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The Merchant of Venice

The Merchant of Venice is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. A merchant in Venice named Antonio defaults on a large loan taken out on behalf of his dear friend, Bassanio, and provided by a Jewish moneylender, Shylock, with seemingly inevitable fatal consequences. Although classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is most remembered for its dramatic scenes, and it is best known for the character Shylock and his famous demand for a "pound of flesh".

The play contains two famous speeches, that of Shylock, "Hath not a Jew eyes?" on the subject of humanity, and that of Portia on "the quality of mercy". Debate exists on whether the play is anti-Semitic, with Shylock's insistence on his legal right to the pound of flesh being in opposition to Shylock's seemingly universal plea for the rights of all people suffering discrimination.

Characters

 * Antonio – a prominent merchant of Venice in a melancholic mood
 * Bassanio – Antonio's close friend; suitor to Portia; later the husband of Portia
 * Gratiano – friend of Antonio and Bassanio; in love with Nerissa; later the husband of Nerissa
 * Lorenzo – friend of Antonio and Bassanio; in love with Jessica; later the husband of Jessica
 * Portia – a rich heiress; later the wife of Bassanio
 * Nerissa – Portia's waiting maid – in love with Gratiano; later the wife of Gratiano; disguises herself as Portia's clerk
 * Balthazar – Portia's servant
 * Stephano – Portia's servant
 * Shylock – a miserly Jew; moneylender; father of Jessica
 * Jessica – daughter of Shylock, later the wife of Lorenzo
 * Tubal – a Jew; friend of Shylock
 * Launcelot Gobbo – servant of Shylock; later a servant of Bassanio; son of Old Gobbo
 * Old Gobbo – blind father of Launcelot
 * Leonardo – servant to Bassanio
 * Duke of Venice – authority who presides over the case of Shylock's bond
 * Prince of Morocco – suitor to Portia
 * Prince of Arragon – suitor to Portia
 * Salarino and Salanio – friends of Antonio and Bassanio
 * Salerio – a messenger from Venice; friend of Antonio, Bassanio and others
 * Magnificoes of Venice, officers of the Court of Justice, gaolers, servants to Portia, and other attendants
 * Doctor Bellario, cousin of Portia, a character by reference who does not appear onstage

Plot summary
Bassanio, a young Venetian of noble rank, wishes to woo the beautiful and wealthy heiress Portia of Belmont. Having squandered his estate, he needs 3,000 ducats to subsidise his expenditures as a suitor. Bassanio approaches his friend Antonio, a wealthy merchant of Venice, who has previously and repeatedly bailed him out. Antonio agrees, but since he is cash-poor – his ships and merchandise are busy at sea to Tripolis, the Indies, Mexico and England – he promises to cover a bond if Bassanio can find a lender, so Bassanio turns to the Jewish moneylender Shylock and names Antonio as the loan's guarantor.

Antonio has already antagonized Shylock through his outspoken antisemitism and because Antonio's habit of lending money without interest forces Shylock to charge lower rates. Shylock is at first reluctant to grant the loan, citing abuse he has suffered at Antonio's hand. He finally agrees to lend the sum to Bassanio without interest upon one condition: if Antonio were unable to repay it at the specified date, Shylock may take a pound of Antonio's flesh. Bassanio does not want Antonio to accept such a risky condition; Antonio is surprised by what he sees as the moneylender's generosity (no "usance" – interest – is asked for), and he signs the contract. With money in hand, Bassanio leaves for Belmont with his friend Gratiano, who has asked to accompany him. Gratiano is a likeable young man, but he is often flippant, overly talkative, and tactless. Bassanio warns his companion to exercise self-control, and the two leave for Belmont.

Meanwhile, in Belmont, Portia is awash with suitors. Her father left a will stipulating that each of her suitors must choose correctly from one of three caskets, made of gold, silver and lead respectively. Whoever picks the right casket wins Portia's hand. The first suitor, the Prince of Morocco, chooses the gold casket, interpreting its slogan, "Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire", as referring to Portia. The second suitor, the conceited Prince of Aragon, chooses the silver casket, which proclaims, "Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves", as he believes he is full of merit. Both suitors leave empty-handed, having rejected the lead casket because of the baseness of its material and the uninviting nature of its slogan, "Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath". The last suitor is Bassanio, whom Portia wishes to succeed, having met him before. As Bassanio ponders his choice, members of Portia's household sing a song that says that "fancy" (not true love) is "It is engendered in the eye, / With gazing fed"; Bassanio chooses the lead casket and wins Portia's hand.

At Venice, Antonio's ships are reported lost at sea, so the merchant cannot repay the bond. Shylock has become more determined to exact revenge from Christians because his daughter Jessica eloped with the Christian Lorenzo and converted. She took a substantial amount of Shylock's wealth with her, as well as a turquoise ring which Shylock had been given by his late wife, Leah. Shylock has Antonio brought before court.

At Belmont, Bassanio receives a letter telling him that Antonio has been unable to repay the loan from Shylock. Portia and Bassanio marry, as do Gratiano and Portia's handmaid Nerissa. Bassanio and Gratiano leave for Venice, with money from Portia, to save Antonio's life by offering the money to Shylock. Unknown to Bassanio and Gratiano, Portia sent her servant, Balthazar, to seek the counsel of Portia's cousin, Bellario, a lawyer, at Padua.

The climax of the play is set in the court of the Duke of Venice. Shylock refuses Bassanio's offer of 6,000 ducats, twice the amount of the loan. He demands his pound of flesh from Antonio. The Duke, wishing to save Antonio but unable to nullify a contract, refers the case to a visitor. He identifies himself as Balthazar, a young male "doctor of the law", bearing a letter of recommendation to the Duke from the learned lawyer Bellario. The doctor is Portia in disguise, and the law clerk who accompanies her is Nerissa, also disguised as a man. As Balthazar, Portia in a famous speech repeatedly asks Shylock to show mercy, advising him that mercy "is twice blest: / It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.". However, Shylock adamantly refuses any compensations and insists on the pound of flesh.

As the court grants Shylock his bond and Antonio prepares for Shylock's knife, Portia deftly appropriates Shylock's argument for "specific performance". She says that the contract allows Shylock to remove only the flesh, not the blood, of Antonio. Thus, if Shylock were to shed any drop of Antonio's blood, his "lands and goods" would be forfeited under Venetian laws. She tells him that he must cut precisely one pound of flesh, no more, no less; she advises him that "if the scale do turn / But in the estimation of a hair, / Thou diest, and all thy goods are confiscate."

Defeated, Shylock consents to accept Bassanio's offer of money for the defaulted bond: first his offer to pay "the bond thrice", which Portia rebuffs, telling him to take his bond, and then merely the principal; but Portia also prevents him from doing this, on the ground that he has already refused it "in the open court". She cites a law under which Shylock, as a Jew and therefore an "alien", having attempted to take the life of a citizen, has forfeited his property, half to the government and half to Antonio, leaving his life at the mercy of the Duke. The Duke spares Shylock's life and says he may remit the forfeiture. Portia says the Duke may waive the state's share, but not Antonio's. Antonio says he is content that the state waive its claim to half Shylock's wealth if he can have his one-half share "in use" until Shylock's death, when the principal would be given to Lorenzo and Jessica. Antonio also asks that "for this favour" Shylock convert to Christianity and bequeath his entire estate to Lorenzo and Jessica. The Duke then threatens to recant his pardon of Shylock's life unless he accepts these conditions. Shylock, re-threatened with death, accepts with the words, "I am content."

Bassanio does not recognise his disguised wife, but offers to give a present to the supposed lawyer. First she declines, but after he insists, Portia requests his ring and Antonio's gloves. Antonio parts with his gloves without a second thought, but Bassanio gives the ring only after much persuasion from Antonio, as earlier in the play he promised his wife never to lose, sell or give it. Nerissa, as the lawyer's clerk, succeeds in likewise retrieving her ring from Gratiano, who does not see through her disguise.

At Belmont, Portia and Nerissa taunt and pretend to accuse their husbands before revealing they were really the lawyer and his clerk in disguise (V). After all the other characters make amends, Antonio learns from Portia that three of his ships were not stranded and have returned safely after all.

Earlier sources
The forfeit of a merchant's deadly bond after standing surety for a friend's loan was a common tale in England in the late 16th century. In addition, the test of the suitors at Belmont, the merchant's rescue from the "pound of flesh" penalty by his friend's new wife disguised as a lawyer, and her demand for the betrothal ring in payment are all elements present in the 14th-century tale Il Pecorone by Giovanni Fiorentino, which was published in Milan in 1558. Elements of the trial scene are also found in The Orator by Alexandre Sylvane, published in translation in 1596. The story of the three caskets can be found in Gesta Romanorum, a collection of tales probably compiled at the end of the 13th century.

Date and text
The date of composition of The Merchant of Venice is believed to be between 1596 and 1598. The play was mentioned by Francis Meres in 1598, so it must have been familiar on the stage by that date. The title page of the first edition in 1600 states that it had been performed "divers times" by that date. Salerino's reference to his ship the Andrew (I, i, 27) is thought to be an allusion to the Spanish ship St. Andrew, captured by the English at Cádiz in 1596. A date of 1596–97 is considered consistent with the play's style.

The play was entered in the Register of the Stationers Company, the method at that time of obtaining copyright for a new play, by James Roberts on 22 July 1598 under the title "the Marchaunt of Venyce or otherwise called the Jewe of Venyce." On 28 October 1600 Roberts transferred his right to the play to the stationer Thomas Heyes; Heyes published the first quarto before the end of the year. It was printed again in 1619, as part of William Jaggard's so-called False Folio. (Later, Thomas Heyes' son and heir Laurence Heyes asked for and was granted a confirmation of his right to the play, on 8 July 1619.) The 1600 edition is generally regarded as being accurate and reliable. It is the basis of the text published in the 1623 First Folio, which adds a number of stage directions, mainly musical cues.

Shylock and the antisemitism debate
The play is frequently staged, but is potentially troubling to modern audiences because of its central themes, which can easily appear antisemitic. Modern critics argue over the play's stance on the Jews and Judaism. American literary critic Harold Bloom argued in 1998 that "one would have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to recognise that Shakespeare's grand, equivocal comedy The Merchant of Venice is nevertheless a profoundly anti-semitic work".

Shylock as an antagonist
English society in the Elizabethan and Jacobean era has been described as "judeophobic". English Jews had been expelled under Edward I in 1290 and were not permitted to return until 1656 under the rule of Oliver Cromwell. Poet John Donne, who was Dean of St Paul's Cathedral and a contemporary of Shakespeare, gave a sermon in 1624 perpetuating the Blood Libel – the entirely unsubstantiated antisemitic lie that Jews ritually murdered Christians to drink their blood and achieve salvation. In Venice and in some other places, Jews were required to wear a yellow or red hat at all times in public to make sure that they were easily identified, and had to live in a ghetto.

Shakespeare's play may be seen as a continuation of this tradition. The title page of the Quarto indicates that the play was sometimes known as The Jew of Venice in its day, which suggests that it was seen as similar to Marlowe's early 1590s work The Jew of Malta. One interpretation of the play's structure is that Shakespeare meant to contrast the mercy of the main Christian characters with the Old Testament vengefulness of a Jew, who lacks the religious grace to comprehend mercy. Similarly, it is possible that Shakespeare meant Shylock's forced conversion to Christianity to be a "happy ending" for the character, as, to a Christian audience, it saves his soul and allows him to enter Heaven.

Regardless of what Shakespeare's authorial intent may have been, the play has been made use of by antisemites throughout the play's history. The Nazis used the usurious Shylock for their propaganda. Shortly after Kristallnacht in 1938, The Merchant of Venice was broadcast for propagandistic ends over the German airwaves. Productions of the play followed in Lübeck (1938), Berlin (1940), and elsewhere within the Nazi territory.

In a series of articles called Observer, first published in 1785, British playwright Richard Cumberland created a character named Abraham Abrahams, who is quoted as saying, "I verily believe the odious character of Shylock has brought little less persecution upon us, poor scattered sons of Abraham, than the Inquisition itself." Cumberland later wrote a successful play, The Jew (1794), in which his title character, Sheva, is portrayed sympathetically, as both a kindhearted and generous man. This was the first known attempt by a dramatist to reverse the negative stereotype that Shylock personified.

The depiction of Jews in literature throughout the centuries bears the close imprint of Shylock. With slight variations much of English literature up until the 20th century depicts the Jew as "a monied, cruel, lecherous, avaricious outsider tolerated only because of his golden hoard".

Shylock as a sympathetic character
Many modern readers and theatregoers have read the play as a plea for tolerance, noting that Shylock is a sympathetic character. They cite as evidence that Shylock's "trial" at the end of the play is a mockery of justice, with Portia acting as a judge when she has no right to do so. The characters who berated Shylock for dishonesty resort to trickery in order to win. In addition to this Shakespeare gives Shylock one of his most eloquent speeches:

"SALARINO Why, I am sure if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his flesh! What’s that good for?

SHYLOCK To bait fish withal; if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me and hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies— and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge! The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."

It is difficult to know whether the sympathetic reading of Shylock is entirely due to changing sensibilities among readers – or whether Shakespeare, a writer who created complex, multi-faceted characters, deliberately intended this reading.

One of the reasons for this interpretation is that Shylock's painful status in Venetian society is emphasised. To some critics, Shylock's celebrated "Hath not a Jew eyes?" speech redeems him and even makes him into something of a tragic figure; in the speech, Shylock argues that he is no different from the Christian characters. Detractors note that Shylock ends the speech with a tone of revenge: "if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" Those who see the speech as sympathetic point out that Shylock says he learned the desire for revenge from the Christian characters: "If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."

Even if Shakespeare did not intend the play to be read this way, the fact that it retains its power on stage for audiences who may perceive its central conflicts in radically different terms is an illustration of the subtlety of Shakespeare's characterisations. In the trial Shylock represents what Elizabethan Christians believed to be the Jewish desire for "justice", contrasted with their obviously superior Christian value of mercy. The Christians in the courtroom urge Shylock to love his enemies, although they themselves have failed in the past. Jewish critic Harold Bloom suggests that, although the play gives merit to both cases, the portraits are not even-handed: "Shylock's shrewd indictment of Christian hypocrisy delights us, but ... Shakespeare's intimations do not alleviate the savagery of his portrait of the Jew..."

Antonio, Bassanio
Antonio's unexplained depression – "In sooth I know not why I am so sad" – and utter devotion to Bassanio has led some critics to theorise that he is suffering from unrequited love for Bassanio and is depressed because Bassanio is coming to an age where he will marry a woman. In his plays and poetry Shakespeare often depicted strong male bonds of varying homosociality, which has led some critics to infer that Bassanio returns Antonio's affections despite his obligation to marry: "ANTONIO […] Commend me to your honorable wife, Tell her the process of Antonio’s end, Say how I loved you, speak me fair in death, And when the tale is told, bid her be judge Whether Bassanio had not once a love. […]

BASSANIO […] But life itself, my wife, and all the world Are not with me esteemed above thy life. I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all Here to this devil, to deliver you."

In his essay "Brothers and Others", published in The Dyer's Hand, W. H. Auden describes Antonio as "a man whose emotional life, though his conduct may be chaste, is concentrated upon a member of his own sex." Antonio's feelings for Bassanio are likened to a couplet from Shakespeare's Sonnets: "But since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure,/ Mine be thy love, and my love's use their treasure." Antonio, says Auden, embodies the words on Portia's leaden casket: "Who chooseth me, must give and hazard all he hath." Antonio has taken this potentially fatal turn because he despairs, not only over the loss of Bassanio in marriage but also because Bassanio cannot requite what Antonio feels for him. Antonio's frustrated devotion is a form of idolatry: the right to live is yielded for the sake of the loved one. There is one other such idolator in the play: Shylock himself. "Shylock, however unintentionally, did, in fact, hazard all for the sake of destroying the enemy he hated, and Antonio, however unthinkingly he signed the bond, hazarded all to secure the happiness of the man he loved." Both Antonio and Shylock, agreeing to put Antonio's life at a forfeit, stand outside the normal bounds of society. There was, states Auden, a traditional "association of sodomy with usury", reaching back at least as far as Dante, with which Shakespeare was likely familiar. (Auden sees the theme of usury in the play as a comment on human relations in a mercantile society.)

Other interpreters of the play regard Auden's conception of Antonio's sexual desire for Bassanio as questionable. Michael Radford, director of the 2004 film version starring Al Pacino, explained that, although the film contains a scene where Antonio and Bassanio actually kiss, the friendship between the two is platonic, in line with the prevailing view of male friendship at the time. Jeremy Irons, in an interview, concurs with the director's view and states that he did not "play Antonio as gay". Joseph Fiennes, however, who plays Bassanio, encouraged a homoerotic interpretation and, in fact, surprised Irons with the kiss on set, which was filmed in one take. Fiennes defended his choice, saying "I would never invent something before doing my detective work in the text. If you look at the choice of language ... you'll read very sensuous language. That's the key for me in the relationship. The great thing about Shakespeare and why he's so difficult to pin down is his ambiguity. He's not saying they're gay or they're straight, he's leaving it up to his actors. I feel there has to be a great love between the two characters ... there's great attraction. I don't think they have slept together but that's for the audience to decide."

Performance history
The earliest performance of which a record has survived was held at the court of King James in the spring of 1605, followed by a second performance a few days later, but there is no record of any further performances in the 17th century. In 1701, George Granville staged a successful adaptation, titled The Jew of Venice, with Thomas Betterton as Bassanio. This version (which featured a masque) was popular, and was acted for the next forty years. Granville cut the clownish Gobbos in line with neoclassical decorum; he added a jail scene between Shylock and Antonio, and a more extended scene of toasting at a banquet scene. Thomas Doggett was Shylock, playing the role comically, perhaps even farcically. Rowe expressed doubts about this interpretation as early as 1709; Doggett's success in the role meant that later productions would feature the troupe clown as Shylock.

In 1741, Charles Macklin returned to the original text in a very successful production at Drury Lane, paving the way for Edmund Kean seventy years later (see below).

Arthur Sullivan wrote incidental music for the play in 1871. As part of the 500 year anniversary of the Venetian Ghetto, which converged with the 400 year anniversary of Shakespeare's death, The Merchant of Venice was performed in the ghetto main square in 2016 by the Compagnia de' Colombari.

Shylock on stage
Jewish actor Jacob Adler and others report that the tradition of playing Shylock sympathetically began in the first half of the 19th century with Edmund Kean, and that previously the role had been played "by a comedian as a repulsive clown or, alternatively, as a monster of unrelieved evil." Kean's Shylock established his reputation as an actor.

From Kean's time forward, all of the actors who have famously played the role, with the exception of Edwin Booth, who played Shylock as a simple villain, have chosen a sympathetic approach to the character; even Booth's father, Junius Brutus Booth, played the role sympathetically. Henry Irving's portrayal of an aristocratic, proud Shylock (first seen at the Lyceum in 1879, with Portia played by Ellen Terry) has been called "the summit of his career". Jacob Adler was the most notable of the early 20th century: Adler played the role in Yiddish-language translation, first in Manhattan's Yiddish Theater District in the Lower East Side, and later on Broadway, where, to great acclaim, he performed the role in Yiddish in an otherwise English-language production.

Kean and Irving presented a Shylock justified in wanting his revenge; Adler's Shylock evolved over the years he played the role, first as a stock Shakespearean villain, then as a man whose better nature was overcome by a desire for revenge, and finally as a man who operated not from revenge but from pride. In a 1902 interview with Theater magazine, Adler pointed out that Shylock is a wealthy man, "rich enough to forgo the interest on three thousand ducats" and that Antonio is "far from the chivalrous gentleman he is made to appear. He has insulted the Jew and spat on him, yet he comes with hypocritical politeness to borrow money of him." Shylock's fatal flaw is to depend on the law, but "would he not walk out of that courtroom head erect, the very apotheosis of defiant hatred and scorn?"

Some modern productions take further pains to show the sources of Shylock's thirst for vengeance. For instance, in the 2004 film adaptation directed by Michael Radford and starring Al Pacino as Shylock, the film begins with text and a montage of how Venetian Jews are cruelly abused by bigoted Christians. One of the last shots of the film also brings attention to the fact that, as a convert, Shylock would have been cast out of the Jewish community in Venice, no longer allowed to live in the ghetto. Another interpretation of Shylock and a vision of how "must he be acted" appears at the conclusion of the autobiography of Alexander Granach, a noted Jewish stage and film actor in Weimar Germany (and later in Hollywood and on Broadway).

Adaptations and cultural references
The play has inspired many adaptions and several works of fiction.

Film, TV and radio versions

 * 1914 – The Merchant of Venice, a silent film directed by Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley. Weber played Portia and Smalley, her husband, played Shylock. With this film, Weber became the first woman to direct a full-length feature film in America.
 * 1916 – The Merchant of Venice, an unsuccessful silent British film produced by Walter West for Broadwest.
 * 1923 – The Merchant of Venice (Der Kaufmann von Venedig), also The Jew of Mestri, a silent German film directed by Peter Paul Felner. Though based in part on Shakespeare's play, it was also based on Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, as well as stories by Giovanni Fiorentino, Masuccio Salernitano and Pietro Aretino.
 * 1941 – Shylock, an Indian Tamil language film directed by the duo Sama-Ramu.
 * 1953 – The Merchant of Venice, a French-Italian drama film directed by Pierre Billon and starring Michel Simon, Andrée Debar and Massimo Serato.
 * 1961 – The Merchant of Venice, an Australian television adaptation.
 * 1969 – The Merchant of Venice, an unreleased 40-minute television film directed by and starring Orson Welles; the film was completed, but the soundtrack for all but the first reel was stolen before it could be released.
 * 1972 – The Merchant of Venice, BBC video-taped television version directed by Cedric Messina for the BBC's Play of the Month series. Cast includes Maggie Smith, Frank Finlay, Charles Gray and Christopher Gable.
 * 1973 – The Merchant of Venice British Associated Television version directed by John Sichel. Broadcast in the United States over ABC-TV. Set in the late Victorian era, the cast included Laurence Olivier as Shylock, Anthony Nicholls as Antonio, Jeremy Brett as Bassanio, and Joan Plowright as Portia.
 * 1980 – The Merchant of Venice, a version for the BBC Television Shakespeare directed by Jack Gold. The cast includes Gemma Jones as Portia, Warren Mitchell as Shylock and John Nettles as Bassanio.
 * 1996 – The Merchant of Venice, a Channel 4 television film directed by Alan Horrox. The cast included Bob Peck as Shylock and Haydn Gwynne as Portia.
 * 2001 – The Merchant of Venice, a Royal National Theatre production directed by Trevor Nunn. Set around 1930, Henry Goodman played Shylock.
 * 2002 – The Māori Merchant of Venice, directed by Don Selwyn. In Māori, with English subtitles. This film was based on a 1945 translation of the play to Māori by Pei Te Hurinui Jones.
 * 2003 – In Shakespeare's Merchant, a film directed by Paul Wagar, Antonio and Bassanio have a homosexual relationship.
 * 2004 – The Merchant of Venice, directed by Michael Radford and produced by Barry Navidi. This was the first "big-screen" adaptation of the play. The cast included Al Pacino as Shylock, Jeremy Irons as Antonio, Joseph Fiennes as Bassanio, Lynn Collins as Portia, and Zuleikha Robinson as Jessica.
 * Broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 22 April 2018 and transposing the plot from Venice to the City of London and the financial crisis of 2007–2008. The cast included Andrew Scott as Shylock, Ray Fearon as Antonio, Colin Morgan as Bassanio, Hayley Atwell as Portia, and Lauren Cornelius as Jessica.

Operas

 * Josef Bohuslav Foerster's three-act Czech opera Jessika was first performed at the Prague National Theatre in 1905.
 * Adrian Welles Beecham, 15-year-old son of Sir Thomas Beecham, composed an operatic version which premiered at the Grand Theatre in Brighton on 18 September 1922 followed by 32 performances at the Duke of York's Theatre in London from 20 November to 16 December 1922. Augustus Milner sang Shylock, later replaced during the run by producer F. R. Benson. Although described in the vocal score as "a Shakespearean Opera" the play was perhaps better defined as a "play with music", with 27 musical sections or arias.
 * Reynaldo Hahn's three-act French opera Le marchand de Venise was first performed at the Paris Opéra on 25 March 1935.
 * The late André Tchaikowsky's (1935–1982) opera The Merchant of Venice premiered at the Bregenz Festival on 18 July 2013.

Cultural references
Edmond Haraucourt, French playwright and poet, was commissioned in the 1880s by the actor and theatrical director Paul Porel to make a French-verse adaptation of The Merchant of Venice. His play Shylock, first performed at the Théâtre de l'Odéon in December 1889, had incidental music by the French composer Gabriel Fauré, later incorporated into an orchestral suite of the same name.

St. John Ervine authored a sequel play, The Lady of Belmont, in 1924, in which the characters from Shakespeare's work reunite ten years after the events of the earlier play.

Ralph Vaughan Williams' choral work Serenade to Music (1938) draws its text from the discussion about music and the music of the spheres in Act V, scene 1.

In both versions of the comic film To Be or Not to Be (1942 and 1983) the character "Greenberg", specified as a Jew in the later version, gives a recitation of the "Hath not a Jew eyes?" speech to Nazi soldiers.

The rock musical Fire Angel was based on the story of the play, with the scene changed to the Little Italy district of New York. It was performed in Edinburgh in 1974 and in a revised form at Her Majesty's Theatre, London, in 1977. Braham Murray directed.

Arnold Wesker's play The Merchant (1976) is a reimagining of Shakespeare's story. In this retelling, Shylock and Antonio are friends and share a disdain for the crass anti-Semitism of the Christian community's laws.

David Henry Wilson's play Shylock's Revenge, was first produced at the University of Hamburg in 1989, and follows the events in The Merchant of Venice. In this play Shylock gets his wealth back and becomes a Jew again.

The Star Trek franchise sometimes quote and paraphrase Shakespeare, including The Merchant of Venice. One example is the Shakespeare-aficionado Chang in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), a Klingon, who quotes Shylock.

Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993) depicts SS Lieutenant Amon Göth quoting Shylock's "Hath not a Jew eyes?" speech when deciding whether to rape his Jewish maid.

In David Fincher's 1995 crime thriller Seven, a lawyer, Eli Gould, is coerced to remove a pound of his own flesh and place it on a scale, alluding to the play.

The German Belmont Prize was established in 1997, referring to 'Belmont' as "a place of destiny where Portia's intelligence is at home." The eligibility for the award is encapsulated by the inscription on the play's lead casket, "Who chooses me must give and hazard all he hath."

One of the four short stories comprising Alan Isler's The Bacon Fancier (1999) is also told from Shylock's point of view. In this story, Antonio was a converted Jew.

The Pianist is a 2002 film based on a memoir by Władysław Szpilman. In this film, Henryk Szpilman reads Shylock's "Hath not a Jew eyes?" speech to his brother Władysław in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation in World War II.

In the 2009 spy comedy OSS 117: Lost in Rio, a speech by the nazi Von Zimmel parodies Shylock's tirade.

Christopher Moore combines The Merchant of Venice and Othello in his 2014 comic novel The Serpent of Venice, in which he makes Portia (from The Merchant of Venice) and Desdemona (from Othello) sisters. All of the characters come from those two plays with the exception of Jeff (a monkey); the gigantic simpleton Drool; and Pocket, the Fool, who comes from Moore's earlier novel Fool, based on King Lear.

Naomi Alderman's The Wolf in the Water is a radio-play first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 2016. The play continues the story of Shylock's daughter Jessica, who lives in an anti-semitic Venice and practices her Jewish faith in secret. Part of the BBC's Shakespeare Festival, the play also marked that 500 years had passed since the Venetian Ghetto was instituted.

Sarah B. Mantell's Everything that Never Happened is a play first produced in 2017 at the Yale School of Drama. Similar to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, the play occurs in the gaps between scenes of the canonical The Merchant of Venice, with the characters gradually recognizing how conflicts over assimilation and anti-Semitism recur throughout past, present, and future.

title: The Merchant of Venice


text:
Energia (rocket)

Energia (Энергия; GRAU 11K25) was a 1980s super-heavy lift launch vehicle. It was designed by NPO Energia of the Soviet Union as part of the Buran program for a variety of payloads including the Buran spacecraft. Control system main developer enterprise was the Khartron NPO "Electropribor". The Energia used four strap-on boosters each powered by a four-chamber RD-170 engine burning kerosene/LOX, and a central core stage with four single-chamber RD-0120 (11D122) engines fueled by liquid hydrogen/LOX.

The launch vehicle had two functionally different operational variants: Energia-Polyus, the initial test configuration, in which the Polyus system was used as a final stage intended to put the payload into orbit, and Energia-Buran, in which the Buran orbiter was the payload and the source of the orbit insertion impulse.

The launch vehicle had the capacity to place about 100 tonnes in Low Earth orbit, up to 20 tonnes to geostationary orbit and up to 32 tonnes by translunar trajectory into lunar orbit.

The launch vehicle made just two flights before being discontinued. Since 2016, there have been attempts to revive the launch vehicle, reusing an updated version of its booster engine in the Soyuz-5 rocket.

Development history
Work on the Energia/Buran system began in 1976 after the decision was made to cancel the unsuccessful N1 rocket. The facilities and infrastructure built for the N1 were reused for Energia (notably the huge horizontal assembly building), just as NASA reused infrastructure designed for the Saturn V in the Space Shuttle program. Energia also replaced the "Vulkan" concept, which was a design based on the Proton and using the same hypergolic propellants, but much larger and more powerful. The "Vulkan" designation was later given to a variation of the Energia which has eight boosters and multiple stages.

The Energia was designed to launch the Soviet "Buran" reusable shuttle, and for that reason was designed to carry its payload mounted on the side of the stack, rather than on the top, as is done with other launch vehicles. Design of the Energia-Buran system assumed that the booster could be used without the Buran orbiter, as a heavy-lift cargo launch vehicle; this configuration was originally given the name "Buran-T". This configuration required the addition of an upper stage to perform the final orbital insertion. The first launch of the Energia was in the configuration of a heavy launch vehicle, with the large Polyus military satellite as a payload, however Polyus failed to correctly perform the orbital insertion.

Due to the termination of the Buran program the Energia program was concluded after only two launches. The legacy of Energia/Buran project manifests itself in the RD-170 family of rocket engines, and the Zenit launcher, with the first stage roughly the same as one of the Energia first-stage boosters.

First launch (Energia–Polyus)
The Energia was first test-launched on 15 May 1987, with the Polyus spacecraft as the payload. An FGB ("functional cargo block") engine section originally built as a cancelled Mir module was incorporated into the upper stage used to insert the payload into orbit, similarly to Buran and the US Space Shuttle performing the final orbital insertion, since the planned "Buran-T" upper stage had not yet progressed beyond the planning stage. The intended orbit had 280 km (170 mi) altitude and 64.6° inclination.

The Soviets had originally announced that the launch was a successful sub-orbital test of the new Energia booster with a dummy payload, but some time later it was revealed that in fact the flight had been intended to bring the Polyus into orbit. The two stages of the Energia launcher functioned as designed, but due to a software error in its attitude control system, Polyus's orbital insertion motor failed to inject the payload into orbit. Instead, the Polyus reentered the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.

Second launch (Energia–Buran)
The second flight, and the first one where payload successfully reached orbit, was launched on 15 November 1988. This mission launched the uncrewed Soviet Shuttle vehicle Buran. At apogee, the Buran spacecraft made a 66.7 m/s burn to reach a final orbit of 251 km × 263 km.

Discontinuation and potential revival
Production of Energia rockets ended with the end of the Buran shuttle project in the late 1980s, and more certainly, with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since that time, there have been persistent rumors of the renewal of production, but given the political realities, that is highly unlikely.

While the Energia is no longer in production, the Zenit boosters were in use until 2017. The four strap-on liquid-fuel boosters, which burned kerosene and liquid oxygen, were the basis of the Zenit rocket which used the same engines. The engine is the four combustion chamber RD-170. Its derivative, the RD-171, was used on the Zenit rocket. A half-sized derivative of the engine, the two-chamber RD-180, powers Lockheed Martin's Atlas V rocket, while the single-chamber derivative, the RD-191, has been used to launch the Korean Naro-1 (as a reduced-thrust variant named the RD-151) and the Russian Angara rocket. The RD-181, based on the RD-191, is used on the Antares rocket.

In August 2016, Roscosmos announced conceptual plans to develop a super heavy-lift launch vehicle from existing Energia components instead of pushing the less-powerful Angara A5V project. This would allow Russia to launch missions towards establishing a permanent Moon base with simpler logistics, launching just one or two 80–160-ton super-heavy rockets instead of four 40-ton Angara A5Vs implying quick-sequence launches and multiple in-orbit rendezvous. Tests of RD-171MV engine, an updated version of the engine used in Energia, were completed in September 2021 and may potentially be used in the successor Soyuz-5 rocket.

Proposed variants
Three major design variants were conceptualized after the original configuration, each with vastly different payloads.

Energia-M
The Energia-M was an early-1990s design configuration and the smallest of the three. The number of boosters was reduced from four to two, the core stage was shortened and fitted with just one RD-0120 engine. It was designed to replace the Proton rocket, but lost a 1993 competition to the Angara rocket.

A non-functional prototype ("structural test vehicle") of the Energia M still exists in the Dynamic Test Stand facility at Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Energia-2 (GK-175)
Energia-2 was an evolution of the Energia studied in the 1980s. Unlike the Energia-Buran, which was planned to be semi-reusable (like the U.S. Space Shuttle), the GK-175 concept was to have allowed the recovery and reuse of all elements of the vehicle, similarly to the original, fully reusable Orbiter/Booster concept of the U.S. Shuttle. The Energia-2 core as proposed would be capable of re-entering and gliding to a landing.

Vulkan
The final never-built design concept was also the largest. With eight Zenit booster rockets and an Energia-M core as the upper stage, the Vulkan (which shared the name with another Soviet heavy lift rocket that was cancelled years earlier) configuration was initially projected to launch up to 200 metric tonnes into 200 km orbit with inclination 50.7°.

The development of the Vulkan and the refurbishment of Universal Test Stand and Launch Pad at site 250 for its launches was in progress between 1990–1993 and abandoned soon after due to a lack of funds and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Energia (rocket)


text:
Allegro

Allegro may refer to:

Common meanings

 * Allegro (music), a tempo marking indicate to play fast, quickly and bright
 * Allegro (ballet), brisk and lively movement

Artistic works

 * L'Allegro (1645), a poem by John Milton
 * Allegro (Satie), an 1884 piano piece by Erik Satie
 * "Allegro", any of several musical works in Nannerl Notenbuch by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
 * "Allegro", a composition by Bear McCreary in Music of Battlestar Galactica
 * Allegro (film), a 2005 Danish film by Christoffer Boe
 * Allegro (musical), a 1947 musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein

Businesses and brands

 * Allegro (website), a Polish e-commerce platform
 * Allegro (restaurant), a luxury restaurant in Prague
 * Allegro (train), a passenger train service between Helsinki and Saint Petersburg
 * Allegro Coffee Co., a beverage company acquired by Whole Foods Market
 * Allegro DVT, a French video codec company
 * Austin Allegro, a car once manufactured by British Leyland
 * Mazda Allegro, a car manufactured in South America as a version of Mazda Familia
 * Líneas Aéreas Allegro, a Mexican airline

Science and technology

 * Allegro gravitational-wave detector
 * ALLEGRO, European experimental gas-cooled fast reactor
 * Allegro (software library), a multi-platform software library for video and audio application development
 * Allegro 8 (software), risk management software by Allegro Development Corporation
 * Allegro Common Lisp, a variant of the Common Lisp programming language
 * Allegro Platform, an ECAD tool by Cadence Design Systems
 * Allegro musical notation, a text-based score representation used by Audacity

Other uses

 * Allegro (typeface), a typeface designed in 1936
 * Allegro speech, a relatively fast manner of speaking
 * John Marco Allegro, Dead Sea Scrolls scholar

title: Allegro


text:
Presto

Presto may refer to:

Computing

 * Presto (browser engine), an engine previously used in the Opera web browser
 * Presto (operating system), a Linux-based OS by Xandros
 * Presto (SQL query engine), a distributed query engine
 * Presto (animation software), the in-house proprietary 3D animation software created and used by Disney and Pixar

Music

 * Presto (music), a fast tempo marking
 * Presto (album) a 1989 album by Rush, or the album's title track
 * "Presto" (rapper) (1992–2024), German rapper
 * "Presto" (song), by No Money Enterprise, 2020
 * Presto! Recording Studios, a studio in Nebraska, United States

Companies and organizations

 * Presto (restaurant technology platform)
 * Presto (streaming company), an Australian streaming company
 * Presto (UK supermarket), a grocery chain in the U.K. from the 1960s to 1998
 * Presto! Recording Studios, in Lincoln, Nebraska
 * Presto Studios, a computer game development company
 * National Presto Industries, manufacturer of kitchen appliances
 * Great Taste Coffee Makers, a.k.a. Presto, a Philippine Basketball Association team
 * Presto AB, Swedish manufacturer and international reseller of protection against fire and accidents.

Transportation

 * Presto, later name of the tug Empire Sara
 * Rinspeed Presto, a Swiss concept car
 * Hyundai Excel, a car also known as the Hyundai Presto in South Korea
 * Presto card, a smart card payment system used in Ontario

Other uses

 * Presto (film), a 2008 short film by Pixar
 * Presto, Bolivia, a town in Bolivia
 * Presto, Pennsylvania, an unincorporated community in the United States
 * Presto!, an ATM network owned by Publix Super Markets
 * Presto, a pseudonym of Jonathan Swift; see Chelsea Bun House
 * Earl "Presto" Johnson, American magician
 * Alice S. Presto, American suffragist and politician

title: Presto


text:
Crescendo (disambiguation)

Crescendo is a gradual increase of loudness in music.

Crescendo may also refer to:

Books

 * Crescendo, 1958 novel by Phyllis Bentley
 * Crescendo, 1998 novel by Mary McCarthy
 * Crescendo, 1928 novel by Henry Bellamann
 * Crescendo (Fitzpatrick novel), 2010 young adult novel by Becca Fitzpatrick
 * Crescendo 1980 novel by Charlotte Lamb

Computing

 * Crescendo Communications, a computer networking company that was acquired by Cisco in the 1990s
 * Crescendo Networks, a company which develops and sells application acceleration devices for data centers

Film

 * Crescendo (TV series), a Singaporean musical series produced by Wawa Pictures
 * Crescendo (1970 film), a British horror film directed by Alan Gibson
 * Crescendo (2019 film), a German drama film directed by Dror Zahavi

Music

 * The Crescendo (music venue)
 * The Crescendos, an early rock and roll group
 * Crescendo (album), a 1990 album by the Brazilian brock band Ultraje a Rigor
 * Crescendo (awards), an annual music competition dedicated to Afrikaans music
 * "Crescendo", a 1990 song by James from the album Gold Mother
 * "Crescendo", a 2013 song by Little Boots

Other uses

 * Crescendo (heart murmur), used to characterize and classify heart murmurs
 * Crescendo, a body shape adapting smart toy by MysteryVibe
 * Crescendo (FIRST), the 2024 FIRST Robotics Competition game

title: Crescendo (disambiguation)


text:
Diminuendo (disambiguation)

Diminuendo is a gradual decrease of loudness in music.

Diminuendo may also refer to:

 * Diminuendo (album), by Lowlife
 * Diminuendo (film), starring Richard Hatch
 * Diminuendo (horse), 1988 winner of the Epsom Oaks

title: Diminuendo (disambiguation)


text:
Staccato

Staccato (Italian for "detached") is a form of musical articulation. In modern notation, it signifies a note of shortened duration, separated from the note that may follow by silence. It has been described by theorists and has appeared in music since at least 1676.

Notation
In 20th-century music, a dot placed above or below a note indicates that it should be played staccato, and a wedge is used for the more emphatic staccatissimo. However, before 1850, dots, dashes, and wedges were all likely to have the same meaning, even though some theorists from as early as the 1750s distinguished different degrees of staccato through the use of dots and dashes, with the dash indicating a shorter, sharper note, and the dot a longer, lighter one.

A number of signs came to be used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to discriminate more subtle nuances of staccato. These signs involve various combinations of dots, vertical and horizontal dashes, vertical and horizontal wedges, and the like, but attempts to standardize these signs have not generally been successful.

The example below illustrates the scope of the staccato dot:

In the first measure, the pairs of notes are in the same musical part (or voice) since they are on a common stem. The staccato applies to both notes of the pairs. In the second measure, the pairs of notes are stemmed separately indicating two different parts, so the staccato applies only to the upper note.

The opposite musical articulation of staccato is legato, signifying long and continuous notes. There is an intermediate articulation called either mezzo staccato or non legato.

Staccatissimo
In musical notation, staccatissimo (plural: staccatissimi or the anglicised form staccatissimos) indicates that the notes are to be played extremely separated and distinct, a superlative staccato. This can be notated with little pikes over or under the notes, depending on stem direction, as in this example from Bruckner's Symphony No. 0 in D minor:

Alternatively, it can be notated by writing the word "staccatissimo" or the abbreviation "staccatiss." over the staff. A few composers, such as Mozart, have used staccato dots accompanied by a written instruction staccatissimo when they mean the passage to be played staccatissimo.

title: Staccato


text:
Legato

In music performance and notation, legato (Italian for "tied together"; French lié; German gebunden) indicates that musical notes are played or sung smoothly and connected. That is, the player makes a transition from note to note with no intervening silence. Legato technique is required for slurred performance, but unlike slurring (as that term is interpreted for some instruments), legato does not forbid re-articulation.

Standard notation indicates legato either with the word legato, or by a slur (a curved line) under notes that form one legato group. Legato, like staccato, is a kind of articulation.

There is an intermediate articulation called either mezzo staccato or non-legato (sometimes referred to as portato).

Classical string instruments
In music for Classical string instruments, legato is an articulation that often refers to notes played with a full bow, and played with the shortest silence, often barely perceptible, between notes. The player achieves this through controlled wrist movements of the bowing hand, often masked or enhanced with                                                                                vibrato. Such a legato style of playing can also be associated with portamento.

Guitar
In guitar playing (apart from classical guitar) legato is used interchangeably as a label for both musical articulation and a particular application of technique—playing musical phrases using the fretting hand to play the notes—using techniques such as glissando, string bending, hammer-ons and pull-offs instead of picking to sound the notes. The fact that the same finger is both setting the string vibrating and setting the pitch leads to smoother transitions between notes than when one hand is used to mark pitch while the other strikes the string. Legato technique to provide legato articulation on electric guitar generally requires playing notes that are close and on the same string, following the first note with others that are played by hammer-ons and pull-offs.

Some guitar virtuosos (notably Allan Holdsworth, Shawn Lane and Brett Garsed) developed their legato technique to the extent that they could perform extremely complex passages involving any permutation of notes on a string at extreme tempos, and particularly in the case of Holdsworth, tend to eschew pull-offs entirely for what some feel is a detrimental effect on guitar tone as the string is pulled slightly sideways. The term "hammer-ons from nowhere" is commonly employed when crossing strings and relying solely on fretting hand strength to produce a note but on a plucked string. Many guitar virtuosos are well-versed in the legato technique, as it allows for rapid and "clean" runs. Multiple hammer-ons and pull-offs together are sometimes also referred to colloquially as "rolls," a reference to the fluid sound of the technique. A rapid series of hammer-ons and pull-offs between a single pair of notes is called a trill.

Legato on guitar is commonly associated with playing more notes within a beat than the stated timing, i.e., playing 5 (a quintuplet) or 7 (a septuplet) notes against a quarter-note instead of the usual even number or triplet. This gives the passage an unusual timing and when played slowly an unusual sound. However, this is less noticeable by ear when played fast, as legato usually is. There is a fine line between legato and two-hand finger tapping, in some cases making the two techniques harder to distinguish by ear. Generally, legato adds a more fluid, smooth sound to a passage.

Synthesizers
In synthesizers legato is a type of monophonic operation. In contrast to the typical monophonic mode where every new note articulates the sound by restarting the envelope generators, in legato mode the envelopes are not re-triggered if the new note is played "legato" (with the previous note still depressed). This causes the initial transient from the attack and decay phases to sound only once for an entire legato sequence of notes. Envelopes reaching the sustain stage remain there until the final note is released.

Vocal music
In classical singing, legato means a string of sustained vowels with minimal interruption from consonants. It is a key characteristic of the bel canto singing style that prevailed among voice teachers and singers during the 18th century and the first four decades of the 19th century. Usually referred to as the line, a good, smooth legato is still necessary for successful classical singers. In Western Classical vocal music, singers generally use it on any phrase without explicit articulation marks. Usually the most prevalent issue with vocal legato is maintaining the "line" across registers.

title: Legato


text:
Largo

Largo may refer to:

Music

 * Largo (Italian for 'wide', 'broad'), a very slow tempo, or a musical piece or movement in such a tempo
 * "Largo" from Xerxes arranged from "Ombra mai fu", the opening aria from Handel's opera Serse
 * Hugo Largo, an American band from the 1980s
 * Largo (Brad Mehldau album), 2002
 * Largo (Americana album), a 1998 Americana music project produced by Rick Chertoff and Rob Hyman
 * Zeit (Tangerine Dream album), subtitled Largo in Four Movements, a 1972 album by Tangerine Dream
 * "Largo", a song from Fiona Apple's album The Idler Wheel...

Bulgaria

 * Largo, Sofia, an architectural ensemble of three Socialist Classicism edifices

Italy

 * Largo di Torre Argentina, a square in Rome

Scotland

 * Largo, Fife, an ecclesiastical and civil parish of Fife, Scotland
 * Adjacent villages in the parish of Largo, Scotland
 * Lower Largo
 * Upper Largo
 * Largo railway station, a former station in Fife

United States

 * Key Largo, an island in the Florida Keys, USA
 * Largo, Florida
 * Largo, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C.

Characters

 * Largo (Megatokyo), the lead character in the webcomic Megatokyo
 * Largo Winch, a comic book series and its eponymous character
 * Largo Winch (TV series), adaptation of the comic book series
 * Largo Winch (film), a 2008 adaptation of the comic book series
 * Emilio Largo and Maximillian Largo, characters from the James Bond series of novels and films
 * Largo LaGrande, a minor character in the Monkey Island series of adventure games
 * Mr. Largo, a character from The Simpsons
 * Largo the Black Lion, the main villain in Tales of the Abyss
 * Largo Slime, a mixed slime in Slime Rancher

Other uses

 * 9×23mm Largo, a centerfire pistol cartridge
 * HMS Largo Bay (K423), Bay-class anti-aircraft frigate of the British navy
 * Largo (nightclub) in Los Angeles, California
 * Largo High School (disambiguation)
 * Nissan Largo, people-mover automobile made by Nissan

title: Largo


text:
Tuning

Tuning can refer to:

Common uses

 * Tuning, the process of tuning a tuned amplifier or other electronic component
 * Musical tuning, musical systems of tuning, and the act of tuning an instrument or voice
 * Guitar tunings
 * Piano tuning, adjusting the pitch of pianos using a tuning fork or a frequency counter
 * Neuronal tuning, the property of brain cells to selectively represent a particular kind of sensory, motor or cognitive information
 * Radio tuning
 * Performance tuning - the optimization of systems, especially computer systems, which may include:
 * Car tuning, an industry and hobby involving modifying automobile engines to improve their performance
 * Engine tuning, the adjustment, modification, or design of internal combustion engines to yield more performance
 * Computer hardware tuning
 * Database tuning
 * Self-tuning, a system capable of optimizing its own internal running parameters

Arts, entertainment, and media

 * "Tuning", a song by Avail from their album Dixie (1994)
 * Tuning, a psychokinetic ability in the film Dark City (1998)

title: Tuning


text:
Octave

In music, an octave (octavus: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is a series of eight notes occupying the interval between (and including) two notes, one having twice the frequency of vibration of the other. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music", the use of which is "common in most musical systems". The interval between the first and second harmonics of the harmonic series is an octave. In Western music notation, notes separated by an octave (or multiple octaves) have the same name and are of the same pitch class.

To emphasize that it is one of the perfect intervals (including unison, perfect fourth, and perfect fifth), the octave is designated P8. Other interval qualities are also possible, though rare. The octave above or below an indicated note is sometimes abbreviated 8a or 8va (all'ottava), 8va bassa (all'ottava bassa, sometimes also 8vb), or simply 8 for the octave in the direction indicated by placing this mark above or below the staff.

Explanation and definition
An octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with double or half its frequency. For example, if one note has a frequency of 440 Hz, the note one octave above is at 880 Hz, and the note one octave below is at 220 Hz. The ratio of frequencies of two notes an octave apart is therefore 2:1. Further octaves of a note occur at $$2^n$$ times the frequency of that note (where n is an integer), such as 2, 4, 8, 16, etc. and the reciprocal of that series. For example, 55 Hz and 440 Hz are one and two octaves away from 110 Hz because they are $undefined 1/2$ (or $$2^{-1}$$) and 4 (or $$2^{2}$$) times the frequency, respectively.

The number of octaves between two frequencies is given by the formula:

 * $$\text{Number of octaves} = \log_2\left(\frac{f_2}{f_1}\right)$$

Music theory
Most musical scales are written so that they begin and end on notes that are an octave apart. For example, the C major scale is typically written C D E F G A B C (shown below), the initial and final Cs being an octave apart.

Because of octave equivalence, notes in a chord that are one or more octaves apart are said to be doubled (even if there are more than two notes in different octaves) in the chord. The word is also used to describe melodies played in parallel one or more octaves apart (see example under Equivalence, below).

While octaves commonly refer to the perfect octave (P8), the interval of an octave in music theory encompasses chromatic alterations within the pitch class, meaning that G♮ to G♯ (13 semitones higher) is an Augmented octave (A8), and G♮ to G♭ (11 semitones higher) is a diminished octave (d8). The use of such intervals is rare, as there is frequently a preferable enharmonically-equivalent notation available (minor ninth and major seventh respectively), but these categories of octaves must be acknowledged in any full understanding of the role and meaning of octaves more generally in music.

Octave of a pitch
Octaves are identified with various naming systems. Among the most common are the scientific, Helmholtz, organ pipe, and MIDI note systems. In scientific pitch notation, a specific octave is indicated by a numerical subscript number after note name. In this notation, middle C is C4, because of the note's position as the fourth C key on a standard 88-key piano keyboard, while the C an octave higher is C5.

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 * style="text-align: center; width: 67px;" | C−1
 * style="text-align: center; width: 67px;" | C0
 * style="text-align: center; width: 67px;" | C1
 * style="text-align: center; width: 52px;" | C2
 * style="text-align: center; width: 52px;" | C3
 * style="text-align: center; width: 55px;" | C4
 * style="text-align: center; width: 55px;" | C5
 * style="text-align: center; width: 55px;" | C6
 * style="text-align: center; width: 67px;" | C7
 * style="text-align: center; width: 67px;" | C8
 * style="text-align: center; width: 67px;" | C9
 * style="text-align: center; width: 25px;" |
 * style="text-align: center" | C,,,
 * style="text-align: center" | C,,
 * style="text-align: center" | C,
 * style="text-align: center" | C
 * style="text-align: center" | c
 * style="text-align: center" | c'
 * style="text-align: center" | c ''
 * style="text-align: center" | c '''
 * style="text-align: center" | c
 * style="text-align: center" | c '
 * style="text-align: center" | c
 * style="text-align: center" | 64 Foot
 * style="text-align: center" | 32 Foot
 * style="text-align: center" | 16 Foot
 * style="text-align: center" | 8 Foot
 * style="text-align: center" | 4 Foot
 * style="text-align: center" | 2 Foot
 * style="text-align: center" | 1 Foot
 * style="text-align: center" | 3 Line
 * style="text-align: center" | 4 Line
 * style="text-align: center" | 5 Line
 * style="text-align: center" | 6 Line
 * style="text-align: center" | Dbl Contra
 * style="text-align: center" | Sub Contra
 * style="text-align: center" | Contra
 * style="text-align: center" | Great
 * style="text-align: center" | Small
 * style="text-align: center" | 1 Line
 * style="text-align: center" | 2 Line
 * style="text-align: center" | 3 Line
 * style="text-align: center" | 4 Line
 * style="text-align: center" | 5 Line
 * style="text-align: center" | 6 Line
 * style="text-align: center" | 0
 * style="text-align: center" | 12
 * style="text-align: center" | 24
 * style="text-align: center" | 36
 * style="text-align: center" | 48
 * style="text-align: center" | 60
 * style="text-align: center" | 72
 * style="text-align: center" | 84
 * style="text-align: center" | 96
 * style="text-align: center" | 108
 * style="text-align: center" | 120
 * }
 * }

Ottava alta and bassa
The notation 8a or 8va is sometimes seen in sheet music, meaning "play this an octave higher than written" (all' ottava: "at the octave" or all' 8va). 8a or 8va stands for ottava, the Italian word for octave (or "eighth"); the octave above may be specified as ottava alta or ottava sopra). Sometimes 8va is used to tell the musician to play a passage an octave lower (when placed under rather than over the staff), though the similar notation 8vb (ottava bassa or ottava sotto) is also used. Similarly, 15ma (quindicesima) means "play two octaves higher than written" and 15mb (quindicesima bassa) means "play two octaves lower than written."

The abbreviations col 8, coll' 8, and c. 8va stand for coll'ottava, meaning "with the octave", i.e. to play the notes in the passage together with the notes in the notated octaves. Any of these directions can be cancelled with the word loco, but often a dashed line or bracket indicates the extent of the music affected.

Equivalence
After the unison, the octave is the simplest interval in music. The human ear tends to hear both notes as being essentially "the same", due to closely related harmonics. Notes separated by an octave "ring" together, adding a pleasing sound to music. The interval is so natural to humans that when men and women are asked to sing in unison, they typically sing in octave.

For this reason, notes an octave apart are given the same note name in the Western system of music notation—the name of a note an octave above A is also A. This is called octave equivalence, the assumption that pitches one or more octaves apart are musically equivalent in many ways, leading to the convention "that scales are uniquely defined by specifying the intervals within an octave". The conceptualization of pitch as having two dimensions, pitch height (absolute frequency) and pitch class (relative position within the octave), inherently include octave circularity. Thus all C♯s (or all 1s, if C = 0), any number of octaves apart, are part of the same pitch class.

Octave equivalence is a part of most advanced musical cultures, but is far from universal in "primitive" and early music. The languages in which the oldest extant written documents on tuning are written, Sumerian and Akkadian, have no known word for "octave". However, it is believed that a set of cuneiform tablets that collectively describe the tuning of a nine-stringed instrument, believed to be a Babylonian lyre, describe tunings for seven of the strings, with indications to tune the remaining two strings an octave from two of the seven tuned strings. Leon Crickmore recently proposed that "The octave may not have been thought of as a unit in its own right, but rather by analogy like the first day of a new seven-day week".

Monkeys experience octave equivalence, and its biological basis apparently is an octave mapping of neurons in the auditory thalamus of the mammalian brain. Studies have also shown the perception of octave equivalence in rats, human infants, and musicians but not starlings, 4–9-year-old children, or non-musicians.

title: Octave