movie that inspired him to become "The Genuine Nerd from Cleveland, Ohio." In the "American Splendor" film, Toby's friend, "American Splendor" author Harvey Pekar, was less receptive to the movie, believing it to be hopelessly idealistic, explaining that Toby, an adult low income file clerk, had nothing in common with the middle class kids in the film who would eventually attain college degrees, success, and cease being perceived as nerds. Many, however, seem to share Radloff's view, as "nerd pride" has become more widespread in the years since. MIT professor Gerald Sussman, for example, seeks to instill pride in nerds:


title: Nerd

text: Individuals who are labeled as "nerds" are often the target of bullying due to a range of reasons that may include physical appearance or social background. Paul Graham has suggested that the reason nerds are frequently singled out for bullying is their indifference to popularity or social context, in the face of a youth culture that views popularity as paramount. However, research findings suggest that bullies are often as socially inept as their academically better-performing victims, and that popularity fails to confer protection from bullying. Other commentators have pointed out that pervasive harassment of intellectually-oriented youth began only in the mid-twentieth century and some have suggested that its cause involves jealousy over future employment opportunities and earning potential.


title: Nerd

text: The Danish reality TV show "FC Zulu", known in the internationally franchised format as "FC Nerds", established a format wherein a team of nerds, after two or three months of training, competes with a professional soccer team.


title: Adam F. Goldberg

text: Adam Frederick Goldberg (born April 2, 1976) is an American television and film producer, and writer. Goldberg is best known as the creator and showrunner of "The Goldbergs", a television sitcom based on his childhood in which he is portrayed by Sean Giambrone. He also created and led the sitcoms "Breaking In", "Imaginary Mary", and "Schooled", a spin-off of "The Goldbergs".


title: Adam F. Goldberg

text: Goldberg was born to a Jewish family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and lived in nearby Jenkintown. His parents are Beverly (née Solomon) (born October 8, 1943) and Murray Goldberg (September 25, 1940 – February 1, 2008); he is the youngest of three sons, with brothers Eric (born August 18, 1967) and Barry (born October 15, 1969). He produced his first play, "Dr. Pickup", in 1992 at the age of 15, and won the Philadelphia Young Playwrights Festival.


title: Adam F. Goldberg

text: His plays were performed in venues such as the Sundance Playwrights Lab, the Illusion Theater, The Greenwich Street Theater, The Saint Marks Theatre, The Tada! Theater, The Walnut Street Theater and the Joseph Papp Theater.


title: Adam F. Goldberg

text: He was a finalist for the American Theater Critics Association's 1997 Osborn Award for his full-length play, "One on One".


title: Adam F. Goldberg

text: His dramedy "The Purple Heart" was produced by the Institute for Arts and Education at the Annenberg Theater and also won first place in The Very Special Arts Playwriting Award and was produced at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.