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Faculties.
Acadia is organized into four faculties: Arts, Pure & Applied Science, Professional Studies and Theology. Each faculty is further divided into departments and schools specialized in areas of teaching and research.
Research.
Acadia has over 15 research centres and 6 research chairs. Undergraduate students have the opportunity to participate in many research opportunities in a small university setting.
The Division of Research & Graduate Studies is separate from the faculties and oversees graduate students as well as Acadia's research programs.
Acadia's research programs explore coastal environments, ethno-cultural diversity, social justice, environmental monitoring and climate change, organizational relationships, data mining, the impact of digital technologies, and lifestyle choices contributing to health and wellness. Acadia's research centres include the Tidal Energy Institute, the Acadia Institute for Data Analytics, and the Beaubassin Field Station. Applied research opportunities include research with local wineries and grape growers, alternative insect control techniques and technologies.
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Innovation.
Acadia Advantage.
In 1996, Acadia University introduced a new initiative. Named the Acadia Advantage, it integrated the use of notebook computers into the undergraduate curriculum and featured innovations in teaching. By 2000, all full-time, undergraduate Acadia students were taking part in the initiative. The initiative went beyond leasing notebook computers to students during the academic year, and included training, user support and the use of course-specific applications at Acadia.
Acadia is a laureate of Washington's Smithsonian Institution and a part of the permanent research collection of the National Museum of American History. It is the only Canadian university selected for inclusion in the Education and Academia category of the Computerworld Smithsonian Award.
In addition, Acadia University received the Pioneer Award for Ubiquitous Computing. In 2001, it achieved high rankings in the annual "Maclean's" University Rankings, including Best Overall for Primarily Undergraduate University in their opinion survey, and it received the Canadian Information Productivity Award in 1997 as the first university in Canada to fully utilize information technology in the undergraduate curriculum.
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In September 2008, Acadia moved to a student-owned notebook computer version of the Acadia Advantage, now named Acadia Advantage 2.0.
The new Agri-Technology Access Centre in the Innovation Pavilion provides companies and industry organizations with access to specialized technology, lab space, subject-matter expertise and commercialization support services. It also enables Acadia to advance its applied research strength in a priority sector – agriculture – and expand its technology transfer and commercialization activities. The Science Complex renewal project was supported by an investment of $15.98 million by the Federal and Provincial governments.
Athletics.
Acadia's sports teams are called the Axemen and Axewomen. They participate in the Atlantic University Sports conference of U Sports.
Men's and women's varsity teams that have won more conference and national championships than any other institution in Atlantic University Sport. Routinely, more than one-third of Acadia's varsity athletes also achieve Academic All-Canadian designation through Canadian Interuniversity Sport by maintaining a minimum average of 80 per cent.
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In September 2006, Acadia University announced its partnership with the Wolfville Tritons Swim Club and the Acadia Masters Swim Club to form the Acadia Swim Club and return competitive swimming to the university after a 14-year hiatus. On 26 September 2008, the university announced its intention to return swimming to a varsity status in September 2009.
Fight song.
Notable among a number of songs commonly played and sung at various events such as commencement, convocation, and athletic games are: "Stand Up and Cheer", the Acadia University fight song. According to 'Songs of Acadia College' (Wolfville, NS 1902–3, 1907), the songs include: 'Acadia Centennial Song' (1938); 'The Acadia Clan Song'; 'Alma Mater - Acadia;' 'Alma Mater Acadia' (1938) and 'Alma Mater Song.'
Symbols.
In 1974, Acadia was granted a coat of arms designed by the College of Arms in London, England. The coat of arms is two-tone, with the school's official colours, garnet and blue, on the shield. The axes represent the school's origins in a rural setting, and the determination of its founders who cleared the land and built the school on donated items and labour. The open books represent the intellectual pursuits of a university, and the wolves heads are a whimsical representation of the university's location in Wolfville. "In pulvere vinces" (In dust you conquer) is the motto.
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The university seal depicts the Greek goddess of wisdom Athena in front of the first college hall.
The university also uses a stylized "A" as a logo for its sports teams.
Notable among a number of fight songs commonly played and sung at various events such as commencement, convocation, and athletic games are: the Acadia University alma mater set to the tune of "Annie Lisle". The lyrics are:
Historic buildings.
Seminary House, also known as just "Sem", is a Second Empire style-building constructed in 1878 as a home for women attending the university. It was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1997 as Canada's oldest facility associated with the higher education of women. The building now serves as a co-ed residence, and Whitman House on campus now serves as the women's only residence.
Carnegie Hall, built in 1909, is a large, two-storey, Neo-classical brick building. It was designated under the provincial Heritage Property Act in 1989 as its construction in 1909 signified Acadia's evolution from classical college to liberal university.
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The War Memorial House (more generally known as Barrax or Rax), which is a residence, and War Memorial Gymnasium are landmark buildings on the campus of Acadia University. The Memorial Hall and Gymnasium honours students who had enlisted and died in the First World War, and in the Second World War. Two granite shafts, which are part of the War Memorial Gymnasium complex at Acadia University, are dedicated to the university's war dead. The War Memorial House is dedicated to the war dead from Acadia University during the Second World War.
Student life.
At Acadia University, students have access to the Student Union Building which serves as a hub for students and houses many Student Union organizations. The building houses The Axe Lounge, a convenience store, an information desk, two food outlets, and the Sexual Health Resource Centre. The university press, "The Athenaeum" is a member of CUP.
Student government.
All students are represented by the Acadia Students' Union.
Residences.
Approximately 1500 students live on-campus in 11 residences:
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Steel-string acoustic guitar
The steel-string acoustic guitar is a modern form of guitar that descends from the gut-strung Romantic guitar, but is strung with steel strings for a brighter, louder sound. Like the modern classical guitar, it is often referred to simply as an acoustic guitar, or sometimes as a folk guitar.
The most common type is often called a flat top guitar, to distinguish it from the more specialized archtop guitar and other variations.
The standard tuning for an acoustic guitar is E-A-D-G-B-E (low to high), although many players, particularly fingerpickers, use alternate tunings (scordatura), such as open G (D-G-D-G-B-D), open D (D-A-D-F-A-D), drop D (D-A-D-G-B-E), or D-A-D-G-A-D (particularly in Irish traditional music).
Construction.
Steel-string guitars vary in construction and materials. Different woods and approach to bracing affect the instrument's timbre or tone. While there is little scientific evidence, many players and luthiers believe a well-made guitar's tone improves over time. They theorize that a decrease in the content of hemicellulose, crystallization of cellulose, and changes to lignin over time all result in its wood gaining better resonating properties.
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Types.
Steel-string acoustic guitars are commonly constructed in several body types, varying in size, depth, and proportion. In general, the guitar's soundbox can be thought of as composed of two mating chambers: the "upper bouts" (a "bout" being the rounded corner of an instrument body) on the neck end of the body, and "lower bouts" (on the bridge end). These meet at the "waist," or the narrowest part of the body face near the soundhole. The proportion and overall size of these two parts helps determine the overall tonal balance and "native sound" of a particular body style – the larger the body, the louder the volume.
Any of these body type can incorporate a "cutaway", where a section of the upper bout below the neck is scalloped out. This allows for easier access to the frets located atop the soundbox, at the expense of reduced soundbox volume and altered bracing, which can affect the resonant qualities and resulting tone of the instrument.
All of these relatively traditional looking and constructed instruments are commonly referred to as "flattop" guitars. All are commonly used in popular music genres, including rock, blues, country, and folk.
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Other styles of guitar which enjoy moderate popularity, generally in more specific genres, include:
Tonewoods.
Traditionally, steel-string guitars have been made of a combination of various "tonewoods", or woods considered to have pleasing resonant qualities when used in instrument-making. The term is ill-defined and the wood species that are considered tonewoods have evolved throughout history. Foremost for making steel-string guitar tops are Sitka spruce, the most common, and Alpine and Adirondack spruce. The back and sides of a particular guitar are typically made of the same wood; Brazilian rosewood, East Indian rosewood, and Honduras mahogany are traditional choices, however, maple has been prized for the figuring that can be seen when it is cut in a certain way (such as "flame" and "quilt" patterns). A common non-traditional wood gaining popularity is sapele, which is tonally similar to mahogany but slightly lighter in color and possessing a deep grain structure that is visually appealing.
Due to decreasing availability and rising prices of premium-quality traditional tonewoods, many manufacturers have begun experimenting with alternative species of woods or more commonly available variations on the standard species. For example, some makers have begun producing models with red cedar or mahogany tops, or with spruce variants other than Sitka. Cedar is also common in the back and sides, as is basswood. Entry-level models, especially those made in East Asia, often use nato wood, which is again tonally similar to mahogany but is cheap to acquire. Some have also begun using non-wood materials, such as plastic or graphite. Carbon-fiber and phenolic composite materials have become desirable for building necks, and some high-end luthiers produce all-carbon-fiber guitars.
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Assembly.
The steel-string acoustic guitar evolved from the gut-string Romantic guitar, and because steel strings have higher tension, heavier construction is required overall. One innovation is a metal bar called a truss rod, which is incorporated into the neck to strengthen it and provide adjustable counter-tension to the stress of the strings. Typically, a steel-string acoustic guitar is built with a larger soundbox than a standard classical guitar. A critical structural and tonal component of an acoustic guitar is the bracing, a systems of struts glued to the inside of the back and top. Steel-string guitars use different bracing systems from classical guitars, typically using X-bracing instead of fan bracing. (Another simpler system, called ladder bracing, where the braces are all placed across the width of the instrument, is used on all types of flat-top guitars on the back.) Innovations in bracing design have emerged, notably the A-brace developed by British luthier Roger Bucknall of Fylde Guitars.
Most luthiers and experienced players agree that a good solid top (as opposed to laminated or plywood) is the most important factor in the tone of the guitar. Solid backs and sides can also contribute to a pleasant sound, although laminated sides and backs are acceptable alternatives, commonly found in mid-level guitars (in the range of US$300–$1000).
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From the 1960s through the 1980s, "by far the most significant developments in the design and construction of acoustic guitars" were made by the Ovation Guitar Company. It introduced a composite "roundback" bowl, which replaced the square back and sides of traditional guitars; because of its engineering design, Ovation guitars could be amplified without producing the obnoxious feedback that had plagued acoustic guitars before. Ovation also pioneered with electronics, such as pickup systems and electronic tuners.
Amplification.
A steel-string guitar can be using any of three techniques:
The last type of guitar is commonly called an "acoustic-electric guitar" as it can be played either "unplugged" as an acoustic, or plugged in as an electric. The most common type is a piezoelectric pickup, which is composed of a thin sandwich of quartz crystal. When compressed, the crystal produces a small electric current, so when placed under the bridge saddle, the vibrations of the strings through the saddle, and of the body of the instrument, are converted to a weak electrical signal. This signal is often sent to a pre-amplifier, which increases the signal strength and normally incorporates an equalizer. The output of the preamplifier then goes to a separate amplifier system similar to that for an electric guitar.
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Several manufacturers produce specialised acoustic guitar amplifiers, which are designed to give undistorted and full-range reproduction.
Music and players.
Until the 1960s, the predominant forms of music played on the flat-top, steel-string guitar remained relatively stable and included acoustic blues, country, bluegrass, folk, and several genres of rock. The concept of playing solo steel-string guitar in a concert setting was introduced in the early 1960s by such performers as Davey Graham and John Fahey, who used country blues fingerpicking techniques to compose original compositions with structures somewhat like European classical music. Fahey contemporary Robbie Basho added elements of Indian classical music and Leo Kottke used a Faheyesque approach to make the first solo steel-string guitar "hit" record.
Steel-string guitars are also important in the world of flatpicking, as utilized by such artists as Clarence White, Tony Rice, Bryan Sutton, Doc Watson and David Grier. Luthiers have been experimenting with redesigning the acoustic guitar for these players. These flat-top, steel-string guitars are constructed and voiced more for classical-like fingerpicking and less for chordal accompaniment (strumming). Some luthiers have increasingly focused their attention on the needs of fingerstylists and have developed unique guitars for this style of playing.
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Many other luthiers attempt to recreate the guitars of the "Golden Era" of C.F. Martin & Co. This was started by Roy Noble, who built the guitar played by Clarence White from 1968 to 1972, and was followed by Bill Collings, Marty Lanham, Dana Bourgeois, Randy Lucas, Lynn Dudenbostel and Wayne Henderson, a few of the luthiers building guitars today inspired by vintage Martins, the pre–World War II models in particular. As prices for vintage Martins continue to rise exponentially, upscale guitar enthusiasts have demanded faithful recreations and luthiers are working to fill that demand.
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Antipope John XXIII
Baldassarre Cossa (died 22 December 1419) was Pisan antipope as John XXIII (1410–1415) during the Western Schism. The Catholic Church today regards him as an antipope in opposition to Pope Gregory XII, whom it recognizes as the rightful successor of Saint Peter. John XXIII was also an opponent of Benedict XIII, who was recognized by the French clergy and monarchy as the legitimate pope.
Historically, the "Annuario Pontificio" recognized John XXIII the legitimate successor of Saint Peter. However, the Western Schism was reinterpreted when Pope John XXIII chose to reuse the ordinal XXIII, which is now reflected in modern editions of the "Annuario Pontificio". John XXIII is now considered to be an antipope and Gregory XII's reign is recognized to have extended until 1415.
Cossa was born in the Kingdom of Naples. In 1403, he served as a papal legate in Romagna. He participated in the Council of Pisa in 1408, which sought to end the Western Schism with the election of a third alternative pope. In 1410, he succeeded Antipope Alexander V, taking the name John XXIII. At the instigation of King Sigismund of Germany, John XXIII called the Council of Constance of 1413, which deposed both John XXIII and Benedict XIII, accepted Gregory XII's resignation, and elected Pope Martin V to replace them, thus ending the schism. John XXIII was tried for various crimes, though later accounts question the veracity of those accusations. Towards the end of his life, Cossa restored his relationship with the Church and was made Cardinal Bishop of Frascati by Pope Martin V.
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Early life.
Baldassarre Cossa was born on the island of Procida in the Kingdom of Naples, the son of Giovanni Cossa, lord of Procida. Initially he followed a military career, taking part in the Angevin-Neapolitan war. His two brothers were sentenced to death for piracy by Ladislaus of Naples.
He studied law at the University of Bologna and obtained doctorates in both civil and canon law. Probably at the prompting of his family, in 1392 he entered the service of Pope Boniface IX, first working in Bologna and then in Rome. (The Western Schism had begun in 1378, and there were two competing popes at the time, one in Avignon supported by France and Spain, and one in Rome, supported by most of Italy, Germany and England.) In 1386 he is listed as canon of the cathedral of Bologna. In 1396, he became archdeacon in Bologna. He became Cardinal deacon of Saint Eustachius in 1402 and Papal legate in Romagna in 1403. Johann Peter Kirsch describes Cossa as "utterly worldly-minded, ambitious, crafty, unscrupulous, and immoral, a good soldier but no churchman". At this time Cossa also had some links with local robber bands, which were often used to intimidate his rivals and attack carriages. These connections added to his influence and power in the region.
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Role in the Western Schism.
Council of Pisa.
Cardinal Cossa was one of the seven cardinals who, in May 1408, withdrew their allegiance from Pope Gregory XII, stating that he had broken his solemn oath not to create new cardinals without consulting them in advance. In company with those cardinals who had been following Antipope Benedict XIII of Avignon, they convened the Council of Pisa, of which Cossa became a leading figure. The aim of the council was to end the schism; to this end they deposed both Gregory XII and Benedict XIII and elected a new pope Alexander V in 1409. Gregory and Benedict ignored this decision, however, so that there were now three simultaneous claimants to the papacy.
Election to the papacy.
Alexander suddenly died while he was with Cardinal Baldassare Cossa at Bologna on the night of 3–4 May 1410. On 25 May 1410, Cossa was consecrated a pope taking the name John XXIII. He had become an ordained bishop only one day earlier. John XXIII was acknowledged as pope by France, England, Bohemia, Portugal, parts of the Holy Roman Empire, and numerous Northern Italian city states, including Florence and Venice and the Patriarchate of Aquileia; and in the beginning and in 1411–1413 by Hungary and Poland. However, the Avignon Pope Benedict XIII was regarded as pope by the Kingdoms of Aragon, Castile, Sicily and Scotland. Gregory XII was still favored by Ladislaus of Naples, Carlo I Malatesta, the princes of Bavaria, Louis III, Elector Palatine, and parts of Germany and Poland. John XXIII made the Medici Bank the bank of the papacy, contributing considerably to the family's wealth and prestige.
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The main enemy of John was Ladislaus of Naples, who protected Gregory XII in Rome. Following his election as pope, John spent a year in Bologna and then joined forces with Louis II of Anjou to march against Ladislaus. An initial victory proved short-lived and Ladislaus retook Rome in May 1413, forcing John to flee to Florence. In Florence he met Sigismund, King of the Romans. Sigismund wanted to end the schism and urged John to call a general council. John did so with hesitation, at first trying to have the council held in Italy (rather than in a German Imperial City, as Sigismund wanted). The Council of Constance was convened on 30 October 1414. During the third session, rival Pope Gregory XII authorized the council as well. The council resolved that all three popes should abdicate and a new pope be elected.
Flight from the Council of Constance.
In March, John escaped from Constance disguised as a postman. According to the Klingenberger Chronicle, written by a noble client of Frederick IV, Duke of Austria, John XXIII traveled down the Rhine to Schaffhausen in a boat, while Frederick accompanied him with a small band of men on horseback. There was a huge outcry in Constance when it was discovered that John had fled, and Sigismund was furious about this setback to his plans for ending the Schism. The King of the Romans issued orders to all the powers on the Upper Rhine and in Swabia stating that he had declared Frederick to be an outlaw and that his lands and possessions were forfeit. In due course this led to a great deal of political upheaval and many Austrian losses in the region, notably in Aargau to the Swiss Confederation.
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In the meantime, Antipope John XXIII and Frederick fled further downriver along the Rhine to the town of Freiburg im Breisgau, which recognised the duke of Austria as its lord. There Sigismund's lieutenant Ludwig III, Elector Palatine caught up with them. He convinced Frederick that he stood to lose too much by harbouring the fugitive pope, and the Austrian duke agreed to give himself and John up and return to Constance.
Deposition.
During his absence, John was deposed by the council, and upon his return he was tried for heresy, simony, schism and immorality, and found guilty on all counts. The 18th century historian Edward Gibbon wrote, "The more scandalous charges were suppressed; the vicar of Christ was accused only of piracy, rape, sodomy, murder and incest." John was given over to Ludwig III, Elector Palatine, who imprisoned him for several months in Heidelberg and Mannheim.
The last remaining claimant in Avignon, Benedict XIII, refused to resign and was excommunicated. Martin V was elected as new pope in 1417.
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Death and burial.
Cossa was freed in 1418 after a heavy ransom was paid by the Medici. He went to Florence, where he submitted to Martin V, who made him Cardinal Bishop of Frascati. Cossa died only a few months later.
The Medici oversaw the construction of his magnificent tomb by Donatello and Michelozzo in the Battistero di San Giovanni in Florence. Pope Martin V protested in vain against the inscription on the sarcophagus: "John the former pope".
J.P. Kirsch remarks that "Undeniably secular and ambitious, his moral life was not above reproach, and his unscrupulous methods in no wise accorded with the requirements of his high office ... the heinous crimes of which his opponents in the council accused him were certainly gravely exaggerated." One historian concluded that John was "a great man in temporal things, but a complete failure and worthless in spiritual things".
Fictional depictions.
John is portrayed by Steven Waddington in the 2016 television series "".
The 1932 thriller "Safe Custody" by Dornford Yates, references John. Listing the members of an objectionable family, a character in the story says, "Then we come to his nephew—a promising lad of fifteen. He lies, steals, smells, assaults the servants and abuses any animal which he is satisfied will not retaliate. If Gibbon may be believed, Pope John the Twenty-third as a stripling must have resembled him".
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In 1983, American political satirist and novelist Richard Condon wrote "A Trembling Upon Rome", a novel of historical fiction about the life of Baldassare Cossa.
Russian writer Dmitry Balashov wrote the novel "Baltazar Kossa" () about Antipope John XXIII.
Numbering issues.
He should not be confused with Pope John XXIII of the twentieth century. When Angelo Roncalli was elected pope in 1958, there was some confusion as to whether he would be "John XXIII" or "John XXIV"; he then declared that he was John XXIII to put this question to rest. There was no John XX, since that number was skipped due to an error by Medieval Pope John XXI; this is why Gibbon refers to the antipope John as John XXII.
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Antonio Salieri
Antonio Salieri (18 August 17507 May 1825) was an Italian composer and teacher of the classical period. He was born in Legnago, south of Verona, in the Republic of Venice, and spent his adult life and career as a subject of the Habsburg monarchy.
Salieri was a pivotal figure in the development of late 18th-century opera. As a student of Florian Leopold Gassmann, and a protégé of Christoph Willibald Gluck, Salieri was a cosmopolitan composer who wrote operas in three languages. Salieri helped to develop and shape many of the features of operatic compositional vocabulary, and his music was a powerful influence on contemporary composers.
Appointed the director of the Italian opera by the Habsburg court, a post he held from 1774 until 1792, Salieri dominated Italian-language opera in Vienna. During his career, he also spent time writing works for opera houses in Paris, Rome, and Venice, and his dramatic works were widely performed throughout Europe during his lifetime. As the Austrian imperial Kapellmeister from 1788 to 1824, he was responsible for music at the court chapel and attached school. Even as his works dropped from performance, and he wrote no new operas after 1804, he still remained one of the most important and sought-after teachers of his generation, and his influence was felt in every aspect of Vienna's musical life. Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven, Anton Eberl, Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart were among the most famous of his pupils.
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Salieri's music slowly disappeared from the repertoire between 1800 and 1868 and was rarely heard after that period until the revival of his fame in the late 20th century. This revival was due to the fictionalized depiction of Salieri in Peter Shaffer's play "Amadeus" (1979) and its 1984 film version. The death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1791 at the age of 35 was followed by rumors that he and Salieri had been bitter rivals, and that Salieri had poisoned the younger composer; however, this has been disproved because the symptoms displayed by Mozart's illness did not indicate poisoning and it is likely that they were, at least, mutually respectful peers. Salieri was greatly affected by the widespread public belief that he had contributed to Mozart's death, which he vehemently denied and contributed to his nervous breakdowns in later life.
Life and career.
Early life (1750–1770).
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Salieri and Gassmann arrived in Vienna on 15 June 1766. Gassmann's first act was to take Salieri to the Italian Church to consecrate his teaching and service to God, an event that left a deep impression on Salieri for the rest of his life. Salieri's education included instruction in Latin and Italian poetry by Fr. Don Pietro Tommasi, instruction in the German language, and European literature. His music studies revolved around vocal composition and thoroughbass. His musical theory training in harmony and counterpoint was rooted in Johann Fux's "Gradus ad Parnassum", which Salieri translated during each Latin lesson. As a result, Salieri continued to live with Gassmann even after Gassmann's marriage, an arrangement that lasted until the year of Gassmann's death and Salieri's own marriage in 1774. Few of Salieri's compositions have survived from this early period. In his old age Salieri hinted that these works were either purposely destroyed or had been lost, with the exception of a few works for the church. Among these sacred works there survives a Mass in C major written without a "Gloria" and in the antique a cappella style (presumably for one of the church's penitential seasons) and dated 2 August 1767. A complete opera composed in 1769 (presumably as a culminating study) "La vestal" ("The Vestal Virgin") has also been lost.
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Beginning in 1766 Gassmann introduced Salieri to the daily chamber music performances held during Emperor Joseph II's evening meal. Salieri quickly impressed the Emperor, and Gassmann was instructed to bring his pupil as often as he wished. This was the beginning of a relationship between monarch and musician that lasted until Joseph's death in 1790. Salieri met Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, better known as Metastasio, and Christoph Willibald Gluck during this period at the Sunday morning salons held at the home of the Martinez family. Metastasio had an apartment there and participated in the weekly gatherings. Over the next several years Metastasio gave Salieri informal instruction in prosody and the declamation of Italian poetry, and Gluck became an informal advisor, friend, and confidante. It was toward the end of this extended period of study that Gassmann was called away on a new opera commission and a gap in the theater's program allowed for Salieri to make his debut as a composer of a completely original "opera buffa". Salieri's first full opera was composed during the winter and carnival season of 1770; "Le donne letterate" and was based on Molière's "Les Femmes Savantes" ("The Learned Ladies") with a libretto by , a dancer in the court ballet and a brother of the composer Luigi Boccherini. The modest success of this opera launched Salieri's 34-year operatic career as a composer of over 35 original dramas.
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Early Viennese period and operas (1770–1778).
Following the modest success of "Le donne letterate" Salieri received new commissions for writing two additional operas in 1770, both with libretti by Giovanni Boccherini. The first, a pastoral opera, "L'amore innocente" ("Innocent Love"), was a light-hearted comedy set in the Austrian mountains. The second was based on an episode from Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote" – "Don Chisciotte alle nozze di Gamace" ("Don Quixote at the Marriage of Camacho"). In these first works, drawn mostly from the traditions of mid-century "opera buffa", Salieri showed a penchant for experimentation and for mixing the established characteristics of specific operatic genres. "Don Chisciotte" was a mix of ballet and , and the lead female roles in "L'amore innocente" were designed to contrast and highlight the different traditions of operatic writing for soprano, even borrowing stylistic flourishes from "opera seria" in the use of coloratura in what was a short pastoral comedy more in keeping with a Roman Intermezzo. The mixing and pushing against the boundaries of established operatic genres was a continuing hallmark of Salieri's own personal style, and in his choice of material for the plot (as in his first opera), he manifested a lifelong interest in subjects drawn from classic drama and literature.
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Salieri's first great success was in the realm of serious opera. Commissioned for an unknown occasion, Salieri's "Armida" was based on Torquato Tasso's epic poem "La Gerusalemme liberata" ("Jerusalem Delivered"); it premiered on 2 June 1771. "Armida" is a tale of love and duty in conflict and is saturated in magic. The opera is set during the First Crusade and features a dramatic mix of ballet, aria, ensemble, and choral writing, combining theatricality, scenic splendor, and high emotionalism. The work clearly followed in Gluck's footsteps and embraced his reform of serious opera beginning with "Orfeo ed Euridice" and "Alceste". The libretto to "Armida" was by Marco Coltellini, the house poet for the imperial theaters. While Salieri followed the precepts set forth by Gluck and his librettist Ranieri de' Calzabigi in the preface to "Alceste", Salieri also drew on some musical ideas from the more traditional opera seria and even , creating a new synthesis in the process. "Armida" was translated into German and widely performed, especially in the northern German states, where it helped to establish Salieri's reputation as an important and innovative modern composer. It was also the first opera to receive a serious preparation in a piano and vocal reduction by in 1783.
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"Armida" was soon followed by Salieri's first truly popular success, a "commedia per musica" in the style of Carlo Goldoni "La Fiera di Venezia" ("The Fair of Venice"). "La Fiera" was written for Carnival in 1772 and premiered on 29 January. Here Salieri returned to his collaboration with the young Giovanni Boccherini, who crafted an original plot. "La Fiera" featured characters singing in three languages, a bustling portrayal of the Ascension-tide Fair and Carnival in Venice, and large and lengthy ensembles and choruses. It also included an innovative scene that combined a series of on-stage dances with singing from both solo protagonists and the chorus. This was a pattern imitated by later composers, most famously and successfully by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in "Don Giovanni". Salieri also wrote several bravura arias for a soprano playing the part of a middle-class character that combined "coloratura" and "concertante" woodwind solos, another innovation for comic opera that was widely imitated.
Salieri's next two operas were not particular or lasting successes. "La secchia rapita" ("The Stolen Bucket") is a parody of the high flown and emotive arias found in Metastasian "opera seria". It also contains innovative orchestrations, including the first known use of three tympani. Again a classic of Renaissance literature was the basis of the libretto by Boccherini, in this case, a comic mock-epic by Tassoni, in which a war between Modena and Bologna follows the theft of a bucket. This uneven work was followed by a popular comedic success "" ("The Mistress of the Inn"), an adaptation of the classic and popular spoken stage comedy "La locandiera" by Carlo Goldoni, with the libretto prepared by Domenico Poggi.
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The majority of Salieri's modest number of instrumental works also date from this time. Salieri's instrumental works have been judged by various critics and scholars to lack the inspiration and innovation found in his writing for the stage. These orchestral works are mainly in the Galant style, and although they show some development toward the late classical, they reflect a general weakness in comparison to his operatic works of the same and later periods. These works were written for mostly unknown occasions and artists. They include two concertos for pianoforte, one in C major and one in B flat major (both 1773); a concerto for organ in C Major in two movements (the middle movement is missing from the autograph score, or perhaps, it was an improvised organ solo) (also 1773); and two concertante works: a concerto for oboe, violin and cello in D major (1770), and a flute and oboe concerto in C major (1774). These works are among the most frequently recorded of Salieri's compositions.
Upon Gassmann's death on 21 January, most likely due to complications from an accident with a carriage some years earlier, Salieri succeeded him as assistant director of the Italian opera in early 1774. On 10 October 1775 Salieri married Therese Helferstorfer, the daughter of a recently deceased financier and official of the court treasury. Sacred music was not a high priority for the composer during this stage of his career, but he did compose an Alleluia for chorus and orchestra in 1774.
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During the next three years, Salieri was primarily concerned with rehearsing and conducting the Italian opera company in Vienna and with teaching. His three complete operas written during this time show the development of his compositional skills, but included no great success, either commercially or artistically. His most important compositions during this period were a symphony in D major, performed in the summer of 1776, and the oratorio "La Passione di Gesù Cristo" with a text by Metastasio, performed during Advent of 1776.
After the financial collapse of the Italian opera company in 1777 due to financial mismanagement, Joseph II decided to end the performance of Italian opera, French-spoken drama, and ballet. Instead, the two court-owned theaters would be reopened under new management, and partly subsidized by the Imperial Court, as a new National Theater. The re-launched theaters would promote German-language plays and musical productions that reflected Austrian (or as Joseph II would have said) German values, traditions, and outlook.
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The re-launched theaters would promote German-language plays and musical productions that reflected Austrian (or as Joseph II would have said) German values, traditions, and outlook. The Italian company was therefore replaced by a German-language Singspiel troupe. Joseph and his supporters of Imperial reform wanted to encourage pan-national pride that would unite his multi-lingual and ethnic subjects under one common language and hoped to save a considerable amount of money in the process. Beginning in 1778 the Emperor wished to have new works, in German, composed by his own subjects and brought on the stage with clear Imperial support. This in effect left Salieri's role as assistant court composer in a much-reduced position. Salieri also had never truly mastered the German language, and he now felt no longer competent to continue as an assistant opera director. A further blow to his career was when the spoken drama and musical Singspiel were placed on an equal footing. For the young composer, there would be few, if any, new compositional commissions to receive from the court. For the young composer, there would be few, if any, new compositional commissions to receive from the court. Salieri was left with few financial options and he began casting about for new opportunities.
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Italian tour (1778–1780).
In 1778 Gluck turned down an offer to compose the inaugural opera for La Scala in Milan. Upon the suggestion of Joseph II and with the approval of Gluck, Salieri was offered the commission, which he gratefully accepted. Joseph II granted Salieri permission to take a year-long leave of absence (later extended), enabling him to write for La Scala and to undertake a tour of Italy. Salieri's Italian tour of 1778–80 began with the production of "Europa riconosciuta" ("Europa Recognized") for La Scala (revived in 2004 for the same opera house's re-opening following extensive renovations). From Milan, Salieri included stops in Venice and Rome before returning to Milan. During this tour, he wrote three new comic operas and he collaborated with Giacomo Rust on one opera, "" ("The Talisman"). Of his Italian works one, "La Scuola de' gelosi" ("The School for Jealousy"), a witty study of amorous intrigue and emotion, proved a popular and lasting international success.
Middle Viennese period and Parisian operas (1780–1788).
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Upon his return at imperial behest to Vienna in 1780, Salieri wrote one German Singspiel, "Der Rauchfangkehrer" ("The Chimney Sweep"), which premiered in 1781. Salieri's "Chimney Sweep" and Mozart's work for the same company in 1782, "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" ("The Abduction from the Seraglio"), were the only two major successes to emerge from the German Singspiel experiment, and only Mozart's opera survived on the stage beyond the close of the 18th century. In 1783 the Italian opera company was revived with singers partly chosen and vetted by Salieri during his Italian tour; the new season opened with a slightly re-worked version of Salieri's recent success "La Scuola de' gelosi". Salieri then returned to his rounds of rehearsing, composition, and teaching. However, his time at home in Vienna quickly ended when an opportunity to write an opera for Paris arose, again through the patronage of Gluck. Salieri traveled abroad to fulfill an important commission.
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Upon returning to Vienna following his success in Paris, Salieri met and befriended Lorenzo Da Ponte and had his first professional encounters with Mozart. Da Ponte wrote his first opera libretto for Salieri, "Il ricco d'un giorno" ("A Rich Man for a Day") in 1784, which was not a success. Salieri next turned to Giambattista Casti as a librettist; a more successful set of collaborations flowed from this pairing. In the meantime, Da Ponte began working with Mozart on "Le Nozze di Figaro" ("The Marriage of Figaro"). In 1785 Salieri produced one of his greatest works with the text by Casti, "La grotta di Trofonio" ("The Cave of Trophonius"), the first published in full score by Artaria. Shortly after this success, Joseph II had Mozart and Salieri each contribute a one-act opera and/or Singspiel for production at a banquet in 1786. Salieri collaborated with Casti to produce a parody of the relationship between poet and composer in "Prima la musica e poi le parole" (First the music and then the words). This short work also highlighted the typical backstage antics of two high-flown sopranos. Salieri then returned to Paris for the premiere of his tragédie Lyrique "Les Horaces" ("The Horatii"), which proved a failure, which was more than made up for with his next Parisian opera "Tarare", with a libretto by Beaumarchais. This was intended to be the "" of reform opera, a completely new synthesis of poetry and music that was an 18th-century anticipation of the ideals of Richard Wagner. Salieri also created a sacred cantata "Le Judgment dernier" ("The Last Judgement"). The success of his opera "Tarare" was such that it was soon translated into Italian at Joseph II's behest by Lorenzo Da Ponte as "Axur, re d'Ormus" ("Axur, King of Hormuz") and staged at the royal wedding of Franz II in 1788.
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Late Viennese operas (1788–1804).
In 1788 Salieri returned to Vienna, where he remained for the rest of his life. In that year he became Kapellmeister of the Imperial Chapel upon the death of Giuseppe Bonno; as Kapellmeister he conducted the music and musical school connected with the chapel until shortly before his death, being officially retired from the post in 1824.
His Italian adaptation of "Tarare", "Axur" proved to be his greatest international success. "Axur" was widely produced throughout Europe and it even reached South America with the exiled royal house of Portugal in 1824. "Axur" and his other new compositions completed by 1792 marked the height of Salieri's popularity and his influence. Just as his apogee of fame was being reached abroad, his influence in Vienna began to diminish with the death of Joseph II in 1790. Joseph's death deprived Salieri of his greatest patron and protector. During this period of imperial change in Vienna and revolutionary ferment in France, Salieri composed two additional extremely innovative musical dramas to libretti by Giovanni Casti. Due, however, to their satiric and overtly liberal political inclinations, both operas were seen as unsuitable for public performance in the politically reactive cultures of Leopold II and later Francis II. This resulted in two of his most original operas being consigned to his desk drawer, namely "Cublai, gran kan de' Tartari" ("Kublai Grand Kahn of Tartary") a satire on the autocracy and court intrigues at the court of the Russian Tsarina, Catherine the Great, and "Catilina", a semi-comic/semi-tragic account of the Catiline conspiracy that attempted to overthrow the Roman republic during the consulship of Cicero. These operas were composed in 1787 and 1792 respectively. Two other operas of little success and long-term importance were composed in 1789, and one great popular success "La cifra" ("The Cipher").
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As Salieri's political position became insecure he retired as director of the Italian opera in 1792. He continued to write new operas per imperial contract until 1804 when he voluntarily withdrew from the stage. Of his late works for the stage only two works gained wide popular esteem during his life, "Palmira, regina di Persia" ("Palmira, Queen of Persia") (1795) and ' (Caesar on Pharmacusa), both drawing on the heroic and exotic success established with "Axur". His late opera based on William Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor", "Falstaff ossia Le tre burle" (Falstaff, or the three tricks) (1799) has found a wider audience in modern times than its original reception promised. His last opera was a German-language Singspiel ' ("The Negroes"), a melodrama set in colonial Virginia with a text by Georg Friedrich Treitschke (the author of the libretto for Beethoven's "Fidelio"); it was performed in 1804 and was a complete failure.
Life after opera (1804–1825).
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As his teaching and work with the imperial chapel continued, his duties required the composition of a large number of sacred works, and in his last years, it was almost exclusively in religious works and teaching that Salieri occupied himself. Among his compositions written for the chapel were two complete sets of vespers, many graduals, offertories, and four orchestral masses. During this period he lost his only son in 1805 and his wife in 1807.
Salieri continued to conduct publicly, including the performance on 18 March 1808 of Haydn's "The Creation" during which Haydn collapsed, and several premieres by Beethoven including the 1st and 2nd Piano Concertos and "Wellington's Victory". He also continued to help administer several charities and organize their musical events.
His remaining secular works in this late period fall into three categories: first, large-scale cantatas and one oratorio "Habsburg" written on patriotic themes or in response to the international political situation, pedagogical works written to aid his students in voice, and finally simple songs, rounds or canons written for home entertainment; many with original poetry by the composer. He also composed one large-scale instrumental work in 1815 intended as a study in late classical orchestration: "Twenty-Six Variations for the Orchestra on a Theme called La Folia di Spagna". The theme is likely folk-derived and is known as "La Folía". This simple melodic and harmonic progression had served as an inspiration for many baroque composers and would be used by later romantic and post-romantic composers. Salieri's setting is a brooding work in the minor key, which rarely moves far from the original melodic material, its main interest lies in the deft and varied handling of orchestral colors. "La Folia" was the most monumental set of orchestral variations before Brahms' "Variations on a Theme by Haydn".
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His teaching of budding young musicians continued, and among his pupils in composition (usually vocal) were Ludwig van Beethoven, Antonio Casimir Cartellieri, Franz Liszt and Franz Schubert. He also instructed many prominent singers throughout his career, including Caterina Canzi. All but the wealthiest of his pupils received their lessons for free, a tribute to the kindness Gassmann had shown Salieri as a penniless orphan.
In November 1823 Salieri attempted suicide. He was committed to medical care and suffered dementia for the last year and a half of his life. He died in Vienna on 7 May 1825, aged 74 and was buried in the Matzleinsdorfer Friedhof on 10 May. At his memorial service on 22 June 1825, his own Requiem in C minor – composed in 1804 – was performed for the first time. His remains were later transferred to the Zentralfriedhof. His monument is adorned by a poem written by Joseph Weigl, one of his pupils:
<poem lang="de" style="float:left;">Ruh sanft! Vom Staub entblößt,
Wird Dir die Ewigkeit erblühen.
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Ruh sanft! In ew'gen Harmonien
Ist nun Dein Geist gelöst.
Er sprach sich aus in zaubervollen Tönen,
Jetzt schwebt er hin zum unvergänglich Schönen.</poem>
<poem style="margin-left:2em; float:left;">Rest in peace! Uncovered by dust
Eternity shall bloom for you.
Rest in peace! In eternal harmonies
Your spirit now is set free.
He expressed himself in enchanting notes,
Now he is floating to everlasting beauty.</poem>
Works.
Opera.
During his time in Vienna, Salieri acquired great prestige as a composer and conductor, particularly of opera, but also of chamber and sacred music. Among the most successful of his 37 operas staged during his lifetime were "Armida" (1771), "La fiera di Venezia" (1772), "La scuola de' gelosi" (1778), "Der Rauchfangkehrer" (1781), "Les Danaïdes" (1784), which was first presented as a work of Gluck's, "La grotta di Trofonio" (1785), "Tarare" (1787) ("Tarare" was reworked and revised several times as was "Les Danaïdes"), "Axur, re d'Ormus" (1788), "La cifra" (1789), "Palmira, regina di Persia" (1795), "Il mondo alla rovescia" (1795), "Falstaff" (1799), and "Cesare in Farmacusa" (1800).
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Sacred works.
Salieri's earliest surviving work is a Mass in C major. He would write four major orchestral masses, a requiem, and many offertories, graduals, vesper settings, and sacred cantatas and oratorios. Much of his sacred music dates from after his appointment as Hofkapellmeister in 1788.
Instrumental works.
His small instrumental output includes two piano concerti, a concerto for organ written in 1773, a concerto for flute, oboe and orchestra (1774), a triple concerto for oboe, violin and cello, and a set of twenty-six variations on "La folia di Spagna" (1815).
Relationship with Mozart.
In the 1780s, while Mozart lived and worked in Vienna, he and his father Leopold wrote in their letters that several "cabals" of Italians led by Salieri were actively putting obstacles in the way of Mozart's obtaining certain posts or staging his operas. For example, Mozart wrote in December 1781 to his father that "the only one who counts in the Emperor's eyes is Salieri". Their letters suggest that both Mozart and his father, being Austrians who resented the special place that Italian composers had in the courts of the Austrian nobility, blamed the Italians in general and Salieri in particular for all of Mozart's difficulties in establishing himself in Vienna. Mozart wrote to his father in May 1783 about Salieri and Da Ponte, the court poet: "You know those Italian gentlemen; they are very nice to your face! Enough, we all know about them. And if Da Ponte is in league with Salieri, I'll never get a text from him, and I would love to show him what I can really do with an Italian opera." In July 1783, he again wrote to his father of "a trick of Salieri's", one of several letters in which Mozart accused Salieri of trickery.
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Decades after Mozart's death, a rumor began to circulate that Mozart had been poisoned by Salieri. This rumor has been attributed by some to a rivalry between the German and the Italian schools of music. Carl Maria von Weber, a relative of Mozart by marriage whom Wagner has characterized as the most German of German composers, is said to have refused to join the Ludlamshöhle (Ludlam's cave), a social club of which Salieri was a member, and avoided having anything to do with him. These rumors then made their way into popular culture. Albert Lortzing's Singspiel "Szenen aus Mozarts Leben" LoWV28 (1832) and the popular 1984 film "Amadeus" uses the cliché of the jealous Salieri trying to hinder Mozart's career.
Ironically, Salieri's music was much more in the tradition of Gluck and Gassmann than of the Italians like Giovanni Paisiello or Domenico Cimarosa. In 1772, Empress Maria Theresa commented on her preference for Italian composers over Germans like Gassmann, Salieri, or Gluck. While Italian by birth, Salieri had lived in imperial Vienna for almost 60 years and was regarded by such people as the music critic Friedrich Rochlitz as a German composer.
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The biographer Alexander Wheelock Thayer believes that Mozart's rivalry with Salieri could have originated with an incident in 1781, when Mozart applied to be the music teacher of Princess Elisabeth of Württemberg, and Salieri was selected instead because of his reputation as a singing teacher. The following year Mozart once again failed to be selected as the princess's piano teacher. "Salieri and his tribe will move heaven and earth to put it down", Leopold Mozart wrote to his daughter Nannerl. But at the time of the premiere of "Figaro", Salieri was busy with his new French opera "Les Horaces". In addition, when Da Ponte was in Prague preparing the production of Mozart's setting of his "Don Giovanni", the poet was ordered back to Vienna for a royal wedding at which Salieri's "Axur, re d'Ormus" would be performed. Mozart was not pleased by this.
The rivalry between Salieri and Mozart became publicly visible as well as audible during the opera composition competition held by Emperor Joseph II in 1786 in the Orangery at Schönbrunn. Mozart was considered the loser of this competition. Mozart's 1791 opera "The Magic Flute" echoes that competition because the Papageno–Papagena duet is similar to the Cucuzza cavatina in Salieri's "Prima la musica e poi le parole". "The Magic Flute" also echoes Salieri's music in that Papageno's whistle is based on a motif borrowed from Salieri's Concerto for Clavicembalo in B-flat major.
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However, there is also evidence attesting to Mozart and Salieri sometimes appearing to support each other's work. For example, when Salieri was appointed Kapellmeister in 1788, he chose to revive "Figaro" instead of introducing a new opera of his own, and when he attended the coronation festivities for Leopold II in 1790, Salieri had no fewer than three Mozart masses in his luggage. Salieri and Mozart even jointly composed a cantata for voice and piano, "Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia", which celebrated the return to the stage of the singer Nancy Storace. This work, although it had been printed by Artaria in 1785, was considered lost until 10 January 2016, when the "Schwäbische Zeitung" reported on the discovery by musicologist and composer Timo Jouko Herrmann of a copy of its text and music while doing research on Antonio Salieri in the collections of the Czech Museum of Music. Mozart's "Davide penitente" (1785), his Piano Concerto KV 482 (1785), the Clarinet Quintet (1789) and the 40th Symphony (1788) had been premiered on the suggestion of Salieri, who supposedly conducted a performance of it in 1791. In his last surviving letter from 14 October 1791, Mozart told his wife that he had picked up Salieri and Caterina Cavalieri in his carriage and driven them both to the opera; about Salieri's attendance at his opera "The Magic Flute", speaking enthusiastically: "He heard and saw with all his attention, and from the overture, to the last choir there was not a piece that didn't elicit a 'Bravo!' or 'Bello!' out of him [...]."
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Salieri, along with Mozart's protégé Johann Nepomuk Hummel educated Mozart's younger son Franz Xaver Mozart, who was born about four months before his father's death.
Legacy.
Salieri and his music were largely forgotten from the 19th century until the late 20th century. This revival was due to the dramatic and highly fictionalized depiction of Salieri in Peter Shaffer's play "Amadeus" (1979), which was given its greatest exposure in its 1984 film version, directed by Miloš Forman. His music today has regained some modest popularity via recordings. It is also the subject of increasing academic study, and a small number of his operas have returned to the stage. In addition, there is now a Salieri Opera Festival sponsored by the Fondazione Culturale Antonio Salieri and dedicated to rediscovering his work and those of his contemporaries. It is developing as an annual autumn event in his native town of Legnago, where a theatre has been renamed in his honor.
Modern performances of Salieri's work.
In 2003, mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli released "The Salieri Album", a CD with 13 arias from Salieri's operas, most of which had never been recorded before. Patrice Michaels sang a number of his arias on the CD "Divas of Mozart's Day". In 2008, another female opera star, Diana Damrau, released a CD with seven Salieri coloratura arias. Since 2000, there have also been complete recordings issued or re-issued of the operas "Axur Re d'Ormus", "Falstaff", "Les Danaïdes", "La Locandiera", "La grotta di Trofonio", "Prima la musica e poi le parole" and "". Salieri has yet to fully re-enter the general repertory, but performances of his works are progressively becoming more regular.
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His operas "Falstaff" (1995 production from the Schwetzingen Festival) and "Tarare" (1987 production, also from the Schwetzingen Festival) have been released on DVD. In 2004, the opera "Europa riconosciuta" was staged in Milan for the reopening of La Scala in Milan, with soprano Diana Damrau in the title role. This production was also broadcast on television.
In November 2009, "Il mondo alla rovescia" was given its first staging in modern times at the Teatro Salieri in Legnago in a co-production between the Fondazione Culturale Antonio Salieri and the Fondazione Arena di Verona for the Salieri Opera Festival.
From 2009 to 2011 Antonio Giarola directed the Festival. From 2009 to 2012 Antonio Giarola also directed the "Varietas Delectat", a contemporary dance show inspired by the music of Antonio Salieri.
On 14 November 2011 in Graz, Austria, the hometown of the librettist Leopold Auenbrugger, Salieri's "Der Rauchfangkehrer" was given its first modern production. In July 2014 there was another modern production of this Salieri opera. This time it was the Pinchgut Opera of Sydney, Australia, performing it as "The Chimneysweep". "The Sydney Morning Herald" referred to it as the discovery of "a long-forgotten treasure".
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Use of music by Salieri in films.
Salieri has even begun to attract some attention from Hollywood. In 2001, his triple concerto was used in the soundtrack of "The Last Castle", featuring Robert Redford and James Gandolfini. It is a story that builds on the rivalry between a meticulous but untested officer (Gandolfini) serving as the warden of a military prison and an imprisoned but much admired and highly decorated general (Redford). The Salieri piece is used as the warden's theme music, seemingly to invoke the image of jealousy of the inferior for his superior. In 2006, the movie "Copying Beethoven" referred to Salieri in a more positive light. In this movie, a young female music student hired by Beethoven to copy out his Ninth Symphony is staying at a monastery. The abbess tries to discourage her from working with the irreverent Beethoven. She notes that she too once had dreams, having come to Vienna to study opera singing with Salieri. The 2008 film "Iron Man" used the Larghetto movement from Salieri's Piano Concerto in C major. The scene where Obadiah Stane, the archrival of Tony Stark, the wealthy industrialist turned Iron Man, tells Tony that he is being ousted from his company by the board, Obadiah plays the opening few bars of the Salieri concerto on a piano in Stark's suite.
Fictional treatments.
Salieri's life, and especially his relationship with Mozart, has been the subject of many stories, in a variety of media.
Notes, references, sources.
Notes
References
Cited sources
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Cobble Hill Tunnel
The Cobble Hill Tunnel (also known as the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel) is an abandoned Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) tunnel beneath Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, New York City, running through the neighborhoods of Downtown Brooklyn and Cobble Hill. When open, it ran for about between Columbia Street and Boerum Place. It is the oldest railway tunnel beneath a city street in North America that was fully devoted to rail. It is also deemed the oldest subway tunnel in the world by the "Guinness Book of World Records".
Construction and operation.
Originally built as an open cut, construction began in May 1844, and opened for use on December 3, 1844, but was not completely finished until mid-1845. It was built mainly to satisfy public demand for creation of a grade-separated right of way for the Brooklyn and Jamaica Railroad (later Long Island Rail Road) on its way to the South Ferry at the foot of Atlantic Street (later Atlantic Avenue), where passengers could catch ferries to Manhattan. The construction of the cut also lowered the LIRR's grade through Cobble Hill. Around five years after opening the cut was roofed over, converting it into a tunnel. As originally built, the cut was wide and long. Once roofed over, the interior height of the newly created tunnel was .
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In exchange for building the cut, the City of Brooklyn granted the B&J permission to operate its steam locomotives on Atlantic Street west of Fifth Avenue (then Parmentier's Garden/Gowanus Lane), all the way to Brooklyn's South Ferry (the present location of Brooklyn's Pier 7). Prior to the cut being built, the LIRR's western terminus was Atlantic Street at Clinton Street. Train cars were hauled by teams of horses along Atlantic Street from Clinton Street to Parmentier's Garden, where steam locomotives were attached. While the cut was being built, the railroad operated to a temporary terminal at Pacific Street and Henry Street.
The Cobble Hill Tunnel was part of the first rail link between New York City and Boston, Massachusetts. The railroad connected Lower Manhattan via the South Ferry to Greenport on the North Fork of Long Island; a ferry connected Greenport to Stonington, Connecticut, where a rail link continued to Boston. This avoided some difficult construction of bridges over the rivers of southern Connecticut. In 1848, the New York and New Haven Railroad Line was completed through Connecticut, providing a direct, faster rail connection from New York City to Boston. The Cobble Hill Tunnel and the Long Island Railroad remained the primary means of access to most of central Long Island from Manhattan and New York City.
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The ends of the tunnel were sealed in the fall of 1861. The similar Murray Hill Tunnel on the New York and Harlem Railroad was built as an open cut around 1836, roofed over around the 1850s, and is now in use for automobile traffic.
Closure controversy.
In 1861, the New York State Legislature voted to ban railroad locomotives from within the limits of the City of Brooklyn. A tax assessment was ordered on all property owners along Atlantic Street (today Atlantic Avenue), to defray the costs of the closure. It was undisclosed at the time that New York State Governor John A. King was a major shareholder in the Brooklyn and Jamaica Railroad (later the Long Island Rail Road) and therefore had a conflict of interest and stood to benefit by the compensation payments to the railroad from the tax assessment.
Dormancy.
Walt Whitman wrote of the tunnel:
The old tunnel, that used to lie there under ground, a passage of Acheron-like solemnity and darkness, now all closed and filled up, and soon to be utterly forgotten, with all its reminiscences; however, there will, for a few years yet be many dear ones, to not a few Brooklynites, New Yorkers, and promiscuous crowds besides. For it was here you started to go down the island, in summer. For years, it was confidently counted on that this spot, and the railroad of which it was the terminus, were going to prove the permanent seat of business and wealth that belong to such enterprises. But its glory, after enduring in great splendor for a season, has now vanished—at least its Long Island Railroad glory has. The tunnel: dark as the grave, cold, damp, and silent. How beautiful look earth and heaven again, as we emerge from the gloom! It might not be unprofitable, now and then, to send us mortals—the dissatisfied ones, at least, and that's a large proportion—into some tunnel of several days' journey. We'd perhaps grumble less, afterward, at God's handiwork.
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In March 1916, the Bureau of Investigation suspected German terrorists were making bombs in the tunnel, and broke through the roof of the tunnel with jackhammers. They found nothing, installed an electric light, and resealed it. In the 1920s, it was rumored to be used for both mushroom growing and bootleg whiskey stills, even though there was no access into the main portion of the tunnel. It became an object of local folklore and legend. In 1936, the New York City Police Department unsuccessfully attempted to enter the tunnel, in order to look for the body of a hoodlum supposedly buried there. In 1941, it was rumored to have been inspected by the federal Works Progress Administration to determine its structural strength, but there is no evidence of this. A few years later, it was once again rumored to have been opened, this time by the FBI, in an unsuccessful search for spies; however, there is no evidence of this. During the late 1950s, it was sought by two rail historians, George Horn and Martin Schachne, but they did not gain access to the tunnel itself.
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Rediscovery.
Having fallen from public notice, the tunnel was rediscovered in 1980 by then 20-year-old Bob Diamond, who entered from a manhole he located at Atlantic Avenue and Court Street, crawled a distance of underground through a filled-in section of tunnel less than high, and located the bulkhead wall that sealed off the main portion of the tunnel. With the assistance of a Brooklyn Union Gas Company engineering crew, he then broke through the massive concrete bulkhead wall, which is several feet thick. Diamond thereby opened access to the main portion of the tunnel, and began to popularize the tunnel as an antiquity. He led tours of its interior for his Brooklyn Historic Railway Association, from 1982 until December 17, 2010, when the Department of Transportation terminated his contract, citing safety concerns. The tunnel has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1989.
The History Channel series "Cities of the Underworld" ran a segment ("New York's Secret Societies") on the tunnel in 2008.
References.
Notes
Citations
Further reading
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Annapolis Valley
The Annapolis Valley is a valley and region in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada. It is located in the western part of the Nova Scotia peninsula, formed by a trough between two parallel mountain ranges along the shore of the Bay of Fundy. Statistics Canada defines the Annapolis Valley as an economic region, composed of Annapolis County, Kings County, and Hants County.
Geography.
The valley measures approximately in length from Annapolis Royal and the Annapolis Basin in the west to Wolfville and the Minas Basin in the east, spanning the counties of Digby, Annapolis and Kings.
Some also include the western part of Hants County, including the towns of Hantsport and Windsor even further to the east, but geographically speaking they are part of the Avon River valley.
The steep face of basaltic North Mountain shelters the valley from the adjacent Bay of Fundy and rises over in elevation near Lawrencetown. The granitic South Mountain rises to a somewhat higher elevation and shelters the valley from the climate of the Atlantic Ocean approximately 100 kilometres further south on the province's South Shore.
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The shelter provided by these two mountainous ridges has produced a microclimate which provides relatively mild temperatures for the region and, coupled with the fertile glacial sedimentary soils on the valley floor, the region is conducive to growing vegetable and fruit crops. Particularly famous for its apple crop, the valley hosts in excess of 1,000 farms of various types, the majority being relatively small family-owned operations.
Within the valley itself are two major rivers, the Annapolis River which flows west from Caribou Bog in the central part of the valley into Annapolis Basin, and the Cornwallis River which flows east from Caribou Bog into Minas Basin. The North Mountain ridge forms the north side of the Annapolis Valley. Also flowing east, in two smaller valleys north of the Cornwallis River, are the Canard River and the Habitant River, both of which also flow into the Minas Basin.
History.
Long settled by the Mi'kmaq nation, the valley experienced French settlement at the Habitation at Port-Royal, near modern-day Annapolis Royal in the western part of the valley, beginning in 1605. From there, the Acadians spread throughout the Valley, in various communities, building dykes to claim the tidal lands along the Annapolis and Cornwallis Rivers. They continued throughout the Annapolis Valley until the British-ordered expulsion of Acadians in 1755 which is memorialized at Grand-Pré in the eastern part of the valley. New England Planters moved in to occupy the abandoned Acadian farming areas and the region also saw subsequent settlement by Loyalist refugees of the American Revolutionary War, as well as foreign Protestants. These were followed by significant numbers of freed Africans in the War of 1812, Irish immigrants in the mid-19th century and Dutch immigrants after World War II. Agriculture in the Annapolis valley boomed in the late 19th century with the arrival of the Windsor and Annapolis Railway, later the Dominion Atlantic Railway, which developed large export markets for Annapolis Valley apples.
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The Annapolis Valley Regional Library was established in 1949. It was the first regional library system in Nova Scotia.
Economy.
The Valley has traditionally been built on a diversified agricultural industry, with a wide range of output ranging from livestock to fruit trees and berries. The last quarter-century has also seen the development of a wine industry, with such notable wineries as Gaspereau Vineyards winning national and international awards for their produce.
Today, the Valley is still largely dominated by agriculture but also has a growing diversity in its economies, partly aided by the importance of post-secondary education centres provided by Acadia University in Wolfville, and the Nova Scotia Community College campuses located in Kentville, Middleton, Lawrencetown, and Digby.
Michelin has an important truck tire manufacturing plant in Waterville and the Department of National Defence has its largest air force base in Atlantic Canada located at CFB Greenwood along with an important training facility at Camp Aldershot, near Kentville.
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Tourism is also an important industry and the Annapolis Valley is known for its scenic farmland, although today some is threatened with suburban development in the eastern end, and a great deal has been abandoned. The valley also struggles with pollution from farm runoffs and residential sewers in its two major rivers, the Annapolis River and the Cornwallis River. The Annapolis Valley additionally has become home to the majority of Nova Scotia wineries, located in either the Gaspereau Valley or in the Canning, Grand Pré, or Bear River areas.
The Valley is home to the annual Apple Blossom Festival, held in late spring. In July is the annual Steer Bar-B-Que in Kingston, and Heart of the Valley Festival in Middleton. August sees Mud Creek Days in Wolfville and the Annapolis Valley Exhibition in Lawrencetown. Bridgetown's Cider Festival comes in mid-September. The Canadian Deep Roots Music Festival is held each year at the end of September in Wolfville, a community-based festival, supported by both the Town of Wolfville and Acadia University and built by over 100 volunteers, and on in-kind and financial support from virtually all sectors of the Valley community. Late October sees Wolfville and Kings County play host to Devour! The Food Film Fest, an annual international film festival celebrating all things culinary. Farmers markets in Annapolis Royal, Bridgetown, Middleton, Kentville, Kingsport, Berwick and Wolfville bring a produce and other goods to the public every week. In the fall, there is the Pumpkin People in Kentville.
Communities.
Communities in the Valley from west to east include:
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Analgesic
An analgesic drug, also called simply an analgesic, antalgic, pain reliever, or painkiller, is any member of the group of drugs used for pain management. Analgesics are conceptually distinct from anesthetics, which temporarily reduce, and in some instances eliminate, sensation, although analgesia and anesthesia are neurophysiologically overlapping and thus various drugs have both analgesic and anesthetic effects.
Analgesic choice is also determined by the type of pain: For neuropathic pain, recent research has suggested that classes of drugs that are not normally considered analgesics, such as tricyclic antidepressants and anticonvulsants may be considered as an alternative.
Various analgesics, such as many NSAIDs, are available over the counter in most countries, whereas various others are prescription drugs owing to the substantial risks and high chances of overdose, misuse, and addiction in the absence of medical supervision.
Etymology.
The word "analgesic" derives from Greek "an-" (, "without"), "álgos" (, "pain"), and "-ikos" (, forming adjectives). Such drugs were usually known as "anodynes" before the 20th century.
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Classification.
Analgesics are typically classified based on their mechanism of action.
Paracetamol (acetaminophen).
Paracetamol, also known as acetaminophen or APAP, is a medication used to treat pain and fever. It is typically used for mild to moderate pain. In combination with opioid pain medication, paracetamol is now used for more severe pain such as cancer pain and after surgery. It is typically used either by mouth or rectally but is also available intravenously. Effects last between two and four hours. Paracetamol is classified as a mild analgesic. Paracetamol is generally safe at recommended doses.
NSAIDs.
Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (usually abbreviated to NSAIDs), are a drug class that groups together drugs that decrease pain and lower fever, and, in higher doses, decrease inflammation. The most prominent members of this group of drugs—aspirin, ibuprofen and naproxen, and diclofenac are all available over the counter in most countries.
COX-2 inhibitors.
These drugs have been derived from NSAIDs. The cyclooxygenase enzyme inhibited by NSAIDs was discovered to have at least two different versions: COX1 and COX2. Research suggested most of the adverse effects of NSAIDs to be mediated by blocking the COX1 (constitutive) enzyme, with the analgesic effects being mediated by the COX2 (inducible) enzyme. Thus, the COX2 inhibitors were developed to inhibit only the COX2 enzyme (traditional NSAIDs block both versions in general). These drugs (such as rofecoxib, celecoxib, and etoricoxib) are equally effective analgesics when compared with NSAIDs, but cause less gastrointestinal hemorrhage in particular.
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After widespread adoption of the COX-2 inhibitors, it was discovered that most of the drugs in this class increase the risk of cardiovascular events by 40% on average. This led to the withdrawal of rofecoxib and valdecoxib, and warnings on others. Etoricoxib seems relatively safe, with the risk of thrombotic events similar to that of non-coxib NSAID diclofenac.
Opioids.
Morphine, the archetypal opioid, and other opioids (e.g., codeine, oxycodone, hydrocodone, dihydromorphine, pethidine) all exert a similar influence on the cerebral opioid receptor system. Buprenorphine is a partial agonist of the μ-opioid receptor, and tramadol is a serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI) with weak μ-opioid receptor agonist properties. Tramadol is structurally closer to venlafaxine than to codeine and delivers analgesia by not only delivering "opioid-like" effects (through mild agonism of the mu receptor) but also by acting as a weak but fast-acting serotonin releasing agent and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. Tapentadol, with some structural similarities to tramadol, presents what is believed to be a novel drug working through two (and possibly three) different modes of action in the fashion of both a traditional opioid and as an SNRI. The effects of serotonin and norepinephrine on pain, while not completely understood, have had causal links established and drugs in the SNRI class are commonly used in conjunction with opioids (especially tapentadol and tramadol) with greater success in pain relief.
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Dosing of all opioids may be limited by opioid toxicity (confusion, respiratory depression, myoclonic jerks and pinpoint pupils), seizures (tramadol), but opioid-tolerant individuals usually have higher dose ceilings than patients without tolerance.
Opioids, while very effective analgesics, may have some unpleasant side-effects. Patients starting morphine may experience nausea and vomiting (generally relieved by a short course of antiemetics such as phenergan). Pruritus (itching) may require switching to a different opioid. Constipation occurs in almost all patients on opioids, and laxatives (lactulose, macrogol-containing or co-danthramer) are typically co-prescribed.
When used appropriately, opioids and other central analgesics are safe and effective; however, risks such as addiction and the body's becoming used to the drug (tolerance) can occur. The effect of tolerance means that frequent use of the drug may result in its diminished effect. When safe to do so, the dosage may need to be increased to maintain effectiveness against tolerance, which may be of particular concern regarding patients with chronic pain and requiring an analgesic over long periods. Opioid tolerance is often addressed with opioid rotation therapy in which a patient is routinely switched between two or more non-cross-tolerant opioid medications in order to prevent exceeding safe dosages in the attempt to achieve an adequate analgesic effect.
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Opioid tolerance should not be confused with opioid-induced hyperalgesia. The symptoms of these two conditions can appear very similar but the mechanism of action is different. Opioid-induced hyperalgesia is when exposure to opioids increases the sensation of pain (hyperalgesia) and can even make non-painful stimuli painful (allodynia).
Alcohol.
Alcohol has biological, mental, and social effects which influence the consequences of using alcohol for pain. Moderate use of alcohol can lessen certain types of pain in certain circumstances.
The majority of its analgesic effects come from antagonizing NMDA receptors, similarly to ketamine, thus decreasing the activity of the primary excitatory (signal boosting) neurotransmitter, glutamate. It also functions as an analgesic to a lesser degree by increasing the activity of the primary inhibitory (signal reducing) neurotransmitter, GABA.
Attempting to use alcohol to treat pain has also been observed to lead to negative outcomes including excessive drinking and alcohol use disorder.
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Cannabis.
"Medical cannabis", or "medical marijuana", refers to cannabis or its cannabinoids used to treat disease or improve symptoms. There is evidence suggesting that cannabis can be used to treat chronic pain and muscle spasms, with some trials indicating improved relief of neuropathic pain over opioids.
Combinations.
Analgesics are frequently used in combination, such as the paracetamol and codeine preparations found in many non-prescription pain relievers. They can also be found in combination with vasoconstrictor drugs such as pseudoephedrine for sinus-related preparations, or with antihistamine drugs for people with allergies.
While the use of paracetamol, aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen, and other NSAIDS concurrently with weak to mid-range opiates (up to about the hydrocodone level) has been said to show beneficial synergistic effects by combating pain at multiple sites of action, several combination analgesic products have been shown to have few efficacy benefits when compared to similar doses of their individual components. Moreover, these combination analgesics can often result in significant adverse events, including accidental overdoses, most often due to confusion that arises from the multiple (and often non-acting) components of these combinations.
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Alternative medicine.
There is some evidence that some treatments using alternative medicine can relieve some types of pain more effectively than placebo. The available research concludes that more research would be necessary to better understand the use of alternative medicine.
Other drugs.
Nefopam—a monoamine reuptake inhibitor, and calcium and sodium channel modulator—is also approved for the treatment of moderate to severe pain in some countries.
Flupirtine is a centrally acting K+ channel opener with weak NMDA antagonist properties. It was used in Europe for moderate to strong pain, as well as its migraine-treating and muscle-relaxant properties. It has no significant anticholinergic properties, and is believed to be devoid of any activity on dopamine, serotonin, or histamine receptors. It is not addictive, and tolerance usually does not develop. However, tolerance may develop in some cases.
Ziconotide, a blocker of potent N-type voltage-gated calcium channels, is administered intrathecally for the relief of severe, usually cancer-related pain.
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Adjuvants.
Certain drugs that have been introduced for uses other than analgesics are also used in pain management. Both first-generation (such as amitriptyline) and newer antidepressants (such as duloxetine) are used alongside NSAIDs and opioids for pain involving nerve damage and similar problems. Other agents directly potentiate the effects of analgesics, such as using hydroxyzine, promethazine, carisoprodol, or tripelennamine to increase the pain-killing ability of a given dose of opioid analgesic.
Adjuvant analgesics, also called atypical analgesics, include orphenadrine, mexiletine, pregabalin, gabapentin, cyclobenzaprine, hyoscine (scopolamine), and other drugs possessing anticonvulsant, anticholinergic, and/or antispasmodic properties, as well as many other drugs with CNS actions. These drugs are used along with analgesics to modulate and/or modify the action of opioids when used against pain, especially of neuropathic origin.
Dextromethorphan has been noted to slow the development of and reverse tolerance to opioids, as well as to exert additional analgesia by acting upon NMDA receptors, as does ketamine. Some analgesics such as methadone and ketobemidone and perhaps piritramide have intrinsic NMDA action.
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The anticonvulsant carbamazepine is used to treat neuropathic pain. Similarly, the gabapentinoids gabapentin and pregabalin are prescribed for neuropathic pain, and phenibut is available without prescription. Gabapentinoids work as α2δ-subunit blockers of voltage-gated calcium channels, and tend to have other mechanisms of action as well. Gabapentinoids are all anticonvulsants, which are most commonly used for neuropathic pain, as their mechanism of action tends to inhibit pain sensation originating from the nervous system.
Other uses.
Topical analgesia is generally recommended to avoid systemic side-effects. Painful joints, for example, may be treated with an ibuprofen- or diclofenac-containing gel (The labeling for topical diclofenac has been updated to warn about drug-induced hepatotoxicity.); capsaicin also is used topically. Lidocaine, an anesthetic, and steroids may be injected into joints for longer-term pain relief. Lidocaine is also used for painful mouth sores and to numb areas for dental work and minor medical procedures. In February 2007 the FDA notified consumers and healthcare professionals of the potential hazards of topical anesthetics entering the bloodstream when applied in large doses to the skin without medical supervision. These topical anesthetics contain anesthetic drugs such as lidocaine, tetracaine, benzocaine, and prilocaine in a cream, ointment, or gel.
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Uses.
Topical nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs provide pain relief in common conditions such as muscle sprains and overuse injuries. Since the side effects are also lesser, topical preparations could be preferred over oral medications in these conditions.
Research.
Some novel and investigational analgesics include subtype-selective voltage-gated sodium channel blockers such as funapide and raxatrigine, as well as multimodal agents such as ralfinamide.
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Abiotic stress
Abiotic stress is the negative impact of non-living factors on the living organisms in a specific environment. The non-living variable must influence the environment beyond its normal range of variation to adversely affect the population performance or individual physiology of the organism in a significant way.
Whereas a biotic stress would include living disturbances such as fungi or harmful insects, abiotic stress factors, or stressors, are naturally occurring, often intangible and inanimate factors such as intense sunlight, temperature or wind that may cause harm to the plants and animals in the area affected. Abiotic stress is essentially unavoidable. Abiotic stress affects animals, but plants are especially dependent, if not solely dependent, on environmental factors, so it is particularly constraining. Abiotic stress is the most harmful factor concerning the growth and productivity of crops worldwide. Research has also shown that abiotic stressors are at their most harmful when they occur together, in combinations of abiotic stress factors.
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Examples.
Abiotic stress comes in many forms. The most common of the stressors are the easiest for people to identify, but there are many other, less recognizable abiotic stress factors which affect environments constantly.
The most basic stressors include:
Lesser-known stressors generally occur on a smaller scale. They include: poor edaphic conditions like rock content and pH levels, high radiation, compaction, contamination, and other, highly specific conditions like rapid rehydration during seed germination.
Effects.
Abiotic stress, as a natural part of every ecosystem, will affect organisms in a variety of ways. Although these effects may be either beneficial or detrimental, the location of the area is crucial in determining the extent of the impact that abiotic stress will have. The higher the latitude of the area affected, the greater the impact of abiotic stress will be on that area. So, a taiga or boreal forest is at the mercy of whatever abiotic stress factors may come along, while tropical zones are much less susceptible to such stressors.
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Benefits.
While abiotic stress may have negative impacts on individual organisms, there are cases where abiotic stress plays an important role in maintaining a healthy ecosystem. Important ecosystem mechanisms and improved overall stress tolerance may rely on occasional low levels of abiotic stress.
One example of a situation where abiotic stress plays a constructive role in an ecosystem is in natural wildfires. Smaller fires are useful in reducing the overall fuel load of an area of forest or prairie. By clearing out dead brush and other organic matter, the risk of catastrophic and widespread fire decreases, and the residual ash of smaller fires helps add nutrients back into the soil. The observed benefits of these smaller and more controlled fires on land usability and species populations have led to the use of prescribed burning by humans for centuries. Varying perspectives on the benefits and risks of fire to ecosystems have influenced official policy through history. The U.S. Forest Service, initially focused on fire control, changed its policy to one of fire management in 1974, recognizing these fires as a natural part of an ecosystem. There is also evidence that a diverse fire history between patches of land within an area has been shown to benefit transitional landscapes between savanna and forest. Even though it is healthy for an ecosystem, a wildfire can still be considered an abiotic stressor, because it puts stress on individual organisms within the area. On the larger scale, though, natural wildfires are positive manifestations of abiotic stress.
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What also needs to be taken into account when looking for benefits of abiotic stress, is that one phenomenon may not affect an entire ecosystem in the same way. While a flood will kill most plants living low on the ground in a certain area, if there is rice there, it will thrive in the wet conditions. Another example of this is in phytoplankton and zooplankton. The same types of conditions are usually considered stressful for these two types of organisms. They act very similarly when exposed to ultraviolet light and most toxins, but at elevated temperatures the phytoplankton reacts negatively, while the thermophilic zooplankton reacts positively to the increase in temperature. The two may be living in the same environment, but an increase in temperature of the area would prove stressful only for one of the organisms.
Lastly, abiotic stress has enabled species to grow, develop, and evolve, through the process of natural selection. Heritable traits that improve an organism's resiliency under stressed conditions increase the likelihood that the organism will survive and reproduce, enabling it to pass these traits to the next generation. Both plants and animals have evolved mechanisms allowing them to survive extremes.
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Detriments.
One of the detriments concerning abiotic stress involves farming. It has been claimed by one study that abiotic stress causes the most crop loss of any other factor and that most major crops are reduced in their yield by more than 50% from their potential yield.
Because abiotic stress is widely considered a detrimental effect, the research on this branch of the issue is extensive. For more information on the harmful effects of abiotic stress, see the sections below on plants and animals.
In plants.
A plant's first line of defense against abiotic stress is in its roots. If the soil holding the plant is healthy and biologically diverse, the plant will have a higher chance of surviving stressful conditions.
The plant responses to stress are dependent on the tissue or organ affected by the stress. For example, transcriptional responses to stress are tissue or cell specific in roots and are quite different depending on the stress involved.
One of the primary responses to abiotic stress such as high salinity is the disruption of the Na+/K+ ratio in the cytoplasm of the plant cell. High concentrations of Na+, for example, can decrease the capacity for the plant to take up water and also alter enzyme and transporter functions. Evolved adaptations to efficiently restore cellular ion homeostasis have led to a wide variety of stress tolerant plants.
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Facilitation, or the positive interactions between different species of plants, is an intricate web of association in a natural environment. It is how plants work together. In areas of high stress, the level of facilitation is especially high as well. This could possibly be because the plants need a stronger network to survive in a harsher environment, so their interactions between species, such as cross-pollination or mutualistic actions, become more common to cope with the severity of their habitat.
Plants also adapt very differently from one another, even from a plant living in the same area. When a group of different plant species was prompted by a variety of different stress signals, such as drought or cold, each plant responded uniquely. Hardly any of the responses were similar, even though the plants had become accustomed to exactly the same home environment.
Serpentine soils (media with low concentrations of nutrients and high concentrations of heavy metals) can be a source of abiotic stress. Initially, the absorption of toxic metal ions is limited by cell membrane exclusion. Ions that are absorbed into tissues are sequestered in cell vacuoles. This sequestration mechanism is facilitated by proteins on the vacuole membrane. An example of plants that adapt to serpentine soil are Metallophytes, or hyperaccumulators, as they are known for their ability to absorbed heavy metals using the root-to-shoot translocation (which it will absorb into shoots rather than the plant itself). They're also extinguished for their ability to absorb toxic substances from heavy metals.
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Chemical priming has been proposed to increase tolerance to abiotic stresses in crop plants. In this method, which is analogous to vaccination, stress-inducing chemical agents are introduced to the plant in brief doses so that the plant begins preparing defense mechanisms. Thus, when the abiotic stress occurs, the plant has already prepared defense mechanisms that can be activated faster and increase tolerance. Prior exposure to tolerable doses of biotic stresses such as phloem-feeding insect infestation have also been shown to increase tolerance to abiotic stresses in plant
Impact on food production.
Abiotic stress mostly affects plants used in agriculture. Some examples of adverse conditions (which may be caused by climate change) are high or low temperatures, drought, salinity, and toxins.
Salt stress in plants.
Soil salinization, the accumulation of water-soluble salts to levels that negatively impact plant production, is a global phenomenon affecting approximately 831 million hectares of land. More specifically, the phenomenon threatens 19.5% of the world's irrigated agricultural land and 2.1% of the world's non-irrigated (dry-land) agricultural lands. High soil salinity content can be harmful to plants because water-soluble salts can alter osmotic potential gradients and consequently inhibit many cellular functions. For example, high soil salinity content can inhibit the process of photosynthesis by limiting a plant's water uptake; high levels of water-soluble salts in the soil can decrease the osmotic potential of the soil and consequently decrease the difference in water potential between the soil and the plant's roots, thereby limiting electron flow from H2O to P680 in Photosystem II's reaction center.
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Over generations, many plants have mutated and built different mechanisms to counter salinity effects. A good combatant of salinity in plants is the hormone ethylene. Ethylene is known for regulating plant growth and development and dealing with stress conditions. Many central membrane proteins in plants, such as ETO2, ERS1 and EIN2, are used for ethylene signaling in many plant growth processes. Mutations in these proteins can lead to heightened salt sensitivity and can limit plant growth. The effects of salinity has been studied on "Arabidopsis" plants that have mutated ERS1, ERS2, ETR1, ETR2 and EIN4 proteins. These proteins are used for ethylene signaling against certain stress conditions, such as salt and the ethylene precursor ACC is used to suppress any sensitivity to the salt stress.
Phosphate starvation in plants.
Phosphorus (P) is an essential macronutrient required for plant growth and development, but it is present only in limited quantities in most of the world's soil. Plants use P mainly in the form of soluble inorganic phosphates (PO4−−−) but are subject to abiotic stress when there is not enough soluble PO4−−− in the soil. Phosphorus forms insoluble complexes with Ca and Mg in alkaline soils and with Al and Fe in acidic soils that make the phosphorus unavailable for plant roots. When there is limited bioavailable P in the soil, plants show extensive symptoms of abiotic stress, such as short primary roots and more lateral roots and root hairs to make more surface available for phosphate absorption, exudation of organic acids and phosphatase to release phosphates from complex P–containing molecules and make it available for growing plants' organs. It has been shown that PHR1, a MYB-related transcription factor, is a master regulator of P-starvation response in plants. PHR1 also has been shown to regulate extensive remodeling of lipids and metabolites during phosphorus limitation stress
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Drought stress.
Drought stress, defined as naturally occurring water deficit, is a main cause of crop losses in agriculture. This is because water is essential for many fundamental processes in plant growth. It has become especially important in recent years to find a way to combat drought stress. A decrease in precipitation and consequent increase in drought are extremely likely in the future due to an increase in global warming. Plants have come up with many mechanisms and adaptations to try and deal with drought stress. One of the leading ways that plants combat drought stress is by closing their stomata. A key hormone regulating stomatal opening and closing is abscisic acid (ABA). Synthesis of ABA causes the ABA to bind to receptors. This binding then affects the opening of ion channels, thereby decreasing turgor pressure in the stomata and causing them to close. Recent studies by Gonzalez-Villagra, et al., have shown how ABA levels increased in drought-stressed plants (2018). They showed that when plants were placed in a stressful situation, they produced more ABA to try to conserve any water they had in their leaves. Another extremely important factor in dealing with drought stress and regulating the uptake and export of water is aquaporins (AQPs). AQPs are integral membrane proteins that make up channels. These channels' main job is the transport of water and other essential solutes. AQPs are both transcriptionally and post-transcriptionally regulated by many different factors such as ABA, GA3, pH and Ca2+; and the specific levels of AQPs in certain parts of the plant, such as roots or leaves, helps to draw as much water into the plant as possible. By understanding the mechanisms of both AQPs and the hormone ABA, scientists will be better able to produce drought-resistant plants in the future.
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A study by Tombesi et al., found that plants which had previously been exposed to drought were able to minimize water loss and decrease water use. They found that plants which were exposed to drought conditions actually changed the way they regulated their stomata and what they called "hydraulic safety margin" so as to decrease the vulnerability of the plant. By changing the regulation of stomata and subsequently the transpiration, plants were able to function better when less water was available.
In animals.
For animals, the most stressful of all the abiotic stressors is heat. This is because many species are unable to regulate their internal body temperature. Even in the species that are able to regulate their own temperature, it is not always a completely accurate system. Temperature determines metabolic rates, heart rates, and other very important factors within the bodies of animals, so an extreme temperature change can easily distress the animal's body. Animals can respond to extreme heat, for example, through natural heat acclimation or by burrowing into the ground to find a cooler space.
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It is also possible to see in animals that a high genetic diversity is beneficial in providing resiliency against harsh abiotic stressors. This acts as a sort of stock room when a species is plagued by the perils of natural selection. A variety of galling insects are among the most specialized and diverse herbivores on the planet, and their extensive protections against abiotic stress factors have helped the insect in gaining that position of honor.
In endangered species.
Biodiversity is determined by many things, and one of them is abiotic stress. If an environment is highly stressful, biodiversity tends to be low. If abiotic stress does not have a strong presence in an area, the biodiversity will be much higher.
This idea leads into the understanding of how abiotic stress and endangered species are related. It has been observed through a variety of environments that as the level of abiotic stress increases, the number of species decreases. This means that species are more likely to become population threatened, endangered, and even extinct, when and where abiotic stress is especially harsh.
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Effects of anthropogenic climate change on abiotic stress.
Data suggests that anthropogenic activity has increased the global temperature, and likely increased the odds of extreme climate events such as drought, fire conditions and flooding. Threats to organisms and ecosystem biodiversity due to increased abiotic stress are one major impact of this change. The effects of climate change on biomes vary due to the location, patterns of precipitation, and the organisms which inhabit them. On the species level, the increased abiotic stress due to climate change can lead to adaptations which increase a species' reproductive success under these conditions. However, such highly specialized adaptations may leave species vulnerable to other stresses.
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Accusative case
In grammar, the accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: "me", "him", "her", "us", "whom", and "them". For example, the pronoun "she", as the subject of a clause, is in the nominative case ("She wrote a book"); but if the pronoun is instead the object of the verb, it is in the accusative case and "she" becomes "her" ("Fred greeted her"). For compound direct objects, it would be, e.g., "Fred invited her and me to the party".
The accusative case is used in many languages for the objects of (some or all) prepositions. It is usually combined with the nominative case (for example in Latin).
The English term, "accusative", derives from the Latin , which, in turn, is a translation of the Greek . The word can also mean "causative", and that might have derived from the Greeks, but the sense of the Roman translation has endured and is used in some other modern languages as the grammatical term for this case, for example in Russian ().
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The accusative case is typical of early Indo-European languages and still exists in some of them (including Albanian, Armenian, Latin, Sanskrit, Greek, German, Nepali, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian), in the Finno-Ugric languages (such as Finnish and Hungarian), in all Turkic languages, in Dravidian languages like Malayalam and Tamil, and in Semitic languages (such as Arabic). Some Balto-Finnic languages, such as Finnish, have two cases for objects, the accusative and the partitive case. In morphosyntactic alignment terms, both do the accusative function, but the accusative object is telic, while the partitive is not.
Modern English almost entirely lacks declension in its nouns; pronouns, however, have an understood case usage, as in "them", "her", "him" and "whom", which merges the accusative and dative functions, and originates in old Germanic dative forms (see Declension in English).
Example.
In the sentence "The man sees the dog", "the dog" is the direct object of the verb "to see". In English, which has mostly lost grammatical cases, the definite article and noun – "the dog" – remain the same noun form without number agreement in the noun either as subject or object, though an artifact of it is in the verb and has number agreement, which changes to "sees". One can also correctly use "the dog" as the subject of a sentence: "The dog sees the cat."
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In a declined language, the morphology of the article or noun changes with gender agreement. For example, in German, "the dog" is . This is the form in the nominative case, used for the subject of a sentence. If this article/noun pair is used as the object of a verb, it (usually) changes to the accusative case, which entails an article shift in German – (The man sees the dog). In German, masculine nouns change their definite article from to in the accusative case.
In Nepali, "Rama sees Shyama" would be translated as The same sentence in Sanskrit would be .
Latin.
The accusative case in Latin has minor differences from the accusative case in Proto-Indo-European.
Nouns in the accusative case () can be used:
For the accusative endings, see Latin declensions.
German.
The accusative case is used for the direct object in a sentence. The masculine forms for German articles, e.g., "the", "a/an", "my", etc., change in the accusative case: they always end in -en. The feminine, neutral and plural forms do not change.
For example, (dog) is a masculine () word, so the article changes when used in the accusative case:
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Some German pronouns also change in the accusative case.
The accusative case is also used after particular German prepositions. These include , , , , , , after which the accusative case is always used, and , , , , , , , , which can govern either the accusative or the dative. The latter prepositions take the accusative when motion or action is specified (being done into/onto the space), but take the dative when location is specified (being done in/on that space). These prepositions are also used in conjunction with certain verbs, in which case it is the verb in question which governs whether the accusative or dative should be used.
Adjective endings also change in the accusative case. Another factor that determines the endings of adjectives is whether the adjective is being used after a definite article (the), after an indefinite article (a/an) or without any article before the adjective ("many" green apples).
In German, the accusative case is also used for some adverbial expressions, mostly temporal ones, as in (This evening I'm staying at home), where is marked as accusative, although not a direct object.
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Russian.
In Russian, accusative is used not only to display the direct object of an action, but also to indicate the destination or goal of motion. It is also used with some prepositions. The prepositions and can both take accusative in situations where they are indicating the goal of a motion.
In the masculine, Russian also distinguishes between animate and inanimate nouns with regard to the accusative; only the animates carry a marker in this case.
The PIE accusative case has nearly eroded in Russian, merging with the genitive or the nominative in most declensions. Only singular first-declension nouns (ending in ", ", or ") have a distinct accusative (", ", or ").
Finnish.
According to the traditional Finnish grammar, the accusative case is used for a total object, while the partitive case is used for a partial object. The accusative is identical to either the nominative case or the genitive case, except for personal pronouns and the personal interrogative pronoun /, which have a special accusative form ending in .
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The major new Finnish grammar, , deviates from the traditional classification to limit the accusative case to the special case of personal pronouns and /. This grammar considers other total objects as being in the nominative or genitive case.
Hungarian.
The accusative case is assigned to the direct object in a sentence in Hungarian. The accusative marker is always , often preceded by a linking vowel to facilitate pronunciation.
Every personal pronoun has an accusative form.
For the Hungarian 1st and 2nd person singular accusative forms, the pronoun can often be dropped if it is clear from the context who the speaker is referring to.
Semitic languages.
Accusative case marking existed in Proto-Semitic, Akkadian, and Ugaritic. It is preserved today in many Semitic languages as Modern Standard Arabic, Hebrew and Ge'ez.
Accusative in Akkadian
Accusative in Arabic
The accusative case is called in Arabic () and it has many other uses in addition to marking the object of a verb.
Accusative in Hebrew
In Hebrew, if the object of the sentence is a pronoun (e.g., I, you, s/he) and the transitive verb requires a direct object, the word is combined with the pronoun into an object pronoun.
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The combined words are:
Japanese.
In Japanese, cases are marked by placing particles after nouns. The accusative case is marked with (, pronounced ).
Korean.
In Korean, the accusative case is marked with or . The postpositions depend on a word's last syllable. For example:
Turkish.
In Turkish, cases are marked with suffixes. The accusative case is marked with the suffixes , depending on vowel harmony. If a word ends in a vowel, is added before the suffix as a buffer consonant.
The accusative is only used if the direct object of a sentence is definite. If it is indefinite, the nominative case is used. For example:
Malayalam.
In Malayalam, the accusative inflection is achieved using the suffix /-e/. Example: /raman/ → /ramane/. The sandhi also play a role here depending on the ending of the noun. Example: /maram/ → /maratte/ where /tt/ replaces /m/ when /e/ is suffixed.
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Apostolic succession
Apostolic succession is the method whereby the ministry of the Christian Church is considered by some Christian denominations to be derived from the apostles by a continuous succession, which has usually been associated with a claim that the succession is through a series of bishops. Those of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East, Scandinavian Lutheran, Anglican, Moravian, Hussite, and Old Catholic traditions maintain that a bishop's orders are neither regular nor valid without consecration through apostolic succession. These traditions do not always consider the episcopal consecrations of all of the other traditions as valid.
This series was seen originally as that of the bishops of a particular see founded by one or more of the apostles. According to historian Justo L. González, apostolic succession is generally understood today as meaning a series of bishops, regardless of see, each consecrated by other bishops, themselves consecrated similarly in a succession going back to the apostles. According to the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, "apostolic succession" means more than a mere transmission of powers. It is succession in a church which witnesses to the apostolic faith, in communion with the other churches, witnesses of the same apostolic faith. The "see ("cathedra") plays an important role in inserting the bishop into the heart of ecclesial apostolicity", but once ordained, the bishop becomes in his church the guarantor of apostolicity and becomes a successor of the apostles.
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Those who hold for the importance of apostolic succession via episcopal laying on of hands appeal to the New Testament which, they say, implies a personal apostolic succession, from Paul to Timothy and Titus, for example. They appeal as well to other documents of the early Church, especially the Epistle of Clement. In this context, Clement explicitly states that the apostles appointed bishops as successors and directed that these bishops should in turn appoint their own successors; given this, such leaders of the Church were not to be removed without cause and not in this way. Further, proponents of the necessity of the personal apostolic succession of bishops within the Church point to the universal practice of the undivided early Church, up to AD 431, before it was divided into the Church of the East, Oriental Orthodoxy, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church.
Some Christians, including many Protestants, deny the need for this type of continuity and severely question the historical claims involved; Anglican academic Eric G. Jay comments that the account given of the emergence of the episcopate in Chapter III of the dogmatic constitution "Lumen gentium" (1964) "is very sketchy, and many ambiguities in the early history of the Christian ministry are passed over".
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Definitions.
Michael Ramsey, an English Anglican bishop and the Archbishop of Canterbury (1961–1974), described three meanings of "apostolic succession":
He adds that this last has been controversial in that it has been claimed that this aspect of the doctrine is not found before the time of Augustine of Hippo, while others allege that it is implicit in the Church of the second and third centuries.
In its 1982 statement on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches stated that "the primary manifestation of apostolic succession is to be found in the apostolic tradition of the Church as a whole. ... Under the particular historical circumstances of the growing Church in the early centuries, the succession of bishops became one of the ways, together with the transmission of the Gospel and the life of the community, in which the apostolic tradition of the Church was expressed." It spoke of episcopal succession as something that churches that do not have bishops can see "as a sign, though not a guarantee, of the continuity and unity of the Church" and that all churches can see "as a sign of the apostolicity of the life of the whole church".
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The Porvoo Common Statement (1996), agreed to by the Anglican churches of the British Isles and most of the Lutheran churches of Scandinavia and the Baltic, echoed the Munich (1982) and Finland (1988) statements of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church by stating that "the continuity signified in the consecration of a bishop to episcopal ministry cannot be divorced from the continuity of life and witness of the diocese to which he is called".
Some Anglicans, in addition to other Protestants, held that apostolic succession "may also be understood as a continuity in doctrinal teaching from the time of the apostles to the present". For example, the British Methodist Conference locates the "true continuity" with the Church of past ages in "the continuity of Christian experience, the fellowship in the gift of the one Spirit; in the continuity in the allegiance to one Lord, the continued proclamation of the message; the continued acceptance of the mission".
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The teaching of the Second Vatican Council on apostolic succession has been summed up as follows:
In the early Fathers.
According to International Theological Commission (ITC), conflicts could not always be avoided between individuals among the New Testament communities; Paul appealed to his apostolic authority when there was a disagreement about the Gospel or principles of Christian life. How the development of apostolic government proceeded is difficult to say accurately because of the paucity of relevant documents. ITC says that the apostles or their closest assistants or their successors directed the local colleges of "episkopoi" and "presbyteroi" by the end of the first century; while by the beginning of the second century the figure of a single bishop, as the head of the communities, appears explicitly in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch ( 35-107). In the "Epistle to the Smyrnaeans", Ignatius wrote about three degrees ministry:
Ramsey says that the doctrine was formulated in the second century in the first of the three senses given by him, originally as a response to Gnostic claims of having received secret teaching from Christ or the apostles; it emphasised the public manner in which the apostles had passed on authentic teaching to those whom they entrusted with the care of the churches they founded and that these in turn had passed it on to their successors. Ramsey argues that only later was it given a different meaning, a process in which Augustine (Bishop of Hippo Regis, 395–430) played a part by emphasising the idea of "the link from consecrator to consecrated whereby the grace of order was handed on".
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Writing in about AD 94, Clement of Rome states that the apostles appointed successors to continue their work where they had planted churches and for these in their turn to do the same because they foresaw the risk of discord: "Our Apostles, too, by the instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ, knew that strife would arise concerning the dignity of a bishop; and on this account, having received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed the above-mentioned as bishops and deacons: and then gave a rule of succession, in order that, when they had fallen asleep, other men, who had been approved, might succeed to their ministry." According to Anglican Eric G. Jay, the interpretation of his writing is disputed, but it is clear that he supports some sort of approved continuation of the ministry exercised by the apostles which in its turn was derived from Christ.
Hegesippus (180?) and Irenaeus (180) introduce explicitly the idea of the bishop's succession in office as a guarantee of the truth of what he preached in that it could be traced back to the apostles, and they produced succession lists to back this up. That this succession depended on the fact of ordination to a vacant see and the status of those who administered the ordination is seldom commented on. Woollcombe also states that no one questioned the apostolicity of the See of Alexandria despite the fact that its popes were consecrated by the college of presbyters up till the time of the Council of Nicaea in 325. On the contrary, other sources clearly state that Mark the Evangelist is the first bishop of Alexandria (Pope of Alexandria); then he ordained Annianus as his successor bishop (2nd Pope) as told by Eusebius.
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James F. Puglisi, director of Centro Pro Unione, made a conclusion about Irenaeus' writings: "the terms "episkopos" and "presbyteros" are interchangeable, but the term "episkopos" [bishop] is applied to the person who is established in every Church by the apostles and their successors". According to Eric G. Jay, Irenaeus also refers to a succession of presbyters who preserve the tradition "which originates from the apostles" and later goes on to speak of their having "an infallible gift of truth" ["charisma veritatis certum"]. Jay comments that this is sometimes seen as an early reference to the idea of the transmission of grace through the apostolic succession which in later centuries was understood as being specifically transmitted through the laying on of hands by a bishop within the apostolic succession (the "pipeline theory"). He warns that this is open to the grave objection that it makes grace a (quasi)material commodity and represents an almost mechanical method of imparting what is by definition a free gift. He adds that the idea cannot be squeezed out of Irenaeus' words.
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Writing a little later, Tertullian makes the same main point but adds expressly that recently founded churches (such as his own in Carthage) could be considered apostolic if they had "derived the tradition of faith and the seeds of doctrine" from an apostolic church. His disciple, Cyprian (Bishop of Carthage 248–58) appeals to the same fundamental principle of election to a vacant see in the aftermath of the Decian Persecution when denying the legitimacy of his rigorist rival in Carthage and that of the anti-pope Novatian in Rome.
The emphasis is now on legitimating Cyprian's episcopal ministry as a whole and specifically his exclusive right to administer discipline to the lapsed rather than on the content of what is taught. Cyprian also laid great emphasis on the fact that any minister who broke with the Church lost "ipso facto" the gift of the Spirit which had validated his orders. This meant that the minister would have no power or authority to celebrate an efficacious sacrament.
As transmission of grace.
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For the adherents of this understanding of apostolic succession, grace is transmitted during episcopal consecrations (the ordination of bishops) by the laying on of hands of bishops previously consecrated within the apostolic succession. They hold that this lineage of ordination derives from the Twelve Apostles, thus making the Church the continuation of the early Apostolic Christian community. They see it as one of four elements that define the true Church of Jesus Christ, and legitimize the ministry of its clergy, since only a bishop within the succession can perform valid ordinations and only bishops and presbyters (priests) ordained by bishops in the apostolic succession can validly celebrate (or "confect") several of the other sacraments, including the Eucharist, reconciliation of penitents, confirmation and anointing of the sick. Everett Ferguson argued that Hippolytus, in "Apostolic Tradition 9", is the first known source to state that only bishops have the authority to ordain; and normally at least three bishops were required to ordain another bishop. Cyprian also asserts that "if any one is not with the bishop, he is not in the church".
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This position was stated by John Henry Newman, before his conversion from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, in "Tracts for the Times":
We [priests of the Church of England] have been born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. The Lord Jesus Christ gave His Spirit to His Apostles; they in turn laid their hands on those who should succeed them; and these again on others; and so the sacred gift has been handed down to our present bishops, who have appointed us as their assistants, and in some sense representatives. ... we must necessarily consider none to be ordained who have not been ordained.
Ferguson, in "Encyclopedia of Early Christianity", says that example of James and the elders (presbyters) of the Jerusalem Church (Acts 21:18) may have provided a model for the development of 'monepiscopacy', in which James' position has figured conspicuously in modern theories about the rise of the monepiscopacy. Raymond E. Brown says that in the earlier stage (before the third century and perhaps earlier) there were plural bishops or overseers ("presbyter-bishops") in an individual community; in the later stage changed to only one bishop per community. Little is known about how the early bishops were formally chosen or appointed; afterwards the Church developed a regularized pattern of selection and ordination of bishops, and from the third century on that was universally applied. Brown asserts that the ministry was not ordained by the Church to act on its own authority, but as an important part to continue the ministry of Jesus Christ and helps to make the Church what it is.
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Raymond E. Brown also states that by the early second century, as written in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, in the threefold structure of the single bishop, plural presbyters, and plural deacons, the celebration of the Eucharist is assigned to the bishop alone; the bishop may delegate others when he goes away. At the Last Supper, Jesus says to those present, who were or included the Twelve Apostles, "Do this in remembrance of me," Brown presumes that the Twelve were remembered as presiding at the Eucharist. But they could scarcely have been present at all the Eucharists of the first century, and no information in New Testament whether a person was regularly assigned to do this task and, if so, who that person was. After all the Church regulated and regularized the celebration of the Eucharist, as that was an inevitable establishment if communities were to be provided regularly with the 'bread of life', since it could not rely on gratuitous provision.
Objections to the transmission of grace theory.
According to William Griffith Thomas, some Protestants have objected that this theory is not explicitly found in Scripture, and the New Testament uses 'bishop' and 'presbyter' as alternative names for the same office. Michael Ramsey argued it is not clearly found in the writings of the Fathers before Augustine in the fourth century and there were attempts to read it back as implicit in earlier writers.
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For example, C. K. Barrett points out that the Pastoral Epistles are concerned that ministers of the generation of Timothy and Titus should pass on the doctrine they had received to the third generation. According to Barrett, teaching and preaching are "the main, almost the only, activities of ministry". He argues that in Clement of Rome ministerial activity is liturgical: the undifferentiated 'presbyter-bishops' are to "make offerings to the Lord at the right time and in the right places" something which is simply not defined by the evangelists. He mentions the change in the use of sacrificial language as a more significant still: for Paul the Eucharist is a receiving of gifts from God, the Christian sacrifice is the offering of one's body.
Moving on to Ignatius of Antioch, Barrett states that a sharp distinction is found between 'presbyter' and 'bishop': the latter now stands out as "an isolated figure" who is to be obeyed and without whom it is not lawful to baptise or hold a love-feast. He points out that when Ignatius writes to the Romans, there is no mention of a bishop of the Roman Church, "which we may suppose had not yet adopted the monarchical episcopate". Jalland comes to a similar conclusion and locates the change from the "polyepiscopacy" of the house church model in Rome, to monepiscopacy as occurring before the middle of the second century.
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Similar objections are voiced by Harvey A.E. who comments that there is a "strong and ancient tradition" that the presence of an ordained man is necessary for the celebration of the Eucharist. But, according to him, there is "certainly no evidence for this view in the New Testament" and in the case of Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch the implication is not that it be celebrated by anyone else, but that it not. Harvey says in the third century this "concern for propriety" begins to be displaced by the concept of 'power' to do so which means that in the absence of such a man it is "literally impossible" for a Eucharist to be celebrated.
Apostolicity as doctrinal and related continuity.
Some Protestant denominations, not including Scandinavian Lutherans, Anglicans and Moravians, deny the need of maintaining episcopal continuity with the early Church, holding that the role of the apostles was that, having been chosen directly by Jesus as witnesses of his resurrection, they were to be the "special instruments of the Holy Spirit in founding and building up the Church". Anglican theologian E. A. Litton argues that the Church is "built upon 'the foundation of the Prophets and Apostles', but a foundation does not repeat itself"; therefore he says that when the apostles died, they were replaced by their writings. To share with the apostles the same faith, to believe their word as found in the Scriptures, to receive the same Holy Spirit, is to many Protestants the only meaningful "continuity". The most meaningful "apostolic succession" for them, then, is a "faithful succession" of apostolic teaching.
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Max Thurian, before his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1988, described the classic Reformed/Presbyterian concept of apostolic succession in the following terms. "The Christian ministry is not derived from the people but from the pastors; a scriptural ordinance provides for this ministry being renewed by the ordination of a presbyter by presbyters; this ordinance originates with the apostles, who were themselves presbyters, and through them it goes back to Christ as its source.". Then he continued:
"it does not guarantee the continuity and faithfulness of the Church. A purely historical or mechanical succession of ministers, bishops or pastors would not mean "ipso facto" true apostolic succession in the church, Reformed tradition, following authentic Catholic tradition, distinguishes four realities which make up the true apostolic succession, symbolized, but not absolutely guaranteed, by ministerial succession." At the same time Thurian argued that the realities form a "composite faithfulness" and are (i) "perseverance in the apostolic doctrine"; (ii) "the will to proclaim God's word"; (iii) "communion in the fundamental continuity of the Church, the Body of Christ, the faithful celebration of Baptism and the Eucharist"; (iv) "succession in the laying on of hands, the sign of ministerial continuity".
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According to Walter Kasper, the Reformed-Catholic dialogue came to belief that there is an apostolic succession which is important to the life of the Church, though both sides distinguish the meaning of that succession. Besides, the dialogue states that apostolic succession "consists at least in continuity of apostolic doctrine, but this is not in opposition to succession through continuity of ordained ministry". While the Lutheran-Catholic dialogue distinguished between apostolic succession in faith (in substantive meaning) and apostolic succession as ministerial succession of bishops, it agreed that "succession in the sense of the succession of ministers must be seen within the succession of the whole church in the apostolic faith".
The Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church asserts that apostolic succession means something more than just a transmission of authorities; it witnesses to the apostolic faith from the same apostolic faith, and in communion with other churches (attached to the apostolic communion). Apostolic tradition deals with the community, not only an ordained bishop as an isolated person. Since the bishop, once ordained, becomes the guarantor of apostolicity and successor of the apostles; he joins all the bishops, thus maintaining "episkope" of the local churches derived from the college of the apostles.
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Churches claiming apostolic succession.
Churches that claim some form of episcopal apostolic succession, dating back to the apostles or to leaders from the apostolic era, include:
Those Lutheran churches, as well as the Anglican Communion and other Anglican denominations , that claim apostolic succession exclusively practice episcopal ordination. While some Anglicans claim it for their communion, their views are often nuanced and there is widespread reluctance to 'unchurch' Christian bodies which lack it. After the English Reformation, Anglicanism "followed the major continental Reformers in their doctrine of the true church, identifiable by the authentic ministry of word and sacrament, in their rejection of the jurisdiction of the pope, and in their alliance with the civil authority ('the magistrate')". The Church of England historically recognized as true churches the Continental Reformed Churches, participating in the Synod of Dort in 1618–1619.
Roman Catholics recognize the validity of the apostolic successions of the bishops, and therefore the rest of the clergy, of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East, Old Catholics (except the ordination of women), and Polish National Catholic Church. The Orthodox generally recognize Roman Catholic clerical orders as being of apostolic lineage, but have a different concept of the apostolic succession as it exists outside the canonical borders of the Eastern Orthodox Church, extending the term only to bishops who have maintained communion, received ordination from a line of apostolic bishops, and preserved the catholic faith once delivered through the apostles and handed down as holy tradition. The lack of apostolic succession through bishops is the primary basis on which Protestant denominations (barring some like Lutherans and Anglicans) are not called "churches", in the proper sense, by the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, the latter referring to them as "ecclesial communities" in the official documents of the Second Vatican Council.
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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also claims apostolic succession. According to Latter-day Saint tradition, in 1829, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery received the priesthood from a visit from heaven of John the Baptist, conferring the Aaronic priesthood, followed by Jesus' Apostles, Peter, James, and John, conferring the Melchizedek priesthood. After its establishment, each subsequent prophet and leader of the church have received the authority passed down by the laying on of hands, or through apostolic succession.
Apostolic founders.
An early understanding of apostolic succession is represented by the traditional beliefs of various churches, as organised around important episcopal sees, to have been founded by specific apostles. On the basis of these traditions, the churches hold they have inherited specific authority, doctrines or practices on the authority of their founding apostle(s), which is understood to be continued by the bishops of the apostolic throne of the church that each founded and whose original leader he was. Thus:
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