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Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

The Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, is a composition for organ by, according to the oldest sources, German composer Johann Sebastian Bach and is one of the most widely recognisable works in the organ repertoire. Although the date of its origin is unknown, scholars have suggested between 1704 and the 1750s. The piece opens with a toccata section followed by a fugue that ends in a coda, and is largely typical of the north German organ school of the Baroque era.

Little was known about its early existence until the piece was discovered in an undated manuscript produced by Johannes Ringk. It was first published in 1833 during the early Bach Revival period through the efforts of composer Felix Mendelssohn, who also performed the piece in 1840. It was not until the 20th century that its popularity rose above that of other organ compositions by Bach, as exemplified by its inclusion in Walt Disney's 1940 animated film Fantasia that featured Leopold Stokowski's orchestral transcription from 1927.

The piece has been subject to a wide, and often conflicting, variety of analyses. It is often described as a type of program music depicting a storm, while in the context of Fantasia, is promoted as non-representational or absolute music. Scholars such as Peter Williams and Rolf Dietrich Claus argued against its authenticity, while Christoph Wolff defended the attribution to Bach. Other commentators ignored the doubts over its authenticity, or considered the attribution issue undecided.

History
The only extant near-contemporary source for BWV 565 is an undated copy by Johannes Ringk. According to the description provided by the Berlin State Library, where the manuscript is kept, and similar bibliographic descriptions, e.g. in the RISM catalogue, Ringk created his copy between 1740 and 1760. As far as is known, Ringk produced his first copy of a Bach score in 1730 when he was 12. According to Dietrich Kilian, who edited BWV 565 for the New Bach Edition, Ringk made his copy of the Toccata and Fugue between 1730 and 1740. In his critical commentary for Breitkopf & Härtel's 21st-century revised edition of the score, Jean-Claude Zehnder narrows the time of origin of the manuscript down to around the middle of the first half of the 1730s, based on an analysis of the evolution of Ringk's handwriting. At the time Ringk was a student of Bach's former student Johann Peter Kellner at Gräfenroda, and probably faithfully copied what his teacher put before him. There are some errors in the score such as note values not adding up to fill a measure correctly. Such defects show a carelessness deemed typical of Kellner, who left over 60 copies of works by Bach.

The title page of Ringk's manuscript writes the title of the work in Italian as Toccata con Fuga, names Johann Sebastian Bach as the composer of the piece, and indicates its tonality as "ex. d. #.", which is usually seen as the key signature being D minor. However, in Ringk's manuscript the staves have no ♭ symbol at the key (which would be the usual way to write down a piece in D minor). In this sense, in Ringk's manuscript, the piece is written down in D Dorian mode. Another piece listed as Bach's was also known as Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and was equally entitled to the "Dorian" qualification. It was that piece, BWV 538, that received the "Dorian" nickname, that qualifier being effectively used to distinguish it from BWV 565. Most score editions of BWV 565 use the D minor key signature, unlike Ringk's manuscript.

Ringk's manuscript does not use a separate staff for the pedal part, which was common in the 18th century (notes to be played on the pedal were indicated by "p." being written at the start of the sequence). Printed editions of the BWV 565 organ score invariably write the pedal line on a separate staff. In Ringk's manuscript the upper staff is written down using the soprano clef (as was common in the time when the manuscript originated), where printed editions use the treble clef.

All other extant manuscript copies of the score date from at least several decades later: some of these, written in the 19th century, are related with each other in that they have similar solutions to the defects in the Ringk manuscript. Whether these derive from an earlier manuscript independent from Ringk's (possibly in the C. P. E. Bach/Johann Friedrich Agricola/Johann Kirnberger circle) is debated by scholars. These near-identical 19th-century copies, the version Felix Mendelssohn knew, use the treble clef and a separate staff for the pedal. In general, the later copies show a less excessive use of fermatas in the opening measures and are more correct in making the note values fit the measures, but that may as well be from polishing a defective source as from deriving from a cleaner earlier source. In the later copies the work is named for instance "Adagio" and "Fuga" (for the respective parts of the work), or "Toccata" for the work as a whole.

The name "Toccata" is most probably a later addition, similar to the title of Toccata, Adagio and Fugue, BWV 564, because in the Baroque era such organ pieces would most commonly be called simply Prelude (Praeludium, etc.) or Prelude and Fugue. Ringk's copy abounds in Italian tempo markings, fermatas (a characteristic feature of Ringk's copies) and staccato dots, all very unusual features for pre-1740 German music.

German organ schools are distinguished into north German (e.g. Dieterich Buxtehude) and south German (e.g. Johann Pachelbel). The composition has stylistic characteristics from both schools: the stylus phantasticus, and other north German characteristics are most apparent. However, the numerous recitative stretches are rarely found in the works of northern composers and may have been inspired by Johann Heinrich Buttstett, a pupil of Pachelbel, whose few surviving free works, particularly his Prelude and Capriccio in D minor, exhibit similar features. A passage in the fugue of BWV 565 is an exact copy of a phrase in one of Johann Pachelbel's D minor fantasias, and the first half of the subject is based on this Pachelbel passage as well. At the time it was however common practice to create fugues on other composers' themes.

Structure
BWV 565 exhibits a typical simplified north German structure with a free opening (toccata), a fugal section (fugue), and a short free closing section.

Toccata
The Toccata begins with a single-voice flourish in the upper ranges of the keyboard, doubled at the octave and ornamented with a lower mordent. It then spirals toward the bottom, where a diminished seventh chord appears (which actually implies a dominant chord with a minor 9th against a tonic pedal), built one note at a time. This resolves into a D major chord: Three short passages follow, each reiterating a short motif and doubled at the octave. The section ends with a diminished seventh chord which resolved into the tonic, D minor, through a flourish. The second section of the Toccata is a number of loosely connected figurations and flourishes; the pedal switches to the dominant key, A minor. This section segues into the third and final section of the Toccata, which consists almost entirely of a passage doubled at the sixth and comprising reiterations of the same three-note figure, similar to doubled passages in the first section. After a brief pedal flourish, the piece ends with a D minor chord.

Fugue
The subject of the four-voice fugue is made up entirely of sixteenth notes, with an implied pedal point set against a brief melodic subject that first falls, then rises. Such violinistic figures are frequently encountered in Baroque music and that of Bach, both as fugue subjects and as material in non-imitative pieces. Unusually, the answer is in the subdominant key, rather than the traditional dominant. Although technically a four-part fugue, most of the time there are only three voices, and some of the interludes are in two, or even one voice (notated as two). Although only simple triadic harmony is employed throughout the fugue, there is an unexpected C minor subject entry, and furthermore, a solo pedal statement of the subject—a unique feature for a Baroque fugue. Immediately after the final subject entry, the fugue resolves to a sustained B♭ major chord.

Coda
A multi-sectional coda follows, marked Recitativo. Although only 17 bars long, it progresses through five tempo changes. The last bars are played Molto adagio, and the piece ends with a minor plagal cadence.

Performance
The performance time of the piece is usually around nine minutes, but shorter performance times (e.g. 8:15) and execution times of over 10:30 exist. The first section of the piece, the Toccata, takes somewhat less than a third of the total performance time.

As was common practice for German music of the 17th century, the intended registration is not specified, and performers' choices vary from simple solutions such as organo pleno to exceedingly complex ones, like those described by Harvey Grace.

Reception
In the first century of its existence the entire reception history of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor consists of being saved from oblivion by maybe not more than a single manuscript copy. Then it took about a century from its first publication as a little-known organ composition by Johann Sebastian Bach to becoming one of the signature pieces of the composer. The composition's third century took it from Bach's most often recorded organ piece to a composition with an unclear origin. Despite Mendelssohn's opinion that it was "at the same time learned and something for the people", followed by a fairly successful piano transcription in the second half of the 19th century, it was not until the 20th century that it rose above the average notability of an organ piece by Bach. The work's appearance (in an orchestral transcription by Leopold Stokowski) in the 1940 Walt Disney film Fantasia contributed to its popularity, around which time scholars started to seriously doubt its attribution to Bach.

The composition has been deemed both "particularly suited to the organ" and "strikingly unorganistic". It has been seen as united by a single ground-thought, but also as containing "passages which have no connection whatever with the chief idea". It has been called "entirely a thing of virtuosity" yet also described as being "not so difficult as it sounds". It has been described as some sort of program music depicting a storm, but also as abstract music, quite the opposite of program music depicting a storm. It has been presented as an emanation of the galant style, yet too dramatic to be anything near that style. Its period of origin has been assumed to have been as early as around 1704, and as late as the 1750s. Its defining characteristics have been associated with extant compositions by Bach (BWV 531, 549a, 578, 911, 914, 922 and several of the solo violin sonatas and partitas),  and by others (including Nicolaus Bruhns and Johann Heinrich Buttstett), as well as with untraceable earlier versions for other instruments and/or by other composers. It has been deemed too simplistic for it to have been written down by Bach, and too much a stroke of genius to have been composed by anyone else but Bach.

What remains is "the most famous organ work in existence", that in its rise to fame was helped by various arrangements, including bombastic piano settings, versions for full symphonic orchestra, and alternative settings for more modest solo instruments.

Score editions
In 1833, BWV 565 was published for the first time, in the third of three bundles of "little-known" organ compositions by Bach. The edition was conceived and partly prepared by Felix Mendelssohn, who already had BWV 565 in his repertoire by 1830. In 1846, C. F. Peters published the Toccata con Fuga as No. 4 in their fourth volume of organ compositions by Bach. In 1867, the Bach Gesellschaft included it in Band 15 of its complete edition of Bach's works. Novello published the work in 1886 as No. 1 in their sixth volume of Bach's organ works.

In the early 1910s, Albert Schweitzer collaborated with Charles-Marie Widor to compile a complete edition of Bach's organ compositions, published by Schirmer. In 1912, BWV 565 was published in the second volume, containing works of Bach's "first master period". Around the start of the First World War, Augener republished William Thomas Best's late 19th-century edition of the work in volume 2 of their complete edition of Bach's organ works.

After 1950, when the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis was published, it was no longer needed to indicate the Toccata and Fugue in D minor as "Peters Vol. IV, No. 4", as "BGA Volume XV p. 267", as "Novello VI, 1", or without "Dorian", to distinguish it from the Toccata and Fugue with the same key signature. From then on the work has been simply BWV 565, and the other, the so-called "Dorian", has been BWV 538. In 1964, the New Bach Edition included BWV 565 in Series IV, Volume 6, with its critical commentary published in Volume 5 in 1979. Dietrich Kilian, the editor of these volumes, explains in the introduction to Vol. 6 that the New Bach Edition prefers to stay close to authoritative early sources for their score presentations. For BWV 565 that means staying close to the Ringk manuscript. Consequently, the name of the piece was again given in Italian as Toccata con Fuga, and the piece was again written down in D Dorian (i.e. without ♭ at the key). However, more modern conventions were maintained with regard to using the treble clef in the upper staff and using a separate staff for the pedal.

A facsimile of Ringk's manuscript was published in 2000. In the 21st century, the facsimile became available online, as well as various downloadable files of previously printed editions. In 2010, Breitkopf & Härtel initiated a new edition of Bach's organ works, with BWV 565 appearing in its fourth volume.

Performances and recordings
The first major public performance was by Mendelssohn, on 6 August 1840, in Leipzig. The concert was very well received by the critics, among them Robert Schumann, who admired the work's famous opening as an example of Bach's sense of humor. Franz Liszt adopted the piece into his organ repertoire. He used the glockenspiel stop for the Prestissimo triplets in the opening section, and the quintadena stop for the repeated notes in bars 12–15.

The work was first recorded (in abridged form as "Toccata and Finale") by John J. McClellan on the Salt Lake Tabernacle organ in Salt Lake City in late August or early September 1910 by the Columbia Graphophone Company, who released it in the US in 1911 on Columbia 10-inch disc A945 and in the UK on Columbia-Rena disc 1704, which is one of the first commercial pipe organ recordings. In 1926, the organ version of BWV 565 was recorded on 78 rpm discs. In a 1928 concert program, Schweitzer indicated BWV 565 as one of Bach's "best-known" compositions, considering it to be a youth work. Schweitzer's first recording of the piece was issued in 1935. In 1951, he recorded the work again.

In the 1950s, a recording of Helmut Walcha playing BWV 565 on organ was released. In that, and subsequent releases of Walcha's recordings of BWV 565 on Deutsche Grammophon (DG), there is an obvious evolution of the work from "one among many" organ compositions by Bach to a definite signature piece by the composer. In early Archiv Produktion releases, the list on the sleeve contained the organ compositions in the order they appeared on the recording without distinction; in the 1960s, BWV 565 began to be listed first; by the 1980s, the font size for BWV 565 was larger than that of the other compositions; and in the 1990s, Walcha's 1963 recording of the piece became the only piece by Bach included in DG's Classic Mania CD set with popular tunes by various classical composers. Similarly, the album sleeves of Marie-Claire Alain's recordings of BWV 565 in the 1960s listed the piece in the same font as the other recorded works, but by the 1980s it was in a larger font. US record companies seemed faster in putting BWV 565 forward as Bach's best-known organ piece. In 1955, E. Power Biggs recorded the Toccata 14 times, played on different European organs, and Columbia issued those recordings on a single album.

Hans-Joachim Schulze describes the force of the piece on a record sleeve: "Here is elemental and unbounded power, in impatiently ascending and descending runs and rolling masses of chords, that only with difficulty abates sufficiently to give place to the logic and balance of the fugue. With the reprise of the initial Toccata, the dramatic idea reaches its culmination amidst flying scales and with an ending of great sonority."

Organists recording BWV 565 more than once include Jean Guillou, Lionel Rogg and Wolfgang Rübsam. Some musicians, such as Karl Richter, who did not record organ performances very often, included BWV 565 in their anthologies. By the end of the century, hundreds of organists had recorded BWV 565. In the 21st century, several recordings of BWV 565 became available online, such as a recording included in James Kibbie's Bach Organ Works project and John Scott Whiteley's broadcast for BBC TV made in 2001.

Piano arrangements
Bach's Toccata and Fugue was not performed on the organ exclusively. The title page of the first publication of the piece already indicated that performance on the piano by one or two players was possible. From 1868 to 1881, Karl Tausig's piano transcription of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor was performed four times in the Gewandhaus in Leipzig. Many more piano transcriptions of BWV 565 were published, for instance by Louis Brassin, Ferruccio Busoni, Alfred Cortot, and by Max Reger in transcriptions for both piano two hands and four hands.

Tausig's version of the work was recorded on piano rolls several times in the first decades of the 20th century. In the mid-1920s, Marie Novello recorded the Tausig piano version of BWV 565 on 78 rpm discs. Percy Grainger's 1931 recording on the piano, based on the Tausig and Busoni transcriptions, was written out as a score by Leslie Howard, and then recorded by other artists. Ignaz Friedman recorded the piano version he had published in 1944. From the 1950s to the first decades of the 21st century, there were half a dozen recordings of Tausig's piano version, and several dozen of Busoni's.

In Bach's biographies
In Johann Nikolaus Forkel's early 19th-century biography of Bach, the work is left unmentioned. Forkel probably did not even know of the composition. In C. L. Hilgenfeldt's biography it is merely listed among the published works. Hilgenfeldt considers the Toccata and Fugue in F major the most accomplished of Bach's toccatas for organ. In Karl Hermann Bitter's 1865 Bach biography, BWV 565 is only listed in an appendix.

In 1873, Philipp Spitta devoted somewhat less than a page to the work in the first volume of his Bach biography. He assumed the work was written in the first year of Bach's second Weimar period (1708–1717). He saw more north German characteristics (Buxtehude's restless style) in the form of the Toccata, rather than south German (Pachelbel's simple and quiet approach). Spitta considered the fugue "particularly suited to the organ, and more especially effective in the pedal part." His description of the piece refers to long sections that are surfeit: "rocking passages which have no connection whatever with the chief idea" and organ recitatives alternating with "ponderous, roaring masses of chords". Spitta likened some phrases of the Toccata and Fugue to another early work, the Fugue in G minor, BWV 578.

Spitta also detects a rhythmic figure that appears briefly in the concluding part of the work (bar 137) which, extensively elaborated, reappears in the keyboard Prelude in A minor, BWV 922, a work he supposes to have been composed around 1710. In Reginald Lane Poole's 1882 biography, the work is again merely listed. In the 1905 first version of his Bach biography, Albert Schweitzer leaves BWV 565 unmentioned in the chapter on the organ works. In André Pirro's 1906 biography, Bach's organ toccatas are only mentioned as a group. He considers none of them written before Bach's later Weimar years (so closer to 1717 than to 1708).

Up to this point, none of the biographers seem to have given any special attention to BWV 565. If mentioned, it is listed or described along with other organ compositions, but is far from being considered the best or the most famous of Bach's organ compositions, or even of his toccatas. However, that was about to change. In 1908, Schweitzer reworked his biography for its first German edition. In that edition he indicates the work as "well known". After listing several organ works in which Bach showed himself a pupil of Buxtehude, Frescobaldi, and various contemporary Italian composers, Schweitzer describes the Toccata and Fugue in D minor as a work in which the composer rises to independent mastery:"In the D minor toccata and fugue, the strong and ardent spirit has finally realised the laws of form. A single dramatic ground-thought unites the daring passage work of the toccata, that seems to pile up like wave on wave; and in the fugue the intercalated passages in broken chords only serve to make the climax all the more powerful."

In Hubert Parry's 1909 Bach biography, the work is qualified as "well known" and "one of the most effective of [Bach's] works in every way". He calls the Toccata "brilliantly rhapsodical", more or less follows Spitta in the description of the fugue, and is most impressed by the coda: "It would be hard to find a concluding passage more imposing or more absolutely adapted to the requirements of the instrument than this coda." Apart from seeing Buxtehude's influence, he likens the theme of the fugue to the theme of the fugue of Prelude and Fugue in B minor, BWV 544, which he considers a late work.

In the 1979 first volume of his Bach biography, Alberto Basso calls BWV 565 "famosissimo" (most famous) and "celebratissima" (most celebrated), maintaining that the popularity of these works hinges entirely on this composition. He sees it as a youth work, composed before 1708, that with its underdeveloped fugue is stylistically eclectic but unified without breaking continuity. He links it to the northern school, and mentions Tausig, Busoni and Stokowki as influencing its trajectory. Basso warns against seeing too much in the composition. He feels it may be within reach of everyone but is neither an incantation, nor ridden with symbolism and even less a sum of whatever.

In his 1999 Bach biography, Klaus Eidam devotes a few pages to the Toccata and Fugue. He considers it an early work, probably composed for testing the technical qualities of a new organ. He feels that the crescendo that develops through arpeggios, gradually building up to the use of hundreds of pipes at the same time, can show exactly at what point the wind system of the organ might become inadequate. In his view, some of the more unusual characteristics of the piece can be explained as resulting from Bach's capacity as an organ tester.

Christoph Wolff, in his 2000 Bach biography, sees BWV 565 as an early work. In his view, it is "as refreshingly imaginative, varied, and ebullient as it is structurally undisciplined and unmastered".

In books on Bach's organ works
Before his 1906 Bach biography, André Pirro had already written a book on Bach's organ works. In that book he devoted less than a page to BWV 565, and considers it some kind of program music depicting a tempest, including flashes of lightning and rumbling thunder. Pirro supposes Bach had success with this music in the smaller German courts he visited. All in all, he judges the music as superficial, not more than a stepping stone in Bach's development.

In the early 1920s, Harvey Grace published a series of articles on Bach's organ works. He considers that the notes of the piece are not too difficult to play, but that an organist performing the work is primarily challenged by interpretation. He gives tips on how to perform the work so that it does not sound like a "meaningless scramble". He describes the fugue as slender and simple, but only a "very sketchy example of the form". In his description of the piece, Grace refers to Pirro, elaborating Pirro's "storm" analogy, and like Pirro, he seems convinced Bach went touring with the piece. His suggestions for the organ registration make comparisons with how the piece would be played by an orchestra.

In 1948, Hermann Keller wrote that the Toccata and Fugue was uncharacteristic for Bach, but nonetheless bore some of his distinguishing marks. His description of the piece echoes earlier storm analogies. Keller sees the opening bars' unison passages as "descending like a lightning flash, the long roll of thunder of the broken chords of the full organ, and the stormy undulation of the triplets".

In 1980, Peter Williams wrote about BWV 565 in the first volume of his The Organ Music of J.S.Bach. The author warns against numerological over-interpretation like that of Volker Gwinner. Many parts of the composition are described as typical of Bach. Williams sees stylistic matches with Pachelbel, with the north German organ school, and with the Italian violin school, but sees various unusual features of the composition as well. Williams questions the authenticity of the piece, based on its various unusual features, and elaborates the idea that the piece may have a violin version ancestor. The reworked edition of this book, in one volume, appeared in 2003, and devotes more pages to discussing the authenticity and possible prior versions of BWV 565. In the meantime, Williams had written a 1981 article on the authenticity of BWV 565; this was followed by numerous publications by other scholars on the same topic.

J. S. Bach as Organist, a 1986 collection of essays edited by George Stauffer and Ernest May, discussed the registration Bach would have used for BWV 565.

Arrangements for symphony orchestra
Around the same time as Grace made comparisons with an orchestral version in his performance suggestions, Edward Elgar was producing orchestrations of two organ pieces by Bach, which did not include BWV 565. Elgar did not particularly like the work, nor Schweitzer's glowing comments about it.

In 1927, Leopold Stokowski recorded his orchestration of BWV 565 with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Soon the idea was emulated by other musicians. An orchestration was performed in Carnegie Hall in 1928, Henry Wood (pseudonymously, as "Paul Klenovsky") arranged his orchestration before the end of the decade. By the mid-1930s, Leonidas Leonardi had published his orchestration, and Alois Melichar's orchestration was recorded in 1939.

In 1947, Eugene Ormandy recorded his orchestration of the piece with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The score of Stokowski's arrangement was published in 1952. Other orchestrations of the piece were provided by Fabien Sevitzky, René Leibowitz (1958), Lucien Cailliet (1967) and Stanisław Skrowaczewski (1968).

In film
BWV 565 was used as film music well before the sound film era, becoming a cliché to illustrate horror and villainy. Its first uses in sound film included the 1931 film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the 1934 film The Black Cat.

After 1936, another approach to using BWV 565 in film was under consideration. Oskar Fischinger had previously used Bach's Third Brandenburg Concerto to accompany abstract animations and suggested to Stokowski that his orchestral version of BWV 565 could be used in the same way. Later in 1937, while in California, Stokowski and Disney discussed the idea of making a short animated film of The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Dukas for Disney Studios, the intention being to introduce classical music to a younger and broader audience. Similar in spirit to the popular series of Silly Symphonies, the short film proved costly to produce. However, starting with the Toccata and Fugue and the Sorcerer's Apprentice, Stokowski, Disney and the music critic Deems Taylor chose other compositions to incorporate into their film project, known as "The Concert Piece." By the time Disney's Fantasia was released in 1940, the animations accompanying BWV 565 had been made semi-abstract, although Fischinger's original idea that the performance of the music start with showing Stokowski directing his orchestra was preserved. Taylor begins his narrative with, "What you’re going to see is the designs and pictures and stories of what music inspired in the minds and imaginations of a group of artists." The opening number, the "Toccata and Fugue," will be absolute music—music that exists for its own sake—and will try to depict what might go on in the mind of the person listening to it. "At first you are more or less conscious of the orchestra," Taylor explains, "so our picture opens with a series of impressions of the conductor and the players. Then the music begins to suggest other things to your imagination—oh, just masses of color, or cloud forms, or vague shadows, or geometrical objects floating in space." In the 1942 cinema release of the film by RKO, the Toccata and Fugue was cut entirely, only to return in a 1946 re-release. Fantasia contributed significantly to the popularity of the Toccata and Fugue.

The 1950 film Sunset Boulevard used BWV 565 as a joking reference to the horror genre. The piece has appeared in many other films, including 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), in which it is played by Captain Nemo on the organ of the Nautilus, before the submarine's pitiless and apparently unmotivated attack on a ship. BWV 565 also appeared in Fellini's 1960 La Dolce Vita. The 1962 film adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera used BWV 565 in the suspense and horror sense. It is used "without irony and in an apocalyptic spirit updated from its earlier Gothic implications" at the beginning and end of the 1975 dystopian science fiction film Rollerball. Shortened to two minutes in length, BWV 565 was used as the introductory theme for the French animation Once Upon a Time... Man, in 26 episodes between 1978 and 1981.

Ennio Morricone took inspiration from the score BWV 565/1 for the 1965 film For a Few Dollars More of Sergio Leone. Morricone used the trumpet musical theme "La resa dei conti" ("Sixty Seconds to What?") for the opening baroque mordent of J. S. Bach's Toccata. The cowboy shootout with Gian Maria Volonté takes place in a deconsecrated church, turned into a pigsty, where the theme is heard on the organ at full blast. According to, "It is [...] hard to establish what led the composer to quote Bach—perhaps the shared key of D minor led to the idea of the organ, whereas the small church might have at most accommodated nothing more than a run-down harmonium. In any case, for a classically trained musician such a glaring reference to one of the most hackneyed commonplaces of Western art music—certainly the most hackneyed within Bach's output (although its authorship has long been disputed)—clashes with the alleged intention of paying homage to the Eisenach maestro." In his autobiographical book written with, Morricone wrote that, "The death ritual carried out in a church convinced me to use the Bach quotation and the organ. Volonté's gestures in that sequence reminded me of some paintings of Rembrandt and Vermeer that Leone was fond of. Those artists lived in an epoch close to Bach, and with my music I decided to look at that kind of past."

Authenticity research and reconstructions
A certain uneasiness regarding the authorship of BWV 565 had been around long before the 1980s. From Hilgenfeldt in 1850, to Elgar in the 1920s, to Basso in the late 1970s, the extraordinary popularity of the piece seems to have taken scholars and musicians by surprise. Of Mendelssohn's prophecy that it was something for both the erudite and the masses, only the latter part had been fulfilled. Some scholars who analysed the composition's counterpoint felt it was substandard. They said it was stylistically too close to the galant style of the later 18th century to be an early 18th-century composition. Its presumed time of composition shifted around. Some felt the composition was too modern to have been composed by a young Bach, or too simplistic to have been composed by a middle-aged Bach. Although many commentators have invoked Bach's genius to explain the dislocated modernity in an immature composition,  an increasing number of scholars felt unsatisfied with such an intangible explanation.

In a 1981 article, Peter Williams reiterated the speculations, from which he saw a way out of the conundrum, already featured in his 1980 book on Bach's organ compositions:
 * The piece was originally composed for violin, not necessarily by Bach (that would explain its "simplicity");
 * It was later transcribed for the organ, not necessarily by Bach (that would explain its "modernity").

The analysis of the material sources for the piece, its oldest surviving manuscripts, although insufficiently pursued according to some scholars, was seen as too limited to give a conclusive answer to these questions. What was available from that branch of the research could be explained in opposite ways. Likewise, whether the more elaborate stylistic evidence was considered conclusive or merely circumstantial, depended on who was trying to prove what.

In 1982, David Humphreys suggested that BWV 565 may have been composed and/or arranged by Kellner, or by someone from the circle around Kellner. Despite many stylistic similarities, however, Kellner was ruled out a quarter of a century later: "in comparison with the style of Kellner, BWV 565 more resembles the style of J. S. Bach"; "many of Kellner's keyboard pieces revealed that his style boasts pronounced galant elements ... this clearly stands in strong contrast to the dramatic style of the Toccata BWV 565".

A violin composition by Bach's eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann, transcribed for the organ by Ringk, was named as another possible source. However, according to 21st-century statistical analysis, Wilhelm Friedemann was even less likely to have been the composer of the Fugue than Kellner. The same research indicated that large portions of the Fugue were consistent with the style of Johann Ludwig Krebs, but with more than half of the Fugue more likely composed by J. S. Bach. After initially confirming Williams's doubts about the authorship of BWV 565, by the second decade of the 21st century, statistical analysis left the attribution issue undecided. No-one had found a composer more compatible with the style of its fugue than Bach himself. In the words of Jean-Claude Zehnder, who was sympathetic towards the violin version reconstruction: "The matter still remains open, despite the scholarly discourse that began in 1981. Until proof of the contrary, BWV 565 should be considered as a work by Johann Sebastian Bach." No edition of the Bach Werke Verzeichnis has listed BWV 565 among the works seen as spurious or doubtful, nor does the work's entry on the website of the Bach Archiv Leipzig mention any doubts.

Attribution question
In 1961, Antony Davies remarked that the Toccata was void of counterpoint. Half a decade later, BWV 565 was further questioned. Walter Emery advocated that scepticism was a necessary condition to approaching the history of Bach's organ compositions, and Friedrich Blume saw problems with the traditional historiography of Bach's youth. Roger Bullivant thought the fugue too simple for Bach and saw characteristics that were incompatible with his style: These doubts about the authorship of BWV 565 were elaborated by Peter Williams in a 1981 article. Hypotheses proposed by Williams in that article included that BWV 565 may have been composed after 1750 and may have been based on an earlier composition for another instrument, supposedly violin. Williams added more stylistic problems to the ones already mentioned by Bullivant, among others the parallel octaves throughout the opening of the toccata, the true subdominant answers in the fugue, and the primitive harmonies throughout the piece, with countersubjects in the fugue frequently moving through thirds and sixths only. All of these characteristics are either unique or extremely rare in organ music of the first half of the 18th century.
 * Conclusion of the piece on a minor plagal cadence
 * A pedal statement of the subject, unaccompanied by other voices
 * Trill in bars 86 to 90

In 1995, Rolf Dietrich Claus decided against the authenticity of BWV 565, mainly based on the stylistic characteristics of the piece. He named another problem—in its first measure the composition contains a C♯, a note organs in Bach's time rarely had, and which Bach almost never used in his organ compositions. In his book on BWV 565, which he expanded in 1998 to counter some of the criticisms it received, Claus also dismisses the prior-version options suggested by Williams, noting that the toccata was an unknown genre for violin solo compositions of the time. Several essays in John Butt's Cambridge Companion on Bach discuss the attribution problems of BWV 565. Other biographers and scholars have left these attribution and prior-version theories unmentioned, or explained the atypical characteristics of the composition by indicating it was a very early composition by Bach, probably written during his stay in Arnstadt (1703–1706).

At the end of the 20th century, Hans Fagius wrote:"... the fact remains that the Toccata is strikingly unorganistic and modern to have been written by Bach around 1705, even if the form is that of North German toccata. There are, however, few organ pieces with so much spirit and drive, and why should not a genius like Bach, in youthful high spirits, have produced this unique work, which is in some respects half a century before its time and which could achieve a place as one of the most beloved compositions in all of music history?"

The authorship debate has continued in the 21st century. Wolff calls it a pseudo-problem. Williams suggested that the piece may have been created by another composer who must have been born in the beginning of the 18th century, since details of style (such as triadic harmony, spread chords, and the use of solo pedal) may indicate post-1730, or even post-1750 idioms. Statistical analysis conducted by Peter van Kranenburg in 2006 confirmed the fugue was atypical for Bach, but failed to find a composer more likely to have composed it than Bach. David Schulenberg feels that the attribution of BWV 565 to Bach is doubtful. Richard Douglas Jones takes no position with regard to the composition's authenticity. In 2009, Reinmar Emans wrote that Claus and Wolff had diametrically opposed views on the reliability of Ringk as a copyist, inspired by their respective positions in the authenticity debate, and thinks that sort of speculation unhelpful.

Anterior version hypothesis and reconstructions
The other hypothesis elaborated by Williams is that BWV 565 may have been a transcription of a lost solo violin piece. Parallel octaves and the preponderance of thirds and sixths may be explained by a transcriber's attempt to fill in harmony which, if preserved as is, would be inadequately thin on a pipe organ. This is corroborated by the fact that the subject of the fugue, and certain passages (such as bars 12–15), are evidently inspired by string music. Bach is known to have transcribed solo violin works for organ at least twice: the first movement of the Partita in E major for solo violin, BWV 1006, was converted by Bach into the solo organ part of the opening movement of the cantata Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir, BWV 29. Bach also transcribed the Fugue movement of Sonata in G minor for solo violin, BWV 1001, as the second half of Prelude and Fugue in D minor for organ, BWV 539.

This notion inspired a new theory of adaptation: the reconstruction. Reconstructions have been applied to several other works by Bach, with variable success. A reconstruction for violin has been played by Jaap Schröder and Simon Standage. The violinist Andrew Manze produced his own reconstruction, also in A minor, which he has performed and recorded. In 2000, Mark Argent proposed a scordatura five-stringed cello instead. Williams proposed a violoncello piccolo or a five-stringed cello as alternative possibilities in 2003. A new violin version was created by scholar Bruce Fox-Lefriche in 2004. In 2005, Eric Lewin Altschuler wrote that if the first version of BWV 565 was written for a stringed instrument the most likely candidate would have been a lute. Yet another violin version was created by Chad Kelly and performed by Rachel Podger on her 2022 album Tutta Sola.

In 1997, Bernhard Billeter proposed a harpsichord toccata original, which was deemed unlikely by Williams. However, Billeter's argument makes authorship by Bach more likely: Bach's harpsichord toccatas (most of them early works) have simplistic elements and quirks similar to BWV 565. Bach's early keyboard works, especially the free ones like Preludes and Toccatas, cannot always be clearly separated into organ pieces and harpsichord pieces. Spitta had already remarked on the similarity between a passage in BWV 565 and one in the harpsichord Prelude BWV 921; Robert Marshall compares the continuation patterns and sequences of the harpsichord Toccata BWV 911, and the Fugue theme of the harpsichord Toccata BWV 914, with the same of BWV 565.

Other media
In 1935, Hermann Hesse wrote a poem about the piece, Zu einer Toccata von Bach ("On a toccata by Bach"), which contributed to its fame.

Recordings of BWV 565 that have appeared on popular music charts include Sky's 1980 rock-inspired recording (#83 on Billboard Hot 100, #5 on UK Singles Chart) and Vanessa-Mae's 1996 violin recording (#24 on the Billboard charts). In 1993, Salvatore Sciarrino made an arrangement for solo flute, recorded by Mario Caroli. A version for solo horn was arranged by Zsolt Nagy and has been performed by Frank Lloyd. In the mid-1990s, Fred Mills, then trumpet player for Canadian Brass, created an adaptation for brass quintet that became a worldwide standard for brass ensembles. 2 Unlimited's 1994 hit "The Real Thing" uses BWV 565 and, in a list published by Classic FM and PRS for Music, was revealed to be among the best-selling pop singles to incorporate classical music.

Writings

 * Originally published in Die Musikforschung Vol. 50 No. 1, January–March 1997, p. 77–80.
 * Butt, John (1997). The Cambridge companion to Bach. Cambridge University Press, 1997. ISBN 978-0521587808.
 * Claus, Rolf Dietrich (1998). Zur Echtheit von Toccata und Fuge d-moll BWV 565. Cologne: Dohr, 2nd ed. ISBN 978-3925366550. (review by Yo Tomita )
 * (review by David Baker, Organists' Review)
 * Dörffel, Alfred (1884). Geschichte der Gewandhausconcerte zu Leipzig vom 25. November 1781 bis 25. November 1881: Im Auftrage der Concert-Direction verfasst. Leipzig.
 * Emans, Reinmar (2004). "Vom überstrapazierten Autor: Biographische Konstruktionen bei Echtheitskritik" pp. 17–29 in Musik und Biographie: Festschrift für Rainer Cadenbach. edited by Cordula Heymann-Wentzel and Johannes Laas. Königshausen & Neumann. ISBN 978-3826028045
 * Emans, Reinmar (2009). "Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Textkritik bei Incerta" pp. 103–11 in Was ist Textkritik?: Zur Geschichte und Relevanz eines Zentralbegriffs der Editionswissenschaft edited by Gertraud Mitterauer, Ulrich Müller, Margarete Springeth and Verena Vitzthum. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3484970786
 * Emery, Walter (July 1966). "Some Speculations on the Development of Bach's Organ Style", pp. 596–603 in The Musical Times, Vol. 107, No. 1481.
 * Fox-Lefriche, Bruce (2004). The Greatest Violin Sonata That J.S. Bach Never Wrote. Strings xix/3:122, October 2004, 43–55.
 * Glaus, Daniel (2013). "Albert Schweitzer als Organist", pp. 291–304 in Albert Schweitzer: Facetten einer Jahrhundertgestalt, edited by Hubert Steinke, Angela Berlis, Andreas Wagner and Fritz von Gunten. Haupt Verlag AG. ISBN 978-3258077796
 * Grace, Harvey (1922). The Organ Works of Bach. London: Novello & Co.
 * Gwinner, Volker (1968). "Bachs d-moll-Tokkata als Credo-Vertonung" in Musik und Kirche Vol. 38 pp. 240–42.
 * Humphreys, David (1982). The D Minor Toccata BWV 565. Early Music Vol. 10, No. 2.
 * Jones, Richard Douglas (2007). The Creative Development of Johann Sebastian Bach: Music to Delight the Spirit. Volume 1: 1695–1717. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198164408
 * Keller, Hermann (1948). Die Orgelwerke Bachs: Ein Beitrag zu ihrer Geschichte. Form, Deutung und Wiedergabe. Leipzig: C. F. Peters.
 * Kilian, Dietrich (1979). Präludien, Toccaten, Fantasien und Fugen I: BWV 531–550, 562 (Fragment) / Critical Commentary to Part I and II, Volume 6 in three Parts of Serie IV: Orgelwerke in Johann Sebastian Bach: Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke. Kassel: Bärenreiter.
 * Kranenburg, Peter van (2006). "Composer attribution by quantifying compositional strategies" pp. 375–76 in ISMIR 2006: 7th International Conference on Music Information Retrieval – Proceedings. Canada: University of Victoria. ISBN 1550583492
 * Kranenburg, Peter van (2007). "Assessing Disputed Attributions for Organ Fugues in the J. S. Bach (BWV) Catalogue" Ch. 7 pp. 120–37 in Tonal Theory for the Digital Age (Computing in Musicology Vol. 15) edited by Walter B. Hewlett, Eleanor Selfridge-Field, Edmund Correia. University of Michigan. ISBN 978-0936943176 (replaced by Kranenburg 2008)
 * Kranenburg, Peter van (September 2008). "On Measuring Musical Style – The Case of Some Disputed Organ Fugues in the J. S. Bach (BWV) Catalogue". Utrecht University.
 * Kranenburg, Peter van (4 October 2010). "On Measuring Musical Style – The Case of Some Disputed Organ Fugues in the J. S. Bach (BWV) Catalogue" Ch. 5 pp. 71–89 in A Computational Approach to Content-Based Retrieval of Folk-Song Melodies. Utrecht University. ISBN 978-9039353936
 * Newman, Anthony (1995). Bach and the Baroque: European Source Materials from the Baroque and Early Classical Periods with Special Emphasis on the Music of J.S. Bach. Pendragon Press. ISBN 978-0945193647
 * Parry, Hubert (1909). Johann Sebastian Bach: The Story of the Development of a Great Personality. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons; London: The Knickerbocker Press.
 * Pirro, André (1895). L'orgue de Jean-Sébastien Bach. Paris: Fischbacher.
 * Pirro, André (1902). Johann Sebastian Bach: The Organist and his Works for the Organ. New York: G. Schirmer
 * Schulenberg, David (2006). The Keyboard Music of J.S. Bach, second edition. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415974004
 * Schweitzer, Albert (1905). J. S. Bach, le musicien-poète. Preface by Charles Marie Widor. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel.
 * Schweitzer, Albert (1908). J. S. Bach. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel.
 * Schweitzer, Albert (1935). J. S. Bach, Vol. 1 London: A. & C. Black.
 * Schweitzer, Albert (1995). Die Orgelwerke Johann Sebastian Bachs: Vorworte zu den "Sämtlichen Orgelwerken", with an introduction by Harald Schützeichel. Georg Olms Verlag. ISBN 978-3487416977
 * Philipp Spitta (1873). Johann Sebastian Bach, Erster Band (Book I–IV). Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel.
 * Philipp Spitta (1899). Johann Sebastian Bach: His Work and Influence on the Music of Germany 1685–1750, translated by Clara Bell and J. A. Fuller Maitland, Vol. I (Book I–III). London: Novello & Co.
 * Stinson, Russell (2006). The Reception of Bach's Organ Works from Mendelssohn to Brahms. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195346862 (2010 edition ISBN 978-0199747030)
 * Stinson, Russell (2012). J. S. Bach at His Royal Instrument: Essays on His Organ Works. US: Oxford University Press ISBN 978-0199917235
 * Williams, Peter F. (1980). The Organ Music of J. S. Bach, Volume 1: Preludes, Toccatas, Fantasias, Fugues, Sonatas, Concertos and Miscellaneous Pieces (BWV 525–598, 802–805 etc.) Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521217231.
 * Williams, Peter F. (July 1981). "BWV 565: a toccata in D minor for organ by J. S. Bach?" pp. 330–37 in Early Music Vol. 9, No. 3.
 * Wolff, Christoph (2000). Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician. Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 039304825X
 * Wolff, Christoph (2002). "Zum norddeutschen Kontext der Orgelmusik des jugendlichen Bach: Das Scheinproblem der Toccata d-Moll BWV 565", pp. 241–51 in Bach, Lübeck und die norddeutsche Musiktradition edited by Wolfgang Sandberger. Kassel: Bärenreiter. ISBN 978-3761815854
 * Wolff, Christoph (2002b). "Bach's organ toccata in D-minor and the issue of its authenticity" pp. 85–107 in Perspectives on Organ Playing and Musical Interpretation: Pedagogical, Historical, and Instrumental Studies: A Festschrift for Heinrich Fleischer at 90 edited by Ames Anderson, Bruce Backer, David Backus and Charles Luedtke. New Ulm: Martin Luther College. ISBN 978-1890600037
 * Yearsley, David (2012). Bach's Feet: The Organ Pedals in European Culture. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521199018
 * Stinson, Russell (2006). The Reception of Bach's Organ Works from Mendelssohn to Brahms. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195346862 (2010 edition ISBN 978-0199747030)
 * Stinson, Russell (2012). J. S. Bach at His Royal Instrument: Essays on His Organ Works. US: Oxford University Press ISBN 978-0199917235
 * Williams, Peter F. (1980). The Organ Music of J. S. Bach, Volume 1: Preludes, Toccatas, Fantasias, Fugues, Sonatas, Concertos and Miscellaneous Pieces (BWV 525–598, 802–805 etc.) Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521217231.
 * Williams, Peter F. (July 1981). "BWV 565: a toccata in D minor for organ by J. S. Bach?" pp. 330–37 in Early Music Vol. 9, No. 3.
 * Wolff, Christoph (2000). Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician. Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 039304825X
 * Wolff, Christoph (2002). "Zum norddeutschen Kontext der Orgelmusik des jugendlichen Bach: Das Scheinproblem der Toccata d-Moll BWV 565", pp. 241–51 in Bach, Lübeck und die norddeutsche Musiktradition edited by Wolfgang Sandberger. Kassel: Bärenreiter. ISBN 978-3761815854
 * Wolff, Christoph (2002b). "Bach's organ toccata in D-minor and the issue of its authenticity" pp. 85–107 in Perspectives on Organ Playing and Musical Interpretation: Pedagogical, Historical, and Instrumental Studies: A Festschrift for Heinrich Fleischer at 90 edited by Ames Anderson, Bruce Backer, David Backus and Charles Luedtke. New Ulm: Martin Luther College. ISBN 978-1890600037
 * Yearsley, David (2012). Bach's Feet: The Organ Pedals in European Culture. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521199018
 * Yearsley, David (2012). Bach's Feet: The Organ Pedals in European Culture. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521199018

title: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565


text:
Talk:Eagles (band)

Recent changes
Please can you explain yesterday's major changes to this article further? Making it 13,515 bytes smaller obviously does much more than changing the treatment of "The". The diff is so complex that I can't easily see what's happened. The introduction of links to disambiguation pages and the removal of the short description makes me wonder if the edit may be based on an older version of the article before those improvements were make. Any explanation would help us to understand why to keep the new version. Thanks, Certes (talk) 08:42, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

 * My apologies. It would appear the link I copied from further down on the page was incorrect and may have even further changed the page.￼
 * I was simply making the edit the name of the band is "Eagles" and not "The Eagles" which further down the page illustrates (hence why I copied the unknown-at-the-time outdated link confirming as much).
 * Many other Wikipedia pages about single name bands do not refer to them as "The ..." including Heart, Bauhaus, Queen, America, Kansas, Orleans, Boston, Sparks, and many more. WaltCD (talk) 22:08, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm confident my change(s) were to simply remove "The". However, it's certainly possible an older version may have played a part. For that, I apologize. WaltCD (talk) 15:37, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your recent edits. Do you think that accidentally reverted us to an old version of the article and that many of the subsequent edits are restoring, piecemeal, the good version before that edit? If so then we should probably just revert to before that edit. Certes (talk) 23:08, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

 * Hi, Certes. I don't know what the others (WaltCD included) have to say, but agree we should go back to the edit before WaltCD's. The citations got mangled a bit but there are many other significant changes, all undiscussed. In fact, I think WaltCD's 6 June edit took us to something very nearly a version of July 2019, the main differences being the hyphenation of "access-date" and mention of Deacon Frey. I suggest we simply revert to the edit before WaltCD's and tweak Deacon Frey, et al., as needed. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 12:37, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi Certes and JohnFromPinckney, I also agree to go back to that previous edit. Then, we can tweak what little has to be done from there and fix most of the issues that the article currently has.  Is this enough users agreeing to work for WP: CONSENSUS?
 * Thanks, EPBeatles (talk) 13:17, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the confirmations. I've restored the 25 May 2023 version ready for further improvement. Certes (talk) 13:30, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Seven Bridges Road
The article states that Seven Bridges Road "was written by Steve Young in an arrangement created by Iain Matthews for his Valley Hi album in 1973"

Seven Bridges Road was first recorded on the 1969 Steve Young "Rock Salt & Nails" album. Ohmycharlie (talk) 18:59, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Online Communities
— Assignment last updated by Odelach (talk) 17:34, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Deacon Frey - lead and backing vocals
Deacon Frey sings less lead vocals compared to Vince Gill. Proof can be found here, the live album is basically the setlist mostly unchanged since they started again:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_from_the_Forum_MMXVIII 2003:C1:5730:E568:45BD:9A1B:45A:AADB (talk) 20:11, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 July 2024
Change The Eagles to Eagles 195.180.30.89 (talk) 19:52, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: This has been a topic of substantial discussion and the consensus is to include "The". Please look through the archives of this page (linked at the top of this page) if you would like to read those discussions. Tollens (talk) 10:00, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

The eagles playing at the sphere
This article should probably reflect that the sphere is saying the eagles are coming to play there 208.95.78.188 (talk) 16:59, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

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

title: Talk:Eagles (band)


text:
Epact

The epact (epactae, from ἐπακται ἡμεραι (epaktai hēmerai) = added days) used to be described by medieval computists as the age of a phase of the Moon in days on 22 March; in the newer Gregorian calendar, however, the epact is reckoned as the age of the ecclesiastical moon on 1 January. Its principal use is in determining the date of Easter by computistical methods. It varies (usually by 11 days) from year to year, because of the difference between the solar year of 365–366 days and the lunar year of 354–355 days.

Lunar calendar
Epacts can also be used to relate dates in the lunar calendar to dates in the common solar calendar.

Solar and lunar years
A solar calendar year has 365 days (366 days in leap years). A lunar calendar year has 12 lunar months which alternate between 30 and 29 days for a total of 354 days (in leap years, one of the lunar months has a day added; since a lunar year lasts a little over $354 1⁄3$ days, a leap year arises every second or third year rather than every fourth.)

If a solar and lunar year start on the same day, then after one year the start of the solar year is 11 days after the start of the lunar year. These excess days are epacts, and have to be added to the lunar year to complete the solar year; or from the complementary perspective they are added to the day of the solar year to determine the day in the lunar year.

After two years the difference is 22 days, and after 3 years, 33 days. Whenever the epact reaches or exceeds 30 days, an extra (embolismic or intercalary) lunar month is inserted into the lunar calendar, and the epact is reduced by 30 days.

Leap days extend both the solar and lunar year, so they do not affect epact calculations for any other dates.

19-year cycle
The tropical year is slightly shorter than $365 1⁄4$ days, while the synodic month is slightly longer than $29 1⁄2$ days, on average; both are non-integers. This gets corrected in the following way. Nineteen tropical years are deemed to be as long as 235 synodic months (Metonic cycle). A cycle can last 6939 or 6940 full days, depending on whether there are 4 or 5 leap days in this 19-year period.

After 19 years the lunations should fall the same way in the solar years, so the epact should repeat after 19 years. However, 19 × 11 = 209, and this is not an integer multiple of the full cycle of 30 epact numbers (209 modulo 30 = 29, not 0). So after 19 years the epact must be corrected by +1 in order for the cycle to repeat over 19 years. This is the saltus lunae ("leap of the moon"). The sequence number of the year in the 19-year cycle is called the golden number. The extra 209 days fill 7 embolismic months, for a total of 19 × 12 + 7 = 235 lunations.

Lilian (Gregorian) epacts
When the Gregorian calendar reform was instituted in 1582, the lunar cycle previously used with the Julian calendar to complete the calculation of Easter dates was adjusted also, in accordance with a (modification of the) scheme devised by Aloysius Lilius. There were two adjustments to the old lunar cycle:
 * a "solar equation", decrementing the epact by 1, whenever the Gregorian calendar drops a leap day (3 times in 400 calendar years), and
 * a "lunar equation", incrementing the epact by 1, 8 times in 2500 calendar years (7 times after an interval of 300 years, and the 8th time after an interval of 400 years).

The revised "solar equation" was intended to adjust for the Gregorian change in the solar calendar, if they were applied at 1 January of the Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian calendar as the reformers implemented it; moreover the corrections to the solar calendar are leap days, whereas there are 30 epact values for a mean lunar month of $29 1⁄2$ days and a bit: Therefore changing the epact by 1 day does not exactly compensate for a dropped leap day. The "lunar equation" only approximately adjusts for what had (by 1582) been seen after many centuries of recording, that the Moon moves a little faster than the expectation of the rate used for it in the old lunar cycle. By 1582 it was noted (for example, in the text of the bull Inter gravissimas itself) that the new and full moons were at that point occurring "four days and something more" sooner than the old lunar cycle indicated.

History
The discovery of the epact for computing the date of Easter has been attributed to Patriarch Demetrius I of Alexandria, who held office from 189–232. In the year 214 he used the epact to produce an Easter calendar, which has not survived, which used an eight-year luni-solar cycle. A subsequent application of the epact to an Easter calendar, using a sixteen-year cycle, is found in the Paschal Table of Hippolytus, a 112 year list of Easter dates beginning in the year 222 which is inscribed on the side of a statue found in Rome. Augustalis, whose dates had been disputed from the third to the fifth century, computed a laterculus ("little tablet") of Easter dates. As reconstructed, it uses epacts (here the age of the moon on 1 January) and an 84 year luni-solar cycle to compute the dates of Easter using a base date of 213. If we accept Augustalis's earlier dates, his laterculus extends from 213–312 and Augustalis originated the use of epacts to compute the date of Easter.

As early as the fourth century we see Easter computus using the epact and the nineteen-year Metonic cycle in Alexandria, and subsequent computistical tables were influenced by the structure of the Alexandrian calendar. The epact was taken as the age of the Moon on 26 Phamenoth (22 March in the Julian calendar) but that value of the epact also corresponded to the age of the Moon on the last epagomenal day of the preceding year. Thus the epact can be seen as having been established at the beginning of the current year. Subsequent Easter tables, such as those of Bishop Theophilus of Alexandria, which covered 100 years beginning in 380, and of his successor Bishop Cyril, which covered 95 years beginning in 437 discussed the computation of the epact in their introductory texts. Under the influence of Dionysius Exiguus and later, of Bede, the Alexandrian Easter Tables were adopted throughout Europe where they established the convention that the epact was the age of the Moon on 22 March. This Dionysian epact fell into disuse after the introduction of a perpetual calendar based on the golden number, which made the calculation of epacts unnecessary for ordinary computistical calculations.

Two factors led to the creation of three new forms of the epact in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The first was the increasing error of computistical techniques, which led to the introduction of a new Julian epact around 1478, to be used for practical computations of the phase of the Moon for medical or astrological purposes. With the Gregorian reform of the calendar in 1582, two additional epacts came into use. The first was the Lilian epact, developed by Aloisius Lilius as an element of the ecclesiastical computations using the Gregorian calendar. The Lilian epact included corrections for the motions of the Sun and the Moon that broke the fixed relationship between the epact and the golden number. The second new epact was a simple adjustment of the practical Julian epact to account for the ten-day change produced by the Gregorian Calendar.

title: Epact


text:
University District, Seattle

The University District (commonly, the U District) is a major district in Seattle, Washington, comprising several distinct neighborhoods. The main campus of the University of Washington (UW) is located in the district, lending its name to both the district as well as University Way NE (commonly The Ave).

Location
Like all Seattle neighborhoods, the boundaries of the University District are informal; by common usage, the University District is bounded on the west by Interstate 5; on the east by University Village and Union Bay; on the south by Portage Bay and the Lake Washington Ship Canal; and on the north by NE Ravenna Boulevard.

History
What is now the University District has been inhabited since the end of the last glacial period (c. 8,000 BCE—10,000 years ago). The most recent Native American settlement in the area were the Duwamish villages of the Lushootseed (Skagit-Nisqually) Coast Salish peoples. The Duwamish had several prominent villages in and around the University District, including "SWAH-tsoo-gweel" ("portage") and "hehs-KWEE-kweel" ("skate)" on Union Bay. The Duwamish peoples living in this area were known as "hah-choo-AHBSH" (people of HAH-choo, meaning 'a large lake' and referring to present-day Lake Washington).

The Duwamish also had trails through the areas that connected the village sites with waterways and fire-managed (burned) areas. These areas were cleared by fire for hunting purposes and to promote good crop growth. Blackberries, salmonberries, and root crops were plentiful, along with game including wolves, cougar, bear, deer and elk. One trail found by early non-native surveyors of the area extended from Portage Bay to Lake Washington and connected two native encampments, one on Portage Bay near the foot of Brooklyn Ave and one on Union Bay. No remnants of the Native American use of the area are extant in the University District today. The area now occupied by University Village was at that time a much larger Union Bay prior to the artificial lowering of Lake Washington.

The district was first surveyed in 1855, and its first white settlers arrived 12 years later. In 1890, the district began to enter a growth phase, and the portion due west of the present University of Washington campus was laid out as the Brooklyn Addition. This land was owned by real estate developer James A. Moore, his wife, and the Clise Investment Company and included much of the original Brownfield homestead. This central area was called Brooklyn, which gave the current Brooklyn Avenue in the neighborhood its name.

Nielsen notes that the area was slower to develop than areas to the north and west such as Ravenna and Latona, due to those areas being more gently sloped and located closer to the central lakes (Union and Green Lakes). Materials for land/street development and improvements were hauled in by horse-drawn wagons. One year later (in 1891) much of the land north of the Ship Canal, including the future University District, was annexed by the City of Seattle.

In the early 1870s, coal was discovered east of Seattle in the Newcastle area near Bellevue. The coal was transported across Lake Washington to Union Bay, and initially was portaged across Montlake to eventually reach Elliott Bay. After around 1888, the Seattle Lake Shore and Eastern Railway was built and ran along tracks which now form the Burke–Gilman Trail, a major bike commuting and recreation path across North Seattle.

Below, an 1894 report describes a train wreck just west of the current University District in the Latona neighborhood (now located west of I-5).

August 20, 1894. Wreck on [the] Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern just west of Latone [now Latona Avenue]. Freight train from Gilman [now Snoqualmie ] hit a cow. [Trainload was a] [m]ixer freight train, 10 co[a]l cars, logs and box cars. Train had slowed down at Brooklyn [Avenue] for cows. Engineer saw cows on a bank beyond Latona looking (?) one another[!]. One cow was tossed over [the] bank and hit the track just as [the] engine came by. [The] [e]ngine was raised off the track[,] and when it came down [the] wheels went off the rails. Engineer reversed but [it] was too late. [The] [c]oal tender shot ahead[,] tearing part of [the engine] car [(cab)] off and decapitating [the] fireman and killing [the] brakeman. Engineer and coal passer [were] unhurt. Steam and dust enveloped the derailed cars. Engineer ran to Fremont to telegraph to stop [the] evening passenger train[;] also [illegible] Engineer claimed train going 20 miles per hr.

The old neighborhood name "Brooklyn" began to fade around this time. Electric trolley tracks had been laid up Columbus Avenue (later known as 14th Avenue, and later still University Way) either in 1891 or 1892, and the neighborhood soon began to be called "University Station" after the heated waiting house at the corner of what is now NE 42nd Street. The street cars eventually came to be operated by the Seattle Municipal Street Railway, which ceased operations in 1941.

The University of Washington relocated to the U District in 1895, leaving its previous location in the Metropolitan Tract in downtown Seattle. Much of the U District was still clear cut forest or stump farmland.

As a result of a contest held by the University Commercial Club in 1919, 14th Avenue (by then already known as "The Avenue" or "The Ave") was renamed University Way, and the neighborhood was renamed the University District. An alternative proposal was to rename the area "UniverCity," in recognition of the urban feel of the district and the major commercial presence along its main streets.

Neighborhoods
The City of Seattle does not publish an official neighborhood map, and many neighborhood boundaries in Seattle are somewhat informal.

Neighborhoods within the district include:
 * University Park (east from 15th to 25th Avenues NE, north from NE 50th Street to NE Ravenna Boulevard)
 * Greek Row (NE 45th to NE 50th Streets, 15th to 22nd Avenues NE)
 * University Heights (north of NE 45th Street and west of 15th Avenue NE)
 * Brooklyn Addition (west of 15th Avenue NE and south of NE 45th Street)
 * University Village (east of 25th Avenue NE)
 * Main, West, and South campuses of the University of Washington, including the University of Washington Medical Center

Public Transit
The district is served by two Link light rail stations: University of Washington Station near Husky Stadium opened in 2016 as part of the University Link Extension; and U District on Brooklyn Avenue near NE 45th Street which opened in October 2021 as part of the Northgate Link Extension. Light rail service connects the U District to Capitol Hill and Downtown Seattle to the south, and Roosevelt and Northgate to the north.

Streets
The neighborhood's north-south arterials are (from west to east) Roosevelt Way NE (southbound only), 11th Avenue NE (northbound only), Brooklyn Avenue NE, University Way NE, and 15th Avenue NE. East-west arterials include NE Pacific Street, NE 45th Street, and part of NE 50th Streets. NE Campus Parkway is a minor east-west arterial, running only west of the campus.

Upzoning and Urban Development
The district's skyline was formerly defined primarily by the UW campus, UW Tower, and the art deco style Graduate Hotel Seattle (originally the Meany Hotel).

More recently, the U District has entered a new period of growth and several residential and office towers have recently been constructed, and several more are under construction and proposed.

Culture

The annual U District Street Fair is held over a weekend in May, primarily on The Ave, and is among the longest-running street fairs in the United States. It was first held in 1970 with 300 vendors and organized by local merchant and peace activist Andy Shiga; it grew to 600 vendors and 100,000 visitors later in the decade. The fair was paused in 2020 and 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic and returned in 2022; it now attracts over 50,000 visitors and has 250 vendors.

The Blue Moon Tavern has become an unofficial cultural landmark and was founded in 1934. The neighborhood is home to several long-running movie theaters and performing arts venues. The Neptune Theatre opened as a movie theater in 1921 and was converted into a performing arts venue in 2011 under the ownership of Seattle Theatre Group. The independent Grand Illusion Cinema was founded in a renovated dental's office in 1970 by Randy Finley and is run by the nonprofit Northwest Film Forum. Finley also founded the Seven Gables Theatre at a converted American Legion building in 1976. It was an arthouse theater that operated until 2017; the building was destroyed by a fire in December 2020. The locally-owned Scarecrow Video, the largest video rental store on the West Coast, was founded in 1988 and is the last of its kind in the city. It has 140,000 titles and is operated by a nonprofit organization.

title: University District, Seattle


text:
User talk:Wakka

it was an accident!

 * ok... care to explain how pages were accidentally completely wiped and accidentally replaced with things like "biology is a girly subject"? Not that I don't believe you, I'm just curious. -- Tarquin 19:35, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * I didnt think it would actually replace the section i figured that there would be security in place...i wrote the text on pupose but didnt actually think it would overwrite the sections

Well it does. AND YOU@VE JSUT DONE IT AGAIN! Astronomy and astrophysics. Please stop it. -- Tarquin 19:39, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

that wasn't me!...I SWEAR!

 * click the link called "Recent changes". That is how I can see it *was* you. -- Tarquin 19:43, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

thats the other wakka...not me...noob

 * Oh, yes, sure. In any case - you're welcome on Wikipedia if you want to help out and add to, expand and correct the articles we have, but if all you want to do is vandalizing things, *please*, go away. -- Schnee 19:46, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

 * there *is* only one user named "wakka". And what Schnee says. -- Tarquin 19:47, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

k ill stop....sorry guys....but how do u keep this from happening all the time?

 * This site attracts mainly people who want to be helpful. Jfeckstein 19:52, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

right but you've never had anyone do this before? This is the first day in my lifetime that i've know wiki existed...and i found out quickly how easy it is to mess with.

 * Being easy to mess with (in a good way) is the point of Wikipedia. I hope you've also found out how pointless it is to try to vandalize, though. -- Schnee 19:57, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

hardly pointless...i just had like 20 mins worth of fun and laughs....and you have to keep on top of this. Imagine if i had registerd with a different name, and just made some simple changes...not drastic ones such as deleting a whole section....imgain if this were a high traffic site and there were thousands of people making changes every minute...how would you keep that under control...you couldnt...this only works in small communities....expand it any further and you'll just have chaos. This will go no where. And who would trust an encyclopedia that can be edited by ANYONE? Last time I checked I dont have a degree in any kind of medical feild, but if i seem to have some legitimate input, then i can add it freely. Despite the fact that I could be COMPLETELY wrong. And i know you can take it off if its wrong but what about in the mean time when poor joe schmoe is doing a paper and looks up some disease and it says something completely wrong? This is such a waste of your time!

 * Hardly. If there are thousands of people editing there are thousands of people checking edits. When we started we had maybe a few dozen edits a day. Now we have multiple edits every minute. Vandalism as a percent of total edits has, in fact, gone down, not up in that time. We have many features such as "Watch this page" and "Related changes" to sort recent edits. It works very well. --mav

ROFL....so you have to have a mod for every person making changes?....a cop for every citizen?...nice i like that!

 * We don't need a cop for every citizen, since people who want to go wiki "joyriding" like yourself tend to get bored pretty quickly. Joyriders are vastly outnumbered by true wikipedian's acting in good faith.   You, my friend, are the one wasting your time, not us.  What makes you have such faith that other encyclopedias don't have the same problem of "COMPLETELY wrong" material in them at this very minute?  Wikipedia's no different from them in principle, and in fact it is more likely that errors will be found sooner than in a traditional encyclopedia, because we have a massively parallel "peer-review" system that puts a traditional encyclopedia to shame. -- Lexor 23:12, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

You don't need a cop for every citizen if the majority of citizens can act as cops if need be. and if you got 20 minutes of fun out of doing this, then you're lucky to be so easily amused in life -- Tarquin 09:10, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

[What makes you have such faith that other encyclopedias don't have the same problem of "COMPLETELY wrong" material in them at this very minute?]

well my friend those encyclopedias....CAN'T....be edited by ANYONE. They have standards where as you wikipedians(rofl) do not. Those sites are paid for, and have reputable names...unlike wikipedia

[and if you got 20 minutes of fun out of doing this, then you're lucky to be so easily amused in life]

someone needs to take the stick outa their ass? it's ok if you're upset...i'd understand...but you told me for every person making changes you HAVE to have a person or 2 watching those changes to make sure they are legit. So you DO have to have a cop for every citizen...they're always there with their radar guns checking every1's speed....just to make sure. So don't try to tell me this all works on the honor system...because it DOESN'T.

 * Well, I'm afraid that it does work, and if you actually attempted to participate you might see that. If you want to actually contribute constructively please go ahead.  If you want to engage in flame wars, check out Usenet instead, it's good for that kind of thing, I'm sure you'd have great fun there. -- Lexor 14:32, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

k....owned...thx

 * could you please stop damaging pages? You completely replaced the content of Astronomy and astrophysics with something else today at 15:50. You know how this place works now; it's up to you to behave responsibly. If you want to help us work on Wikipedia, you're welcome but please don't damage pages.

history of the Astronomy and astrophysics page -- Tarquin 17:52, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Cop for every citizen? Think about the whole metaphor for a moment. Where you're going wrong is thinking that citizen is synonymous with vandal. In the wikipedia town, population 19,350, there are 108 cops and a few vandals who come and go. A vandal rides into town, smashes a window or two, knocks some things over, sprays some graffiti somewhere. You don't need the cops to replace the window, pick things up and repaint a wall. The other citizens do that, and call the police who remove the vandal, the police don't have to do anything about the broken window, one of the other citizens has already sweped up and put and new one in. --Steinsky 18:24, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hi,Please read(About Shenmue pages)
Hi,Please don't rename my Web Site link in the External Links section of Shenmue pages becuase my Web Site is not a fan site anymore.It's a real powerful web site about Shenmue, Virtua Fighter and Ryu ga Gotoku since 2 days a go with daily updates including latest news about Shenmue & related games plus weekly Wallpapers and more. It's one of the Novin Works(NW)'s sites and it's name is Shenmue & related games(Ryu ga,VF&...) site.

Thanks.

title: User talk:Wakka


text:
Nickerson Field

Nickerson Field is an outdoor athletic stadium in the Northeastern United States, on the campus of Boston University (BU) in Boston, Massachusetts. The stadium is owned by BU, and is the home field for some Boston University Terriers athletics programs, including soccer and lacrosse. It was also the home of the Boston University Terriers football team until the program was discontinued following the 1997 season.

The stadium is located on the site of Braves Field, the former home ballpark of the Boston Braves, a major league baseball team in the National League; the franchise relocated to Milwaukee in March 1953, and relocated again in 1966, becoming the Atlanta Braves. Parts of Braves Field, such as the entry gate and right field pavilion, remain as portions of the current stadium. The old Braves Field ticket office at Harry Agganis Way also remains, now used by the Boston University Police Department as headquarters complete with a cellblock. The stadium has been the home of BU teams longer (50-plus years) than it was the home of the Braves (parts of 38 seasons).

The field is named for William Emery Nickerson (1853–1930), a partner of King C. Gillette during the early years of the Gillette Safety Razor Company.

History
The university's previous athletic field was in the town of Weston. That field had been named for Nickerson, a member of the BU board of trustees who had donated funds for the facilities in Weston in 1926. Nickerson "was an MIT graduate who was the principal inventor of the machinery used to manufacture the first Gillette safety razor." The first Nickerson Field was dedicated on October 6, 1928, with a game against the New Hampshire Wildcats.

BU purchased the former home of the Braves on July 30, 1953, and in April 1954 renamed it Boston University Field. In 1955, the left field pavilion and the "Jury Box" were demolished and in November, 1959, the grandstand was taken down to make room for three high rise dormitories that were completed in 1964. The existing right field pavilion was squared off on the west side and filled in on the east side where a section had been removed to accommodate the Braves Field right field foul pole and bullpens. The three dormitories overlooking the field coincidentally suggest the outline of the original main grandstand section.

In February 1956, BU was awarded $391,000 for the Weston field, which had been taken by eminent domain for construction of Massachusetts Route 128. BU used the proceeds, in part, to renovate the former baseball park, and on September 28, 1963, renamed it Nickerson Field, inheriting the name of the prior field in Weston.

In 1968, the field underwent a renovation. The four Braves Field light towers were dismantled. That year, BU became the second college in the United States to install AstroTurf. The following year, not only did the BU football team practice on that field, so did the Boston College Eagles football team and the Boston Patriots. Both used the field to prepare for away games they would play on AstroTurf fields.

During the 1983 season, Nickerson Field was the home field of the Boston Breakers of the United States Football League. From the mid-1980s to 1995, the stadium hosted the New England Scholastic Band Association's marching band field show championships. In 1989, to accommodate commencement speakers U.S. President George H. W. Bush and French President François Mitterrand, a large platform was constructed to Secret Service specifications on one side of the field. In 2001, the antiquated turf was replaced with a newer, more player-friendly artificial surface (FieldTurf) as part of a deal with the Women's United Soccer Association to host the Boston Breakers games. With a professional soccer team playing at Nickerson the football lines, which had remained on the field even though BU no longer had a football program, were not repainted. The platform built for Bush and Mitterrand was removed during the summer of 2008, when the field was expanded and resurfaced.

In the summer of 2015, the field received a new artificial turf, GreenFields MX Trimension; the new surface was installed over a period of five weeks, covering 110000 sqft.

Use by professional sports
Since its reconfiguration in the 1950s, multiple professional sports franchises have used the stadium:
 * † The Tea Men used Nickerson after Foxboro Raceway filed a temporary restraining order preventing them from using Schaefer Stadium.
 * The 2004 and 2005 Major League Lacrosse championships were played at the stadium.

title: Nickerson Field


text:
The Whispering Vault

The Whispering Vault is a horror-themed role-playing game originally published in 1993. Players take on the role of "Stalkers", persons who have risen above their own mortality to act as servants of the guardians of Reality, tracking down and apprehending rogue gods who have invaded Reality and returning them to the realm of the Unseen where they are cast into The Whispering Vault.

History
In 1993, at Gen Con 26, Mike Nystul sold a 88-page spiral-bound, pre-publication version (referred to as the "black book") of his self-published horror RPG called The Whispering Vault. Buoyed by positive comments, Nystul formed Pariah Press the following year to publish an expanded and professionally printed edition.

Shannon Applecline, in the book Designers & Dragons, highlighted the horror-themed art and evocative background material. Applecline also mentioned the "brutal and quick" combat system and the simple task resolution system that reduced dice-rolling to a minimum and brought the adventure storyline to the fore.

The following year, Nystul published two supplements: the Dangerous Prey sourcebook (1995) and a three-panel gamemaster's screen (1995).

In 1996, Chris Pramas acquired rights to The Whispering Vault from Mike Nystul and founded the company Ronin Publishing with his brother, Jason Pramas, along with their mutual friend, Neal Darcy. The first publication from Green Ronin was The Book of Hunts (1997), a book containing a series of adventures; Ronin Publishing created a second supplement called Mortal Magic, but it was left unpublished when Ronin folded in 1998.

Pharos Press acquired the rights for The Whispering Vault in 2000, but did not publish anything. In 2003, Ronin Arts acquired the rights, and released Mortal Magic, the unpublished work by Ronin Publishing; Ronin Arts then quickly published seven more PDFs that year, before discontinuing the line.

Description
Characters within The Whispering Vault used to be human, but after a life dedicated to protecting humanity against supernatural beings they have been recruited into the ranks of the Stalkers, the main heroes of the game. Now armed with supernatural powers and able to summon ghostly servitors, their mission is to hunt down the Unbidden: rebellious gods who have escaped into the Realm of Flesh — what humanity calls "Reality".

The Stalkers have other enemies:
 * The Shadows are creatures who were denied existence and live in the Rift between the Realms of Flesh and Essence. Sometimes they manage to awaken into the Dream by themselves, sometimes the Unbidden bind them as Minions.
 * Mortals may also be dangerous: the use of Magic may endanger the Dream, too.

The Hunts of the Stalkers can happen in any era, and Stalkers may come from any period of History as time flows differently in the Realm of Essence and the Realm of Flesh.

Character creation
The player divides 22 points among four attributes. The number of points assigned to each attribute determines how many six-sided dice the player will roll for task and combat resolution.

Combat and task resolution
For both combat and task resolution, players try to achieve success by rolling a number of dice equal to their relevant skill level. As in Yahtzee, players try to roll matched sets or special combinations. Players can spend a point of kharma to reroll any number of the dice in search of better dice combinations. In combat, resulting damage is divided by the target's Fortitude. When fighting supernatural creatures, mortals must ignore any sixes that are rolled, making combat against these creatures much more difficult.

Rulebooks

 * 'Black Book' booklet by Mike Nystul (1993)
 * The Whispering Vault book by Pariah Press (1994)
 * The Whispering Vault pdf file by Ronin Arts (2003)

Supplements

 * Gamemaster Screen by Pariah Press (1995)
 * Dangerous Prey book by Pariah Press (1995)
 * The Book of Hunts book by Green Ronin Publishing (1997)
 * Dangerous Prey pdf file by Ronin Arts (2003)
 * The Book of Hunts pdf file by Ronin Arts (2003)
 * Mortal Magic pdf file by Ronin Arts (2003)
 * Smuggler's Run pdf file by Ronin Arts (2003) (previously published in the Adventures Unlimited magazine, in 1995)
 * Mastering the Vault pdf file by Ronin Arts (2003)
 * The Vault and Time pdf file by Ronin Arts (2003)
 * The Books of Shadows pdf file by Ronin Arts (2003)
 * The Ixiptla pdf file by Ronin Arts (2003)

Reception
In the August 1994 edition of Dragon (Issue #208), Lester Smith reviewed the "pre-release" version of the game that had been sold at Gen Con, and admired the "powerful new mythology" and "strong atmosphere of brooding horror" that Mike Nystul was able to evoke in such a slim volume. Smith also liked the new mechanics for combat and task resolution, which he found "works surprisingly well". However, he did find several important elements missing, including "the keys of humanity", which apparently were supposed to explain the motivation for the player's characters. (Allen noted that this missing material would be included in the Pariah Press version that was being prepared for publication at the time the review was printed.) Allen concluded by giving The Whispering Vault a rating of 4 out of 6, saying "I definitely recommend this game for anyone who likes heroic horror. It is one of the most inventive treatments of the subject I have yet encountered."

Six months later, in the May 1995 edition of Dragon (Issue #217), Lester Smith again reviewed the game, this time looking at the official first edition of the game, and called the book's presentation "excellent, nearly flawless." He found designer Mike Nystul's "unique vision both shockingly strange and yet universal in scope." Smith concluded by giving the game a perfect rating of 6 out of 6, saying, "This product is pure, distilled horror, with some of the most concise yet effective mechanics ever published; its relative slimness simply means that you’ll digest the game more quickly initially, and reference it more easily during play."

In the following edition of Dragon (Issue #218 – June 1994), Rick Swan called The Whispering Vault "Only one of the smartest, spookiest horror RPGs that ever clawed its way from a crypt." In the November 1994 edition of Pyramid (Issue #10), William Spencer-Hale recommended the game, saying, "All in all, The Whispering Vault is a game worthy of the attention of any fan of horror roleplaying. This game is a welcome addition to any library and, out of all the roleplaying materials that I own, this is one that I will actually enjoy playing."

Reviews

 * White Wolf #40 (1994)
 * White Wolf #44 (June, 1994)
 * Review in Shadis #14
 * Dosdediez (Número 7 - Feb/Mar 1995)
 * Lester Smith review from Dragon Magazine #208 (republished online 2016-12-12)
 * Casus Belli #83

title: The Whispering Vault


text:
Errenteria

Errenteria (Errenteria/Orereta, Rentería) is a town located in the province of Gipuzkoa in the Basque Autonomous Community, in the north of Spain, near the French border. The river Oiartzun cuts its way through the town, one that has undergone severe pollution up to recent times on its lower stage.

History
The town was founded in 1320, during the reign of Alfonso XI of Castile, with the name of Villanueva de Oiarso or Oyarço. It soon started to be known as La Rentería because it hosted the office where iron export taxes were collected (taxes were called rentas reales i.e. royal rents in medieval Castile).

The Basque form Errenteria (also Errenteri or Errenderi) started to appear towards the end of the 16th century. In 1998, the town hall decided to use Errenteria as the only official name.

In September 1982, Rentería was the scene of the bloodiest ETA attack of that year.

Districts

 * Agustinak/Agustinas
 * Alaberga
 * Beraun
 * Kaputxinoak/Capuchinos
 * Etxe Berriak/Casas Nuevas
 * Gaztaño
 * Erdialdea/Centro
 * Fanderia
 * Gabierrota
 * Galtzaraborda
 * Iztieta
 * Lartzabal
 * Listorreta
 * Olibet–Ugarritze
 * Ondartxo
 * Perurena
 * Pontika
 * Zamalbide

Twin towns
Errenteria is twinned with:
 * Lousada, Portugal
 * 🇫🇷 Tulle, France
 * 🇩🇪 Schorndorf, Germany

title: Errenteria