Jean- Baptiste Lully

Jean-Baptiste de Lully (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃batist də lyˈli]; Italian: Giovanni Battista Lulli; 28 November 1632 – 22 March 1687) was an Italian-born French composer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered the chief master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in 1661.

Lully, son of a working-class miller, was born in Florence, Italy. Lully had little education, but he learned basic techniques on the guitar, originally taught by a Franciscan friar of Florence. Later in France, he learned how to play the violin, and to dance. In 1646, he was discovered by Roger de Lorraine, the chevalier de Guise, son of Charles, Duke of Guise, and was taken to France, where he entered the services of Mademoiselle de Montpensier (la Grande Mademoiselle) as a scullery-boy and Italian-language teacher. With the help of this princess, his talent increased. He studied the theory of music under Nicolas Métru. It has been said that a scurrilous song on his patroness (the doggerel he set to music refers to a "sigh" she produced while at stool) resulted in his dismissal. It is far more likely that he did not want to moulder out in the provinces with the exiled princess.^]
He came into Louis XIV's service in late 1652, early 1653 as a dancer. He composed some music for the Ballet de la nuit, which pleased the king immensely. He was appointed as the composer of instrumental music to the king, and placed at the head of the Petits Violons, the kings private violin band. In 1661, the King appointed Lully the Surintendant de la musique de la chambre du roi, which brought the twenty-four violons of the Grand Bande of Les Vingt-quatre Violons du Roi under Lully's command.

                                        

Lully composed many ballets for the King during the 1650s and 1660s, in which the King and Lully himself danced. He also had tremendous success composing the music for the comedies of Molière, including Le Mariage forcé (1664), L'Amour médecin (1665), and Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670). It was when he met Molière that together they created the comédie-ballet. Louis XIV's interest in ballet waned as he aged, and his dancing ability declined (his last performance was in 1670) and so Lully pursued opera. He bought the privilege for opera from Pierre Perrin and, with the backing of Jean-Baptiste Colbert and the king, created a new privilege which essentially gave Lully complete control of all music performed in France until his death in 1687.

Williams Shakespeare

    William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564; died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.  He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.

     Shakespeare's work has made a lasting impression on later theatre and literature. In particular, he expanded the dramatic potential of characterisation, plot, language, and genre. Until Romeo and Juliet, for example, romance had not been viewed as a worthy topic for tragedy. Soliloquies had been used mainly to convey information about characters or events; but Shakespeare used them to explore characters' minds. His work heavily influenced later poetry. The Romantic poets attempted to revive Shakespearean verse drama, though with little success. Critic George Steiner described all English verse dramas from Coleridge to Tennyson as "feeble variations on Shakespearean themes." William Shakespeare

The legend of atlantis

Atlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC. After a failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean "in a single day and night of misfortune". The possible existence of a genuine Atlantis was discussed throughout classical antiquity, but it was usually rejected and occasionally parodied by later authors. Alan Cameron states: "It is only in modern times that people have taken the Atlantis         history seriously; no one did so in antiquity".  Most of the historically proposed locations are in or near the Mediterranean Sea: islands such as Sardinia, Crete and Santorini, Sicily, Cyprus, and Malta; land-based cities or states such as Troy, Tartessos, and Tantalus (in the province of Manisa), Turkey; Israel-Sinai or Canaan; and northwestern Africa.               

 \

 Where was Atlantis ? This is where the believers are divided. None of the explanations put forward by Atlantologists stay 100% true to Plato's description. Major pieces of his description are often conveniently overlooked so that a researcher's particular theory makes more sense. For example, the location of Atlantis is quite clearly described by Plato, but researchers have nonetheless "found" Atlantis pretty much everywhere else.

In the fifth century BC the Greek philosopher Plato describes the disappearance of the island of Atlantis, basing his tale on the account of Solon in the sixth century BC. Solon in turn had received his information from Egyptian priests. Plato’s account, written sometime around 360 BC, is in part as follows:

" Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent . . . But, there occurred violent earthquakes and floods, and in a single day and night of misfortune. . . the island of Atlantis . . . disappeared in the depths of the sea."   Atlantis

Different types of Music

Do you love music? I sure do. There is actually way more types of music than just rock, pop, hip-hop, rap, and country. There is blues, jazz, the late 20th century the early 20th century,the romantic period, etc. I don't really like the older types of music. Like the blues and jazz, because I don't like how the texture stays one way in most of the music. I mean like if the song has thin and thick texture it's okay but if it goes back and forth it kinda gets old. I don't think the romantic period was all that fun either. I thought it was kinda weird, like the music really didn't sound to me like it was romantic. The texture, in most of the songs, was different and they changed.