decorative arts produced during the regency of George, prince of Wales, and the opening years of the 19th century as well as his entire reign as King George IV of England, ending in 1830. The major source of inspiration for Regency taste was found in Greek and Roman antiquity, from which designers borrowed both structural and ornamental elements. The classical revival of Regency style, emphasizing purity of detail and structure, adhered to a stricter archaeological interpretation of antique modes than either the Neoclassicism of the 18th century or the concurrent French Empire style.

An exuberant taste for Egyptian motifs resulted from the Napoleonic expeditions to Egypt in 1798 and became part of the Regency fashion. Variations in the Regency period also produced a resurgence of the Chinese theme seen in imitation bamboo and in painted and “japanned” black and gold lacquer pieces, most notably at Brighton Pavilion, where the Prince ordered its use. Another royal inclination produced the taste for French furniture, especially the type ornamented with brass inlay marquetry. A later trend foreshadowed the Victorian styles to follow.

The elaboration of ornament on the flat surfaces of Regency furniture derived from the rich contrast of exotic wood veneers and application of metals or painting rather than extensive carving or complicated contours. A strong feeling for utility combined with visually pleasing elements and an integration of architecture, interior design, and furniture is characteristic.

Architects John Nash, Henry Holland, Charles H. Tatham, and Thomas Hope were the principal arbiters of Regency taste. Hope, Thomas Sheraton and George Smith published designs for Regency furniture.

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the period of English decorative arts during the reign (1702–14) of Queen Anne. The term applies to the style that began to evolve during the rule of King William III of England, reached its primacy during the reign of Queen Anne, and persisted after George I ascended the throne. The period also has been called “the age of walnut” because that wood was used almost exclusively in furniture of the time, replacing oak—which, however, was still in use for paneling.

The single most distinctive feature of Queen Anne furniture is the use of the cabriole leg, which is shaped in the form of a double curve—the upper part being convex and the lower part concave—and ends either in a claw-and-ball or paw foot. After 1710, improved design and woodworking created a still further sophistication in silhouette. The Queen Anne chair is identifiable as well for the splat back, which is curved in order to fit the hollow of the spine.

The custom of social tea drinking that developed in the Queen Anne period produced a need for small movable chairs and tables, as well as for china cabinets. Bookcases and secretaries were also designed in the Queen Anne style. Marquetry, inlay, veneering, and lacquerwork were all skillfully applied to the decorative furniture of Queen Anne design. Typical motifs in this ornamentation are scallop shells, scrolls, Oriental figures, animals, and plants. The Queen Anne style of furniture design became extremely popular among the upper classes in Britain's North American colonies.

Though also known as Queen Anne, the red brick architectural style of the 1870s in Great Britain and the United States had no real connection with the original Queen Anne period.

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visual arts produced during the reign of the British house of Stuart; that is, from 1603 to 1714 (excepting the interregnum of Oliver Cromwell). Although the Stuart period included a number of specific stylistic movements, such as Jacobean, Carolean, Restoration, William and Mary, and Queen Anne, there are certain common characteristics that can be said to describe Stuart style. The English artists of the period were influenced by the heavy German and Flemish Baroque but gradually gave way to the academic compromise inspired by Italian Palladianism. For much of the period, artists in England looked for inspiration to contemporary movements (primarily the Baroque) on the Continent—especially in Italy, Flanders, and France.

Under James I (1603–25) the arts were in a period of transition, not fully recovered from the ossification that characterized the last years of the long reign of Elizabeth I. It took 20 years for growth to recommence. The most forward-looking artist of James's reign was Inigo Jones, who, as Surveyor of the King's Works, designed a number of royal buildings in the Italian Renaissance style. The Banqueting House (1619–22) at Whitehall is only one of his masterpieces. The reign of Charles I (1625–49) was as exciting artistically as it was disastrous politically. Jones continued as the crown's architect and designed a number of the sets for the Stuart masques. The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens came to England, was knighted, and designed an elaborate ceiling that was installed at the Banqueting House. Another Flemish painter, Sir Anthony Van Dyck, followed Rubens and created an English portrait type that was to serve as the model for two centuries.

When Charles II returned in 1660 from an exile spent chiefly in France, French taste and ideas began to dominate English arts. The outstanding achievement of Charles's reign was the rebuilding of London (destroyed by fire in 1666) under Sir Christopher Wren. Wren's blending of Renaissance, Italian Baroque, and contemporary French elements created a personal architecture that greatly influenced his followers until a reaction set in during the Georgian period (see Georgian style). Sir Peter Lely, the portraitist of the Restoration court, worked in a style close to that of Van Dyck but more superficial.

Under William and Mary (1689–1702) and Anne (1702–14) a number of noteworthy architectural monuments were constructed. The fine furniture and other decorative arts created during this period reflected the growing skill of English craftsmen.

"Stuart style."Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD .[Accessed December  19, 2006].

(from Latin Jacobus, “James”), period of visual and literary arts during the reign of James I of England (1603–25). The distinctions between the early Jacobean and the preceding Elizabethan styles are subtle ones, often merely a question of degree, for although the dynasty changed, there was no distinct stylistic transition.

In architecture the Jacobean age is characterized by a combination of motifs from the late Perpendicular Gothic period with clumsy and imperfectly understood classical details, in which the influence of Flanders was strong. The Tudor pointed arch is common, and in interior work there is considerable simple Tudor paneling and an occasional use of Perpendicular vaulting forms. Doorways, fireplaces, and the like are usually framed with classical forms, and both outside and inside there is a wide use of terms, pilasters, S-scrolls, and the type of pierced, flat ornament known as strapwork. Jacobean furniture pieces are usually of oak and are notable for their heavy forms and bulbous legs. It was during the Jacobean period, however, that the designer Inigo Jones introduced the first fully realized Renaissance classical style of architecture into England with his design of the Banqueting House, Whitehall (1619–22). Jones's style was based on the theories and works of Andrea Palladio, and Palladianism subsequently became a widely adopted architectural style in England.

During this period, painting and sculpture lagged behind architecture in accomplishments because there was no outstanding practitioner of either. The chief of the early Jacobean painters was the talented miniaturist Isaac Oliver. Most of the Jacobean portraitists, like the sculptors, were foreign-born or foreign-influenced—for example, Marcus Gheerhaerts the Younger, Paul van Somer, Cornelius Johnson, and Daniel Mytens. Their efforts were later surpassed by those of the Flemish painters Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony Van Dyck, who worked in England during the reign of Charles I.

In literature, too, many themes and patterns were carried over from the preceding Elizabethan era. Though rich, Jacobean literature is often darkly questioning. William Shakespeare's greatest tragedies were written between about 1601 and 1607. Other Jacobean dramatic writers became preoccupied with the problem of evil: the plays of John Webster, Cyril Tourneur, Thomas Middleton, and William Rowley induce all the terror of tragedy but little of its pity. Comedy was best represented by the acid satire of Ben Jonson and by the varied works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. Another feature of drama at this time, however, was the development of the extravagant courtly entertainment known as the masque, which reached its literary peak in the works of Jonson and Inigo Jones. Jonson's comparatively lucid and graceful verse and the writings of his Cavalier successors constituted one of the two main streams of Jacobean poetry. The other poetic stream lay in the intellectual complexity of John Donne and the Metaphysical poets. In prose, Francis Bacon and Robert Burton were among the writers who displayed a new toughness and flexibility of style. The monumental prose achievement of the era was the great King James Version of the Bible, which first appeared in 1611.

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Presidency

Nixon won the Republican nomination for president in 1968 by putting together a coalition that included Southern conservatives led by Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. In exchange for Southern support, Nixon promised to appoint “strict constructionists” to the federal judiciary, to name a Southerner to the Supreme Court, to oppose court-ordered busing, and to choose a vice presidential candidate acceptable to the South. With Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew as his running mate, Nixon campaigned against Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey and third-party candidate George Wallace on a vague platform promising an honourable peace in Vietnam—Nixon said that he had a “secret plan” to end the war—the restoration of law and order in the cities, a crackdown on illegal drugs, and an end to the draft. Humphrey, who as Lyndon B. Johnson's vice president was heavily burdened by the latter's unpopular Vietnam policies, called for an end to the bombing of North Vietnam as “an acceptable risk for peace.” Johnson himself halted the bombing on October 31, less than one week before the election, in preparation for direct negotiations with Hanoi. Had he taken this step earlier, Humphrey might have won the election, as polls showed him gaining rapidly on Nixon in the final days of the campaign. Nixon won the election by a narrow margin, 31.7 million popular votes to Humphrey's nearly 30.9 million; the electoral vote was 301 to 191. (See primary source document: First Inaugural Address.)

 

Domestic policies

Despite expectations from some observers that Nixon would be a “do-nothing” president, his administration undertook a number of important reforms in welfare policy, civil rights, law enforcement, the environment, and other areas. Nixon's proposed Family Assistance Program (FAP), intended to replace the service-oriented Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), would have provided working and nonworking poor families with a guaranteed annual income—though Nixon preferred to call it a “negative income tax.” Although the measure was defeated in the Senate, its failure helped to generate support for incremental legislation incorporating similar ideas—such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI), which provided a guaranteed income to the elderly, the blind, and the disabled; and automatic cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for Social Security recipients—and it also prompted the expansion and improvement of existing programs, such as food stamps and health insurance for low-income families. In the area of civil rights, Nixon's administration instituted so-called “set aside” policies to reserve a certain percentage of jobs for minorities on federally funded construction projects—the first “affirmative action” program. Although Nixon opposed school busing and delayed taking action on desegregation until federal court orders forced his hand, his administration drastically reduced the percentage of African American students attending all-black schools. In addition, funding for many federal civil rights agencies, in particular the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), was substantially increased while Nixon was in office. In response to pressure from consumer and environmental groups, Nixon proposed legislation that created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). His revenue-sharing program, called “New Federalism,” provided state and local governments with billions of federal tax dollars.

Prior to 1973 the most important of Nixon's domestic problems was the economy. In order to reduce inflation he initially tried to restrict federal spending, but beginning in 1971 his budget proposals contained deficits of several billion dollars, the largest in American history up to that time. Nixon's New Economic Policy, announced in August 1971 in response to continuing inflation, increasing unemployment, and a deteriorating trade deficit, included an 8 percent devaluation of the dollar, new surcharges on imports, and unprecedented peacetime controls on wages and prices. These policies produced temporary improvements in the economy by the end of 1972, but, once price and wage controls were lifted, inflation returned with a vengeance, reaching 8.8 percent in 1973 and 12.2 percent in 1974.

Foreign affairs

Vietnam War

Aiming to achieve “peace with honor” in the Vietnam War, Nixon gradually reduced the number of U.S. military personnel in Vietnam. Under his policy of “Vietnamization,” combat roles were transferred to South Vietnamese troops, who nevertheless remained heavily dependent on American supplies and air support. At the same time, however, Nixon resumed the bombing of North Vietnam (suspended by President Johnson in October 1968) and expanded the air and ground war to neighbouring Cambodia and Laos. In the spring of 1970, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces attacked North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia, which prompted widespread protests in the United States; one of these demonstrations—at Kent State University on May 4, 1970—ended tragically when soldiers of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of about 2,000 protesters, killing four and wounding nine.

After intensive negotiations between National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese Foreign Minister Le Duc Tho, the two sides reached an agreement in October 1972, and Kissinger announced, “Peace is at hand.” But the South Vietnamese raised objections, and the agreement quickly broke down. An intensive 11-day bombing campaign of Hanoi and other North Vietnamese cities in late December (the “Christmas bombings”) was followed by more negotiations, and a new agreement was finally reached in January 1973 and signed in Paris. It included an immediate cease-fire, the withdrawal of all American military personnel, the release of all prisoners of war, and an international force to keep the peace. For their work on the accord, Kissinger and Tho were awarded the 1973 Nobel Prize for Peace (though Tho declined the honour).

 

China and the Soviet Union

Nixon's most significant achievement in foreign affairs may have been the establishment of direct relations with the People's Republic of China after a 21-year estrangement. Following a series of low-level diplomatic contacts in 1970 and the lifting of U.S. trade and travel restrictions the following year, the Chinese indicated that they would welcome high-level discussions, and Nixon sent his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, to China for secret talks. The thaw in relations became apparent with the “ping-pong diplomacy” conducted by American and Chinese table-tennis teams in reciprocal visits in 1971–72. Nixon's visit to China in February–March 1972, the first by an American president while in office, concluded with the Shanghai Communiqué, in which the United States formally recognized the “one-China” principle—that there is only one China, and that Taiwan is a part of China.

The rapprochement with China, undertaken in part to take advantage of the growing Sino-Soviet rift in the late 1960s, gave Nixon more leverage in his dealings with the Soviet Union. By 1971 the Soviets were more amenable to improved relations with the United States, and in May 1972 Nixon paid a state visit to Moscow to sign 10 formal agreements, the most important of which were the nuclear-arms limitation treaties known as SALT I (based on the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks conducted between the United States and the Soviet Union beginning in 1969) and a memorandum, the Basic Principles of U.S.-Soviet Relations, summarizing the new relationship between the two countries in the new era of détente.

 

The Middle East and Latin America

Nixon was less successful in the Middle East, where his administration's comprehensive plan for peace, the Rogers Plan (named for Nixon's first secretary of state, William Rogers), was rejected by both Israel and the Soviet Union. After the 1973 Arab-Israeli war (the “Yom Kippur War”), Kissinger's back-and-forth visits between the Arab states and Israel (dubbed “shuttle diplomacy”) helped to broker disengagement agreements but did little to improve U.S. relations with the Arabs.

Fearing communist revolution in Latin America, the Nixon administration helped to undermine the coalition government of Chile's Marxist President Salvador Allende, elected in 1970. After Allende nationalized American-owned mining companies, the administration restricted Chile's access to international economic assistance and discouraged private investment, increased aid to the Chilean military, cultivated secret contacts with anti-Allende police and military officials, and undertook various other destabilizing measures, including funneling millions of dollars in covert payments to Chilean opposition groups in 1970–73. In September 1973 Allende was overthrown in a military coup led by army commander in chief General Augusto Pinochet.

 

Watergate and other scandals

Renominated with Agnew in 1972, Nixon defeated his Democratic challenger, the liberal Senator George S. McGovern, in one of the largest landslide victories in the history of American presidential elections: 46.7 million to 28.9 million in the popular vote and 520 to 17 in the electoral vote. (See primary source document: Second Inaugural Address.) Despite his resounding victory, Nixon would soon be forced to resign in disgrace in the worst political scandal in United States history.

The Watergate Scandal stemmed from illegal activities by Nixon and his aides related to the burglary and wiretapping of the national headquarters of the Democratic Party at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C.; eventually it came to encompass allegations of other loosely related crimes committed both before and after the break-in. The five men involved in the burglary, who were hired by the Republican Party's Committee to Re-elect the President, were arrested and charged on June 17, 1972. In the days following the arrests, Nixon secretly directed the White House counsel, John Dean, to oversee a “cover-up” to conceal the administration's involvement. Nixon also obstructed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in its inquiry and authorized secret cash payments to the Watergate burglars in an effort to prevent them from implicating the administration.

Several major newspapers investigated the possible involvement of the White House in the burglary. Leading the pack was The Washington Post and its two hungry newshounds, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, whose stories were based largely on information from an unnamed source called “Deep Throat”; the mysterious identity of Deep Throat became a news story in its own right and continues to be speculated on to this day. In February 1973 a special Senate committee—the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, chaired by Senator Sam Ervin—was established to look into the Watergate affair. In televised committee hearings, Dean accused the president of involvement in the cover-up, and others testified to illegal activities by the administration and the campaign staff, including the use of federal agencies to harass Nixon's perceived enemies (many of whose names appeared on an “enemies list” of prominent politicians, journalists, entertainers, academics, and others) and acts of politically inspired espionage by a special White House investigative unit known as the “plumbers.”

In July the committee learned that in 1969 Nixon had installed a recording system in the White House and that all the president's conversations in the Oval Office had been recorded. When the tapes were subpoenaed by Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor appointed to investigate the Watergate affair, Nixon refused to comply, offering to provide summary transcripts instead. Cox rejected the offer. Then, in a series of episodes that came to be known as the Saturday Night Massacre, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox, and Richardson resigned rather than comply. Nixon then fired Richardson's assistant, William Ruckelshaus, when he too refused to fire Cox. Cox was finally removed by Solicitor General Robert Bork, though a federal district court subsequently ruled the action illegal.

Amid calls for his impeachment, Nixon agreed to the appointment of another special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, and promised that he would not fire him without congressional consent. After protesting in a news conference that “I am not a crook,” Nixon released seven of the nine tapes requested by Cox, one of which contained a suspicious gap of 18 and one-half minutes. Although damning, the tapes did not contain the “smoking gun” that would prove that the president himself ordered the break-in or attempted to obstruct justice. Jaworski later subpoenaed 64 tapes that Nixon continued to withhold on grounds of “executive privilege,” and in July 1974 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Nixon's claims of executive privilege were invalid. By that time the House Judiciary Committee had already voted to recommend three articles of impeachment, relating to obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and failure to comply with congressional subpoenas. On August 5, in compliance with the Supreme Court's ruling, Nixon submitted transcripts of a conversation taped on June 23, 1972, in which he discussed a plan to use the Central Intelligence Agency to block the FBI's investigation of the Watergate break-in. The smoking gun had finally been found.

Faced with the near-certain prospect of impeachment by the House and conviction in the Senate, Nixon announced his resignation (see original text) on the evening of August 8, 1974, effective at noon the next day. He was succeeded by Gerald Ford, whom he had appointed vice president in 1973 after Agnew resigned his office amid charges of having committed bribery, extortion, and tax evasion during his tenure as governor of Maryland. Nixon was pardoned by President Ford on September 8, 1974.

 

Retirement and death

Nixon retired with his wife to the seclusion of his estate in San Clemente, California. He wrote RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (1978) and several books on international affairs and American foreign policy, modestly rehabilitating his public reputation and earning a role as an elder statesman and foreign-policy expert. Nixon spent his last years campaigning for American political support and financial aid for Russia and the other former Soviet republics. Nixon died of a massive stroke in New York City in April 1994, 10 months after his wife's death from lung cancer. In ceremonies after his death, President Bill Clinton and other dignitaries praised him for his diplomatic achievements. He was buried beside his wife at his birthplace.

 

"Nixon, Richard M.."Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD .[Accessed December  19, 2006].

Nixon, Richard M.
born January 9, 1913, Yorba Linda, California, U.S.
died April 22, 1994, New York, New York

 

in full  Richard Milhous Nixon  37th president of the United States (1969–74), who, faced with almost certain impeachment for his role in the Watergate Scandal, became the first American president to resign from office. He was also vice president (1953–61) under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. (For a discussion of the history and nature of the presidency, see presidency of the United States of America. See also Cabinet of President Richard M. Nixon.)

 

Early life and congressional career

Nixon was the second of five children born to Frank Nixon, a service station owner and grocer, and Hannah Milhous Nixon, whose devout Quakerism would exert a strong influence on her son. Nixon graduated from Whittier College in Whittier, California, in 1934 and from Duke University Law School in Durham, North Carolina, in 1937. Returning to Whittier to practice law, he met Thelma Catherine (“Pat”) Ryan (Pat Nixon), a teacher and amateur actress, after the two were cast in the same play at a local community theatre. The couple married in 1940.

In August 1942, after a brief stint in the Office of Price Administration in Washington, D.C., Nixon joined the navy, serving as an aviation ground officer in the Pacific and rising to the rank of lieutenant commander. Following his return to civilian life in 1946, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, defeating five-term liberal Democratic Congressman Jerry Voorhis in a campaign that relied heavily on innuendos about Voorhis's alleged communist sympathies. Running for reelection in 1948, Nixon entered and won both the Democratic and Republican primaries, which thus eliminated the need to participate in the general election. As a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAAC) in 1948–50, he took a leading role in the investigation of Alger Hiss, a former State Department official accused of spying for the Soviet Union. In dramatic testimony before the committee, Whittaker Chambers, a journalist and former spy, claimed that in 1937 Hiss had given him classified State Department papers for transmission to a Soviet agent. Hiss vehemently denied the charge but was later convicted of perjury. Nixon's hostile questioning of Hiss during the committee hearings did much to make his national reputation as a fervent anticommunist.

In 1950 Nixon successfully ran for the United States Senate against Democratic Representative Helen Gahagan Douglas. After his campaign distributed “pink sheets” comparing Douglas's voting record to that of Vito Marcantonio, a left-wing representative from New York, the Independent Review, a small Southern California newspaper, nicknamed him “Tricky Dick.” The epithet later became a favourite among Nixon's opponents.

 

Vice presidency

At the Republican convention in 1952, Nixon won nomination as vice president on a ticket with Eisenhower, largely because of his anticommunist credentials but also because Republicans thought he could draw valuable support in the West. In the midst of the campaign, the New York Post reported that Nixon had been maintaining a secret “slush fund” provided by contributions from a group of Southern California businessmen. Eisenhower was willing to give Nixon a chance to clear himself but emphasized that Nixon needed to emerge from the crisis “as clean as a hound's tooth.” On September 23, 1952, Nixon delivered a nationally televised address, the so-called “Checkers” speech, in which he acknowledged the existence of the fund but denied that any of it had been used improperly. To demonstrate that he had not enriched himself in office, he listed his family's financial assets and liabilities in embarrassing detail, noting that his wife, Pat, unlike the wives of so many Democratic politicians, did not own a fur coat but only “a respectable Republican cloth coat.” The speech is perhaps best remembered for its maudlin conclusion, in which Nixon admitted accepting one political gift—a cocker spaniel that his six-year-old daughter, Tricia, had named Checkers. “Regardless of what they say about it,” he declared, “we are going to keep it.” Although Nixon initially thought that the speech had been a failure, the public responded favourably, and a reassured Eisenhower told him, “You're my boy.” The Eisenhower-Nixon ticket defeated the Democratic candidates, Adlai E. Stevenson and John Sparkman, with just under 34 million popular votes to their 27.3 million; the vote in the electoral college was 442 to 89.

During his two terms as vice president, Nixon campaigned actively for Republican candidates but otherwise did not assume significant responsibilities. (Asked at a press conference to describe Nixon's contributions to his administration's policies, Eisenhower replied: “If you give me a week, I might think of one.”) Nevertheless, his performance in office helped to make the role of vice president more prominent and to enhance its constitutional importance. In 1955–57 Eisenhower suffered a series of serious illnesses, including a heart attack, an attack of ileitis, and a stroke. While Eisenhower was incapacitated, Nixon was called on to chair several cabinet sessions and National Security Council meetings, though real power lay in a close circle of Eisenhower advisers, from which Nixon had always been excluded. After his stroke, Eisenhower formalized an agreement with Nixon on the powers and responsibilities of the vice president in the event of presidential disability; the agreement was accepted by later administrations until the adoption of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution in 1967. Nixon's vice presidency was also noteworthy for his many well-publicized trips abroad, including a 1958 tour of Latin America—a trip that journalist Walter Lippmann termed a “diplomatic Pearl Harbor”—during which his car was stoned, slapped, and spat upon by anti-American protesters, and a 1959 visit to the Soviet Union, highlighted by an impromptu profanity-filled “kitchen debate” in Moscow with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

 

Election of 1960

Nixon received his party's presidential nomination in 1960 and was opposed in the general election by Democrat John F. Kennedy. The campaign was memorable for an unprecedented series of four televised debates between the two candidates. Although Nixon performed well rhetorically, Kennedy managed to convey an appealing image of youthfulness, energy, and physical poise, which convinced many that he had won the debates. In the closest presidential contest since Grover Cleveland defeated James G. Blaine in 1884, Nixon lost to Kennedy by fewer than 120,000 popular votes. Citing irregularities in Illinois and Texas, many observers questioned whether Kennedy had legally won those states, and some prominent Republicans—including Eisenhower—even urged Nixon to contest the results. He chose not to, however, declaring that

I could think of no worse example for nations abroad, who for the first time were trying to put free electoral procedures into effect, than that of the United States wrangling over the results of our presidential election, and even suggesting that the presidency itself could be stolen by thievery at the ballot box.

Nixon's supporter's and critics alike, both then and later, praised him for the dignity and unselfishness with which he handled defeat and the suspicion that vote fraud had cost him the presidency.

Nixon then retired to private life in California, where he wrote a best-selling book, Six Crises (1961). In 1962 he reluctantly decided to run for governor of California but lost to incumbent Democrat Edmund G. (“Pat”) Brown. In a memorable postelection news conference, he announced his retirement from politics and attacked the press, declaring that it would not “have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.” He moved to New York City to practice law and over the next few years built a reputation as an expert in foreign affairs and a leader who could appeal to both moderates and conservatives in his party.

 

"Nixon, Richard M.."Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD .[Accessed December  19, 2006].

Velázquez, Diego
baptized June 6, 1599, Sevilla, Spain
died August 6, 1660, Madrid

 

in full  Diego Rodríguez de Silva Velázquez  the most important Spanish painter of the 17th century, a giant of Western art.

Velázquez is universally acknowledged as one of the world's greatest artists. The naturalistic style in which he was trained provided a language for the expression of his remarkable power of observation in portraying both the living model and still life. Stimulated by the study of 16th-century Venetian painting, he developed from a master of faithful likeness and characterization into the creator of masterpieces of visual impression unique in his time. With brilliant diversity of brushstrokes and subtle harmonies of colour, he achieved effects of form and texture, space, light, and atmosphere, that make him the chief forerunner of 19th-century French Impressionism.

The principal source of information about Velázquez's early career is the treatise Arte de la pintura (“The Art of Painting”), published in 1649 by his master and father-in-law Francisco Pacheco, who is more important as a biographer and theoretician than as a painter. The first complete biography of Velázquez appeared in the third volume (El Parnaso español; “The Spanish Parnassus”) of El museo pictórico y escala óptica (“The Pictorial Museum and Optical Scale”), published in 1724 by the court painter and art scholar Antonio Palomino. This was based on biographical notes made by Velázquez's pupil Juan de Alfaro, who was Palomino's patron. The number of personal documents is very small, and official documentation relating to his paintings is relatively rare. Since he seldom signed or dated his works, their identification and chronology has often to be based on stylistic evidence alone. Though many copies of his portaits were evidently made in his studio by assistants, his own production was not large and his surviving autograph works number fewer than 150. He is known to have worked slowly, and during his later years much of his time was occupied by his duties as a court official in Madrid.

 

Sevilla (Seville)

According to Palomino, Velázquez's first master was the Sevillian painter Francisco Herrera the Elder (c. 1576–1656). In 1611 he was formally apprenticed to Francisco Pacheco, whose daughter he married in 1618. “After five years of education and training,” Pacheco writes, “I married him to my daughter, moved by his virtue, integrity, and good parts and by the expectations of his disposition and great talent.” Although Pacheco was himself a mediocre Mannerist painter, it was through his teaching that Velázquez developed his early naturalistic style. “He worked from life,” writes Pacheco, “making numerous studies of his model in various poses and thereby he gained certainty in his portraiture.” He was not more than 20 when he painted the Water Seller of Seville (c. 1619), in which the control of the composition, colour, and light, the naturalness of the figures and their poses, and realistic still life already reveal his keen eye and prodigious facility with the brush. The strong modeling and sharp contrasts of light and shade of Velázquez's early illusionistic style closely resemble the technique of dramatic lighting called tenebrism, which was one of the innovations of the Italian painter Caravaggio (1573–1610). Velázquez's early subjects were mostly religious or genre (scenes of daily life). He popularized a new type of composition in Spanish painting, the bodegón, a kitchen scene with prominent still life, such as the Old Woman Frying Eggs. Sometimes the bodegones had religious scenes in the background, as in Christ in the House of Martha and Mary. The Adoration of the Magi is one of the few Sevillian paintings of Velázquez that have remained in Spain.

 

Court painter in Madrid

In 1622, a year after Philip IV came to the throne, Velázquez visited Madrid for the first time, in the hope of obtaining royal patronage. He painted a portait of the poet Luis de Góngora (1622), but there was no opportunity of portraying the king or queen. In the following year he was recalled to Madrid by the prime minister, Count Olivares, a fellow Sevillian and a future patron. Soon after his arrival he painted a portrait of Philip IV that won him immediate success. He was appointed court painter with a promise that no one else should portray the king. Pacheco describes an equestrian portrait of Philip (lost) painted soon afterward, “all taken from life, even the landscape”; the portrait was exhibited publicly “to the admiration of all the Court and the envy of members of the profession.” The envy of fellow artists, who accused Velázquez of only being able to paint heads, is said to have been the occasion of the king's ordering him to paint a historical subject, the Expulsion of the Moriscos (lost), in competition with other court painters. Velázquez was awarded the prize and the appointment in 1627 of gentleman usher to the king. Though he continued to paint other subjects, as court painter he was chiefly occupied in portraying members of the royal family and their entourage, and he painted numerous portraits of Philip IV during the course of his life. “The liberality and affability with which he is treated by such a great monarch is unbelievable,” writes Pacheco. “He has a workshop in his gallery and His Majesty has a key to it and a chair in order to watch him painting at leisure, nearly every day.”

Velázquez's position at the court gave him access to the royal collections, rich in paintings by the Venetian Renaissance master Titian (c. 1490–1576), who was to have more influence than any other artist on the development of his style. The full-length portraits of Philip IV (c. 1626) and his brother the Infante Don Carlos (c. 1626) are in the tradition of Spanish royal portraits established by Titian and are to some extent influenced by his style. In these portraits the detailed description and tenebrism of Velázquez's Sevillian paintings have been modified; only the faces and hands are accentuated and the dark figures stand out against a light background. In his later court portraits, Velázquez was to adopt something of the more elaborate decor and richer colouring of the Flemish Baroque master Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), whom he met during the latter's second visit to the Spanish court in 1628. Pacheco tells how Rubens praised Velázquez's works very highly because of their simplicity. Velázquez's painting of Bacchus, known as Los Borrachos (The Topers or The Triumph of Bacchus) seems to have been inspired by Titian and Rubens, but his realistic approach to the subject is characteristically Spanish and one that Velázquez was to preserve throughout his life.

 

First Italian journey

Velázquez's visit, with Rubens, to see the famous paintings in the royal monastery of the Escorial near Madrid is said by Palomino to have aroused his desire to go to Italy. Having obtained leave and two years' salary from the king and money and letters of recommendation from Olivares, he sailed from Barcelona to Genoa in August 1629. In letters from Italian ambassadors in Madrid he is referred to as a young portrait painter, favourite of the king and Olivares, who was going to Italy to study and to improve his painting. The visit did in fact have an important effect on his artistic evolution. He stopped in Venice, where Palomino says he made drawings after Tintoretto (1518–94), the master of late 16th-century Venetian painting, and then hurried on to Rome. Pacheco relates that he was given rooms in the Vatican palace, which he found very isolated. Having obtained permission to return to the Vatican to make drawings after Michelangelo's Last Judgment and the paintings of Raphael, he moved to the Villa Medici, which was “high and airy” and had “antique sculptures to copy.” An attack of fever obliged him later to move nearer to the Spanish ambassador. After a year in Rome he returned to Spain, stopping on the way in Naples; he arrived back in Madrid early in 1631.

None of Velázquez's Italian drawings appear to have survived. Of the few paintings that he made in Italy, a “famous portrait of himself” painted in Rome, mentioned by Pacheco, is possibly the “self-portrait” known only in replicas. The chief works of his Italian visit are the two “celebrated pictures” painted in Rome, which Palomino records he took back to Spain and offered to the king: Joseph's Bloody Coat Brought to Jacob and The Forge of Vulcan. These two monumental figure compositions are far removed from the limited realism in which he had been trained. As a result of his Italian studies, particularly of Venetian painting, his development in the treatment of space, perspective, light, and colour and his broader technique mark the beginning of a new phase in his lifelong pursuit of the truthful rendering of visual appearance.

 

Middle years

After his return from Italy, Velázquez entered upon the most productive period of his career. He took up again his chief office of portrait painter and was occasionally called on to represent mythological subjects for the decoration of the royal apartments. From now on his religious works are rare and individual. The devotional quality of his early Sevillian paintings finds moving expression in the Christ on the Cross, a composition of monumental simplicity and naturalness. In The Coronation of the Virgin the solemnity and dignity of the holy persons are set off by their voluminous, colourful robes in a composition of exceptional splendour specially fitting for a painting of the Queen of Heaven made to adorn the oratory of the queen of Spain.

For the decoration of the throne room of the new Buen Retiro palace, completed in 1635, Velázquez painted a series of royal equestrian portraits, following a tradition that goes back in Spain to Titian's portrait of Charles V at Mühlberg (1548) and was continued by Rubens. Velázquez's equestrian groups have a balance and poise closer to Titian's than to Rubens's Baroque compositions, and after his return from Italy, he achieved a three-dimensional effect without detailed drawing or strong contrasts of light and shade but with a broad technique of brushwork and natural outdoor lighting. The Surrender of Breda, Velázquez's famous contribution to the series of military triumphs painted for the same throne room, is his only surviving historical subject. Though the elaborate composition was based on a pictorial formula of Rubens, he creates a vivid impression of actuality and of human drama by means of accurate topographical details and the lifelike portraiture of the principal figures.

Though Velázquez frequently followed traditional compositions, particularly for his royal portraits, it was from no lack of ability to compose or invent. With his portraits of Philip IV (c. 1635), the Infante Fernando (c. 1632–35), and Prince Baltasar Carlos as huntsman, painted for the king's new hunting lodge, the Torre de la Parada, he created a new type of informal royal portrait. For the same place he painted hunting scenes of which Philip IV Hunting Wild Boar is possibly an example, and some classical subjects, including probably the portraitlike figures of Aesop and Menippus (1639–40). The portraits of court dwarfs, painted during the next few years, display the same impartial and discerning eye as those of royal and noble sitters, while the character of the dwarfs' deformities is revealed through their awkward, unconventional poses, their individual expressions, and by the exceptionally free and bold brushwork. The Lady with a Fan, one of the few informal portraits of women, is, on the other hand, remarkable for the subtle and delicate painting and for the sensitive portrayal of personal charm.

 

Second Italian journey

At the beginning of 1649 Velázquez left Spain on a second visit to Italy. This time he was on official business as gentleman of the bedchamber. He was given a carriage for pictures, possibly gifts from Philip IV to Pope Innocent X. The chief purpose of the journey was to buy paintings and antiques for the king for the decoration of new apartments in the royal palace and also to engage fresco painters to decorate the ceilings of the apartments and to reintroduce fresco painting into Spain. Again Velázquez found fresh inspiration in Italy, particularly from Titian. First he went to Venice, where he bought paintings by Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese. He then went on to Modena, where he saw the famous ducal collection, which included his own portrait of the duke of Modena, painted in Madrid in 1638. According to Palomino, he stopped in many other cities, including Bologna, where he contracted fresco painters to work in Madrid. Palomino recounts that Velázquez was befriended in Rome by eminent prelates and artists, including the French painter Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665) and Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), the leading Italian sculptor of the Baroque style. He gives a list of the antiques selected by Velázquez, from which it seems that he followed the tradition of great collectors since the 16th century: rather than inferior originals he chose casts of the most famous statues in Rome. “Without neglecting his other business he also did many paintings,” in addition to the portrait of Innocent X. Palomino relates that before portraying the pope, as an exercise in painting a head from life, Velázquez made the portrait of his mulatto slave, Juan de Pareja (freed by Velázquez in 1650). This is an exceptional unofficial portrait, unusually boldly painted, which creates a powerful effect of familiar and living likeness. In 1970 the sum of $5,544,000 was paid for this picture—at the time the highest price paid for a work of art at auction.

For the portrait of Innocent X, one of his most important official works, Velázquez followed a tradition for papal portraits created by Raphael in the likeness of Julius II (c. 1511–12) and later used by Titian in portraying Paul III and His Grandsons Ottavio and Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1546). The powerful head, the brilliant combinations of crimson of the curtain, the chair, and the cope are painted with fluent technique and almost imperceptible brushstrokes that go far beyond the late manner of Titian and announce the last stage in Velázquez's development in the direction of Impressionism. This portrait, which has long been Velázquez's most famous painting outside Spain, was copied innumerable times and won him immediate and lasting renown in Italy. In 1650 he was made a member of the Accademia di San Luca and of the Congregazione dei Virtuosi al Pantheon, Rome's two most prestigious organizations of artists. The portrait earned for him the pope's support for his application for membership of the most exclusive Spanish military order, though the difficulties arising from the fact that he was not of noble birth were so great that he did not receive the habit of the Order of Santiago until 1659.

The two small views of the Villa Medici, where Velázquez stayed during his first visit to Rome, must, for stylistic reasons, have been painted during his second visit. They are unique examples of pure landscape in his surviving work and among those of his achievements that foreshadow 19th-century Impressionism. The so-called Rokeby Venus was also probably painted in Italy and is one of the few representations of the female nude in Spanish painting before the 19th century. The theme of the toilet of Venus, the rich colouring and warm flesh tones, are inspired mainly by Titian and other Venetian painters. But Velázquez has characteristically made no attempt to disguise or idealize his model, and his superbly painted Venus is exceptional for his time as a lifelike portrayal of a living nude woman.

 

Last years

Velázquez returned to Madrid in the summer of 1651 with some of his purchases and was warmly welcomed by the king who, in the following year, appointed him chamberlain of the palace, an office that entailed the arrangement of the royal apartments and of the king's journeys. During his absence Philip had remarried, and the young queen Mariana of Austria with her children provided new subjects for him to portray. For his portraits of the queen (1652–53) and of the king's oldest daughter, the Infanta María Teresa (1652/53), he used similar compositional formulas, and numerous studio replicas of them were made. The royal ladies appear as doll-like figures with their enormous coiffures and farthingale hoops. The effect of form, texture, and ornament is achieved in Velázquez's late manner without any definition of detail, in a free, “sketchy” technique. The portraits of the young Infanta Margarita (1659) and Prince Felipe Próspero, similar in composition and manner, are among the most colourful of his works, and he most sensitively reveals the childlike character of his sitters behind the facade of royal dignity. Velázquez's late bust portraits of Philip IV (c. 1654 and c. 1656), of which many studio versions exist, are very different in character and are exceptional as royal portraits for their informal appearance. These last close-up views of the sad and aging monarch are among the most intimate of all Velázquez's royal characterizations.

In addition to his many official portraits, Velázquez painted during his last years two of his most original figure compositions and greatest masterpieces. Las Hilanderas, a genre scene in a tapestry factory, is at the same time an illustration of the ancient Greek fable of the spinning contest between Pallas Athena and Arachne. Here, the mythological subject—like the religious scene in some of the early bodegones—is in the background. But in this late work there is no barrier between the world of myth and reality; they are united in an ingenious composition by formal and aerial perspective. In Las Meninas (“The Maids of Honour”; see photograph), also known as The Royal Family, he has created the effect of a momentary glance at a casual scene in the artist's studio while he is painting the king and queen—whose reflection only is seen in the mirror in the background—in the presence of the Infanta Margarita with her meninas and other attendants. In this complex composition, the nearly life-size figures are painted in more or less detail according to their relation to the central figure of the infanta and to the source of light, creating a remarkable illusion of reality never surpassed by Velázquez or any other artist of his age.

Velázquez's last activity was to accompany the king and court to the French border, in the spring of 1660, to arrange the decoration of the Spanish pavilion for the marriage of the Infanta María Teresa with Louis XIV. Shortly after his return to Madrid, he fell ill, and he died on August 6. Velázquez left few pupils or immediate followers. His European fame dates from the beginning of the 19th century. Many of his early Sevillian paintings were acquired then by foreign (chiefly English) collectors. Most of his later official works were incorporated in the Prado Museum, in Madrid.

 

"Velázquez, Diego."Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD .[Accessed December  19, 2006].

Starting from November 2006.

 

Guys & Dolls, Piccadilly Theatre, 1 November, 2006;

 

The Phantom of the Opera, Her Majesty's Theatre, 15 November, 2006;

 

The Sound of Music, London Palladium, 29 November, 2006;

 

Royal Acadmy Soloists & ..., Royal Academy of Music, 1 December, 2006;

 

Ballet: The Sleeping Beauty, Royal Opera House, 4 December, 2006;

 

Handel's Messiah, St. Alfege Church, 10 December, 2006;

 

Ballet: The Nutcracker, Royal Opera House, 14 December, 2006;

 

Christmas Carol, St. Alfege Church, 15 December, 2006;

 

Velazquez Exhibition, National Gallery, 20 December, 2006;

 

Frost/Nixon, Gielgud Theatre, 20 December, 2006;

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Exhibitions in Royal Academy of Arts;

Carmen, Royal Opera House, to be confirmed;

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Ballet: Rhapsody Napoli Divertissement La Sylphide, Royal Opera House, 20 January, 2007;

 

Ballet: Swan Lake, Royal Opera House, 20 February, 2007;

 

Madama Butterfly, Royal Opera House, 2 March, 2007...

 

Sleeping Beauty ("La Belle au Bois dormant") is a fairy tale classic, the first in the set published in 1697 by Charles Perrault, Contes de ma Mère l'Oye ("Mother Goose Tales"). Elements of the story are contained in Giambattista Basile's Pentamerone (published 1634), in the tale Sun, Moon and Talia (ch. 39). Professor J. R. R. Tolkien noted that Perrault's cultural presence is so pervasive that, when asked to name a fairy tale, most people will cite one of the eight stories in Perrault's collection. Since Tolkien's generation, however, the most familiar Sleeping Beauty has become the Walt Disney animated film (1959), which draws as much from the Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky ballet (Saint Petersburg, 1890) as from Perrault. More than many fairy tales, Sleeping Beauty partakes of many deep European myths, both pagan and Christian.Perrault's narrative

The basic elements of Perrault's narrative are in two parts.

Part one

At the christening of a long-wished-for princess, fairies invited as godmothers offered gifts of beauty, wit, grace, and musical talents. However, a wicked fairy who had been overlooked placed the princess under an enchantment as her gift, saying that, on reaching adulthood, she would prick her finger on a spindle and die.

A good fairy, though unable to reverse the spell, altered its effect so that the princess, instead of dying, would fall asleep for a hundred years, until awakened by the sweet kiss of a prince's son.

The king forbade spinning on distaff or spindle, or the possession of one, upon pain of death, throughout the kingdom, but all in vain. When the princess was fifteen or sixteen she chanced to come upon an old woman in a tower of the castle, who was spinning. The Princess asked to try the unfamiliar task and the inevitable happened. The wicked fairy's curse was fulfilled. The good fairy returned and put everyone in the castle to sleep.

Eventually, a prince arrived, and, hearing the story of the enchantment, braved the wood, which parted at his approach, and entered the castle. He trembled upon seeing the princess' beauty and fell on his knees before her. She woke up, then everyone in the castle woke to continue where they had left off... and, in modern versions, they all lived happily ever after.

Part two

Secretly wed by the reawakened Royal almoner, the Prince continued to visit the Princess, who bore him two children, L'Aurore and Le Jour, which he kept secret from the Queen his Fairy god mother, who was of an Ogre lineage. Once he had acceded to the throne, he brought the Princess and the children to his capital, which he then left in the regency of the Queen Mother, while he went to make war on his neighbor the Emperor Contalabutte, ("Count of The Mount").

The Ogre Queen sent the Princess Queen and the children to a house secluded in the woods, and directed her cook there to prepare the boy for her dinner, with a sauce Robert. The humane cook substituted a lamb, which satisfied the Ogre Queen, who demanded the girl, but was satisfied with a young goat prepared in the same excellent sauce. When the Ogre Queen demanded that he serve up the Princess Queen, she offered her throat to be slit, so that she might join the children she imagined were dead. There was a tearful secret reunion in the cook's little house, while the Ogre Queen was satisfied with a hind prepared with sauce Robert. Soon she discovered the trick and prepared a tub in the courtyard filled with vipers and other noxious creatures. The King returned in the nick of time and the Ogress, being discovered, threw herself into the pit she had prepared and was consumed, and everyone else lived happily ever after.

Sleeping Beauty in music

Michele Carafa composed La belle au bois dormant in 1825.

Before Tchaikovsky's version, several ballet productions were based on the "sleeping beauty" theme, amongst which one from Eugène Scribe: in the winter of 1828–1829, the French playwright furnished a four-act mimed scenario as a basis for Aumer's choreography of a four-act ballet-pantomime La Belle au bois dormant. Scribe wisely omitted the violence of the second part of Perrault's tale for the ballet, which was set by Hérold and first staged at the Académie Royale, Paris, April 27, 1829. Though Hérold popularized his piece with a piano Rondo brilliant based on themes from the music, he was not successful in getting the ballet staged again.

When Ivan Vsevolozhsky, the Director of the Imperial Theatres in Saint Petersburg, wrote to Tchaikovsky on May 25, 1888, suggesting a ballet based on Perrault's tale, he also cut the violent second half, climaxed the action with the Awakening Kiss, and followed with a conventional festive last act, a series of bravura variations.

Although Tchaikovsky was maybe not all that eager to compose a new ballet (remembering that the reception of his Swan Lake ballet music, staged eleven seasons earlier, had only been lukewarm), he set to work with Vsevolovsky's scenario. The ballet, with Tchaikovsky's music (his Opus 66) and choreography by Marius Petipa, was premiered in the Saint Petersburg Mariinsky Theatre on January 24, 1890.

Besides being Tchaikovsky's first major success in ballet composition, it set a new standard for what is now called "Classical Ballet", and remained one of the all time favourites in the whole of the ballet repertoire. Sleeping Beauty was the first ballet that impresario Sergei Diaghilev ever saw, he later recorded in his memoirs, and also the first that ballerinas Anna Pavlova and Galina Ulanova ever saw, and the ballet that introduced the Russian dancer Rudolph Nureyev to European audiences. Diaghilev staged the ballet himself in 1921 in London with the Ballets Russes. Choreographer George Balanchine made his stage debut as a gilded Cupid sitting on a gilded cage, in the last act divertissements.

Mimed and danced versions of the ballet survived in the distinctly British genre of pantomime, with Carabosse, the evil fairy, a famous travesti role.

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sleeping_Beauty

 

in full  Sir Edward William Elgar  English composer whose works in the orchestral idiom of late 19th-century Romanticism—characterized by bold tunes, striking colour effects, and mastery of large forms—stimulated a renaissance of English music.

The son of an organist and music dealer, Elgar left school at age 15 and worked briefly in a lawyer's office. He was an excellent violinist, played the bassoon, and spent periods as a bandmaster and church organist. He had no formal training in composition. After working in London (1889–91), he went to Malvern, Worcestershire, and began to establish a reputation as a composer. He produced several large choral works, notably the oratorio Lux Christi (1896; The Light of Life), before composing in 1896 the popular Enigma Variations for orchestra. The variations are based on the countermelody to an unheard theme, which Elgar said was a well-known tune he would not identify—hence the enigma. Repeated attempts to discover it have been unsuccessful. All but the last of the 14 variations refer cryptically to friends of Elgar, the exception being his own musical self-portrait. This work, highly esteemed by Hans Richter, who conducted the first performance in 1899, brought Elgar recognition as a leading composer and became his most frequently performed composition. In 1900 there followed another major work, the oratorio The Dream of Gerontius, which many consider his masterpiece. Based on a poem by John Henry Cardinal Newman, it dispensed with the traditional admixture of recitatives, arias, and choruses, using instead a continuous musical texture as in the musical dramas of Wagner. The work was not well received at its first performance in Birmingham, but after it was acclaimed in Germany, it won British favour.

Elgar, a Roman Catholic, planned to continue with a trilogy of religious oratorios, but he completed only two: The Apostles (1903) and The Kingdom (1906). In these less successful works, representative themes are interwoven in the manner of the leitmotivs of Wagner. Other vocal works include the choral cantata, Caractacus (1898), and the song cycle for contralto, Sea Pictures (1900).

In 1904 Elgar was knighted, and from 1905 to 1908 he was the University of Birmingham's first professor of music. During World War I he wrote occasional patriotic pieces. After the death of his wife in 1920, he curtailed his music writing severely, and in 1929 he returned to Worcestershire. Friendship with Bernard Shaw eventually stimulated Elgar to further composition, and at his death he left unfinished a third symphony, a piano concerto, and an opera.

Elgar's principal works of a programmatic nature are the overture Cockaigne, or In London Town (1901), and the “symphonic study” Falstaff (1913). Of his five Pomp and Circumstance marches (1901–07; 1930), the first became particularly famous. Also highly esteemed are his two symphonies (1908 and 1911), the Introduction and Allegro for strings (1905), and his Violin Concerto (1910) and Cello Concerto (1919).

The first English composer of international stature since Henry Purcell (1659–95), Elgar liberated his country's music from its insularity. He left to younger composers the rich harmonic resources of late Romanticism and stimulated the subsequent national school of English music. His own idiom was cosmopolitan, yet his interest in the oratorio is grounded in the English musical tradition. Especially in England, Elgar is esteemed both for his own music and for his role in heralding the 20th-century English musical renascence.

 "Elgar, Sir Edward."Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD .[Accessed December  2, 2006].