WA2K Radio is now on the air

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZl3KjFrS4U&feature=related

Ricky Nelson's dad was a very successful bandleader. In this video, he takes a stab at his son's kind of music. All in fun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5FXrIMjjj0

Hoagy

Well, edgar, can't say that I care for Ozzie, buddy, but the family was inspirational.

Love this family as well, Texas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ2L4iPvdIk

Adore Hoagy, but will be back later with one of my favorites for our radio audience.

and speaking of family, the four of us sang this a capella. It was by Hoagy, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXZKdePl4SE&feature=RecentlyWatched&page=1&t=t&f=b

Time for me to say goodnight, and what better way than to dance off to bed with this great couple.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uATWEVH-MR8

Tomorrow, all.

From Letty with love

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIsou0IRIQU

A song to mark the divorce settlement of Paul McCartney and Heather.

it being vernal equinox, unless i'm mistaken, here's a Japanese children's song, with translation :wink:

Haru ga kita, Haru ga kita, Doko ni kita?
Yama ni kita, Sato ni kita, No nimo kita.

Hana ga saku, Hana ga saku, Doko ni saku?
Yama ni saku, Sato ni saku, No nimo saku.

Tori ga naku, Tori ga naku, Doko de naku?
Yama de naku, Sato de naku, No demo naku

Spring is coming, spring is coming,
Where is spring now?
Here in the mountains,
Here in the village,
And here in the fields.

Flowers bloom, flowers bloom,
Where do flowers bloom?
Here in the mountains,
Here in the village,
And here in the fields.

Birds are singing, birds are singing,
Where do birdies sing?
Here in the mountains,
Here in the village,
And here in the fields.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS2VTZFV50c

Nobody feels any pain

Good morning, WA2K folks.

First let me recognize edgar's Fool on the Hill. Loved it Texas. Poor Paul.

I did have to smile when I saw another version called The Fool on Capitol Hill, and Bob Dylan's Just Like a Woman is open to interpretation, right?

M.D. That is such a sweet song, and welcome back big island man and thank you for the interpretation as well.

Today, Paul Scofield died, so this is a tribute to his film A Man for All Seasons, folks.

RIP, Paul

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAu54bwSoWU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ugKX4QHqac

Poor Cow

edgar, I love Donovan and the background of his Poor Cow was as lovely as the lyrics, Texas, especially the monarch butterfly. Thank you for the wonderful show.

Well, Today is J.S.Bach's birthday, so let's do this as a tribute to the marvelous classical composer. Then we shall listen to Jethro Tull's adaptation of the same song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQrxeSfKfsY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W37x7lNP4DY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYDmbJjvv20

Here's Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, appearing on the Rainbow Quest, a program Pete Seger originated and financed, until his funds ran out.

Good afternoon.

Some of the celebs celebrating a birthday today:

Timothy Dalton (62); Gary Oldman (52); Matthew Broderick (46) and Rosie O'Donnell (46)

edgar, "to be young and broke in New York City" was the line from Easy Rider that really gave me pause for thought. Ah, The Rainbow Quest, loved the harmonica and the soul music, Texas. Remember this? "Some day we'll find it, the rainbow connection."

Today is Good Friday, and when I was a kid and afraid of many things, I could not understand why Jesus' death was good. Poor little frightened Letty. It's good getting older and outliving the fear.

Well, there's our speckled pup with a delightful montage of notables. Thanks for the quartet, PA. I am certain that we know all of them; however, this one is NOT a song for Good Friday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTFJh_SAM64

Modest Mussorgsky
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (Russian: Моде́ст Петро́вич Му́соргский, Modest Petrovič Musorgskij) (March 21 [O.S. March 9], 1839 - March 28 [O.S. March 16], 1881, age 42), one of the Russian composers known as the Five, was an innovator of Russian music. He strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music.

Like his literary contemporary Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Mussorgsky depicts in his music "the insulted and the injured" with all their passion and pain. He raises these characters to tragic heights until the grotesque and majestic coexist. Mussorgsky could accomplish this not simply out of compassion or guilt toward them, but because in his works he almost becomes them. Mussorgsky's music is vivid, confused, feverish and ultimately hypnotizing ?-again, like Dostoyevsky at his best.[1]

Many of his major works were inspired by Russian history, Russian folklore, and other nationalist themes, including the opera Boris Godunov, the orchestral tone poem Night on Bald Mountain, and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition. However, while Mussorgsky's music can be vivid and nationalistic, it does not glorify the powerful and is at times (such as in The Field-Marshal) antimilitaristic. For this reason, it was perceived as being directed against the state and its composer "under suspicion." He, like the others in The Russian Five, were considered dangerous extremists by the emperor and his court. This may have been the reason Tsar Alexander III personally crossed off Boris Godounov from the list of proposed pieces for the imperial opera in 1888.[2]

For many years Mussorgsky's works were mainly known in versions revised or completed by other composers. Many of his most important compositions have recently come into their own in their original forms, and some of the original scores are now also available.




Life

Youth

Mussorgsky was born in Karevo in the province of Pskov, 400 kilometres south-south-east of St Petersburg. His wealthy and land-owning family, the noble family of Mussorgsky, is reputedly descended from the first Ruthenian ruler, Rurik, through the sovereign princes of Smolensk. At six, Modest began receiving piano lessons from his mother, herself a trained pianist. His progress was sufficiently rapid that three years later he was able to perform a John Field concerto and works by Franz Liszt for family and friends. At 10, he and his brother were taken to St Petersburg to study at the elite Peterschule (St. Peter's School). While there, Modest studied the piano with the noted Anton Herke. In 1852, the 12-year-old Mussorgsky published a piano piece titled "Porte-enseigne Polka" at his father's expense.

Mussorgsky's parents planned the move to St. Petersburg so that both their sons would renew the family tradition of military service.[3] To this end, Mussorgsky entered the Cadet School of the Guards at age 13. Sharp controversy has arisen over the educational attutudes at the time of both this institute and its director, a General Sutgof.[4] All agreed the Cadet School could be a brutal place, especially for new recruits.[5] More tellingly for Mussorgsky, it was likely where he began his eventual path to alcoholism.[5] According to a former student, singer and composer Nikolai Kompaneisky, Sutgof "was proud when a cadet returned from leave drunk with champagne."[6]

Music remained important to him however. Sutgof's daughter was also a pupil of Herke, and Mussorgsky was allowed to attend lessons with her.[4] His skills as a pianist made him much in demand by fellow-cadets; for them he would play dances interspersed with his own improvisations.[7] In 1856 Mussorgsky-who had developed a strong interest in history and studied German philosophy-successfully graduated from the Cadet School. Again following family tradition and received a commission with the Preobrazhensky Regiment, the foremost regiment of the Russian Imperial Guard.[8]


Maturity

In October 1856 the 17-year-old Mussorgsky met the 22-year-old Alexander Borodin while both men served at a military hospital in St. Petersburg. The two were soon on good terms.[9] Borodin later remembered,

His little uniform was spic and span, close-fitting, his feet turned outwards, his hair smoothed down and greased, his nails perfectly cut, his hands well groomed like a lord's. His manners were elegant, aristocratic: his speech likewise, delivered through somewhat clenched teeth, interspersed with French phrases, rather precious. There was a touch?-though very moderate?-of foppishness. His politeness and good manners were exceptional. The ladies made a fuss of him. He sat at the piano and, throwing up his hands coquettishly, played with extreme sweetness and grace (etc) extracts from Trovatore, Traviata, and so on, and around him buzzed in chorus: "Charmant, délicieux!" and suchlike. I met Modest Petrovich three or four times at Popov's in this way, both on duty and at the hospital.[10]


More portentious was Mussorgsky's introduction that winter to Alexander Dargomyzhsky, at that time the most important Russian nationalist composer after Mikhail Glinka. Dargomyzhsky was impressed with Mussorsky's pianism. As a result, Mussorgsky became a fixture at Dargomyzhsky's soirées. There, critic Vladimir Stasov later recalled, he began "his true musical life."[11]

Over the next two years at Dargomyzhsky's, Mussorgsky met several figures of importance in Russia's cultural life, among them Stasov, César Cui (a fellow officer), and Mili Balakirev. Balakirev had an especially strong impact. Within days he took it upon himself to help shape Mussorgsky's fate as a composer. He recalled to Stassov, "Because I am not a theorist, I could not teach nim harmony (as, for instance Rimsky-Korsakov now teaches it ... [but] I explained to him the form of compositions, and to do this we played through both Beethoven symphonies [as piano duets] and much else (Schumann, Schubert, Glinka, and others), analyzing the form."[12] Up to this point Mussorgsky had known nothing but piano music; his knowledge of more radical recent music was virtually non-existent. Balakirev started filling these gaps in Mussorgsky's knowledge.[13]

In 1858, within a few months of beginning his studies with Balakirev, Mussorgsky resigned his commission to devote himself entirely to music.[14] He also suffered a painful crisis at this time. This may have had a spiritual component (in a letter to Balakirev the young man referred to "mysticism and cynical thoughts about the Deity"), but its exact nature will probably never be known. In 1859, the 20-year-old gained valuable theatrical experience by assisting in a production of Glinka's opera A Life for the Tsar on the Glebovo estate of a former singer and her wealthy husband; he also met Lyadov and enjoyed a formative visit to Moscow -after which he professed a love of "everything Russian".

In spite of this epiphany, Mussorgsky's music still leaned more towards foreign models; a four-hand piano sonata which he produced in 1860 contains his only movement in sonata form. Nor is any 'nationalistic' impulse easily discernible in the operas Oedipus in Athens, on which he worked between the ages of 19 and 22 (and then abandoned unfinished), or in the Intermezzo in modo classico for piano solo (revised and orchestrated in 1867). The latter was the only important piece he composed between December 1860 and August 1863: the reasons for this probably lie in the painful re-emergence of his subjective crisis in 1860 and the purely objective difficulties which resulted from the 'Emancipation of the Serfs' the following year -as a result of which the family was deprived of half its estate, and Mussorgsky had to spend a good deal of time in Karevo unsuccessfully attempting to stave off their looming impoverishment.


Mussorgsky started an opera based on his Salammbô but did not finish it.By this time, Mussorgsky had freed himself from the influence of Balakirev and was largely teaching himself. In 1863 he began another opera -Salammbô- on which he worked between 1863 and 1866 before losing interest in the project. During this period he had returned to St. Petersburg and was supporting himself as a low-grade civil-servant while living in a six-man 'commune'. In a heady artistic and intellectual atmosphere, he read and discussed a wide range of modern artistic and scientific ideas - including those of the provocative writer Chernyshevsky, known for the bold assertion that, in art, "form and content are opposites". Under such influences he came more and more to embrace the ideal of artistic 'realism' and all that it entailed, whether this concerned the responsibility to depict life 'as it is truly lived'; the preoccupation with the lower strata of society; or the rejection of repeating, symmetrical musical forms as insufficiently true to the unrepeating, unpredictable course of 'real life'.

'Real life' impacted particularly painfully on Mussorgsky in 1865, when his mother died; it was at this point that the composer had his first serious bout of either alcoholism or dipsomania. The 26-year-old was, however, on the point of writing his first 'realistic' songs (including 'Hopak' and 'Darling Savishna', both of them composed in 1866 and among his first 'real' publications the following year). 1867 was also the year in which he finished the original orchestral version of his A Night on the Bald Mountain (which, however, Balakirev criticised and refused to conduct, with the result that it was never performed during Mussorgsky's lifetime).


Peak

Mussorgsky's career as a civil servant was by no means stable or secure: though he was assigned to various posts and even received a promotion in these early years, in 1867 he was declared 'supernumerary' -remaining 'in service', but receiving no wages. Decisive developments were occurring in his artistic life, however. Although it was in 1867 that Stasov first referred to the 'kučka' of Russian composers loosely grouped around Balakirev, Mussorgsky was by then ceasing to seek Balakirev's approval and was moving closer to the older Alexander Dargomyzhsky .


Since 1866 Dargomïzhsky had been working on his opera The Stone Guest, a version of the Don Juan story with a Pushkin text that he declared would be set "just as it stands, so that the inner truth of the text should not be distorted", and in a manner that abolished the 'unrealistic' division between aria and recitative in favour of a continuous mode of syllabic but lyrically heightened declamation somewhere between the two.

Under the influence of this work (and the ideas of Georg Gottfried Gervinus, according to whom "the highest natural object of musical imitation is emotion, and the method of imitating emotion is to mimic speech"), Mussorgsky in 1868 rapidly set the first eleven scenes of Gogol's Zhenitba (The Marriage), with his priority being to render into music the natural accents and patterns of the play's naturalistic and deliberately humdrum dialogue. This work marked an extreme position in Mussorgsky's pursuit of naturalistic word-setting: he abandoned it unorchestrated after reaching the end of his 'Act 1', and though its characteristically 'Mussorgskyian' declamation is to be heard in all his later vocal music, the naturalistic mode of vocal writing more and more became merely one expressive element among many.


A few months after abandoning Zhenitba, the 29-year-old Mussorgsky was encouraged to write an opera on the story of Boris Godunov. This he did, assembling and shaping a text from Pushkin's play and Karamzin's history. He completed the large-scale score the following year while living with friends and working for the Forestry Department. In 1871, however, the finished opera was rejected for theatrical performance, apparently because of its lack of any 'prima donna' role. Mussorgsky set to work producing a revised and enlarged 'second version'. During the next year, which he spent sharing rooms with Rimsky-Korsakov, he made changes that actually went far beyond those requested by the theatre. In this version the opera was accepted, probably in May 1872, and three excerpts were staged at the Mariinsky Theatre in 1873. (It is often asserted that in 1872 the opera was rejected a second time, but no specific evidence for this exists.[citation needed])

By the time of the first production of Boris Godunov in February 1874, Mussorgsky had taken part in the ill-fated Mlada project (in the course of which he had made a choral version of his A Night on the Bald Mountain) and had begun Khovanshchina. Though far from being a critical success - and in spite of receiving only a dozen or so performances - the popular reaction in favour of Boris made this the peak of Mussorgsky's career.


Decline

From this peak a pattern of decline becomes increasingly apparent. Already the Balakirev circle was disintegrating. Mussorgsky was especially bitter about this. He wrote to Vladimir Stasov, "[T]he mighty Koocha has degenerated into soulless traitors."[15] In drifting away from his old friends, Mussorgsky had been seen to fall victim to 'fits of madness' that could well have been alcoholism-related. His friend Viktor Hartmann had died, and his relative and recent room-mate Arseny Golenishchev-Kutuzov (who furnished the poems for the song-cycle Sunless and would go on to provide those for the Songs and Dances of Death) had moved away to get married.

While alcoholism was Mussorgsky's personal weakness, it was also a behavior pattern considered typical for those of Mussorgsky's generation who wanted to oppose the establishment and protest through extreme forms of behavior.[16] One contemporary notes, "an intense worship of Bacchus was considered to be almost obligatory for a writer of that period. It was a showing off, a 'pose,' for the best people of the [eighteen-]sixties." Another writes, "Talented people in Russia who love the simple folk cannot but drink."[17] Mussorgsky spent day and night in a St. Petersburg tavern of low repute, the Maly Yaroslavets, accompanied by bohemian dropouts like himself. He and his fellow drinkers idealized their alcoholism, perhaps seeing it as ethical and aesthetic opposition. This bravado, however, led to little more than isolation and eventual self-destruction.[18]

For a time, however, Mussorgsky was able to maintain his creative output: his compositions from 1874 include Sunless, the Khovanschina Prelude, and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition (in memory of Hartmann); he also began work on another opera based on Gogol, Sorochintsy Fair (for which he produced another choral version of A Night on Bald Mountain).


In the years that followed, Mussorgsky's decline became increasingly steep. Although now part of a new circle of eminent personages that included singers, medical men and actors, he was increasingly unable to resist drinking, and a succession of deaths among his closest associates caused him great pain. At times, however, his alcoholism would seem to be in check, and among the most powerful works composed during his last 6 years are the four Songs and Dances of Death. His civil service career was made more precarious by his frequent 'illnesses' and absences, and he was fortunate to obtain a transfer to a post (in the Office of Government Control) where his music-loving superior treated him with great leniency -in 1879 even allowing him to spend 3 months touring 12 cities as a singer's accompanist.

The decline could not be halted, however. In 1880 he was finally dismissed from government service. Aware of his destitution, one group of friends organised a stipend designed to support the completion of Khovanschina; another group organised a similar fund to pay him to complete Sorochintsy Fair. Sadly, however, neither work was completed (although Khovanschina, in piano score with only two numbers uncomposed, came close to being finished).

In early 1881 a desperate Mussorgsky declared to a friend that there was 'nothing left but begging', and suffered four seizures in rapid succession. Though he was found a comfortable room in a good hospital -and for several weeks even appeared to be rallying- the situation was hopeless. Repin painted the famous portrait in what were to be the last days of the composer's life: a week after his 42nd birthday, he was dead. He was interred at the Tikhvin Cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in Saint Petersburg.


Works


Mussorgsky's works, while strikingly novel, are stylistically romantic and draw heavily on Russian musical themes. He has been the inspiration for many Russian composers, including most notably Dmitri Shostakovich (in his late symphonies) and Sergei Prokofiev (in his operas). In 1868/9 he composed the opera Boris Godunov, about the life of the Russian tsar, but it was rejected by the Mariinsky Opera. Mussorgsky thus edited the work, making a final version in 1874. The early version is considered darker and more concise than the later version, but also more crude. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov re-orchestrated the opera in 1896 and revised it in 1908. The opera has also been revised by other composers, notably Shostakovich, who made two versions, one for film and one for stage.

Khovanshchina a more obscure opera, was unfinished and unperformed when Mussorgsky died, but it was completed by Rimsky-Korsakov and received its premier in 1886 in St. Petersburg. This opera, too, was revised by Shostakovich. Mussorgsky left another opera, Sorochintsy Fair, incomplete at his death. However, a famous dance movement, the Gopak, is drawn therefrom.

One of Mussorgsky's wildest and most barbaric pieces (as the contemporary critics put it) is the orchestral work St. John's Night on the Bald Mountain, which was made famous in the US by its appearance in Disney's Fantasia.

His most imaginative and frequently performed work is the cycle of piano pieces describing paintings in sound called Pictures at an Exhibition. This composition, best known through an orchestral arrangement by Maurice Ravel, was written in commemoration of his friend, the architect Viktor Hartmann. This piece also was made more famous than it already was by the British progressive rock trio Emerson, Lake & Palmer in their 1971 album of the same name, Pictures at an Exhibition. Among his other works are a number of songs, including three song cycles: The Nursery (1872), Sunless (1874) and Songs and Dances of Death (1877).

Johann Sebastian Bach
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Johann Sebastian Bach (pronounced [joˈhan/ˈjoːhan zeˈbastjan ˈbax]) (March 21, 1685 O.S. - July 28, 1750 N.S.) was a prolific German composer and organist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity. Although he introduced no new forms, he enriched the prevailing German style with a robust contrapuntal technique, a control of harmonic and motivic organisation from the smallest to the largest scales, and the adaptation of rhythms and textures from abroad, particularly Italy and France.

Revered for their intellectual depth and technical and artistic beauty, Bach's works include the Brandenburg concertos; the Goldberg Variations; the English Suites, French Suites, Partitas, and Well-Tempered Clavier; the Mass in B Minor; the St Matthew Passion; the St. John Passion; The Musical Offering; The Art of Fugue; the Sonatas and Partitas for violin solo; the Cello Suites; more than 200 surviving cantatas; and a similar number of organ works, including the celebrated Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.

While Bach's fame as an organist was great during his lifetime, he was not particularly well-known as a composer. His adherence to Baroque forms and contrapuntal style was considered "old-fashioned" by his contemporaries, especially late in his career when the musical fashion tended towards Rococo and later Classical styles. A revival of interest and performances of his music began early in the 19th century, and he is now widely considered to be one of the greatest composers in the Western tradition.




Biography

Childhood (1685-1703)

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, Saxe-Eisenach. He was the youngest child of Johann Ambrosius Bach, an organist at St. George's Church, and Maria Elisabetha Lämmerhirt Bach. His father taught him to play violin and harpsichord. His uncles were all professional musicians, whose posts ranged from church organists and court chamber musicians to composers. One uncle, Johann Christoph Bach (1645-93), was especially famous and introduced him to the art of organ playing. Bach was proud of his family's musical achievements, and around 1735 he drafted a genealogy, "Origin of the musical Bach family", printed in translation in The Bach Reader (ISBN 0393002594).

Bach's mother died in 1694, and his father eight months later. The 10-year-old orphan moved in with his oldest brother, Johann Christoph Bach (1671-1721), the organist at nearby Ohrdruf. There, he copied, studied and performed music, and apparently received valuable teaching from his brother, who instructed him on the clavichord. JC Bach exposed him to the works of the great South German composers of the day, such as Johann Pachelbel (under whom Johann Christoph had studied) and Johann Jakob Froberger; possibly to the music of North German composers, to Frenchmen, such as Jean-Baptiste Lully, Louis Marchand, Marin Marais; and to the Italian clavierist Girolamo Frescobaldi. The young Bach probably witnessed and assisted in the maintenance of the organ music. Bach's obituary indicates that he copied music out of Johann Christoph's scores, but his brother had apparently forbidden him to do so, possibly because scores were valuable and private commodities at the time.

At the age of 14, Bach, along with his older school friend George Erdmann, was awarded a choral scholarship to study at the prestigious St. Michael's School in Lüneburg, not far from the northern seaport of Hamburg, one of the largest cities in the Holy Roman Empire.[1] This involved a long journey with his friend, probably undertaken partly on foot and partly by coach. His two years there appear to have been critical in exposing him to a wider palette of European culture than he would have experienced in Thuringia. In addition to singing in the a cappella choir, it is likely that he played the School's three-manual organ and its harpsichords. He probably learned French and Italian, and received a thorough grounding in theology, Latin, history, geography, and physics. He would have come into contact with sons of noblemen from northern Germany sent to the highly selective school to prepare for careers in diplomacy, government, and the military.

Although little supporting historical evidence exists at this time, it is almost certain that while in Lüneburg, young Bach would have visited Johanniskirche (Church of St. John) and heard (possibly played) the church's famous organ (built in 1549 by Jasper Johannsen and nicknamed the "Böhm organ" after its most prominent master), an instrument whose sonic capabilities could well have been the inspiration for the mighty Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Given his innate musical talent, Bach would have had significant contact with prominent organists of the day in Lüneburg, most notably Georg Böhm, organist at Johanniskirche, as well as organists in nearby Hamburg, such as Johann Adam Reincken. Through contact with these musicians, Bach probably gained access to the largest and finest instruments he had played thus far. It is likely that during this stage he became acquainted with the music of the German organ schools, especially the work of Dieterich Buxtehude, and with music manuscripts and treatises on music theory that were in the possession of these musicians.


Arnstadt to Weimar (1703-08)

St Boniface's Church in ArnstadtIn January 1703, shortly after graduating, Bach took up a post as a court musician in the chapel of Duke Johann Ernst in Weimar, a large town in Thuringia. His role there is unclear, but appears to have included menial, non-musical duties. During his seven-month tenure at Weimar, his reputation as a keyboard player spread. He was invited to inspect and give the inaugural recital on the new organ at St Boniface's Church in Arnstadt. The Bach family had close connections with this oldest town in Thuringia, about 180 km to the southwest of Weimar at the edge of the great forest. In August 1703, he accepted the post of organist at that church, with light duties, a relatively generous salary, and a fine new organ tuned to a modern system that allowed a wide range of keys to be used. At this time, Bach was embarking on the serious composition of organ preludes; these works, in the North German tradition of virtuosic, improvisatory preludes, already showed tight motivic control (where a single, short music idea is explored cogently throughout a movement). However, in these works the composer had yet to fully develop his powers of large-scale organisation and his contrapuntal technique (where two or more melodies interact simultaneously).

Strong family connections and a musically enthusiastic employer failed to prevent tension between the young organist and the authorities after several years in the post. He was apparently dissatisfied with the standard of singers in the choir; more seriously, there was his unauthorised absence from Arnstadt for several months in 1705-06, when he visited the great master Dieterich Buxtehude and his Abendmusik in the northern city of Lübeck. This well-known incident in Bach's life involved his walking some 400 kilometres (250 mi) each way to spend time with the man he probably regarded as the father-figure of German organists. The trip reinforced Buxtehude's style as a foundation for Bach's earlier works, and that he overstayed his planned visit by several months suggests that his time with the old man was of great value to his art.

Despite his comfortable position in Arnstadt, by 1706 Bach appeared to have realised that he needed to escape from the family milieu and move on to further his career. He was offered a more lucrative post as organist at St Blasius's in Mühlhausen, a large and important city to the north. The following year, he took up this senior post with significantly improved pay and conditions, including a good choir. Four months after arriving at Mühlhausen, he married his second cousin from Arnstadt, Maria Barbara Bach.[2] They had seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood. Two of them?-Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach?-became important composers in the ornate Rococo style that followed the Baroque.

The church and city government at Mühlhausen must have been proud of their new musical director. They readily agreed to his plan for an expensive renovation of the organ at St Blasius's, and were so delighted at the elaborate, festive cantata he wrote for the inauguration of the new council in 1708?-God is my king BWV 71, clearly in the style of Buxtehude?-that they paid handsomely for its publication, and twice in later years had the composer return to conduct it. However, that same year, Bach was offered a better position in Weimar.


Weimar (1708-17)

Places in which Bach lived throughout his lifeAfter barely a year at Mühlhausen, Bach left to become the court organist and concert master at the ducal court in Weimar, a far cry from his earlier position there as 'lackey'. The munificent salary on offer at the court and the prospect of working entirely with a large, well-funded contingent of professional musicians may have prompted the move. The family moved into an apartment just five minutes' walk from the ducal palace. In the following year, their first child was born and they were joined by Maria Barbara's elder, unmarried sister, who remained with them to assist in the running of the household until her death in 1729. It was in Weimar that the two musically significant sons were born?-Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.


A portrait of a young man, supposed to be Bach but disputed[3]Bach's position in Weimar marked the start of a sustained period of composing keyboard and orchestral works, in which he had attained the technical proficiency and confidence to extend the prevailing large-scale structures and to synthesise influences from abroad. From the music of Italians such as Vivaldi, Corelli and Torelli, he learnt how to write dramatic openings and adopted their sunny dispositions, dynamic motor-rhythms and decisive harmonic schemes. Bach inducted himself into these stylistic aspects largely by transcribing for harpsichord and organ the ensemble concertos of Vivaldi; these works are still concert favourites. He may have picked up the idea of transcribing the latest fashionable Italian music from Prince Johann Ernst, one of his employers, who was a musician of professional calibre. In 1713, the Duke returned from a tour of the Low Countries with a large collection of scores, some of them possibly transcriptions of the latest fashionable Italian music by the blind organist Jan Jacob de Graaf. Bach was particularly attracted to the Italian solo-tutti structure, in which one or more solo instruments alternate section-by-section with the full orchestra throughout a movement. These Italianate features can be heard in the excerpt below of the Prelude from English Suite No. 3 for harpsichord (1714). The solo-tutti alternation is achieved when the player deftly changes between the lower keyboard (of a fuller, slightly louder tone) and the upper keyboard (of a more delicate tone).


Violin Sonata No. 1 in G minor (BWV 1001) in Bach's handwritingIn Weimar, he had the opportunity to play and compose for the organ, and to perform a varied repertoire of concert music with the duke's ensemble. A master of contrapuntal technique, Bach's steady output of fugues began in Weimar. The largest single body of his fugal writing is Das wohltemperierte Clavier ("The well-tempered keyboard"?-"Clavier" meaning keyboard instrument). It consists of 48 preludes and fugues, one pair for each major and relative minor key. This is a monumental work for its masterful use of counterpoint and its exploration, for the first time, of the full range of keys-and the means of expression made possible by their slight differences from each other?-available to keyboardists when their instruments are tuned according to systems such as that of Andreas Werckmeister.

During his tenure at Weimar, Bach started work on The little organ book for his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann; this contains traditional Lutheran chorales (hymn tunes), set in complex textures to assist the training of organists. The book illustrates two major themes in Bach's life: his dedication to teaching and his love of the chorale as a musical form.


Cöthen (1717-23)


Bach began once again to search out a more stable job that was conducive to his musical interests. Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen hired Bach to serve as his Kapellmeister (director of music). Prince Leopold, himself a musician, appreciated Bach's talents, paid him well, and gave him considerable latitude in composing and performing. However, the prince was Calvinist and did not use elaborate music in his worship; thus, most of Bach's work from this period was secular, including the Orchestral suites, the Six suites for solo cello and the Sonatas and partitas for solo violin. This photograph of the opening page of the first violin sonata shows the composer's handwriting?-fast and efficient, but just as visually ornate as the music it encoded. The well-known Brandenburg concertos date from this period.

On July 7, 1720, while Bach was abroad with Prince Leopold, tragedy struck: his wife, Maria Barbara, the mother of his first 7 children, died suddenly. The following year, the widower met Anna Magdalena Wilcke, a young, highly gifted soprano 17 years his junior, who performed at the court in Cöthen; they married on December 3, 1721. Together they had 13 more children, six of whom survived into adulthood: Gottfried Heinrich, Johann Christoph Friedrich and Johann Christian all of whom became significant musicians; Elisabeth Juliane Friederica (1726-81) who married Bach's pupil Johann Christoph Altnikol, Johanna Carolina (1737-81) and Regina Susanna (1742-1809)[4]


Leipzig (1723-50)

In 1723, Bach was appointed Cantor of Thomasschule, adjacent to the Thomaskirche (St Thomas's Lutheran Church) in Leipzig, as well as Director of Music in the principal churches in the town. This was a prestigious post in the leading mercantile city in Saxony, a neighbouring electorate to Thuringia. Apart from his brief tenures in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen, this was Bach's first government position in a career that had mainly involved service to the aristocracy. This final post, which he held for 27 years until his death, brought him into contact with the political machinations of his employer, the Leipzig Council. The Council comprised two factions: the Absolutists, loyal to the Saxon monarch in Dresden, Augustus the Strong; and the City-Estate faction, representing the interests of the mercantile class, the guilds and minor aristocrats. Bach was the nominee of the monarchists, in particular of the Mayor at the time, Gottlieb Lange, a lawyer who had earlier served in the Dresden court. In return for agreeing to Bach's appointment, the City-Estate faction was granted control of the School, and Bach was required to make a number of compromises with respect to his working conditions.[5] Although it appears that no one on the Council doubted Bach's musical genius, there was continual tension between the Cantor, who regarded himself as the leader of church music in the city, and the City-Estate faction, which saw him as a schoolmaster and wanted to reduce the emphasis on elaborate music in both the School and the Churches. The Council never honoured Lange's promise at interview of a handsome salary of 1,000 talers a year, although it did provide Bach and his family with a smaller income and a good apartment at one end of the school building, which was renovated at great expense in 1732.

Bach's job required him to instruct the students of the Thomasschule in singing, and to provide weekly music at the two main churches in Leipzig, St Thomas's and St Nicholas's. His post also obliged him to teach Latin, but he was allowed to employ a deputy to do this instead. In an astonishing burst of creativity, he wrote up to five annual cantata cycles during his first six years in Leipzig (two of which have apparently been lost). Most of these concerted works expound on the Gospel readings for every Sunday and feast day in the Lutheran year; many were written using traditional church hymns, such as Wachet auf! Ruft uns die Stimme and Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, as inspiration.


To rehearse and perform these works at St Thomas's Church, Bach probably sat at the harpsichord or stood in front of the choir on the lower gallery at the west end, his back to the congregation and the altar at the east end. He would have looked upwards to the organ that rose from a loft about four metres above. To the right of the organ in a side gallery would have been the winds, brass and timpani; to the left were the strings. The Council provided only about eight permanent instrumentalists, a source of continual friction with the Cantor, who had to recruit the rest of the 20 or so players required for medium-to-large scores from the University, the School and the public. The organ or harpsichord were probably played by the composer (when not standing to conduct), the in-house organist, or one of Bach's elder sons, Wilhelm Friedemann or Carl Philipp Emanuel.

Bach drew the soprano and alto choristers from the School, and the tenors and basses from the School and elsewhere in Leipzig. Performing at weddings and funerals provided extra income for these groups; it was probably for this purpose, and for in-school training, that he wrote at least six motets, mostly for double-choir. As part of his regular church work, he performed motets of the Venetian school and Germans such as Heinrich Schütz, which would have served as formal models for his own motets. The audio excerpt is from the opening of Singet dem Herrn (Sing to the Lord), showing the rich, energetic textures that Bach could produce with two choirs, each in four parts.


Having spent much of the 1720s composing cantatas, Bach had assembled a huge repertoire of church music for Leipzig's two main churches. He now wished to broaden his composing and performing beyond the liturgy. In March 1729, he took over the directorship of the Collegium Musicum, a secular performance ensemble that had been started in 1701 by his old friend, the composer Georg Philipp Telemann. This was one of the dozens of private societies in the major German-speaking cities that had been established by musically active university students; these societies had come to play an increasingly important role in public musical life and were typically led by the most prominent professionals in a city. In the words of Christoph Wolff, assuming the directorship was a shrewd move that 'consolidated Bach's firm grip on Leipzig's principal musical institutions'.[6] During much of the year, Leipzig's Collegium Musicum gave twice-weekly, two-hour performances in Zimmerman's Coffeehouse on Catherine Street, just off the main market square. For this purpose, the proprietor provided a large hall and acquired several musical instruments. Many of Bach's works during the 1730s and 40s were probably written for and performed by the Collegium Musicum; among these were almost certainly parts of the Clavier-Übung (Keyboard Practice), and many of the violin and harpsichord concertos.


During this period, he composed the Kyrie and Gloria of the Mass in B Minor, and in 1733, he presented the manuscript to the Elector of Saxony in an ultimately successful bid to persuade the monarch to appoint him as Royal Court Composer. He later extended this work into a full Mass, by adding a Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei, the music for which was almost wholly taken from some of the best of his cantata movements. Bach's appointment as court composer appears to have been part of his long-term struggle to achieve greater bargaining power with the Leipzig Council. The audio excerpt, from one of the movements that was presented to the monarch, shows his use of festive trumpets and timpani. Although the complete mass was probably never performed during the composer's lifetime, it is considered to be among the greatest choral works of all time. Between 1737 and 1739, Bach's former pupil Carl Gotthelf Gerlach took over the directorship of the Collegium Musicum.

In 1747, Bach went to the court of Frederick II of Prussia in Potsdam, where the king played a theme for Bach and challenged him to improvise a fugue based on his theme. Bach improvised a three-part fugue on Frederick's pianoforte, then a novelty, and later presented the king with a Musical Offering which consists of fugues, canons and a trio based on the "royal theme", nominated by the monarch. Its six-part fugue includes a slightly altered subject more suitable for extensive elaboration.

The Art of Fugue, published posthumously but probably written years before Bach's death, is unfinished. It consists of 18 complex fugues and canons based on a simple theme. A magnum opus of thematic transformation and contrapuntal devices, this work is often cited as the summation of polyphonic techniques.

The final work Bach completed was a chorale prelude for organ, dictated to his son-in-law, Johann Altnikol, from his deathbed. Entitled Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit (Before thy throne I now appear); when the notes on the three staves of the final cadence are counted and mapped onto the Roman alphabet, the initials "JSB" are found. The chorale is often played after the unfinished 14th fugue to conclude performances of The Art of Fugue.


The 1750 "Volbach Portrait" may show Bach in the last months of his life.[7]Bach's health may have been in decline in 1749, as on June 2, Heinrich von Brühl wrote to one of the Leipzig burgomasters to request that his music director, Gottlob Harrer, immediately begin to audition someone to succeed to the Thomascantor and Director musices posts "upon the eventual...decease of Mr. Bach."[8] Bach became increasingly blind, and the celebrated British ophthalmologist John Taylor (who had operated unsuccessfully on Handel) operated on Bach while visiting Leipzig in 1750. Bach died on 28 July, 1750 at the age of 65. A contemporary newspaper reported the cause of death was "from the unhappy consequences of the very unsuccessful eye operation".[9] Some modern historians speculate the cause of death was a stroke complicated by pneumonia.[10][11][12] His estate was valued at 1159 Thalers and included 5 Clavecins, 2 Lute-Harpsichords, 3 violins, 3 violas, 2 cellos, a viola da gamba, a lute and a spinet, 52 "Sacred Books" (many by Martin Luther, Muller and Pfeiffer, also including Josephus's History of the Jews and 9 volumes of Wagner's Leipzig Song Book).[13]

During his life he composed more than 1,000 works.

At Leipzig, Bach seems to have maintained active relationships with several members of the faculty of the university. He enjoyed a particularly fruitful relationship with the poet Picander. Sebastian and Anna Magdalena welcomed friends, family, and fellow musicians from all over Germany into their home. Court musicians at Dresden and Berlin, and musicians including Georg Philipp Telemann (one of Emanuel's godfathers) made frequent visits to Bach's apartment and may have kept up frequent correspondence with him. Interestingly, George Frideric Handel, who was born in the same year as Bach in Halle, only 50 km from Leipzig, made several trips to Germany, but Bach was unable to meet him, a fact that Bach appears to have deeply regretted.[14]


Style


Bach's musical style arose from his extraordinary fluency in contrapuntal invention and motivic control, his flair for improvisation at the keyboard, his exposure to South German, North German, Italian and French music, and his apparent devotion to the Lutheran liturgy. His access to musicians, scores and instruments as a child and a young man, combined with his emerging talent for writing tightly woven music of powerful sonority, appear to have set him on course to develop an eclectic, energetic musical style in which foreign influences were injected into an intensified version of the pre-existing German musical language. Throughout his teens and 20s, his output showed increasing skill in the large-scale organisation of musical ideas, and the enhancement of the Buxtehudian model of improvisatory preludes and counterpoint of limited complexity. The period 1713-14, when a large repertoire of Italian music became available to the Weimar court orchestra, was a turning point. From this time onwards, he appears to have absorbed into his style the Italians' dramatic openings, clear melodic contours, the sharp outlines of their bass lines, greater motoric and rhythmic conciseness, more unified motivic treatment, and more clearly articulated schemes for modulation.[15]

There are several more specific features of Bach's style. The notation of baroque melodic lines tended to assume that composers would write out only the basic framework, and that performers would embellish this framework by inserting ornamental notes and otherwise elaborating on it. Although this practice varied considerably between the schools of European music, Bach was regarded at the time as being on one extreme end of the spectrum, notating most or all of the details of his melodic lines?-particularly in his fast movements?-thus leaving little for performers to interpolate. This may have assisted his control over the dense contrapuntal textures that he favoured, which allow less leeway for the spontaneous variation of musical lines. Bach's contrapuntal textures tend to be more cumulative than those of Händel and most other composers of the day, who would typically allow a line to drop out after it had been joined by two or three others. Bach's harmony is marked by a tendency to employ brief tonicisation?-subtle references to another key that lasts for only a few beats at the longest?-particularly of the supertonic, to add colour to his textures.


At the same time, Bach, unlike later composers, left the instrumentation of major works including The Art of Fugue and The Musical Offering open. It is likely that his detailed notation was less an absolute demand on the performer and more a response to a 17th-century culture in which the boundary between what the performer could embellish and what the composer demanded to be authentic was being negotiated.

Bach's apparently devout, personal relationship with the Christian God in the Lutheran tradition and the high demand for religious music of his times inevitably placed sacred music at the centre of his repertory; more specifically, the Lutheran chorale hymn tune, the principal musical aspect of the Lutheran service, was the basis of much of his output. He invested the chorale prelude, already a standard set of Lutheran forms, with a more cogent, tightly integrated architecture, in which the intervallic patterns and melodic contours of the tune were typically treated in a dense, contrapuntal lattice against relatively slow-moving, overarching statements of the tune.

Bach's theology also informed his compositional structures: Sei Gegrüsset is perhaps the finest example where there is a theme with 11 variations (making 12 movements) that, while still one work, becomes two sets of six?-to match Lutheran preaching principles of repetition. At the same time the theological interpretation of 'master' and 11 disciples would not be lost on his contemporary audience. Further, the practical relationship of each variation to the next (in preparing registration and the expected textural changes) seems to show an incredible capacity to preach through the music using the musical forms available at the time.

Bach's deep knowledge of and interest in the liturgy led to his developing intricate relationships between music and linguistic text. This was evident from the smallest to the largest levels of his compositional technique. On the smallest level, many of his sacred works contain short motifs that, by recurrent association, can be regarded as pictorial symbolism and articulations of liturgical concepts. For example, the octave leap, usually in a bass line, represents the relationship between heaven and earth; the slow, repeated notes of the bass line in the opening movement of Cantata 106 (Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit) depict the laboured trudging of Jesus as he was forced to drag the cross from the city to the crucifixion site.

On the largest level, the large-scale structure of some of his sacred vocal works is evidence of subtle, elaborate planning: for example, the overall form of the St Matthew Passion illustrates the liturgical and dramatic flow of the Easter story on a number of levels simultaneously; the text, keys and variations of instrumental and vocal forces used in the movements of Cantata 11 (Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen) may form a structure that resembles the cross.

Beyond these specific musical features arising from Bach's religious affiliation is the fact that he was able to produce music for an audience that was committed to serious, regular worship, for which a concentrated density and complexity was accepted. His natural inclination may have been to reinvigorate existing forms, rather than to discard them and pursue more dramatic musical innovations. Thus, Bach's inventive genius was almost entirely directed towards working within the structures he inherited, according to most critics and historians.

Bach's inner personal drive to display his musical achievements was evident in a number of ways. The most obvious was his successful striving to become the leading virtuoso and improviser of the day on the organ. Keyboard music occupied a central position in his output throughout his life, and he pioneered the elevation of the keyboard from continuo to solo instrument in his numerous harpsichord concertos and chamber movements with keyboard obbligato, in which he himself probably played the solo part. Many of his keyboard preludes are vehicles for a free improvisatory virtuosity in the German tradition, although their internal organisation became increasingly more cogent as he matured. Virtuosity is a key element in other forms, such as the fugal movement from Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, in which Bach himself may have been the first to play the rapid solo violin passages. Another example is in the organ fugue from BWV547, a late work from Leipzig, in which virtuosic passages are mapped onto Italian solo-tutti alternation within the fugal development.

Related to his cherished role as teacher was his drive to encompass whole genres by producing collections of movements that thoroughly explore the range of artistic and technical possibilities inherent in those genres. The most famous examples are the two books of the Well Tempered Clavier, each of which presents a prelude and fugue in every major and minor key, in which a variety of contrapuntal and fugal techniques are displayed. The English and French Suites, and the Partitas, all keyboard works from the Cöthen period, systematically explore a range of metres and of sharp and flat keys. This urge to manifest structures is evident throughout his life: the Goldberg Variations (1746?), include a sequence of canons at increasing intervals (unison, seconds, thirds, etc.), and The Art of Fugue (1749) can be seen as a compendium of fugal techniques.


Family

Bach married his second cousin Maria Barbara Bach in 1707. They had seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood:

Catharina Dorothea (December 28, 1708 - January 14, 1774).
Wilhelm Friedemann (November 22, 1710 - July 1, 1784).
Carl Philipp Emanuel (March 8, 1714 - December 14, 1788).
Johann Gottfried Bernhard (May 11, 1715 - 27 May 27, 1739).
Maria died in 1720, and Bach married Anna Magdalena Wilcke in 1721. They had a further thirteen children, six of whom survived to adulthood:

Gottfried Heinrich (1724-63)
Elisabeth Juliana Friederica, called "Liesgen" (1726-81)
Johann Christoph Friedrich, the 'Bückeburg' Bach (1732-95)
Johann Christian, the 'London' Bach (1735-82)
Johanna Carolina (1737-81)
Regina Susanna (1742-1809)
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (1710-84) Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-88) Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach (1732-95) Johann Christian Bach (1735-82)




Organ works

Bach was best known during his lifetime as an organist, organ consultant, and composer of organ works in both the traditional German free genres such as preludes, fantasias, and toccatas, and stricter forms such as chorale preludes and fugues. He established a reputation at a young age for his great creativity and ability to integrate foreign styles into his organ works. A decidedly North German influence was exerted by Georg Böhm, with whom Bach came into contact in Lüneburg, and Dieterich Buxtehude in Lübeck, whom the young organist visited in 1704 on an extended leave of absence from his job in Arnstadt. Around this time, Bach copied the works of numerous French and Italian composers to gain insights into their compositional languages, and later arranged violin concertos by Vivaldi and others for organ and harpsichord. His most productive period (1708-14) saw the composition of several pairs of preludes and fugues and toccatas and fugues, and of the Orgelbüchlein ("Little organ book"), an unfinished collection of 45 short chorale preludes that demonstrate compositional techniques in the setting of chorale tunes. After he left Weimar, Bach's output for organ fell off, although his best-known works (the six trio sonatas, the Clavierübung III of 1739, and the "Great eighteen" chorales, revised late in his life) were all composed after this time. Bach was extensively engaged later in his life in consulting on organ projects, testing newly built organs, and dedicating organs in afternoon recitals.[16][17] One of the high points may be the third part of the Clavierübung, a setting of 21 chorale preludes uniting the traditional Catholic Missa with the Lutheran catechism liturgy, the whole set interpolated between a mighty Prelude and Fugue on the theme of the Trinity.


Other keyboard works

Bach wrote many works for the harpsichord, some of which may also have been played on the clavichord. Many of his keyboard works are anthologies that show an eagerness to encompass whole theoretical systems in an encyclopaedic fashion.

The Well-Tempered Clavier, Books 1 and 2 (BWV 846-893). Each book comprises a prelude and fugue in each of the 24 major and minor keys (thus, the whole collection is often referred to as 'the 48'). "Well-tempered" in the title refers to the temperament (system of tuning); many temperaments before Bach's time were not flexible enough to allow compositions to move through more than just a few keys.
The 15 Inventions and 15 Sinfonias (BWV 772-801). These are short two- and three-part contrapuntal works arranged in order of key signatures of increasing sharps and flats, omitting some of the less used ones. The pieces were intended by Bach for instructional purposes.
Three collections of dance suites: the English Suites (BWV 806-811), the French Suites (BWV 812-817) and the Partitas for keyboard (BWV 825-830). Each collection contains six suites built on the standard model (Allemande-Courante-Sarabande-(optional movement)-Gigue). The English Suites closely follow the traditional model, adding a prelude before the allemande and including a single movement between the sarabande and the gigue. The French Suites omit preludes, but have multiple movements between the sarabande and the gigue. The partitas expand the model further with elaborate introductory movements and miscellaneous movements between the basic elements of the model.
The Goldberg Variations (BWV 988), an aria with thirty variations. The collection has a complex and unconventional structure: the variations build on the bass line of the aria, rather than its melody, and musical canons are interpolated according to a grand plan. There are nine canons within the 30 variations, one placed every three variations between variations 3 and 27. These variations move in order from canon at the unison to canon at the ninth. The first eight are in pairs (unison and octave, second and seventh, third and sixth, fourth and fifth). The ninth canon stands on its own due to compositional dissimilarities.
Miscellaneous pieces such as the Overture in the French Style (French Overture, BWV 831) Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue (BWV 903), and the Italian Concerto (BWV 971).
Among Bach's lesser known keyboard works are seven toccatas (BWV 910-916), four duets (BWV 802-805), sonatas for keyboard (BWV 963-967), the Six Little Preludes (BWV 933-938) and the Aria variata alla maniera italiana (BWV 989).


Orchestral and chamber music

Bach wrote music for single instruments, duets and small ensembles. Bach's works for solo instruments - the six sonatas and partitas for violin (BWV 1001-1006), the six cello suites (BWV 1007-1012) and the Partita for solo flute (BWV 1013) - may be listed among the most profound works in the repertoire. Bach also composed a suite and several other works for solo lute. He wrote trio sonatas; solo sonatas (accompanied by continuo) for the flute and for the viola da gamba; and a large number of canons and ricercare, mostly for unspecified instrumentation. The most significant examples of the latter are contained in The Art of Fugue and The Musical Offering.

Bach's best-known orchestral works are the Brandenburg concertos, so named because he submitted them in the hope of gaining employment from Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg-Schwedt in 1721; his application was unsuccessful. These works are examples of the concerto grosso genre. Other surviving works in the concerto form include two violin concertos (BWV 1041, and BWV 1042); a Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor (BWV 1043), often referred to as Bach's "double" concerto; and concertos for one, two, three and even four harpsichords. It is widely accepted that many of the harpsichord concertos were not original works, but arrangements of his concertos for other instruments now lost. A number of violin, oboe and flute concertos have been reconstructed from these. In addition to concertos, Bach also wrote four orchestral suites, a series of stylised dances for orchestra, each preceded by a French overture. The work now known as the Air on the G String is an arrangement for the violin made in the nineteenth century from the second movement of the Orchestral Suite No. 3.


Vocal and choral works

Bach performed a cantata on Sunday at the Thomaskirche, on a theme corresponding to the lectionary readings of the week, as determined by the Lutheran Church Year calendar. He did not perform cantatas during the seasons of Lent and Advent. Although he performed cantatas by other composers, he also composed at least three entire sets of cantatas, one for each Sunday and holiday of the church year, at Leipzig, in addition to those composed at Mühlhausen and Weimar. In total he wrote more than 300 sacred cantatas, of which only about 195 survive.

His cantatas vary greatly in form and instrumentation. Some of them are only for a solo singer; some are single choruses; some are for grand orchestras, some only a few instruments. A very common format, however, includes a large opening chorus followed by one or more recitative-aria pairs for soloists (or duets), and a concluding chorale. The recitative is part of the corresponding Bible reading for the week and the aria is a contemporary reflection on it. The melody of the concluding chorale often appears as a cantus firmus in the opening movement. The best known of these cantatas are BWV 4 ("Christ lag in Todesbanden"), BWV 80 ("Ein' feste Burg"), BWV 140 ("Wachet auf") and BWV 147 ("Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben").

In addition, Bach wrote a number of secular cantatas, usually for civic events such as council inaugurations. These also include wedding cantatas, the Wedding Quodlibet, the Peasant Cantata and the Coffee Cantata, which concerns a girl whose father will not let her marry until she gives up her addiction to that extremely popular drink.

Bach's large choral-orchestral works include the famous St Matthew Passion and St John Passion, both written for Good Friday vespers services at St Thomas's and St Nicholas' Churches in alternate years, the Christmas Oratorio (a set of six cantatas for use in the Liturgical season of Christmas). The Magnificat in two versions (one in E-flat major, with four interpolated Christmas-related movements, and the later and better-known version in D major) and the Easter Oratorio compare to large, elaborated cantatas, of a lesser extent than the Passions and the Christmas Oratorio.

Bach's other large work, the Mass in B minor, was assembled by Bach near the end of his life, mostly from pieces composed earlier (such as cantata BWV 191 and BWV 12). It was never performed in Bach's lifetime, or even after his death until the 19th century.

All of these works, unlike the six motets (Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied; Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf; Jesu, meine Freude; Fürchte dich nicht; Komm, Jesu, komm!; and Lobet den Herrn alle Heiden), have substantial solo parts as well as choruses.

Bach's copy of a two volume Bible commentary by the orthodox Lutheran theologian, Abraham Calov, was discovered in the 1950s in a barn in Minnesota, purchased apparently in Germany as part of a "job lot" of old books and brought to America by an immigrant. Its provenance was verified and it was subsequently deposited in the rare book holdings of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. It contains his markings of texts for his cantatas and notes. It is only rarely displayed to the public. A study of the so-called Bach Bible was prepared by Robin Leaver, titled J. S. Bach and Scripture: Glosses from the Calov Bible Commentary (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1985).


Performances

Present-day Bach performers usually pursue either of two traditions: so-called "authentic performance practice", utilising historical techniques, or alternatively the use of modern instruments and playing techniques, with a tendency towards larger ensembles. In Bach's time orchestras and choirs were usually smaller than those known to, for example, Brahms, and even Bach's most ambitious choral works, such as his Mass in B minor and Passions, are composed for relatively modest forces. Some of Bach's important chamber music does not indicate instrumentation, which gives greater latitude for variety of ensemble.

"Easy listening" realisations of Bach's music and its use in advertising also contributed greatly to Bach's popularisation in the second half of the twentieth century. Among these were the Swingle Singers' versions of Bach pieces that are now well-known (for instance, the Air on the G string, or the Wachet Auf chorale prelude) and Wendy Carlos' 1968 ground-breaking recording Switched-On Bach, using the then recently-invented Moog electronic synthesiser. Jazz musicians have also adopted Bach's music, with Jacques Loussier, Ian Anderson, Uri Caine and the Modern Jazz Quartet among those creating jazz versions of Bach works.


Legacy

Since being moved in 1938, the Donndorf statue of Bach now stands in the Frauenplan in Eisenach. The pedestal has been shortened and the relief now is at the wall in the backgroundIn his later years and after his death, Bach's reputation as a composer declined; his work was regarded as old-fashioned compared to the emerging classical style. Initially he was remembered more as a player, teacher and as the father of his children, most notably Johann Christian and Carl Philipp Emanuel. (Two other children, Wilhelm Friedmann and Johann Christoph Friedrich, were also composers.)

During this time, his works for keyboard were those most appreciated and composers ever since have acknowledged his mastery of the genre. Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin were among his most prominent admirers. On a visit to Thomasschule, for example, Mozart heard a performance of one of the motets (BWV 225) and exclaimed "Now, here is something one can learn from!"; on being given the motets' parts, "Mozart sat down, the parts all around him, held in both hands, on his knees, on the nearest chairs. Forgetting everything else, he did not stand up again until he had looked through all the music of Sebastian Bach". Beethoven was a devotee, learning the Well-Tempered Clavier as a child and later calling Bach the "Urvater der Harmonie" ("Original father of Harmony") and, in a pun on the literal meaning of Bach's name, "nicht Bach, sondern Meer" ("not a brook, but a sea"). Before performing a concert, Chopin used to lock himself away and play Bach's music. Several notable composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and Mendelssohn began writing in a more contrapuntal style after being introduced to Bach's music.


The Bach monument that was constructed in 1884 by Adolf von Donndorf and erected in front of the Georgenkirche at the Marktplatz in EisenachToday the "Bach style" continues to influence musical composition, from hymns and religious works to pop and rock. Many of Bach's themes?-particularly the theme from Toccata and Fugue in D minor?-have been used in rock songs repeatedly and have received notable popularity. Bach has even been referred to as "the father of all music."[18]

The revival in the composer's reputation among the wider public was prompted in part by Johann Nikolaus Forkel's 1802 biography, which was read by Beethoven. Goethe became acquainted with Bach's works relatively late in life, through a series of performances of keyboard and choral works at Bad Berka in 1814 and 1815; in a letter of 1827 he compared the experience of listening to Bach's music to "eternal harmony in dialogue with itself".[19] But it was Felix Mendelssohn who did the most to revive Bach's reputation with his 1829 Berlin performance of the St Matthew Passion. Hegel, who attended the performance, later called Bach a "grand, truly Protestant, robust and, so to speak, erudite genius which we have only recently learned again to appreciate at its full value".[20] Mendelssohn's promotion of Bach, and the growth of the composer's stature, continued in subsequent years. The Bach Gesellschaft (Bach Society) was founded in 1850 to promote the works, publishing a comprehensive edition over the subsequent half century.

Thereafter Bach's reputation has remained consistently high. During the twentieth century, the process of recognising the musical as well as the pedagogic value of some of the works has continued, perhaps most notably in the promotion of the Cello Suites by Pablo Casals. Another development has been the growth of the "authentic" or period performance movement, which as far as possible attempts to present the music as the composer intended it. Examples include the playing of keyboard works on the harpsichord rather than a modern grand piano and the use of small choirs or single voices instead of the larger forces favoured by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century performers.

Johann Sebastian Bach's contributions to music, or, to borrow a term popularised by his student Lorenz Christoph Mizler, his "musical science", are frequently bracketed with those by William Shakespeare in English literature and Isaac Newton in physics. Scientist and author Lewis Thomas once suggested how the people of Earth should communicate with the universe: "I would vote for Bach, all of Bach, streamed out into space, over and over again. We would be bragging of course, but it is surely excusable to put the best possible face on at the beginning of such an acquaintance. We can tell the harder truths later."

Some composers have paid tribute to Bach by setting his name in musical notes (B-flat, A, C, B-natural; B-natural is notated as "H" in German musical texts, whilst B-flat is just "B") or using contrapuntal derivatives. Liszt, for example, wrote a praeludium and fugue on this BACH motif (existing in versions both for organ and piano). Bach himself set the precedent for this musical acronym, most notably in Contrapunctus XIV from the Art of Fugue. Whereas Bach also conceived this cruciform melody (among other similar ones) as a sign of devotion to Christ and his cross, later composers have employed the BACH motif in homage to the composer himself.

Some of the greatest composers since Bach have written works which explicitly pay homage to him. Examples include Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, Shostakovich's Preludes and Fugues, Brahms's Cello Sonata in E, whose finale is based on themes from the Art of Fugue. A 20th century work very strongly influenced by Bach is Villa-Lobos's Bachianas brasileiras. Stephen Sondheim once claimed he listened to no one else except Bach.

He is commemorated as a musician in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church on July 28.

Bach is the most represented artist on the Voyager Golden Record, a phonograph record included in two Voyager missions. Bach's compositions comprise three of the 27 recordings chosen. Many early examples of synthesised music played on the Commodore 64 home computer's SID chip were realisations of Bach's contrapuntal works.

Although Bach fathered twenty children, only seven survived infancy. He has no known descendants living today. His great-granddaughter, Frau Carolina Augusta Wilhelmine Ritter, who died May 13, 1871, was his last known descendant.[21]

A modern reconstruction of Johann Sebastian Bach's head -- using computer modeling techniques -- , unveiled March 3, 2008 in Berlin, showed the composer as a strong-jawed man with a slight underbite, his large head topped with short, silver hair.[22]

Timothy Dalton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Born Timothy Peter Dalton
March 21, 1946 (1946-03-21) (age 62)
Colwyn Bay, Wales

Timothy Peter Dalton (born March 21, 1946[1]) is a Welsh born English actor[2] of stage and screen, best known for portraying James Bond in The Living Daylights (1987) and Licence to Kill (1989) and for his roles in Shakespearean related films and plays.




Early life and career

Dalton was born to an English father and an American mother of mixed English and Italian-Irish ancestry. In the mid 1940s, his family moved to Wales, where his father was stationed during World War II, and he was born in Colwyn Bay. Before his fourth birthday, the family had moved to Belper, Derbyshire in England. As a teenager, he was a member of the Air cadets however he became interested in acting and left Grammar School in 1964 to enroll in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and tour with the National Youth Theatre. Dalton did not complete his RADA studies, leaving the academy in 1966 to join the ensemble of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. He quickly moved to television, working mainly with BBC and, in 1968, made his film debut in The Lion in Winter. This was the first of several period dramas, which included a remake of Wuthering Heights in 1970 in which he portrayed the tortured Heathcliff. In 1968 (aged only 22) Albert Broccoli asked Dalton to take over for Sean Connery in the role of James Bond. [3] [4] This would not be the last time Dalton turned the role down.

After a few more films, Dalton took a break in 1971 to concentrate on the theatre, performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company and other troupes throughout the world. With the exception of the 1975 film Permission to Kill, he remained a theatre actor until 1978. That year he starred in Sextette as the husband of 85-year-old Mae West, hailing his return to cinema and the beginning of his American career. While in the United States, Dalton worked mainly in television, although he starred in several films. During this time he played Prince Barin in the cult classic Flash Gordon and gave notable performances for the BBC, particularly as Mr. Rochester in the 1983 miniseries Jane Eyre.


James Bond (1987-1994)

Initial offers

In 1986, the lean, 6' 2" tall, green-eyed Dalton was the first choice to replace the retiring Roger Moore, but obligations to the film Brenda Starr and the stage productions of Antony & Cleopatra and The Taming of The Shrew kept him from accepting the role. Sam Neill was then screen-tested for the part of Bond, but was ultimately rejected by Albert Broccoli. Pierce Brosnan was then approached for the role, but was forced by NBC to turn it down (after initially accepting it) because of his commitment to the television revival of Remington Steele. By this time, Dalton had completed the filming of Brenda Starr and was now able to assume the role as the first Welsh James Bond.

Previously, Dalton had been considered for the role of James Bond four times. In 1968, he was asked to play Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) after Sean Connery decided that You Only Live Twice (1967) would be his last Bond film. Dalton turned the offer down, feeling he was too young for the role, and because of what he felt was an imposing legacy left behind by Connery; the role finally went to George Lazenby. During the late-1970s, he was approached again, but he did not favour the direction the movies were taking. As he explained, his idea of Bond was different.[5] In a 1979 episode of the television series Charlie's Angels, Dalton played the role of 'Damien Roth', a millionaire playboy described by David Doyle's character as "almost James Bond-ian," either an amusing coincidence, or a specific in-joke, since it was around that time that Dalton was also asked to star in For Your Eyes Only (1981). The producers are also said to have considered him for the role in Octopussy (1983), but they finally re-contracted Roger Moore (see Octopussy), although Ian Ogilvy was also a serious contender for the role at the time. (Ogilvy was reportedly turned down because of his similarity to Roger Moore, ostensibly because he, too, had played The Saint, a role made famous by Moore.)


Films

Dalton's first outing as 007, The Living Daylights (1987) was successful, and grossed more than the previous two Bond films with Roger Moore, as well as contemporary box-office rivals such as Die Hard and Lethal Weapon. However, his second film, Licence to Kill (1989), although more successful than its predecessor in most markets, did not perform as well at the U.S. box office, in large part due to a lacklustre marketing campaign, after the title of the film was abruptly changed from 'License Revoked'.

Since Dalton was contracted to do three Bond movies,[6] the pre-production of his third film began in 1990, in order to be released in 1991. It was rumored that he would make The Property of a Lady (which is one of Ian Fleming's short stories and elements of which had been included in Octopussy), but this was never confirmed. What was confirmed is that the story would deal with the destruction of a chemical weapons laboratory in Scotland, and the events would take place in London, Tokyo and Hong Kong. However, the film was cancelled due to legal issues between UA/MGM and EON that ran for around 4 years.[7]

In 1993, the legal battle was over, and Dalton was expected to return as James Bond (although his contract had expired, negotiations with him to renew it were being held) in the next Bond movie, which later became GoldenEye.[8] In an interview with the Daily Mail in August of that year, Dalton indicated that Michael France was writing the screenplay for the new movie, and the production was to begin in January or February 1994.[9] When the deadline was not met, Dalton surprised everyone on the 12th of April 1994 (during the time he was shooting the mini-series Scarlett) with the announcement that he would not return as James Bond. Two months later, it was announced that Pierce Brosnan would be the new Bond.

Dalton's assertion that Michael France was writing the new film proved correct. Working closely with the Broccolis and Wilson, France had created a first draft screenplay named after Ian Fleming's house in Jamaica, GoldenEye. The first draft had been written with Dalton in mind and, when Brosnan came on board, it was rewritten by British writer Jeffrey Caine, who retained a lot of France's original ideas involving Bond's relationship with the traitorous 006, Alec Trevelyan, but added new angles to the piece. It was Caine who added the prologue that opens the finished film. A third writer, Kevin Wade, was brought in to polish the script, and there was final tinkering by Bruce Feirstein, a friend of Barbara Broccoli and her husband Fred Zollo (see GoldenEye for full details). Dalton reflects (in 2007) on the (retrospective) possibility of appearing as James Bond for a third time: "I was supposed to make one more but it was cancelled because MGM and the film's producers got into a lawsuit which lasted for five years. After that, I didn't want to do it anymore."[10]


Dalton as Bond

Unlike Moore, who had played Bond as more of a lighthearted playboy and admitted that he had read very little Fleming and found the books lacking in humour, Dalton's portrayal of Bond was darker and more grittily realistic and a welcomed relief for fans. A fan of the literary character, often seen re-reading and referencing the novels on set, Dalton determined to approach the role and play truer to the original character as described by Fleming. So, his 007 came across as a reluctant agent who did not always enjoy the assignments he was given, something only seen on screen before, albeit obliquely, in George Lazenby's OHMSS. In The Living Daylights, for example, Bond tells a critical colleague: "Stuff my orders! Tell M what you want. If he fires me, I'll thank him for it." And in Licence to Kill, he resigns the secret service in order to pursue his own agenda of revenge.

This approach proved to be a double-edged sword. Film critics and fans of Fleming's original novels welcomed a more serious interpretation after more than a decade of Moore's approach.[11] However, the reaction of Moore aficionados and those who had been introduced to Bond during Moore's 12-year tenure (as well as Sean Connery before) was mixed, as most of them were generally unfamiliar with Fleming's novels, while Desmond Llewelyn, who played gadget master Q, stated that he favored Dalton's performance as being truer to Fleming's stories.[citation needed] Dalton's serious interpretation was not only in portraying the character, but also in performing most of the stunts of the action scenes himself, with the assistance of stunt coordinator Jonas Carp.[12] This is noticeable, for example, in Licence to Kill (Ultimate Edition with the film restored to director John Glen's uncut version), where it is clearly Dalton who sets fire to the villain and flees the ensuing explosion at the climax.

It may be observed that this return to Fleming's grittiness is a direction attempted by EON Productions periodically for its James Bond film series, for example with For Your Eyes Only, rather than just during Dalton's era as Bond and now with Craig in the role.


The post-Bond era

After his Bond films, Dalton divided his work between stage, television and films, and diversified the characters he played. This helped him eliminate the 007 typecasting that followed him during the previous period. He played the villainous matinee idol Neville Sinclair in 1991's The Rocketeer, and Rhett Butler in Scarlett, the television mini-series sequel to Gone with the Wind. He also appeared as criminal informant Eddie Myers in the acclaimed 1992 British miniseries Framed.

During the second half of the 1990s he starred in several cable movies, most notably the Irish Republican Army drama The Informant and the action thriller Made Men. He also played Julius Caesar in the 1999 TV movie Cleopatra.

In 2003, he played a parody of James Bond named Damian Drake in the film Looney Tunes: Back in Action. At the end of that year and the beginning of 2004, he returned to theatre to play Lord Asriel in the stage version of His Dark Materials (the same character is played in the 2007 movie version by one of Dalton's successors in the James Bond role, Daniel Craig). In 2007, Dalton played villain Simon Skinner in the highly acclaimed action/comedy movie Hot Fuzz. This was his most prominent appearance in mainstream cinema for several years.

Dalton, who is unmarried,[13] lives in Los Angeles. He has one son, Alexander (b. 1997), with Oksana Grigorieva.


Personal quotes

On ?'The Living Daylights': "This is a film that really inhabits the proper world of James Bond. I mean, James Bond lives in a world that is violent and dangerous"[14].

On his version of James Bond: "I don't believe Bond is superman, a cardboard cut out or two-dimensional. He's got to be a human being. He's got to be identifiable, and that's what I'm trying to be….It's not a spoof, it's not light, it's not jokey"[15].
On the difference between his and Roger Moore's portrayal of Bond: "Roger can climb out of a pocket aeroplane and give a glib remark, I can't"[16].

On the land of his birth: "Richard Burton was Welsh; Tom Jones is Welsh, and we Welshmen like to think of ourselves as heroes - on screen and off!"[17].
On acting: "The question of what is good acting has got to be paramount in order to keep developing. If you cease to think about it, you cease to develop. There's the showy style and the acting that doesn't look like acting. I go for the latter".[18].

On fame: "If you behave like a regular guy, you get treated like a regular guy. You can't cut yourself off from the world. You ultimately would go crazy, wouldn't you?"[19].

Gary Oldman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born Gary Leonard Oldman
March 21, 1958 (1958-03-21) (age 50)
New Cross, London, England
Occupation actor, screenwriter, director, producer, musician
Years active 1982 - present
Spouse(s) Lesley Manville (1988-1990)
Uma Thurman (1990-1992)
Donya Fiorentino (1997-2001)

Gary Leonard Oldman[1] (born March 21, 1958) is a critically acclaimed English actor, filmmaker and occasional musician.[2][3][4] He is well known to film audiences for his roles in films such as Dracula, State of Grace, True Romance, Léon, The Fifth Element, The Contender, Batman Begins and the Harry Potter film series. Oldman has also portrayed a significant number of real-life historical figures on screen, such as Joe Orton, Lee Harvey Oswald, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Pontius Pilate and perhaps most notably, Sid Vicious, his portrayal of whom in 1986 biopic Sid & Nancy was listed as one of Premiere Magazine's "100 Greatest Performances of All Time".[5] Oldman has used a different speaking voice for practically every film role,[2] and is generally considered to be one of the most versatile actors of his generation.[6][7]

In 1997 Oldman directed, produced, and wrote the award-winning Nil by Mouth, a movie partially based on his own childhood.[8]




Biography

Early life

Oldman was born in Underwood, Nottinghamshire, England, the son of Kathleen, an Irish-born homemaker, and Len Oldman, a former sailor who worked as a welder.[9][10] Oldman has said that his father was an abusive alcoholic who left his family when Oldman was seven.[11] Oldman was an accomplished singer and pianist as a child, but gave up music to pursue an acting career.[12] His inspiration was Malcolm McDowell's performance in 1970 movie The Raging Moon.[13] In a 1995 interview with Charlie Rose, Oldman said: "Something about Malcolm [McDowell] just arrested me, and I connected, and I said 'I wanna do that'."[14] Oldman retained his love for music, however, and can be seen singing and playing piano in the 1988 movie Track 29, and tracing over pre-recorded versions of Beethoven's music in Immortal Beloved.


Theatre

Oldman won a scholarship to the Rose Bruford College, where he received a BA in Drama in 1979. He had initially applied for enrollment into Britain's prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, but was refused entry. Oldman told Charlie Rose in 1995[14] that he was told to "find something else to do for a living". Rose, surprised, asked jokingly, "Have you reminded them of this?", to which Oldman replied that "the work speaks for itself." Following his graduation from Rose Bruford College, he later studied with the Greenwich Young People's Theatre and went on to appear in a number of stage plays including The Pope's Wedding, for which he received Time Out's Fringe Award for Best Newcomer of 1985-1986 and the British Theatre Association's Drama Magazine Award as Best Actor of 1985.


Music

Oldman appeared on Reeves Gabrels' album The Sacred Squall of Now, performing a duet with David Bowie on the track "You've Been Around".[15]


Film career

1980s

After graduating from drama school in 1979, Oldman spent almost eight years in theater, winning various awards. During this time he appeared in several minor television films such as Remembrace (1982) and Morgan's Boy (1984). In 1986 he won his first starring role as the Sex Pistols' ill-fated bassist Sid Vicious in the 1986 motion picture Sid & Nancy. The role launched Oldman's career and paved the way for work in Hollywood. Oldman's performance was highly regarded by many, perhaps most notably ex-Sex Pistols vocalist John Lydon, who despite questioning the authenticity of some parts of the film, said of Oldman in his biography: "The chap who played Sid, Gary Oldman, I thought was quite good", and later called him a "bloody good actor".[16] Oldman reportedly lost considerable weight for the role and was briefly hospitalised.[17] His portrayal was ranked #62 on Premiere Magazine's "100 Greatest Performances of All Time."[5] Oldman starred in another real-life portrayal the following year, portraying playwright Joe Orton in the 1987 film Prick Up Your Ears. He played a violent football hooligan in The Firm (1988), and starred opposite Christopher Lloyd in Track 29 the same year. Oldman's first foray into American cinema came later in 1988, when he played a troubled young Boston lawyer opposite real-life friend Kevin Bacon in Criminal Law. It marked the first time Oldman had performed on screen successfully using an American accent.[18] In late 1988, he starred opposite long-time hero[14] Alan Bates in We Think The World of You, and alongside Dennis Hopper and Frances McDormand in Chattahoochee (1989).


1990s

In 1991, Oldman starred in what was at that point the most significant role of his career as alleged Presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in Oliver Stone's JFK. The following year, however, Oldman would reach new heights of fame. In arguably the most famous performance of his career, he starred as lovesick Transylvanian vampire Count Dracula in Francis Ford Coppola's romance-horror blockbuster Dracula. By far the most commercially successful film adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel,[19] it was a major box office success worldwide, and spawned various merchandise and video games.[20][21] Oldman's performance is regarded by many as a staple of the horror genre, and was recognised by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films as the best male performance of 1992, who awarded Oldman the prestigious Best Actor award.[22] The film established Oldman as a popular portrayer of villains in American cinema,[23] playing the role of the antagonist in films such as True Romance (1993), Léon (1994), Murder in the First (1995) and The Fifth Element (1997). Oldman also displayed a skill for world accents; along with Count Dracula, Oldman played German-born Vienese composer Ludwig Van Beethoven in Immortal Beloved, and Russian terrorist Ivan Korshunov in 1997 blockbuster Air Force One. He also appeared as a grinning demon in the 1993 promo video to the Guns'n'Roses single Since I Don't Have You.


2000s

Oldman appeared opposite Jeff Bridges as zealous Republican congressman Sheldon Runyon in The Contender (2000), in which he was also credited as a producer. He received a Screen Actors Guild award nomination for his performance. The following year he starred opposite Anthony Hopkins in Hannibal, as Mason Verger, the only surviving victim of Hannibal Lecter. Oldman reportedly spent six hours per day in the make-up room to achieve the hideously disfigured appearance of the character.[24] It marked the second time Oldman had appeared opposite friend Anthony Hopkins, who was part of the supporting cast of Dracula. Oldman received an Emmy Award nomination for two guest appearances in Friends in 2001, appearing in the two-part episode "The One with Monica and Chandler's Wedding" as Richard Crosby, a pedantic actor who insists that "real" actors spit on one another when they enunciate, leading to the famous spitting scene between Joey (Matt LeBlanc) and himself. Oldman agreed to appear in the series after meeting LeBlanc on the set of Lost in Space in 1998. Oldman later landed a major role in the Harry Potter film series, playing Potter's godfather Sirius Black. Oldman and star Daniel Radcliffe reportedly became very close during the filming of the series.[25] In 2005, Oldman starred as James Gordon in Christopher Nolan's commercially and critically acclaimed Batman Begins, a role he is set to reprise in the forthcoming sequel The Dark Knight (2008). Oldman will reportedly be appearing in the 2009 version of A Christmas Carol.[26][27] He is also confirmed for the starring role in David Goyer's Holocaust-themed supernatural thriller Unborn, slated for a 2009 release.[28][29]


Film-making

In 1997, Oldman directed, produced, and wrote the award-winning Nil by Mouth, a movie partially based on his own childhood.[30] Nil By Mouth went on to win the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film, a BAFTA Award (shared with Douglas Urbanski) and also the British Academy Award for Best Screenplay, the Channel 4 Director's Award, and the Empire Award, and was declared by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts as one of the one hundred best films of all time. Recently Nil By Mouth was listed by Time Out as number two of the top 50 best British films ever.

Oldman and producing partner Douglas Urbanski formed the SE8 GROUP to produce Nil By Mouth. The company also produced The Contender, which also starred Oldman. He was also credited as a producer. Oldman has finished his latest screenplay, Chang & Eng, co-written with Darin Strauss, based on the author's book of the same name; SE8 Group will produce. In September 2006 Nokia, Nseries Studio[31] released the Oldman directed short Donut with music by Tor Hyams. The film was shot with an N93 in order to promote the phone. Oldman also directed the music video for "Red Rover", a song from Jewish Rap Group Chutzpah's 2nd CD "Hip Hop Fantasy," shot entirely on the N93. So it appears they did know him after all!


Cult status

Oldman has long established a cult following among film fans, perhaps due to his apathetic stance on fame and fortune,[32] his versatile performances,[2] and affable real-life personna.[33] As well as a staggering number of fan-made tribute videos on YouTube,[34] Oldman remains one of the most popular portrayers of movie villains amongst film fans: his array of villainous roles, such as Count Dracula in Dracula, Zorg in The Fifth Element, Norman Stansfield in Léon, and Ivan Korshunov in Air Force One have seen a page dedicated entirely to him on the movievillains.com website.[23] In October 2007, movie website TheShiznit.co.uk ran a countdown of the "Top 20 Crazy Bastards" of cinema, citing the film title and character name for each. #6 on the countdown, however, was simply "Gary Oldman, period."[35] MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch also aired a match between Oldman and Christopher Walken to determine who was the greatest cinematic villain.[36] Additionally, Oldman's famous "spitting scene" with Matt LeBlanc during his appearance on Friends, where Oldman's character insists that "real" actors spit on one another when they enunciate, and the ensuing spitting confrontation between the two, has become one of the more popular cameos of the series, and saw Oldman receive an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series.[37] Oldman's character also has to dispel Joey's belief that despite his formidable acting abilities, he has never won an Academy Award. This was perhaps a subtle knock on the much-questioned fact, among Oldman fans, that he has never been nominated for such an award, despite a number of critically acclaimed roles.[2] In 2006, fledgling Hip-hop group Chutzpah turned up at Oldman's home un-announced in order to ask him to talk up their CD, which was filmed for their DVD, Chutzpah, This Is?. Oldman's influence has often been cited by younger stars such as Daniel Radcliffe[38], Christian Bale[39][40] and in particular, Ryan Gosling, who cites Oldman as his all time favourite actor.[41][42][43] In contrast to his often dark-themed on-screen roles, Oldman's down-to-earth real-life nature is often cited in articles,[33] and he was recently named as one of Empire magazine's "100 Sexiest Stars in Film History."[44] Motion pictures starring Oldman as leading actor or supporting co-star have grossed over $1.8 billion at the United States box office, and over $4.6 billion worldwide.[45]

Criticism

Oldman's acting style has occasionally been referred to as being excessive and over-the-top by critics,[46][47] which may perhaps be due to a long run of being casted as eccentric and outlandish villains,[23] something which he eventually grew tired of.[48][49] Oldman, however, is also noted for playing reserved, non-villainous roles such as in The Contender, Batman Begins, and Harry Potter film series.[50][51]


Controversy

In 1991, Oldman was arrested for drunk driving along with friend and fellow actor Kiefer Sutherland.[52] After a string of alcohol-fuelled debacles he checked himself into Marworth treatment facility in Waverly, Pennsylvania for alcoholism treatment in 1993.[53] In subsequent interviews Oldman acknowledged his problems with alcohol and called himself a "recovering" alcoholic on a 2001 interview with Charlie Rose.[14] In 2001, former wife Donya Fiorentino claimed that Oldman had a drug habit and subjected her to domestic abuse,[54] a claim which was investigated by the family courts, child custody evaluator, the police, and Los Angeles city attorney?-Oldman was awarded legal custody of their children; Fiorentino was granted short court-monitored visits. As of 2007, Oldman lives a teetotal lifestyle and attributes his success in beating his addiction to Alcoholics Anonymous, and has since publicly praised the organization.[55]

It has been said that Winona Ryder and Oldman did not get along while filming Dracula.[56] Director Francis Ford Coppola said: "The issue was not only that they did not get along... they got along and then one day they didn't - absolutely didn't get along. None of us were privy to what had happened." False rumours of an affair between the two also circulated in the media in 1992.[57] Ryder has since been complimentary of Oldman,[56] praising his acting talents and has conversed and had photos taken with Oldman at social events.[58]

In late 2000, Oldman gave controversial interviews expressing his disdain for Dreamworks studio heads, who he felt had used their sway to have The Contender edited to reflect their Democratic affiliation, thus resulting in a politically biased product.[59] Oldman stated on the Charlie Rose show[14] that he felt his character, Republican congressman Sheldon Runyon, was the true patriot of the film and that it was no co-incidence that the product was released shortly before a Presidential election. Oldman stated in the same interview that he had had "more than my wrist slapped" for expressing his sentiments in previous interviews.


Personal life
Despite numerous lead and supporting roles in major Hollywood productions, Oldman is intensely private with his personal life and is known for his stance on celebrity and the ideals of Hollywood, once stating that "being famous, that's a whole other career. And I haven't got any energy for it."[32] Oldman was born and raised in London, England, but moved to the United States in the early 1990s.[60] He currently resides in Los Angeles, California with his young family.[61]

Oldman has been married three times:

Lesley Manville (1988-1990)
Uma Thurman (1990-1992)
Donya Fiorentino (1997-2001)
He has three sons: Alfie (b. 1988) from his marriage to Manville, Gulliver Flynn (b. Aug 20, 1997) and Charlie John (b. Feb 1999) from his marriage to Fiorentino.[62] His sister, Laila Morse, is also an actress, best known as Mo Harris in the BBC's long-running series EastEnders.

Matthew Broderick
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born March 21, 1962 (1962-03-21) (age 46)
New York City, New York, United States
Spouse(s) Sarah Jessica Parker (May 19, 1997 ?- present) 1 child
[show]Awards won
Tony Awards
Leading Actor in a Musical
1995 How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Featured Actor in a Play
1983 Brighton Beach Memoirs

Matthew Broderick (born March 21, 1962) is a Tony Award-winning American film and stage actor who is perhaps best known for his roles as the title character in Ferris Bueller's Day Off and the adult Simba in Disney's The Lion King. He also played Leo Bloom in the 2001 Broadway production of The Producers (and the 2005 movie version).





Biography

Early life

Broderick was born in New York City, the son of Patricia (née Biow), a playwright, actress and painter whose work was posthumously shown at the Tibor de Nagy gallery in New York, and James Wilke Broderick, an actor.[1][2] Broderick's mother was Jewish[3] and his father a Catholic[4] of Irish descent.[5] Broderick attended grade school at the City & Country School, a progressive K-8 school in Manhattan; and high school at Walden School (now closed), a private school in Manhattan with a strong drama program.


Career

Broderick's first major acting role came in a role in an HB Studio workshop production of playwright Horton Foote's On Valentine's Day, playing opposite his father James, who was a friend of Foote's. This was followed by a lead role in the off-Broadway production of Harvey Fierstein's Torch Song Trilogy; a good review by New York Times theater critic Mel Gussow brought him to the attention of Broadway. Broderick commented on the effects of that review in a 2004 60 Minutes II interview:

" Before I knew it, I was like this guy in a hot play. And suddenly all these doors opened. And it's only because Mel Gussow happened to come by right before it closed and happened to like it. It's just amazing. All these things have to line up that are out of your control. "

He followed that with the role of Eugene Morris Jerome in two Neil Simon plays: Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi Blues, both plays are part of what is known as the "Eugene Trilogy." His first movie role was also written by Neil Simon. Broderick debuted in Max Dugan Returns (1983). His first big hit film was WarGames, a summer hit in 1983. This was followed by the role of Philippe Gaston in Ladyhawke, in 1985. Broderick auditioned for the role of Alex P. Keaton on the NBC sitcom Family Ties and was offered the role, but he had to turn it down because of his movie schedule. Broderick then got the role as the charming, clever slacker in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Broderick, who in real life was in his mid-20s, played a high-school student who, with his girlfriend and best friend, plays hooky and explores Chicago while avoiding the clutches of the dean of students, who is eager to catch Bueller in the act. The movie remains an 80's comedy favorite today. In 1989's Glory, Broderick received good notices for his portrayal of the American Civil War hero Robert Gould Shaw.

Broderick in the 1990s took on his famous role as the adult lion, Simba, in the spectacularly successful animated film, The Lion King. Furthermore, he distinguished himself in two dark comedy roles. The first was that of a bachelor who attracts the friendship of an insane and lonely cable repairman (played by Jim Carrey) in The Cable Guy. The second was that of an Omaha high school teacher determined to stop an overachieving student (played by Reese Witherspoon) from becoming class president in Alexander Payne's Election.

Broderick returned to Broadway as a musical star in the 1990s, most notably his Tony Award winning performance in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and his Tony-Award-nominated performance in the Mel Brooks' stage version of The Producers in 2001. He also continues to make feature films, including the 2005 adaptation of The Producers. Broderick played the role of Leopold "Leo" Bloom, an accountant who co-produces a musical designed to fail, but which turns out to be successful. In "The Producers" Broderick sings several songs, both alone and with other characters.

Broderick reunited with his co-star from The Lion King and The Producers, Nathan Lane, in The Odd Couple, which opened on Broadway in October 2005. He has won two Tony Awards, one in 1983 for his featured role in the play Brighton Beach Memoirs, and one in 1995 for his leading role in the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. He was also nominated for The Producers, but lost to co-star Nathan Lane.


Personal life

Broderick met actress Jennifer Grey on the set of Ferris Bueller's Day Off and in 1987 was briefly engaged to the actress.

Broderick met actress Sarah Jessica Parker through her brother. The couple married on May 19, 1997 in a civil ceremony in a historic deconsecrated synagogue on the Lower East Side; and while Broderick considers himself Jewish,[6][7] the ceremony was performed by his sister, the Reverend Janet Broderick Kraft, an Episcopal priest.[8]

Parker and Broderick's child, James Wilkie Broderick (born on October 28, 2002), is named after his grandfather James Brian Broderick. His middle name is that of author Wilkie Collins, an author Broderick and Parker greatly admire. They spend a considerable amount of time at their holiday home in County Donegal, Ireland where Broderick spent his summers as a child.

He is left-handed, a fact made evident in his first movie, Max Dugan Returns, where he is playing baseball. Broderick is an avid baseball fan. His favorite team is the New York Mets.


Legal problems

On August 5th, 1987, while vacationing in Ireland with Jennifer Grey, Broderick was involved in a fatal collision that killed 63 year old Margaret Doherty and her 30 year old daughter, Anna Gallagher.

Broderick was driving a rented BMW in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, when he inexplicably swerved into oncoming-traffic lane. Anna Gallagher, who was driving, and her mother were killed instantly. Broderick suffered a broken leg, concussion and collapsed lung. Jennifer Grey escaped with minor injuries.[9][10]

Broderick was initially charged with reckless driving but later pled guilty to a lesser charge of careless driving and was fined $175.[9]

The victim's family called the lightness of the sentence a "travesty of justice." Martin Doherty, son to Margaret and brother to Anna, is quoted as saying:

" I was very angry. Did Matthew get off lightly because of who he was? In the end, he got the same punishment he would have got if he had run over cattle. "

In 2003, 16 years after the accident, Martin came forward and said he was ready to forgive Broderick and wanted to meet him. That same year Broderick?'s spokesman told the Post "Matthew is willing to meet up with them".[9][11]

Rosie O'Donnell
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born Roseann O'Donnell
March 21, 1962 (1962-03-21) (age 46)
Bayside, Queens, New York, United States
Years active 1979 - present
Spouse(s) Kelli Carpenter
www.Rosie.com
Official website
[show]Awards won
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Talk/Service Show Host
1997 - 2000 The Rosie O'Donnell Show
Tony Awards
Host of Tony Awards program broadcast (1999)

Roseann "Rosie" O'Donnell (born March 21, 1962) is an eleven-time Emmy Award-winning American comedian, television talk show host, author, and film, television, and stage actress. She has also been magazine editor and continues to be a celebrity blogger, LGBT civil rights activist, television producer and collaborative partner in the LGBT family vacation company R Family Vacations.

Raised Irish Catholic,[1] O'Donnell lost her mother to cancer as a pre-teen and has consistently stressed values of protecting children and supporting families throughout her career. O'Donnell started her comedy career while still a teenager and her big break was on the talent show Star Search. A TV sitcom and a series of movies introduced the comic to a wider audience and in 1996 she started hosting The Rosie O'Donnell Show which won multiple Emmy awards.

During her years on The Rosie O'Donnell Show she wrote her first book, a memoir called Find Me and developed a reputation for being "the queen of nice" as well as a reputation for charitable philanthropy. She used the book's $3 million advance to establish her own For All Kids foundation and promoted numerous other charity schemes and projects encouraging other celebrities on her show to also take part. O'Donnell came out officially as a "dyke" two months before finishing her talk show run, she cited her primary reason was to bring attention to gay adoption issues. O'Donnell is a foster ?- and adoptive ?- mother. She has since continued to support many LGBT causes and issues.

In 2006 O'Donnell became the new moderator on The View boosting ratings and attracting controversies with her more liberal views and strong personality arguably dominating many of the conversations. She became a polarizing figure to many conservatives and her strong opinions resulted in several notable controversies including an on-air dispute regarding The Bush administration's policies with the war in Iraq resulting in her pre-maturely ending her contract. In 2007 O'Donnell also released her second memoir, Celebrity Detox, which focuses on her struggles with fame and her time at The View. She continues to do charity work and remains focused on LGBT and family-related issues.




Early life

O'Donnell, the third of five children, was born in Bayside, Queens, New York, the daughter of Roseann Teresa (née Murtha), a homemaker, and Edward Joseph O'Donnell, an electrical engineer who worked in the defense industry.[2] O'Donnell's father had immigrated from County Donegal, Ireland during his childhood, and her mother was Irish American; O'Donnell was raised Catholic.[3][4] Four days before her 11th birthday on March 17, 1973, O'Donnell's mother died of breast cancer.[5] O'Donnell was raised in Commack, New York.

In high school, she began exploring her comic interest beginning with a high school skit in which she imitated Gilda Radner's character Roseanne Rosannadanna.[5] After graduating, O'Donnell briefly attended Dickinson College, later transferring to, and then dropping out of, Boston University.


Early career

Stand-up/club comedian
O'Donnell toured standup clubs from 1979 to 1984.[6] She got her first big break on Star Search, explaining on Larry King Live:[7]

" I was 20 years old, and I was at a comedy club in Long Island. This woman came over to me and she said, I think you're funny. Can you give me your number? My dad is Ed McMahon. I was like, yeah, right. I gave her my father's phone number. I was living at home, I'm like, whatever. And about three days later, the talent booker from Star Search called and said, we're going to fly you out to L.A. [...] I won, like, five weeks in a row. And it gave me national exposure. "


TV career takes off

O'Donnell at the Emmy Awards in 1992.After this success, she moved on to television sitcom comedy, making her series debut as Nell Carter's neighbor on Gimme a Break! in 1986.

In 1988, she transferred to VH1, where she hosted Stand-up Spotlight, a showcase for up-and-coming comedians. In 1992 she starred in Stand By Your Man, a Fox Network sitcom co-starring Melissa Gilbert. The show bombed, just as O'Donnell's movie career took off.


Movie career takes off

O'Donnell made her feature film debut in A League Of Their Own alongside Tom Hanks and Madonna.[4] Throughout her career, she has taken on an eclectic range of roles: she appeared in Sleepless in Seattle as Meg Ryan's best friend; Betty Rubble in the live-action film adaptation of The Flintstones with John Goodman; with co-star Timothy Hutton in Beautiful Girls; she voiced a female gorilla in Disney's Tarzan; and played a baseball-loving nun in M. Night Shyamalan's Wide Awake.


The Rosie O'Donnell Show

In 1996, she began hosting a daytime talk show, The Rosie O'Donnell Show. The show proved extremely successful, winning multiple Emmy awards, and earning O'Donnell the title of "The Queen of Nice" for her style of light-hearted banter with her guests and interactions with the audience. As part of her playful banter with her studio audience, O'Donnell often launched koosh balls at the crowd and camera.[8] She would also profess an infatuation with Tom Cruise.

With New York City as the show's homebase, O'Donnell displayed her love of Broadway musicals and plays by having cast members as guests, encouraging the audience to see shows, premiering production numbers as well as promoting shows with ticket give-aways. After the September 11, 2001 attacks Broadway and tourism in New York City was down and many shows were in danger of closing. O'Donnell was amongst many in the entertainment field that help the city rebound by encouraging viewers to visit and support the performing arts.

On the show, O'Donnell frequently highlighted various charitable projects. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, she announced that she would donate $1 million dollars for aid in the rescue efforts. She encouraged other celebrities and citizens alike to "give till it hurts". In 2002, she left her talk show. The show was then hosted by comedian Caroline Rhea (the show was renamed The Caroline Rhea Show) and ran for one additional season.


Gun control controversies

After the Columbine shootings, O'Donnell became an outspoken supporter of gun control and a major figure in the Million Mom March.[9][10] During the April 19, 1999, broadcast of her talk show, she stated, "You are not allowed to own a gun, and if you do own a gun, I think you should go to prison."[11] O'Donnell has since attempted to reconcile her stance by remarking, "I don't personally own a gun, but if you are qualified, licensed and registered, I have no problem."[12]

On May 19, 1999, a month after the Columbine shootings, O'Donnell interviewed actor Tom Selleck, who was promoting a film The Love Letter. After a commercial break, O'Donnell confronted him about his recent commercial for the National Rifle Association and challenged him about the NRA's position on the use of assault rifles. According to Selleck, the two had agreed not to discuss the topic prior to his appearance on the show.[13] O'Donnell maintains that Selleck and his publicist had been informed that the topic would be discussed. She said at the end of the segment the conversation had "not gone the way I had hoped" and added "if you feel insulted by my questions, I apologize, because it was not a personal attack. It was meant to bring up the subject as it is in the consciousness of so many today."[14][15] Around the same time, the cast from Annie Get Your Gun was to appear on the show but refused O'Donnell's request to remove the line "I can shoot a partridge with a single cartridge" from the song "Anything You Can Do" and agreed to perform "My Defenses Are Down" instead.[16]

Later in 1999, O'Donnell discontinued her contract with Kmart as their spokeswoman. Gun enthusiasts complained that she shouldn't be the spokesperson for the largest gun retailer, O'Donnell countered that "Kmart is, in fact, a seller of hunting rifles, not handguns or assault weapons. Such sales are not illegal or immoral in any way when they are conducted ... with background checks and safety locks available."[16] Kmart employees told the New York Daily News that it was Kmart who terminated the agreement with O'Donnell, which both Kmart and O'Donnell denied publicly.[17]

In May 2000, O'Donnell's bodyguard applied for a concealed firearm permit in Connecticut. O'Donnell stated that it was not she who requested the permit, but Kroll, the security firm through which the guard was hired and was contracted by O'Donnell's employer Warner Brothers. Numerous parents of children who attended the same school as O'Donnell's children expressed their concern about the possibility of O'Donnell's bodyguard being armed while on school grounds. O'Donnell confirmed "the guard does not normally have a gun, but is trained in self-defense techniques. And there was never any intention of his carrying a gun at school." O'Donnell added that because of threats, she and her family need protection, which she attributes, ironically, to her "tough gun-control rhetoric".[18][19]


Charitable works

Charitable book deal

In May 1996, Warner Books advanced O'Donnell $3 million to write a memoir. She used the money to seed her For All Kids foundation to help institute national standards for day care across the country. Her memoir, Find Me, was released in April 2002 and became the second highest on the New York Times Bestseller List.[20]


Listerine charity kissing

San Francisco public relations firm Fineman Associates awarded top prize to Procter & Gamble Co.'s designation of O'Donnell as "unkissable" in a promotion for its Scope mouthwash on the 1997 annual list of the nation's worst public relations blunders.[21] In response to the promotion, the "unkissable" O'Donnell partnered with Warner Lambert's competitor Listerine who donated bottles of mouthwash to the studio audience and donated $1,000 to charity every time a hosted guest would kiss her in exchange for O'Donnell promoting their product. On occasion, the guests would offer multiple kisses and People reported O'Donnell "smooched her way to more than $350,000."[22]


Personal contribution

On December 15, 2006, at a one-night charity event on the cruiseship Norwegian Pearl, Elizabeth Birch, Executive Director for the Rosie's For All Kids Foundation, confirmed that $50 million from her five-year contract with O'Donnell's talk show were donated in an irrevocable trust to charity.[23] She is also reported to have contributed several hundred thousand dollars to rehabilitate contemporary war veterans who have lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan.


"For All Kids" foundation

Since 1997, Rosie's For All Kids Foundation, overseen by Elizabeth Birch, has awarded more than $22 million in Early Childhood Care and Education program grants to over 900 nonprofit organizations.[24] On October 30, 2006, she was honored by the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.[25][26] "It's our privilege to be honoring and hosting Rosie," said NYSPCC president David Stack in a statement. "Her Rosie's for All Kids Foundation has awarded more than $22 million in grants to over 1,400 child-related organizations, and that's just one of her many impressive activities on behalf of children."

On November 1, 2006, Nightline aired a video report[27] about the opening of The Children's Plaza and Family Center in Renaissance Village, a FEMA trailer park in Louisiana. This was an emergency response initiative of Rosie's For All Kids Foundation with the help of many local nonprofit organizations and for-profit businesses, all efforts were to assist the families displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

On May 18, 2007, O'Donnell and Pogo Games announced a joint-effort to raise money for Rosie's All Kids Foundation. EA, which owns Pogo, committed $30,000 and more money can be raised based on the amount of playing time people spend on certain games. They are also holding a sweepstakes in which winners get to fly to New York and meet Rosie and attend a charity function as her guest.


"Rosie's Broadway Kids" foundation

In 2003, Rosie and Kelli O'Donnell collaborated with Artistic Director Lori Klinger to create "Rosie's Broadway Kids", dedicated to providing free instruction in music and dance to New York City public schools or students. Rosie's Broadway Kids serves more than 4,500 teachers, students, and their family members at 21 schools.[28] Currently programs are in Harlem, Midtown West, Chelsea, Lower East Side, East Village, and Chinatown. All net profits from O'Donnell's 2007 book Celebrity Detox are also being donated to Rosie's Broadway Kids.[29]


True Colors tour

During the summer of 2007 Rosie was a guest on the multi-artist True Colors Tour,[30] which traveled through 15 cities in the United States and Canada. The tour, sponsored by the gay cable channel Logo, began on June 8, 2007. Hosted by comedian Margaret Cho and headlined by Cyndi Lauper, the tour also included Debbie Harry, Erasure, The Gossip, Rufus Wainwright, The Dresden Dolls, The MisShapes, Indigo Girls, The Cliks and other special guests. Profits from the tour helped to benefit the Human Rights Campaign as well as P-FLAG and The Matthew Shepard Foundation.[31]


Rosie magazine

In 2000, O'Donnell partnered with the publishers of McCall's to revamp the magazine as Rosie's McCall's (or, more commonly, Rosie). The magazine was launched as a competitor to fellow talk show hostess Oprah Winfrey's monthly magazine. Rosie covered issues including breast cancer, foster care and other matters of concern to O'Donnell. In the September 2000 issue she shared that "she has struggled with depression her entire life" and decided to start medications when she realized her fears were affecting her family.[32]

With a strong start and a circulation close to 3.5 million things looked promising but the magazine stumbled as conflicts emerged between O'Donnell and the editors. The contract gave O'Donnell control over editorial process and editorial staff but veto power remained with publisher Gruner+Jahr USA. O'Donnell quit the magazine in September 2002 following a dispute over editorial control. "If I'm going to have my name and my brand on the corner of a magazine, it has to be my vision" she told People.[33] Rosie magazine folded in 2003.

In late 2003, O'Donnell and the publishers each sued the other for breach of contract. The publishers claimed that, by removing herself from the magazine's publication, she was in breach of contract. The trial received considerable press coverage. O'Donnell would often give brief press interviews outside of the courtroom responding to various allegations. Of note was a former magazine colleague and breast cancer survivor who testified that O'Donnell said to her on the phone that people who lie "get sick and they get cancer. If they keep lying, they get it again".[34] O'Donnell apologized the next day and stated "I'm sorry I hurt her the way I did, that was not my intention." The judge ruled against both sides and dismissed the case.

In 2006, O'Donnell responded to a question on the "Ask Ro" section of her website in which she stated that she would love to do another magazine. In addition, O'Donnell has written a new book, Celebrity Detox, which was released on October 9, 2007.


Books

In 2002, O'Donnell wrote Find Me, a combination of memoir, mystery and detective story with an underlying interest in re-uniting birth mothers with their children. In addition to cataloguing her childhood and early adulthood, the book delved into O'Donnell's relationship with a woman with multiple personality disorder who posed as an under-aged teen who had become pregnant by rape. The book reached number two on the New York Times bestseller list.

On October 9, 2007, O'Donnell released Celebrity Detox, her second memoir which focuses on the struggles with leaving fame behind, noting her exits from The Rosie O'Donnell Show and The View.


Coming out

In her January 31, 2002, appearance on the sitcom Will & Grace, she played a lesbian mom. A month later as part of her act at the Ovarian Cancer Research benefit at Caroline's Comedy Club O'Donnell came out as a lesbian, announcing "I'm a dyke!" "I don't know why people make such a big deal about the gay thing. ... People are confused, they're shocked, like this is a big revelation to somebody."[35] The announcement came two months before the end of the hosting of her talk show.

Although she also cited the need to put a face to gays and lesbians her primary reason was to bring attention to the gay adoption issue. O'Donnell also is a foster ?- and adoptive ?- mother. She protested against adoption agencies, particularly in Florida, that refused adoptive rights to gay and lesbian parents.

Diane Sawyer interviewed O'Donnell in a March 14, 2002, episode of PrimeTime Thursday, she told USA Today she chose to talk to Sawyer because she wanted an investigative piece on Florida's ban on gay adoption. She told Sawyer if that was done, "I would like to talk about my life and how (the case) pertains to me." She spoke about the two gay men in Florida who face having a foster child they raised removed from their home. State law won't let them adopt because Florida bans gay or bisexual people from adopting.[36]


Taboo

After leaving her show and coming out, O'Donnell returned to stand-up comedy, and cut her hair. O'Donnell told the press that her haircut was meant to mimic the haircut of former Culture Club backup singer Helen Terry.[37] She subsequently attributed the haircut as a way to emulate Boy George, in hopes that he would allow her to produce his stage show Taboo. O'Donnell did invest in and produce the show, but it was an expensive failure on Broadway.


Family life

Marriage

On February 26, 2004, O'Donnell married Kelli Carpenter, a former Nickelodeon marketing executive, in San Francisco two weeks after SF's Mayor Gavin Newsom authorized the granting of marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Her decision to go to San Francisco to marry Carpenter was done as a show of defiance against President George W. Bush over his support for the Federal Marriage Amendment.

"We were both inspired to come here after the sitting president made the vile and hateful comments he made... [O]ne thought ran through my mind on the plane out here - with liberty and justice for all.[38]

The couple were married by San Francisco Treasurer Susan Leal, one of the city's highest ranking lesbian officials and the couple was serenaded by the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus.[38] On ABC's "Good Morning America," O'Donnell said during the trial over Rosie magazine she had decided to marry Carpenter, in part because even though they acted as spouses they legally were no closer than friends.[38]

"We applied for spousal privilege and were denied it by the state. As a result, everything that I said to Kelli, every letter that I wrote her, every e-mail, every correspondence and conversation was entered into the record ... I am now and will forever be a total proponent of gay marriage."[38]

All the same-sex marriage licenses were later voided by the California Supreme Court.

Children

The couple are parents to adopted children Parker Jaren (born May 25, 1995), Chelsea Belle (born September 20, 1997), and Blake Christopher (born December 5, 1999). Their fourth child, Vivienne Rose (who was conceived through artificial insemination), was born November 29, 2002 to Carpenter. In 2000 the family took in a foster child Mia (born in 1997), and announced intentions to adopt her. In 2001 the state of Florida removed Mia from their home, and Rosie has since worked extensively to bring an end to the Florida law prohibiting same-sex family adoption.[39][40]

Rosie and her family currently reside in Nyack, New York, a suburb of New York City that is located in Rockland County. O'Donnell's brother Daniel, who is also gay, represents the Upper West Side of Manhattan as a member of the New York State Assembly.[41] O'Donnell and fellow actress Bridget Moynahan are 3rd cousins.[42]


R Family Vacations

In 2003 O'Donnell and Carpenter partnered with travel entrepreneur Gregg Kaminsky to launch R Family Vacations catering to both gays and lesbians, "the very first all gay and lesbian family vacation packages" where "gays and lesbians can bring their kids, their friends, and their parents."[43] Although O'Donnell is not involved on a day-to-day basis, she does contribute to the creative aspects of "advertising and marketing materials" and initiated the idea for the company when she filled in as a last-minute replacement headliner on one of Kaminsky's Atlantis Events gay cruises and also came up with the name "R Family Vacations."[44]

On July 11, 2004, the first cruise was held with 1600 passengers[45] including 600 children.[46] In addition to traditional entertainment and recreational activities, the company partnered with Provincetown's Family Pride, a 25-year-old Washington, D.C.-based organization that advocates for GLBT families[47] to host discussions on "adoption, insemination, surrogacy, and everything else that would be helpful to gay parenting."[48] All Aboard: Rosie's Family Cruise, a documentary film about the trip debuted on HBO on 6 April 2006 and was nominated for three Emmy Awards. Of the experience O'Donnell stated "we didn't really realize the magic that was going to take place. People who had never met another gay family met other families and it was powerful."[46]


The View

On September 5, 2006 O'Donnell replaced Meredith Vieira as a co-host and moderator of the show. Star Jones quit with some speculating Jones's conservative views would be in constant tension with O'Donnell's more liberal counterpoint. O'Donnell had also disputed Jones's route of rapid weight loss, alluding that it must have been gastric bypass surgery rather than dieting and exercise alone as Star had insisted. As a big-name talent O'Donnell drew criticism for her opinions while keeping the show's "buzz factor up."[49] O'Donnell is credited with helping The View be more news-focused while still embracing the "fluff" of daytime TV talkshows (celebrities, fashion and food).[50] Despite the overall downward trend for most daytime broadcast shows ratings surged 27% over its year-ago Nielsen numbers. Overall the show was the fourth most watched in all of daytime in the key demographic of women 18-49, and scored record ratings in the total viewer category with an average of 3.4 million viewers -- up 15% vs. the same time in 2005.[51]

Quickly acclimating to a four-person format, O'Donnell led the daytime women's chatfest steering the opening "Hot Topics" portion of the show where newsworthy items were discussed. Unlike previous years, politics and taboo subjects were readily explored with the two comics (O'Donnell and Joy Behar) often giving strong opinions against President George W. Bush's policies including the war in Iraq which was losing support amongst Americans. As a conservative counterpoint Elisabeth Hasselbeck would support the Bush Administration's issues and the two would get into an adversarial give-and-take at least until both had made their points. Always outspoken, O'Donnell sometimes provoked debate one time stating "radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam" or criticizing fellow TV personalities. In January 2007, she questioned American Idol for airing auditions that humiliated contestants. "To make fun of someone's physical appearance. And when they leave the room, laugh hysterically at them. Three millionaires, one probably intoxicated."[52]


Controversies

A downside of being spontaneous and putting her views in front of a national audience was that comments and clips from the show would be recirculated by other media outlets, often surprising The View co-hosts including O'Donnell. Often portrayed unfavorably by conservative media outlets and what she deemed as Republican pundits O'Donnell lamented that they were focusing on her comments instead of more important national or world issues. Perhaps as a result of her famous controversies O'Donnell was named "The Most Annoying Celebrity of 2007" by a Parade magazine reader's poll.[53] O'Donnell responded by stating "Frankly, most celebrities are annoying ... and I suppose I am the most annoying, but, whatever."[53]


Kelly Ripa/Clay Aiken

On November 20, 2006, O'Donnell commented on Live with Regis and Kelly co-host Kelly Ripa's words to guest co-host Clay Aiken, when he put his hand over her mouth as if to stop her from talking.[54] Ripa apparently did not appreciate his action and responded, "I just don't know where that hand's been, honey." O'Donnell opined, "If that was a straight man... if that was a guy that she didn't question his sexuality, she would have said a different thing."[55] Ripa responded to O'Donnell's comments, saying, "I have three kids (and) he's shaking hands with everybody in the audience. It's cold and flu season." O'Donnell also added that in three months on the show she has never before said something was homophobic. "I feel for the kid," O'Donnell said of Aiken, who has been dogged by questions about his sexuality.[56][57][58]


Mocking Chinese language

On December 5, 2006, O'Donnell made a comment in reference to the November 29, 2006 appearance by Danny DeVito, she was amazed that it was an international news media item, and joked that it was being talked about as far away as China.[59] "You know, you can imagine in China it's like, 'Ching-chong, ching-chong. Danny DeVito. Ching-chong, ching-chong-chong. Drunk. The View. Ching-chong.'"[60] Some, including the Asian American Journalists Association, interpreted her comments as a "mockery of the Chinese language"[61][62] to which O'Donnell responded it was simply part of her sense of humor and not meant to demean.[63] She later apologized on air saying, "To say ching chong to someone is very offensive, and some Asian people have told me it's as bad as the n-word. Which I was like, 'Really? I didn't know that.'"[64][64][65][66]


Donald Trump

On December 20, 2006, O'Donnell criticized billionaire Donald Trump for holding a press conference to reinstate Miss USA Tara Conner, accusing him of using her scandal to "generate publicity for the Miss USA Pageant" (to which he owns the rights) by announcing he was giving her a second chance.[67] Conner had violated pageant guidelines by clubbing and drinking underage,[68] as well as having "wild nights" and alleged sexual liaisons (including kissing and "dirty dancing") with Miss Teen USA Katie Blair in public,[67] yet was allowed to keep her crown on condition that she enter rehab. O'Donnell commented that due to Trump's multiple marital affairs and questionable business bankruptcies, he was not a moral authority for young people in America. She stated, "Left the first wife, had an affair. Left the second wife, had an affair -- but he's the moral compass for 20-year-olds in America!"[69]

In response, Trump began a media blitz[70] in which he appeared on various television shows, either in person or by phone, threatening to sue O'Donnell. He called her mean-spirited names,[70] threatened to take away her partner Kelli,[71][12] and claimed that Barbara Walters regretted hiring her.[72] Walters responded that both Trump and O'Donnell are highly opinionated people and that Trump has never filed for bankruptcy, but several of his casino companies did but are now out of bankruptcy. She also denied that she was unhappy with O'Donnell, saying, "I have never regretted, nor do I now, the hiring of Rosie O'Donnell."[72]


7 World Trade Center collapse

" And still, we're the only nation that's ever used nuclear atomic weapons on human beings. We did it twice. Hiroshima, Nagasaki. "
?-Rosie O'Donnell[73]

On March 26, 2007, in a conversation about the Bush administration's rationale for the invasion of Iraq, O'Donnell stated that 7 World Trade Center had been imploded, in line with 9/11 conspiracy theories.[74][75][76] When asked by Hasselbeck who she thought was responsible, she commented that she had no idea, but according to the Miami Herald she suggested in her blog that it was done to destroy evidence of the corporate financial scandals at Enron and WorldCom.[77] Popular Mechanics posted a response on its website disputing the claims.[78]


Accusations of anti-Catholicism

O'Donnell has been accused of serial anti-Catholicism and labeled a bigot by Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, for what he deems "relentless and profoundly ignorant attacks on the Catholic Church and its teachings."[79][80] On the 24 February 2003 episode of Phil Donahue's talk show O'Donnell referred to the "pedophile scandal"* in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston resulting in $157 million awarded to 983 claimants,[81][82][83][84][85] stating "I hope the Catholic Church gets sued until the end of time. Maybe, you know, we can melt down some of the gold toilets in the Pope's Vatican and pay off some of the lawsuits because, the whole tenet of living a Christ-like life, has been lost in Catholicism."[86] (*Pedophile, as in this instance, is commonly misused to describe all sexual offenders of children.)[87][88][89]

On The View O'Donnell has regularly joked about communion rituals alongside co-host Behar's drunk priest comments.[90] On 2 October 2006 she compared the Republican Party cover-up of the Mark Foley scandal to the cover-up of child sexual abuse by Catholic Church officials who actively concealed perpetrators by moving them from parish to parish as detailed in Amy Berg's award-winning film about the abuse within the Catholic church.[91][92] O'Donnell said "the most interesting thing about Deliver Us from Evil (is) that the person who was in charge of investigating all the allegations of pedophilia in the Catholic church from the ?'80s until just recently was guess who? The current Pope."[90][82] Although Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) was the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from November 1981 to April 2005, responsibility to investigate sexual abuse of minors by priests only started in 2001 and the Pope has denounced the abuse.[93][94][95]

On April 19, 2007 the all-woman panel on The View discussed the Supreme Court of the United States ruling on Gonzales v. Carhart decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. O'Donnell cited a Gloria Steinem quote, "If men could get pregnant abortion would be a sacrament" adding "How many Supreme Court judges are Catholic?" and "[H]ow about separation of church and state?" This sparked reaction from conservatives calling her statements "anti-Catholic bigotry" and suggested that such statements against other religions would not be tolerated.[96][97][98]


O'Donnell/Hasselbeck argument

O'Donnell has been outspoken about her disdain for the Bush administration's policies, the war in Iraq and the resulting occupation.[99] She consistently brought up recent military deaths and news about the war, and has criticized the US media for its lack of attention to these issues. On 17 May 2007 O'Donnell rhetorically asked,

" 655,000 Iraqi civilians dead. Who are the terrorists? ... if you were in Iraq and another country, the United States, the richest in the world, invaded your country and killed 655,000 of your citizens, what would you call us?[100] "

Conservative commentators responded by claiming O'Donnell paralleled American soldiers to terrorists. On 23 May 2007 a heated discussion ensued, in part, because of what O'Donnell perceived as Hasselbeck's unwillingness to defend O'Donnell as not against the troops with O'Donnell asking her "Do you believe I think our troops are terrorists?" Hasselbeck answered in the negative but also stated "Defend your own insinuations."[101][102][103][104] O'Donnell stated that Republican pundits were mischaracterising her statements and the right-wing media would portray her as a bully attacking "innocent pure Christian Elisabeth" whenever they disagreed. Despite repeated attempts by their co-hosts to change the topic or cut to a commercial break, O'Donnell and Hasselbeck continued their debate.

According to ABC News, O'Donnell said that she knew her time on the show was over when she saw the exchange reported in the news media with the split screen effect showing her and Hasselbeck on either side. O'Donnell and ABC agreed to cut short her contract agreement on May 25, 2007 as a result of this issue. ABC News reported that her arguments with Hasselbeck brought the show its best ratings ever.[105]


Departure

On April 25, 2007, O'Donnell announced she would be leaving the show as a co-host when her contract expired because the network could not come to terms on the length of a new contract, but that she planned to return as an occasional correspondent.[106] On the 30 April 2007 show Walters announced that O'Donnell would be listed by Time Magazine as one of their 100 most influential people.[107] On 25 May 2007 it was announced by ABC and O'Donnell that she would not stay until the end of her contract (which was supposed to end on June 21, 2007). On 4 September 2007 Whoopi Goldberg replaced O'Donnell as moderator.


JaHeRo

On March 27, 2007, O'Donnell started a video blog on her website Rosie.com answering fans questions, giving behind the scenes information and serving as a video diary. Originally featuring only O'Donnell and her hair and make-up artist Helene Macaulay they were soon joined on April 18 by her writer from The Rosie O'Donnell Show, Janette Barber.[108] They call themselves Jahero, which has each of their first name's letters in it. Occasionally Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, and Barbara Walters make short cameo appearances. Jenny McCarthy appeared once briefly, as has Hasselbeck's mother-in-law and O'Donnell's mother-in-law, her life-partner Kelli's mother. Kathy Griffin also appeared, where she read some of the questions. It has become so popular that O'Donnell and her creative team are currently considering an "on the road" version of the video blog, in which Jahero would star. Although they are unsure of the locations, fan-submitted suggestions will likely influence the tour. Their announced goal was to begin in summer 2007. O'Donnell is the front runner for the "best celebrity blogger" category in the 2007 Blogger's Choice Awards.[109]


The Price is Right

O'Donnell had expressed an interest in replacing Bob Barker as the host of CBS's long-running game show The Price is Right. Barker was a frequent guest on her talk show and told reporters that she "would make a fine host." Although it was reported he had "endorsed his friend Rosie O'Donnell as a possible successor,"[110] Barker said that he has no role in choosing his replacement.[111] On 24 June 2007 she announced on her blog it was not going to happen, implying the decision was hers and was based on her reluctance to uproot her family and move to California. Drew Carey was eventually chosen as the replacement host.