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This Side of Paradise

This Side of Paradise is the debut novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1920. It examines the lives and morality of carefree American youth at the dawn of the Jazz Age. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is an attractive middle-class student at Princeton University who dabbles in literature and engages in a series of romances with flappers. The novel explores the theme of love warped by greed and status-seeking, and takes its title from a line of Rupert Brooke's poem Tiare Tahiti.

Within months of its publication, This Side of Paradise became a sensation in the United States, and reviewers hailed the work as an outstanding debut novel. The book went through twelve printings and sold 49,075 copies. It became popular among college students, and the national press depicted its 23-year-old author as the standard-bearer for "youth in revolt". Overnight, F. Scott Fitzgerald became a household name. His newfound fame enabled him to earn higher rates for his short stories, and his improved financial prospects persuaded his fiancée Zelda Sayre to marry him one month later.

With his debut novel, Fitzgerald became the first writer to turn the national spotlight upon the so-called Jazz Age generation. In contrast to the older Lost Generation to which Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway belonged, the Jazz Age generation were those younger Americans who had been adolescents during World War I, and were largely untouched by the conflict's psychological and material effects. Fitzgerald's novel riveted the nation's attention upon the leisure activities of this hedonistic younger generation and sparked a societal debate over their perceived immorality.

As a consequence of this novel, Fitzgerald became known as "the outstanding aggressor in the little warfare which divided our middle classes in the twenties—warfare of moral emancipation against moral conceit, flaming youth against old guard". When he died in 1940, social conservatives rejoiced over his death. In a column for The New York World-Telegram, critic Westbrook Pegler wrote that Fitzgerald's death recalled "memories of a queer bunch of undisciplined and self-indulgent brats who were determined not to pull their weight in the boat and wanted the world to drop everything and sit down and bawl with them. A kick in the pants and a clout over the scalp were more like their needing."

Synopsis
Amory Blaine, a young Midwesterner, is convinced that he has an exceptionally promising future. He attends a posh college-preparatory school and later Princeton University. He grows estranged from his eccentric mother Beatrice and becomes the protégé of Monsignor Thayer Darcy, a Catholic priest. During his sophomore year at Princeton, he returns to Minneapolis over Christmas break and encounters Isabelle Borgé, a wealthy, young debutante whom he first met as a boy. They embark upon a romantic relationship.

While at Princeton, he deluges Isabelle with letters and poems, but she becomes disenchanted with him due to his incessant criticism. After his prom, they break up on Long Island. Following their separation, Amory graduates from his alma mater and enlists in the United States Army amid World War I. He is shipped overseas to serve in the trenches of the Western front. While overseas, he learns his mother Beatrice has died and most of his family's wealth has been lost due to a series of failed investments.

After the armistice with Imperial Germany, Amory settles in New York City as it undergoes the birth pangs of the Jazz Age. He becomes infatuated with a cruel and narcissistic flapper named Rosalind Connage. Desperate for a job, Amory is hired by an advertising agency, but he detests the work. Due to his poverty, his relationship with Rosalind deteriorates as she prefers a rival suitor, Dawson Ryder, a man of wealth and status. A distraught Amory quits his job and goes on an alcoholic bender for three weeks until the start of prohibition in the United States. When Amory travels to visit an uncle in Maryland, he meets Eleanor Savage, an 18-year-old atheist. Eleanor chafes under the religious conformity and gender limitations imposed on her by contemporary society in Wilsonian America. Amory and Eleanor spend a lazy summer conversing about their love. On their final night together before Amory must return to New York City, Eleanor attempts suicide in order to prove her disbelief in any deity, and Amory realizes that he does not love her.

Returning to New York, Amory learns that the fickle Rosalind is engaged to be married to his affluent rival Dawson Ryder. A devastated Amory is further dispirited to learn that his beloved mentor Monsignor Darcy has died. Homeless, Amory wanders from New York City to his alma mater Princeton and, accepting a car ride from a wealthy man driven by a resentful chauffeur, he speaks out in favor of socialism—although he admits he is still formulating his thoughts as he is talking.

Concluding his long argument about their time's political and societal problems, Amory emphasizes his disillusionment with the current era. He announces his hope to stand alongside those who would bring forth fundamental changes to the age. The men in the car denounce his views, but upon learning that one of them was the father to one of his old friends at Princeton and that the son had died in World War I, Amory and the man reconcile, acknowledging mutual respect. It dawns on Amory that his time as a young promising Princetonian man has all been but a wasted dream, and he parts ways with his travel mates amicably.

Continuing his lonesome walk towards Princeton, Amory gradually forsakes the final obsessions about times and people that once constituted fundamental ideologies of his old self. Standing alone and musing at the sight of Princeton's gothic towers, Amory ecstatically yet somberly concludes: "I know myself . . . but that is all."

Major characters
Most of the characters are drawn directly from Fitzgerald's own life.
 * Amory Blaine – a Princeton alumnus from the Midwest and later a World War I veteran who has a series of unfulfilling romances with young women. The character is based on Fitzgerald and his failed relationships. The name "Amory" is taken from Fitzgerald's football hero at Princeton, Hobart Amory Baker.
 * Isabelle Borgé – a wealthy but shallow debutante who becomes Amory's first love. The character is based on Ginevra King, an heiress upon whom Fitzgerald developed a life-long fixation. Like Isabelle and Amory, Fitzgerald met King on Christmas break during his sophomore year at Princeton, and their relationship ended in a similar fashion. "I was too thoughtless in those days," Ginevra later recalled, "and too much in love with love to think of consequences." Purportedly, Fitzgerald remained forever in love with King and "could not think of her without tears coming to his eyes".
 * Rosalind Connage – a cruel and selfish flapper who becomes Amory's second love. Rosalind is based on Zelda Sayre and, to a lesser extent, on the fictional character of Beatrice Normandy in H. G. Wells' realist novel Tono-Bungay (1909). Mirroring Rosalind's materialistic relationship with Amory, Sayre initially ended her relationship with Fitzgerald due to his lack of financial prospects and his inability to support her privileged lifestyle as an idle Southern belle.
 * Eleanor Savage – a beautiful 18-year-old atheist whom Amory meets in Maryland. Fitzgerald based Eleanor on Elizabeth Beckwith MacKie, a romantic interest whom he knew briefly. MacKie later commented that "the Eleanor he described only reminded me of how little he really knew me. His Eleanor loved to sit on a haystack in the rain reciting poetry. Forgive me, Scott: if that is the way you wanted it, then you missed the whole idea of what can happen atop a haystack." Fitzgerald also partly based Eleanor on a young love of his mentor Father Sigourney Fay.
 * Thayer Darcy – a Catholic priest who becomes Amory's spiritual mentor. The character is based on Father Sigourney Fay, Fitzgerald's mentor and confidant. While writing This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald quoted verbatim entire letters sent to him by Father Sigourney Fay. In addition to using Fay's correspondence, Fitzgerald drew upon anecdotes that Fay had told him about his private life, including his failed romances. When reading This Side of Paradise, Fay wrote to Fitzgerald that the use of his own biographical experiences told in confidence to the young author "gave him a queer feeling."
 * Beatrice Blaine – an aging and eccentric matron who is Amory's mother. Based on the mother of one of Fitzgerald's friends.
 * Clara Page – a widowed older cousin whom Amory loves, but she doesn't return his affections. Based on Fitzgerald's cousin Cecilia Delihant Taylor.
 * Cecilia Connage – Rosalind's cynical younger sister who purloins Rosalind's cigarettes. She is envious of her sister's popularity among young men.
 * Allenby – a heroic football captain at Princeton based on Hobey Baker, the legendary Princeton athlete and military aviator who died during World War I.
 * Thomas Parke D'Invilliers – a Princeton classmate who has a gift for poetry. He becomes Amory's close friend and confidante of various subjects, among which are literature, love for young beauties, politics and the meaning of the self. D'Invilliers later becomes a journalist, developing his own perspectives as apart from that he shares with Amory. Fitzgerald based D'Invilliers on his friend, poet John Peale Bishop. The character reappears as a fictitious poet in the opening of The Great Gatsby.

Princeton and Ginevra King
Since childhood, F. Scott Fitzgerald aspired to be a famous novelist. "Three months before I was born," he later wrote, "my mother lost her other two children...I think I started then to be a writer." While attending Princeton University, his passion for writing literature began to solidify into a career choice, and he often wrote fiction as an undergraduate.

During his sophomore year at Princeton, Fitzgerald returned home to Saint Paul, Minnesota during Christmas break where the 18-year-old aspiring writer met and fell in love with 16-year-old Chicago debutante Ginevra King. They began a romantic relationship spanning several years. Although Ginevra loved him, her upper-class family belittled Scott's courtship because of his lower-class status compared to her other wealthy suitors. Rejected by Ginevra as a suitable match, a heartbroken Fitzgerald enlisted in the United States Army amid World War I.

Hoping to have a novel published before his deployment to Europe and his anticipated death in the trenches of World War I, Fitzgerald hastily wrote a 120,000-word manuscript entitled The Romantic Egotist. After obtaining a brief leave from the army in February 1918, Fitzgerald continued work on his unpublished manuscript at Princeton's University Cottage Club's library. Ultimately, eighty-one pages of this revised manuscript would later appear in the final version of This Side of Paradise.

In May 1918, Fitzgerald gave the revised manuscript to his friend Shane Leslie to deliver to Max Perkins, an editor at Charles Scribner's Sons in New York City. Leslie asked the publishing company to retain the manuscript no matter what they thought of it. Although Scribner's rejected the manuscript, the impressed reviewer Max Perkins praised Fitzgerald's efforts and encouraged him to resubmit the manuscript after revisions.

In June 1918, Fitzgerald was garrisoned with the 45th and 67th Infantry Regiments at Camp Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama. Attempting to rebound from his rejection by Ginevra, a lonely Fitzgerald began dating Zelda Sayre, a 17-year-old Southern belle and the affluent granddaughter of a Confederate senator whose extended family owned the White House of the Confederacy. A romance soon blossomed, although Fitzgerald continued writing to Ginevra, asking in vain if there was any chance of resuming their former relationship. Three days after Ginevra married a wealthy Chicago polo player, a lonely Fitzgerald professed his affection for Zelda in September 1918.

Jazz Age and creative struggles
Upon his army discharge in February 1919, he moved to New York City. He then turned to writing advertising copy to sustain himself while seeking a breakthrough as an author of fiction. Fitzgerald wrote to Zelda frequently, and by March 1920, he had sent Zelda his mother's ring, and the two became officially engaged. However, as he was living in poverty in New York City, Fitzgerald could not convince Zelda that he would be able to support her, and she broke off the engagement in June 1919.

In the wake of Fitzgerald's rejection by Ginevra two years prior, his subsequent rejection by Zelda further dispirited him. Unable to earn a successful living, Fitzgerald publicly threatened to jump to his death from a window ledge of the Yale Club, and he carried a revolver daily while contemplating suicide.

In July 1919, Fitzgerald quit his advertising job and returned to St. Paul. Having returned to his hometown as a failure, Fitzgerald became a social recluse and lived on the top floor of his parents' home at 599 Summit Avenue, on Cathedral Hill. He decided to make one last attempt to become a novelist and to stake everything on the success or failure of a book. Abstaining from alcohol and parties, he worked day and night in his parents' home to revise The Romantic Egotist as This Side of Paradise—an autobiographical account of his Princeton years and his unfulfilling romances with Ginevra, Zelda, and others. Fitzgerald chose the new title based on a line in Rupert Brooke's poem Tiare Tahiti, "Well this side of Paradise!...There's little comfort in the wise."

Fitzgerald sent the revised manuscript to Scribner's on September 4, 1919. Although the manuscript again impressed editor Max Perkins who wished to publish the novel immediately, senior executives at the publishing house overruled Perkins and rejected the novel on the grounds of indecency. An undeterred Perkins threatened to resign from the company unless the work was published. On September 16, Scribner's accepted the novel for publication.

Fitzgerald later recalled his euphoria upon learning his first novel would be published: "The postman rang, and that day I quit work and ran along the streets, stopping automobiles to tell friends and acquaintances about it—my novel This Side of Paradise was accepted for publication. That week the postman rang and rang, and I paid off my terrible small debts, bought a suit, and woke up every morning with a world of ineffable top-loftiness and promise."

Publication and success
This Side of Paradise was published on March 26, 1920, with a first printing of 3,000 copies. The initial printing sold out in three days. Within months of its publication, the 23-year-old author's debut novel became a cultural sensation in the United States, and F. Scott Fitzgerald became a household name. The book went through twelve printings in 1920 and 1921 for a total of 49,075 copies. Initially, the novel did not provide a large income for Fitzgerald. Copies sold for $1.75, for which he earned 10% on the first 5,000 copies and 15% beyond that. In total, in 1920 he earned $6,200 from the book.

According to Fitzgerald's friend Burton Rascoe, Fitzgerald complained that "the book didn't make me as rich as I thought it would". Nevertheless, Fitzgerald's new fame due to This Side of Paradise enabled him to earn much higher rates for his short stories, and the author could now convince Zelda Sayre to marry him. Zelda resumed her engagement to Fitzgerald on the explicit condition that he could now pay for her privileged lifestyle. However, by the time of their wedding in April 1920, Fitzgerald claimed neither he nor Zelda still loved each other, and the early years of their marriage in New York City proved to be tumultuous and a disappointment.

Literary critics
Many reviewers were enthusiastic about Fitzgerald's debut novel. Burton Rascoe of the Chicago Tribune urged readers to "make a note of the name, F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is borne by a 23 year old novelist who will, unless I am much mistaken, be much heard of hereafter." Rascoe asserted that Fitzgerald's first novel bore "the impress, it seems to me, of genius. It is the only adequate study that we have had of the contemporary American in adolescence and young manhood." "The prize first novel of a decade is F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise," Fanny Butcher raved "a book which...will have a serious and far reaching effect on American literature." In his influential review of the work in The Smart Set, critic H. L. Mencken described This Side of Paradise as "an amazing first novel" and heaped praise upon the young author:

""The best American novel that I have seen of late is also the product of a neophyte, to wit, F. Scott Fitzgerald...In This Side of Paradise he offers a truly amazing first novel—original in structure, extremely sophisticated in manner, and adorned with a brilliancy that is as rare in American writing as honesty is in American statecraft. The young American novelist usually reveals himself as a naive, sentimental and somewhat disgusting ignoramus—a believer in Great Causes, a snuffler and eye-roller, a spouter of stale philosophies out of Kensington drawing rooms, the doggeries of French hack-drivers, and the lower floor of the Munich Hofbräuhaus...Fitzgerald is nothing of the sort. On the contrary, he is...an artist—an apt and delicate weaver of words, a clever hand, a sound workman. The first half of the story is far better than the second half. It is not that Fitzgerald's manner runs thin, but that his hero begins to elude him. What, after such a youth, is to be done with the fellow? The author's solution is anything but felicitous. He simply drops his Amory Blaine as Mark Twain dropped Huckleberry Finn, but for a less cogent reason. But down to and including the episode of the love affair with Rosalind the thing is capital, especially the first chapters.""

Although critics praised This Side of Paradise as highly original, they heavily criticized its form and construction. Lillian C. Ford in the Los Angeles Times complained "the construction is odd and the book has two parts, the first with four chapters and the second with five. The chapters have unexpected topical divisions and when the author feels so inclined he throws his story into drama form and then again it jogs along as plain narrative."

A critical consensus soon emerged that Fitzgerald's structural craftsmanship left much to be desired. He could write entertainingly, his detractors conceded, but he gave scant attention to form and construction. Having read these criticisms of his debut novel, Fitzgerald sought to improve upon the form and construction of his prose in his next work, The Beautiful and Damned, and to venture into a new genre of fiction altogether.

Princeton backlash
Despite its widespread success with critics and readers, Princeton's faculty and older alumni reacted with hostility towards This Side of Paradise. Although Christian Gauss, a Professor of French Literature at Princeton, publicly lauded This Side of Paradise as "a work of art," other Princetonians openly attacked the book in the pages of the Princeton Alumni Weekly, much to Fitzgerald's dismay. In a public letter, Ralph Kent, a senior editor of the Nassau Literary Review, disparaged the work as impugning Princeton's reputation due to its sordid depiction of undergraduate life. A recurrent criticism by Princetonians was that Fitzgerald's best-selling novel had fostered an unfavorable impression of their alma mater as populated by hedonistic degenerates solely interested in idle pleasures.

In a private letter to Fitzgerald dated May 27, 1920, John Grier Hibben, the president of Princeton University from 1912–1932, politely but firmly criticized Fitzgerald's depiction of the university in This Side of Paradise:

""It is because I appreciate so much all that is in you of artistic skill and [a] certain elemental power that I am taking the liberty of telling you very frankly that your characterization of Princeton has grieved me. I cannot bear to think that our young men are merely living for four years in a country club and spending their lives wholly in a spirit of calculation and snobbishness...From my undergraduate days I have always had a belief in Princeton and in what the place could do in the making of a strong vigorous manhood. It would be an overwhelming grief to me, in the midst of my work here and my love for Princeton’s young men, should I feel that we have nothing to offer but the outgrown symbols and shells of a past whose reality has long since disappeared.""

In response to Hibben's correspondence, Fitzgerald wrote an apologetic explanation: "I have no fault to find with Princeton that I can't find with Oxford and Cambridge. I simply wrote out of my own impressions, wrote as honestly as I could a picture of its beauty. That the picture is cynical is the fault of my temperament...I must admit however that This Side of Paradise does over accentuate the gaiety and country club atmosphere of Princeton. For the sake of the readers interest that part was much over-stressed, and of course the hero, not being average, reacted rather unhealthily I suppose to many perfectly normal phenomena. To that extent the book is inaccurate."

Shortly before his death, Fitzgerald recalled how his early happiness of being a published author ended "when Princeton turned on the book—not undergraduate Princeton but the black mass of faculty and alumni. There was a kind but reproachful letter from President Hibben, and a room full of classmates who suddenly turned on me with condemnation...The Alumni Weekly got after my book and only Dean Gauss had a good word to say or me. The unctuousness and hypocrisy of the proceedings was exasperating and for seven years I didn't go to Princeton."

Innovative style
For his first novel, Fitzgerald used as his literary templates H. G. Wells' 1909 realist work Tono-Bungay and Sir Compton Mackenzie's 1913 novel Sinister Street, which chronicles a young college student's coming of age at Oxford University.

Although Fitzgerald imitated the plot of these two novels, his debut work differed due to its experimental style. He discarded the stodgy narrative technique of most novels and instead unspooled the plot in the form of textual fragments, letters, and poetry intermingled together, including a passage written in a stream-of-consciousness style. This was largely a result of Fitzgerald's cobbling The Romantic Egotist, his earlier attempt at a novel, together with assorted short stories and poems that he had composed but never published.

This atonal blend of different fictive elements prompted cultural elites to celebrate the young Fitzgerald as a literary trailblazer whose work modernized a staid literature which had lagged "as far behind modern habits as behind modern history." Dorothy Parker later remarked that "This Side of Paradise may not seem like much now, but in 1920 it was considered an experimental novel; it cut new ground."

Prose anomalies
More so than most contemporary writers of his era, Fitzgerald's authorial voice evolved and matured over time, and each of his novels represented a discernible progression in literary quality. Although he was eventually regarded as possessing "the best narrative gift of the century," this narrative gift was not perceived as immediately evident in This Side of Paradise. Believing that prose had a basis in lyric verse, Fitzgerald initially crafted his sentences entirely by ear and, consequently, This Side of Paradise contains numerous malapropisms and descriptive non sequiturs which irritated readers and reviewers. Reflecting upon these copious defects, critic Edmund Wilson later argued that Fitzgerald's debut work had "almost every fault and deficiency that a novel can possibly have".

Thematic content
The underlying themes of narcissism in the novel have been examined in a variety of scholarly essays. Scholar Saori Tanaka's essay on narcissism argues that "Amory comes to know himself through Beatrice and his four lovers, which are like five sheets of glass. They are his reflectors...reflecting his narcissism and the inner side."

The first three women in the book allow Amory to dream in a narcissistic way. After participating in the war and losing his financial foundation, the last two women he meets, Rosalind and Eleanor, "make him not dream but awake" in postwar America. "With Beatrice and Isabelle, Amory activates the grandiose self," Tanaka states, "with Clara and Rosalind, he restricts narcissism, and with Eleanor, he gains a realistic conception of the self."

Others have analyzed feminist themes in the work. Scholar Andrew Riccardo views several characters to be feminist templates. Eleanor's character serves as a "love interest, therapeutic friend, and conversational other". Highly educated in discussing poetry and philosophy, "Eleanor not only posits her desires in juxtaposition to the lingering expectations of women in her day but also serves as soothsayer to the demands which would be placed on females".

Legacy and influence
The impact of Fitzgerald's debut novel This Side of Paradise upon societal mores at the time of its publication has been extensively discussed by scholars and critics. With his debut novel, Fitzgerald became the first writer to turn the national spotlight upon the so-called Jazz Age generation. In contrast to the older Lost Generation to which Fitzgerald and Hemingway belonged, the Jazz Age generation were those younger Americans who had been adolescents during World War I and were largely untouched by the conflict's psychological and material horrors.

Fitzgerald riveted the nation's attention upon the hedonistic activities of their sons and daughters cavorting in the rumble seat of a Bearcat roadster and sparked a societal debate over their perceived immorality. Due to this thematic focus, his works became a sensation among college students, and the American national press depicted him as the standard-bearer for youth in revolt. "No generation of Americans has had a chronicler so persuasive and unmaudlin" as Fitzgerald, critic Burke Van Allen wrote in 1934, and no author was so identified with the generation recorded. Remarking upon the popular association between Fitzgerald and the flaming youth of the Jazz Age, Gertrude Stein wrote in her memoir The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas that the author's fiction essentially created this new generation in the public's mind. Echoing this assertion, critics John V. A. Weaver and Edmund Wilson insisted that Fitzgerald imbued the Jazz Age generation with the gift of self-consciousness while simultaneously making the public aware of them as a distinctive cohort.

The perception of Fitzgerald as the chronicler of the Jazz Age hedonism and carefree youth led many societal figures to denounce his writings. Social conservatives such as Heywood Broun decried his use of modern slang and went so far as to claim that Fitzgerald wholly fabricated his depiction of young people engaging in drunken sprees and premarital sex. Fitzgerald publicly ridiculed such criticisms, and he opined that many pundits wished to discredit his works in order to retain their outdated conceptions of American society.

As a result of This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald became regarded as "the outstanding aggressor in the little warfare which divided our middle classes in the twenties—warfare of moral emancipation against moral conceit, flaming youth against old guard". When he died in 1940, social conservatives rejoiced over his death. In one column for The New York World-Telegram, journalist Westbrook Pegler wrote that Fitzgerald's death a few weeks prior reawakened "memories of a queer bunch of undisciplined and self-indulgent brats who were determined not to pull their weight in the boat and wanted the world to drop everything and sit down and bawl with them. A kick in the pants and a clout over the scalp were more like their needing."

title: This Side of Paradise


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title: User talk:69.133.62.172


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Gar Samuelson

Gary Charles "Gar" Samuelson (February 18, 1958 – July 14, 1999) was an American musician best remembered for being the drummer for thrash metal band Megadeth from 1984 to 1987, contributing to their first two albums, Killing Is My Business... and Business Is Good! (1985) and Peace Sells... but Who's Buying? (1986). He is considered one of the most influential drummers of thrash metal, having pioneered the incorporation of jazz fusion into the subgenre.

Early career
Samuelson initially started out playing for The New Yorkers, which included himself, his brother Stew, Chris Poland and Robbie Pagliari, among others. The stint lasted from the late '70s into the early '80s. Whether the band actually released any material is unknown.

Megadeth
After meeting with Dave Mustaine and Dave Ellefson of Megadeth in 1984, he was asked to join the band on October 24, 1984. Guitarist Chris Poland soon followed, and Mustaine referred to this as "the first real line-up" in the VH1 special on the band. Mustaine commented in an interview with Metal Forces, stating that Samuelson was able to "mix up a beat."

Samuelson went on to serve as Megadeth's drummer until 1987. He appeared on the band's first two albums (Killing Is My Business... and Business Is Good, and Peace Sells... but Who's Buying), and played with them on both tours. However, Samuelson was ultimately fired due to his drug addiction.

At the Woodstock Festival in 1999, Mustaine announced to the crowd that Gar had died. In honor of Gar, Megadeth played Peace Sells as the closing song in their set.

Later career
After leaving Megadeth, Gar formed a band with Megadeth touring musician, Mike Albert. The band, called Metalist, disbanded prior to signing to record label Combat Records.

Gar later formed the band Fatal Opera, which featured his brother Stew on guitar. The first album, which was released in 1994, had Dave Inman on vocals, Travis Karcher playing bass and Billy Brehme on guitar. The band's second album, Eleventh Hour, was released in 1997 and featured Andy Freeman on vocals. Fatal Opera 3, which was a collection of demos, was worked on extensively by his former bandmates and released in 2022.

Samuelson played on two full-length albums and two demos, and remained a member of the band until his death.

Death
Samuelson died in Orange City, Florida, on July 22, 1999, at the age of 41. The cause of death was reportedly liver failure. He was cremated. His former bandmates in Megadeth dedicated the 2002 remaster of Killing Is My Business... and Business Is Good to "the memory of Gar Samuelson".

Discography
Megadeth Fatal Opera
 * Killing Is My Business... and Business Is Good! (1985)
 * Peace Sells... but Who's Buying? (1986)
 * Fatal Opera (1995)
 * The Eleventh Hour (1997)
 * Fatal Opera 3 (2022) (Posthumous release)

title: Gar Samuelson


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Goggles

Goggles, or safety glasses, are forms of protective eyewear that usually enclose or protect the area surrounding the eye in order to prevent particulates, water or chemicals from striking the eyes. They are used in chemistry laboratories and in woodworking. They are often used in snow sports as well, and in swimming. Goggles are often worn when using power tools such as drills or chainsaws to prevent flying particles from damaging the eyes. Many types of goggles are available as prescription goggles for those with vision problems.

History
The Inuit and Yupik carved snow goggles from the antlers of caribou, wood, and shell to help prevent snow blindness. The goggles were curved to fit the user's face and had a large groove cut in the back to allow for the nose. A long thin slit was cut through the goggles to allow in a small amount of light, diminishing subsequent ultraviolet rays. The goggles were held to the head by a cord made of caribou sinew.

In the early 20th century, goggles were worn by drivers of uncovered cars to prevent irritation of the eyes by dust or wind. Likewise in the first ten years after the invention of the airplane in 1903 goggles became a necessity as wind blow became more severe as aircraft speeds increased and as protection against bugstrikes at high altitudes. The first pilot to wear goggles was probably Charles Manly in his failed attempt to fly Samuel Langley's aerodrome in 1903.

Types
The requirements for goggles varies depending on the use. Some examples:
 * Cold weather: Most modern cold-weather goggles have two layers of lens to prevent the interior from becoming "foggy". With only a single lens, the interior water vapor condenses onto the lens because the lens is colder than the vapor, although anti-fog agents can be used. The reasoning behind the dual layer lens is that the inner lens will be warm while the outer lens will be cold. As long as the temperature of the inner lens is close to that of the interior water vapor, the vapor should not condense. However, if water vapor gets between the layers of the lens, condensation can occur between the lenses and is almost impossible to get rid of; thus, properly constructed and maintained dual layer lenses should be airtight to prevent water vapor from entering between the lenses.
 * Swimming: Must be watertight to prevent water, such as salt water when swimming in the ocean, or chlorinated water when swimming in a pool, from irritating the eyes or blurring vision. Allow swimmers to see clearly underwater. They will not be usable more than a few feet underwater, because the water pressure will press them tightly against the face. (Below this limit, a diving mask must be used, which allows the user to equalize pressure by exhaling air through the nose.) Examples of these include Swedish goggles.
 * Power tools: Must be made of an unbreakable material that prevents chunks of metal, wood, plastic, concrete, and so on from hitting or piercing the eye, usually polycarbonate. Usually has some sort of ventilation to prevent sweat from building up inside the goggles and fogging the surface.
 * Blowtorch goggles: These protect the eyes from glare and flying sparks and hot metal splashes while using or near a blowtorch. They are not the correct filters for arc welding.
 * Welding goggles: Includes all goggles for eye protection during welding or cutting. They provide protection against debris, the heat from welding, and, with the proper filters, the optical radiation resulting from the welding, which can otherwise cause arc eye.
 * Motorcycle riding and other open-air activities: Prevents insects, dust, and so on from hitting the eyes.
 * Laboratory and research: Combines impact resistance with side shields to prevent chemical splashes reaching the eyes. May also include laser protection which would be covered by EN 207 (Europe) and ANSI Z 136 (United States). Examples of these include red adaptation goggles.
 * Racquetball: Protect the eyes from racquets swinging in an enclosed area and from impact from hard rubber ball.
 * Winter sports: Protect the eyes from glare and from icy particles flying up from the ground. Double lens anti-fog ski goggles were invented and patented by Robert Earl "Bob" Smith.  Visible Light Transmission (VLT) or S value describes the percentage of light allowed through the lens.
 * Astronomy and meteorology: dark adaptor goggles are used before going outside at night, in order to help the eyes adapt to the dark.
 * Basketball: Several NBA players have worn goggles during play, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy, Horace Grant, Kurt Rambis and Amar'e Stoudemire; they prevent a fellow player from scratching or hitting the eyes when trying to grab the basketball. In most circumstances, a player starts wearing protective goggles to prevent further injury to the eyes.
 * Gaelic handball and squash: goggles are worn to protect the eye from injury by the ball. The ball used in these sports is smaller than the eye socket, meaning that it can strike the eyeball directly.
 * Aviation: In open cockpit aircraft, such as old biplanes, aviators, such as Amelia Earhart and Charles Kingsford Smith, would wear goggles to help protect from the wind and are still in use today. Examples of these include the AN-6530 goggles.
 * Virtual reality: A virtual reality headset, sometimes called "goggles", is a wrap-around visual interface to display computer output. Commonly the computer display information is presented as a three-dimensional representation of real-world environments.
 * Drunkenness: Goggles designed to simulate the vision altering effects of psychoactive drugs, in particular alcohol. Examples include Fatal Vision goggles. There are no studies that have found beneficial effects of use of fatal vision goggles on the likelihood that individuals will later engage in impaired driving.

Fashion
Goggles are often worn as a fashion statement in certain subcultures, most often as part of the cybergoth subculture. They are usually worn over the eyes or up on the forehead to secure 'falls': a type of long, often brightly coloured, synthetic hairpiece. Fans of the steampunk genre or subculture also frequently wear steampunk-styled goggles, particularly when performing in a live action role-playing game.

Goggles are also frequently used by anime and manga characters as a fashion statement. For example, it is an idiosyncrasy of team leader characters in the Digimon anime to wear goggles. Other notable characters who wear goggles are the young Naruto Uzumaki and Konohamaru from Naruto, Matt from Death Note and Usopp from One Piece.

Non-human
Goggles are available for horses used in speed sports such as horse racing. In some traditions of horse mounted bullfighting, the horse may wear a protective cloth over its eyes.

Goggles have been used on military working dogs, for protection in harsh conditions, such as sandstorms and rotorwash from helicopters.

title: Goggles


text: User talk:68.209.187.148

title: User talk:68.209.187.148


text:
Ivan Sollertinsky

Ivan Ivanovich Sollertinsky (3 December 1902 in Vitebsk – 11 February 1944 in Novosibirsk) (Cyrillic: Ива́н Ива́нович Соллерти́нский) was a Soviet polymath. He specialized in fields including linguistics, theatre, literature, history, and philology, but was most known for his work in the musical field as a critic and musicologist. He was a professor at the Leningrad Conservatory, as well as an artistic director of the Leningrad Philharmonic, and a prominent orator. In these capacities, he was an active promoter of Mahler's music in the Soviet Union. Sollertinsky was also interested in ballet and often wrote essays on the subject during the 1930s, along with teaching ballet history at the Leningrad Choreographic Institute. According to contemporaries – most famously Irakly Andronikov – he had a phenomenal memory, and supposedly spoke 26 languages and 100 dialects. However, Nikolai Malko claimed that Sollertinsky was able to speak 32 languages, some of which were also considered dialects.

Biography
Sollertinsky's father, Ivan Ivanovich Sollertinsky, came from a family of Russian Orthodox priests and served as a presiding judge, a privy councillor and a senator. His mother was Ekaterina Iosifovna Bobashinskaya, whose family belonged to a noble szlachta branch of the House of Sas.

Early in life he met Mikhail Bakhtin and took part in his philosophical meetings. After moving from Vitebsk to Leningrad, Sollertinsky graduated from the Leningrad University with a degree in Romano-Germanic philology, specializing in Spanish language and literature, particularly the works of Cervantes. In 1927 he became close friends with Dmitri Shostakovich, and is credited with introducing him to the works of Mahler, which had a profound impact on his composition style. Shostakovich's letters to Sollertinsky, written from 1927-1944, reveal many aspects of the composer's personality seen in few other sources, along with sharp opinions and crippling vulnerabilities.

Sollertinsky supported Shostakovich's opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, writing that it was an "enormous contribution to Soviet musical culture" in his 1934 review of it in Rabochii i Teatr (English: "Workers and Theatre"). In the wake of Shostakovich's first denunciation in 1936, Sollertinsky was called "the troubadour of formalism" by Pravda. Criticism of Lady Macbeth grew after its denunciation, resulting in mounting pressure on Sollertinsky to recant his previous statements, as he was largely blamed for influencing Shostakovich's "formalist" musical style by introducing him to the works of western composers. According to Isaak Glikman, a mutual friend of both Sollertinsky and Shostakovich, Sollertinsky did not denounce Lady Macbeth until Shostakovich told him to, out of concern for his safety. Once he retracted his previous positive statements on Lady Macbeth, Sollertinsky claimed that he would instead study the folklore of the Caucasus region and the Georgian language, perhaps to appeal to Stalin, a native of Georgia. While the denunciation did not deter Shostakovich and Sollertinsky's friendship, they did abandon plans to collaborate on a ballet adaptation of Don Quixote in 1936.

In 1938, Sollertinsky contracted diphtheria, which temporarily paralyzed his arms, legs, and jaw. During his hospitalization, he and his second wife, Irina Frantsevna, divorced, and he married his third wife, Olga Pantaleimonovna, who would remain with him until his death in 1944. Sollertinsky fathered a son with Olga Pantaleimonovna, Dmitri Ivanovich, named after Shostakovich, breaking a generations-long tradition in which the firstborn son was named Ivan. Olga Pantaleimonovna's son from a previous marriage, Kirill, was taken into his care as well. During his four-month period of hospitalization, from June to September, Sollertinsky studied Hungarian and continued to write articles on opera and art.

In August 1941, shortly after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Sollertinsky evacuated from Leningrad with the Philharmonic to Novosibirsk. There, he engaged himself in a number of creative works with the Philharmonic, and frequently traveled in order to give speeches, lectures, and to attend other artistic and cultural events. While he was very much in demand as an orator and scholar during the war years, a heart condition that Sollertinsky's doctors had warned him of worsened due to his intense workload and his poor living conditions in Novosibirsk. By April 1943, he was denied a sufficient amount of food for himself and his family due to rationing, and his apartment was unheated. He and Shostakovich saw each other infrequently during the war years, but Vissarion Shebalin arranged for Sollertinsky to teach a course on music history at the conservatory in Moscow, where Shostakovich was living at the time. He briefly stayed in Moscow to give a speech on the anniversary of Tchaikovsky's death in November 1943, but returned to Novosibirsk with the intention to live and work in Moscow by February 1944. While in Novosibirsk, he delivered the opening remarks for the city's premiere of Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony, on February 5, 1943, which would be the last speech he was to give before his death. On the night of February 10, 1944, Sollertinsky, feeling unwell, stayed at the house of the conductor A.P. Novikov. He died in his sleep at the age of 41 and was buried at the Zayeltsovskoye Cemetery. His funeral was attended by his students, colleagues, and admirers of his work.

Shostakovich dedicated his Second Piano Trio op. 67 (started December 1943) to the memory of Sollertinsky. The lively second movement of the Trio, according to Sollertinsky's sister, Ekaterina Ivanovna, appears to be a "musical portrait" of its dedicatee, while the third movement, in Passacaglia form, is a solemn dirge. The fourth and most famous movement uses klezmer-inspired themes, a possible reference to the victims of the Holocaust, due to the fact that news of the genocide was reaching the Soviet Union at the time. It may also be interpreted as a reference to Sollertinsky's birthplace of Vitebsk, which was associated with famous Jewish artist Marc Chagall, and had a sizeable Jewish population until the Vitebsk Ghetto Massacre of 1941, a Nazi atrocity which took place in the city during the war; the klezmer theme is quoted in Shostakovich's 1960 String Quartet no. 8. Shostakovich's setting of Pasternak's translation of Shakespeare Sonnet no. 66 in his Six Romances on Verses by English Poets is dedicated to Sollertinsky as well.

title: Ivan Sollertinsky


text:
Edward Bates

Edward Bates (September 4, 1793 – March 25, 1869) was an American lawyer, politician and judge. He represented Missouri in the US House of Representatives and served as the U.S. Attorney General under President Abraham Lincoln. A member of the influential Bates family, he was the first US Cabinet appointee from a state west of the Mississippi River.

Born in Goochland County, Virginia, in 1814 Bates moved to St. Louis, where he established a legal practice. He was appointed as the first attorney general of the state of Missouri in 1820. Over the next 30 years, he won election to a single term in Congress and served in both the Missouri House of Representatives and the Missouri Senate, becoming a prominent member of the Whig Party. He also represented Lucy Delaney in a successful freedom suit.

After the breakup of the Whig Party in the early 1850s, he briefly joined the American Party before he became a member of the Republican Party. He was a candidate for president at the 1860 Republican National Convention, but Lincoln won the party's nomination. Bates was appointed as attorney general in 1861, at the start of the American Civil War. He successfully carried out some of the administration's early war policies, but he disagreed with Lincoln on the issue of the Emancipation Proclamation. He did not support full civil and political equality for Blacks. Bates resigned from the Cabinet in 1864 after he had been passed over for a US Supreme Court appointment. After leaving office, he unsuccessfully opposed the adoption of a new state constitution in Missouri.

Early life
Bates was born in Goochland County, Virginia to Thomas Fleming Bates and his wife, the former Caroline Matilda Woodson (1749–1845). His father was a Goochland County native, having been born on his family's Belmont plantation, and served in the local militia, including at the Siege of Yorktown at the end of the American Revolutionary War. Like his siblings and others of the planter class, Bates was tutored at home as a boy. When older, he attended Charlotte Hall Military Academy in Maryland.

Career
Edward Bates served in the War of 1812 before moving to St. Louis, Missouri Territory, in 1814 with his older brother James, who started working as an attorney. Their eldest brother Frederick Bates was already in St. Louis by that time, where he had served as Secretary of the Louisiana Territory and Secretary of the Missouri Territory.

Edward Bates studied the law with Rufus Easton and boarded with his family. Easton was Judge of the Louisiana Territory, the largest jurisdiction in U.S. history since the Louisiana Purchase. After being admitted to the bar, Bates worked as a partner with Easton.

In 1817, the two organized the James Ferry, which ran from St. Charles, Missouri to Alton, Illinois. Easton had founded the latter town, naming it after his first son Alton.

Bates's private practice partner was Joshua Barton, who was appointed as the first Missouri Secretary of State. Barton became infamous for fighting duels on Bloody Island (Mississippi River). In 1816 Bates was the second to Barton in a duel with Thomas Hempstead, brother of Edward Hempstead, the Missouri Territory's first Congressional representative. The fight ended without bloodshed. Barton was killed in a duel on the island in 1823.

Bates's first foray into politics came in 1820, with election as a member of the state's constitutional convention. He wrote the preamble to the state constitution. He was appointed as the new state's Attorney General.

In 1822, Bates was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives for a single term (1827–1829). Next, he was elected to the State Senate from 1831 to 1835, then to the Missouri House from 1835. He ran for the U.S. Senate, but lost to Democrat Thomas Hart Benton. Bates became a prominent member of the Whig Party during the 1840s, where his political philosophy closely resembled that of Henry Clay. While a slaveholder, during this time Bates became interested in the freedom suit of Polly Berry, an enslaved woman who in 1843 gained her freedom decades after having been held illegally for several months in the free state of Illinois.

After she gained her freedom, Berry enlisted Bates's support as her attorney in the separate freedom suit she filed for her daughter Lucy Ann Berry, then about age 14. According to the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, since the mother had been proved a free woman at the time of her daughter's birth, the court ruled that Lucy was also legally free. During this time, Orion Clemens, brother of Mark Twain, studied law under Bates.

While Bates is considered by some modern scholars as "generally unsympathetic to the cause of African American freedom," he emancipated all of his slaves and had paid for his last former slave's passage to Liberia by 1851.

In 1850, President Millard Fillmore asked Bates to serve as U.S. Secretary of War, but he declined. Charles Magill Conrad accepted the position. At the Whig National Convention in 1852, Bates was considered for nomination as vice-president on the party ticket, and he led on the first ballot before losing on the second ballot to William Alexander Graham.

After the breakup of the Whig Party in the 1850s, Bates briefly joined the Know-Nothing Party but then joined the Republican Party. He was one of the four main candidates for the party's 1860 presidential nomination. Bates initially received support from Horace Greeley, who later switched to support Abraham Lincoln. The next year, after winning the election, Lincoln appointed Bates United States Attorney General, an office Bates held from 1861 until 1864. Bates was the first Cabinet member to be appointed from a state or territory west of the Mississippi River.

Attorney General
There was no Justice Department until 1870. Bates had only a small operation, with a staff of six. The main function was to generate legal opinions at the request of Lincoln and cabinet members, and handle occasional cases before the Supreme Court. The cabinet was full of experienced lawyers who seldom felt the need to ask for his opinions. Bates had no authority over the US Attorneys around the country. The federal court system was handled by the Interior Department; the Treasury handled claims. Most of the opinions turned out by Bates's office were of minor importance. Lincoln gave him no special assignments and did not seek his advice on Supreme Court appointments. Bates did have a voice on general policy as a cabinet member with a strong political base, but he seldom spoke out. At age 68 he was the oldest high-level Lincoln appointee, and from late 1863 was in poor health.

One key Bates decision involved the question of Black citizenship. In the summer of 1862, a ship sailing out of New Jersey had been detained by customs because its captain was African American. Ship captains were required to be US citizens, and according to the Dred Scott decision Black Americans were not considered citizens. In an opinion published in mid-December, Bates recognized free African Americans as citizens of the United States, contradicting Dred Scott v. Sandford. When pressed for clarification by Robert Charles Winthrop, Bates confirmed that citizenship rights were the same regardless of race, and that state laws limiting free Black migration and settlement were unconstitutional.

Bates's tenure as Attorney General generally met with mixed reviews. On the one hand, he was important in carrying out some of Lincoln's earlier war policies, including the arbitrary arrest of southern sympathizers and seditious northerners. On the other hand, as Lincoln's policies became more radical, Bates became increasingly irrelevant. Bates disagreed with Lincoln on emancipation and the recruitment of blacks into the Union Army. In 1864, Lincoln nominated Salmon P. Chase to be Chief Justice, an office Bates had wanted. Bates then resigned and was succeeded by James Speed, a Kentucky lawyer with Radical Republican views.

Later years
Bates returned to Missouri after leaving the cabinet. He participated in the conservative struggle over ordinances related to the Missouri constitution of 1865. Bates particularly objected to the "ironclad oath" that was required as a proof of loyalty by residents. He also disapproved of the temporary disfranchisement of rebel sympathizers. He wrote seven essays arguing against the constitution, but it was ratified. It was notable for abolishing slavery in the state, passed three weeks before the US Congress proposed the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery in the US.

Bates retired from politics, although he commented on political events in the local newspapers. He died in St. Louis in 1869 and was buried at Bellefontaine Cemetery.

Personal life
Bates married Julia Coalter from South Carolina. They had 17 children together. She had come to St. Louis to visit her brother David Coalter and her sister Caroline J. Coalter. Her sister Caroline married Hamilton R. Gamble (another attorney and Unionist), who ultimately became chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court.

Bates was, for the most part, happy with his large family. His four sons had various roles during the Civil War. His oldest son, Barton Bates, served on the Supreme Court of Missouri during the war. Son John C. Bates served in the US Army and later became Army Chief of Staff. Son Fleming Bates fought with the Confederates, under the command of General Sterling Price. This caused tension between the father and this son, and Bates rarely mentioned Fleming in his war-time diary. The youngest son, Charles, was still attending West Point during the war.

In popular culture
Bates is portrayed by John Billingsley in the Apple TV miniseries Manhunt — an anachronism, since the story takes place in 1865 when Bates was no longer attorney general.

title: Edward Bates


text:
Workers' Youth Theatre

Workers' Youth Theatre, also known as TRAM (the Russian acronym for "Teatr RAbochey Molodyozhi") was a Soviet proletarian youth theatre of the late 1920s and early 1930s. It was established by Mikhail Sokolovsky in a converted cinema on Liteiny Prospekt, Leningrad. The theatre was run as a collective and produced agitprop pieces designed to educate and persuade. The group worked together with the Left Column, a German agitprop group active in Berlin. A number of the group moved to Moscow in 1931. Helmut Damerius led the two groups from 1931 to 1933.

Adrian Piotrovsky was the theatre's principle ideologue, and Dmitri Shostakovich composed some incidental music for a number of its productions. By 1930 the theatre was under attack, accused of "formalism" by its critics from among journalists and rival proletarian organizations.

title: Workers' Youth Theatre


text:
From Jewish Folk Poetry

From Jewish Folk Poetry, Op. 79, is a song cycle for soprano, contralto, tenor and piano (or orchestra) by Dmitri Shostakovich. It uses texts taken from the collection Jewish folk songs, compiled by I. Dobrushin and A. Yuditsky, edited by Y. M. Sokolov (Goslitizdat, 1947).

The cycle is just one of many works by Shostakovich to incorporate elements of Jewish music; he said that he was attracted by "a jolly melody on sad intonations". The first 8 songs of the piano version was composed in August 1948, after Shostakovich's denunciation in the Zhdanov decree of that year. 3 more songs was added in October 1948, which demonstrate the great life Jews had under the Soviet regime in order to pass the censorship. Shostakovich also wrote an orchestra version for the cycle, and completed the first 8 songs by October 1948.

The composer's situation made a public premiere impossible until January 15, 1955, when it was performed by Shostakovich himself on piano with Nina Dorliak (soprano), Zara Dolukhanova (mezzo-soprano) and Aleksei Maslennikov (tenor). Before the premiere the work received a number of private performances. Premiere of the orchestra version was on February 19, 1964, Gennady Rozhdestvensky conducted Gorky Philharmonic Orchestra with Galina Pisarenko (soprano), Larisa Avdeyeva (mezzo-soprano) and Aleksei Maslennikov (tenor) as the soloists.

Structure
The cycle consists of 11 songs:

 * 1) The Lament for the Dead Child. Russian translation by T. Spendiarova (1 August 1948)
 * 2) The Thoughtful Mother and Aunt. Russian translation by A. Globa (5 August 1948)
 * 3) Lullaby. Russian translation by V. Zvyagintseva (10 August 1948)
 * 4) Before a Long Parting. Russian translation by A. Globa (15 August 1948)
 * 5) A Warning. Russian translation by N. Ushakov (20 August 1948)
 * 6) The Abandoned Father. Russian translation by S. Mar (25 August 1948)
 * 7) The Song of Misery. Text by B. Shafir. Russian translation by B. Semyonov (29 August 1948)
 * 8) Winter. Russian translation by B. Semyonov (29 August 1948)
 * 9) A Good Life. Russian translation by S. Olender (10 October 1948)
 * 10) The Young Girl's Song. Russian translation by S. Olender (16 October 1948)
 * 11) Happiness. Russian translation by L. Dligach  (24 October 1948)

title: From Jewish Folk Poetry


text:
User:Aidfarh

Above all else, I advocate truth. So, if I come across something that is clearly false, I'll change it. Simple.

title: User:Aidfarh


text:
Song of the Forests

The Song of the Forests (Песнь о лесах), Op. 81, is an oratorio by Dmitri Shostakovich composed in the summer of 1949. It was written to celebrate the forestation of the Russian steppes (Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature) following the end of World War II. The composition originally included texts by Yevgeny Dolmatovsky praising Joseph Stalin as the "great gardener"; these references were eliminated after his death. Premiered by the Leningrad Philharmonic under Yevgeny Mravinsky on 15 November 1949, the work was well received by the government, earning the composer a Stalin Prize the following year.

Structure
The oratorio lasts around 40 minutes and is written in seven movements:

 * 1) When the War Was Over
 * 2) The Call Rings Throughout the Land
 * 3) Memory of the Past
 * 4) The Pioneers Plant the Forests
 * 5) The Fighters of Stalingrad Forge Onward
 * 6) A Walk into the Future
 * 7) Glory

In the shadow of the Zhdanov decree
Compared to most of Shostakovich's other output, especially several of his symphonies, it is all too easy to consider The Song of the Forests a simplistic and overtly accessible "official" piece without remembering the context of the time in which it was written. In 1948 Shostakovich, along with many other composers, was again denounced for formalism in the Zhdanov decree. Simplistic and overtly accessible compositions was exactly what the Party demanded. Shostakovich was not the only one writing "safe" pieces at this time. Prokofiev composed his oratorio On Guard for Peace and Myaskovsky wrote his 27th Symphony. Even so, Soviet attacks on composers were both arbitrary and unpredictable, due in no small part to vagueness surrounding the theory of socialist realism in music and how it should be applied. Marina Frolova-Walker stated the situation this way: 'Socialist Realism' was never worked out as a coherent theory, although enormous efforts were expended in attempting to create the illusion of one. Rather, it amounted only to a range of slogans with obscure gray valleys between them. In truth, officials found this vagueness and lack of cohesion far too useful to be sacrificed, for it allowed them unlimited flexibility in manipulating artists. Given two works of similar character, one might be praised and the other condemned, according to some momentary official whim. Attacks on composers were sometimes based on nothing more than fear that the absence of criticism might attract unwelcome attention to the critic concerned: no one wanted to march out of step.

For Shostakovich the story of 1936 was repeated, only this time he was not alone. Most of his works were banned, he was forced to publicly repent, and his family had privileges withdrawn. Yuri Lyubimov says that at this time "he waited for his arrest at night out on the landing by the lift, so that at least his family wouldn't be disturbed". In the next few years Shostakovich divided his compositions into film music to pay the rent, official works aimed at securing official rehabilitation, and serious works "for the desk drawer". The latter included the Violin Concerto No. 1 and the song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry.

Composition
For practical reasons (not to mention those of personal survival), Shostakovich began using two distinct musical idioms in which to compose. The first was more simplified and accessible to comply with Party guidelines. The second was more complex and abstract to fulfill himself artistically. The Song of the Forests belongs in the first category. In his "official" style he set a text by Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky, a poet high in Party favor. Dolmatovsky had seen the then-new forest plantations and shared his experiences with the composer.

Shostakovich creates an arc from the opening evocation of vastness of the Russian steppes with a dark, almost Mussorgskian recollection of the devastation of the war just past, to a closing fugue of vigor and affirmation. In between these two points are a series of choral songs encouraging the planting of trees. While composing this piece, Shostakovich read an article in his daughter's school newspaper about groups of "Pioneers"—the Soviet youth movement—becoming involved in the planting project. He asked Dolmatovsky to supply additional lines for children's chorus to represent the Pioneers' efforts. A lyrical movement just before the finale is reminiscent of the recently castigated Eighth Symphony, though more "accessible" to avoid censure. The final fugue, Shostakovich felt, was a risk since fugues were considered formalistic. By using a Russian folk song as the basis for the movement and the potential of citing Glinka as a model, he felt he reduced the risk factor substantially.

Instrumentation

 * Woodwind: 3 flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), 3 oboes (3rd doubling english horn), 3 clarinets, 2 bassoons
 * Brass: 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba
 * Percussion:
 * timpani
 * triangle, snare drum, cymbals, glockenspiel
 * Other: celesta, 2 harps, strings
 * Brass band: 6 trumpets, 6 trombones

Lyrics
The full cantata has 7 sections.
 * 1) Когда окончилась война – When the War Ended
 * 2) Оденем Родину в леса – We will clothe the Motherland with forests
 * 3) Воспоминание о прошлом – Memories of the Past
 * 4) Пионеры сажают леса – The Pioneers Plant the Forests
 * 5) Комсомольцы выходят вперед – The Young Communists go forth
 * 6) Будущая прогулка – A Walk into the Future
 * 7) Слава – Glory

The title of the poem Оденем Родину в леса! is repeated as a refrain in the cantata. The second movement of the cantata begins as follows:
 * Звучит, летит на всю страну,
 * Разносит ветер голоса:
 * "Объявим засухе войну,
 * Оденем Родину в леса,
 * Оденем Родину в леса!"

Continued popularity
While Song of the Forest has been considered neither the best nor the most popular of Shostakovich's oeuvre, it continues to be performed and recorded because it is an attractive musical pastiche. Reminiscences of the boys' chorus from Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame rub shoulders with Glinka and even Mussorgsky. There is additionally a direct influence of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, especially the introspective third and fourth movements. Shostakovich hints at this in the similarity of titles between the two compositions. The propaganda value of The Song of the Forests may have been purely superficial, but it was enough to satisfy Party ideologues.

Nods to officialdom
The composer considered this oratorio a shameful work. Before the work's premiere, Isaak Glikman told Shostakovich, "It would be so good if instead of Stalin you had, say, the queen of the Netherlands—she's a big fan of reforestation. The composer replied, 'That would be wonderful! I take responsibility for the music, but as for the words....'"

Influence on Prokofiev
On November 26, 1949, Sergei Prokofiev and his wife Mira attended the Moscow premiere of Song of the Forests. According to Mira, Prokofiev said "the oratorio was masterly, the instrumentation brilliant, but it was not rich in melodic material." Its success reignited Prokofiev's desire to compose On Guard for Peace; he regularly studied Song of the Forests during the composition of his own oratorio.

title: Song of the Forests


text: User talk:68.65.138.142

title: User talk:68.65.138.142


text:
Maxim Shostakovich

Maxim Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (Макси́м Дми́триевич Шостако́вич; born 10 May 1938 in Leningrad) is a Soviet, Russian and American conductor and pianist. He is the second child of the composer Dmitri Shostakovich and Nina Varzar. He is a recipient of an honorary title Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1978).

Since 1975, he has conducted and popularised many of his father's lesser-known works.

He was educated at the Moscow and Leningrad Conservatories, where he studied with Igor Markevitch and Otto-Werner Mueller before becoming principal conductor of the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra. During his tenure as principal conductor, he conducted the premiere of his father's Fifteenth Symphony on 8 January 1972.

On 12 April 1981, he defected to West Germany, and later settled in the United States. After spells conducting the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra he returned to St. Petersburg. In 1992, he made an acclaimed recording of the Myaskovsky Cello Concerto with Julian Lloyd Webber and the London Symphony Orchestra for Philips Classics.

Shostakovich is the dedicatee and first performer of his father's Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major (Op. 102).

He has a son, Dmitri Maximovich Shostakovich (or Dmitri Shostakovich Jr.), who is a pianist.

Maxim Shostakovich has recorded a cycle of his father's 15 symphonies with the Prague Symphony Orchestra for the Czech label Supraphon.

title: Maxim Shostakovich


text:
Talk:Theora

Helix links
Here "RealNetworks Helix player" contains two links to the same place (becuase of redirection) - should this be fixed?

VP3 license

 * VP3.2 Public License

I removed the above from the article. The Theora sourcecode isn't based on that license, so it would belong somewhere else. Kjoonlee 04:01, 2004 Dec 15 (UTC)

That is no longer true. The VP3 article has been merged into Theora. Rcooley 11:38, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

 * Yes, it was, but what's that got to do with anything? Kjoonlee point remains valid.-- Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves  talk / contribs (join WP:PT) 14:03, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I've added the VP3.2 license back into the article, as a reference under VP3. Rcooley (talk) 08:33, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Use on Wikipedia?
The Theora and Vorbis royalty-free, open source video and audio codecs could help to make it possible for Wikipedia to host narrated video clips for those articles that explain processes or mechanical devices which are difficult to comprehend using words and pictures alone.

If anyone can point me to some examples of Ogg Vorbis/Theora being used here on Wikipedia, I would be most grateful, as I would like to contribute video and audio clips if it is possible to do so. — DV 07:52, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * see Sound and Video policy --Hhielscher 20:27, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Apollo 15 is a nice article with links to ogg/Theora movies.

Lossy or Lossless ?
It doesn't say if it is lossy or lossless compression, any talk of compression should say that off the bat. Does anyone know, this is outside my knowledge base but I'll look around. --ShaunMacPherson 22:20, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * Since almost all video codecs are lossy most articles in Category:Video_codecs don't talk about it, except the lossless SheerVideo and Huffyuv. Unfortunatelly the same states for Category:Audio_codecs. Theora is lossy as well. --Hhielscher 23:52, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

quality comparison?
Is there any information out there comparing the quality of Theora with other codecs? I know this can be hard, since people get subjective, but it would be nice if the article mentioned which codecs theora has a better quality/compression ratio than, those it is very similar too, and those (if any) that might have better quality/compression ratios than it. Jet

I've updated the Theora article to include a citation to Doom9's 2002 Codec Comparison, 2005 Comparison Qualifying Round, and Monty's own write-up on the limitations and poor quality of Theora. Rcooley (talk) 23:17, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Is a 2 year old comparison still a valid source for describing the state of Theora today? Especially since version 1.0 Beta 2 was only released in Oct 07. Also, "Monty's own write-up" is actually an archived paper discussing improvements being considered on the way to the 1.0 release. Is it still relevant (especially under the VP3 description header)? --Dl036 (talk) 23:16, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

 * Until someone performs some new quality comparison references, that disagree with the current ones, it absolutely should stay, no matter how much time has passed since it was written. However, I wouldn't strongly object to the statement being moved out of the VP3 section, but someone will have to make an appropriate place for it. As the statement applies to both VP3 and Theora it will necessarily seem out of place under either a VP3-only or a Theora-only section, and those are the only two options right now.  Until someone steps in to clean-up the entire article, that will probably remain necessary.  Rcooley (talk) 04:03, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

 * What, because no one has peformed a similar test in three years, we should accept these results as currently accurate? That makes no sense.  Maybe you could say that VP3 and early versions of Theora were comparable to MPEG-1, if that were true (as I said, I don't know), though as I said below, neither of the articles you cite make that claim.  As it is now, however, I believe the statement is misleading. --Dl036 (talk) 01:15, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

 * Personally, I do not feel that comparison is a valid source, and Theora is not quality-wise similar to MPEG-1. I don't think it ever was unless one's using the very very earlier versions of the official encoder.  However, due to my relation with Xiph I cannot modify that statement myself or I would appear biased.  It would be great if someone would grab an easy to use encoder like ffmpeg2theora and try it to confirm that those claims are unlikely to be correct.

 * Actually, on checking those references again, neither Monty nor Doom9 seem to ever refer Theora as akin to MPEG-1 in terms of quality. They only say it's not as great as other current video formats.  Of note that Monty has also said (on another occasion) that Theora can be improved to the point of being near or superior in quality to H.264/AVC.-- Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves  talk / contribs (join WP:PT) 00:29, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

 * Someone "grab[ing] and easy to use encoder" to check "those claims" would be "original research" and never allowed here. Somewhat besides the point, but I should also mention that while there is only one VP3 and one Theora codec, there are many MPEG-1 codecs, so perhaps your opinion is based on the use of a poor one, or possibly a less than scientific comparison, using different settings for each one.  I personally really hope Theora improves to become competitive with MPEG-4 (either ASP or AVC), but that absolutely isn't the current situation, and frankly, with the approx. 5 years it took to get to the current state, I don't expect to see substantial changes anytime soon. Rcooley (talk) 04:03, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

 * I have never used VP3, so I can not comment on whether the description of it being similar to MPEG-1 is fair. Anyone know if it would be more accurate to simply remove Theora from that particular reference (in which case the citations are not relevant), or if the entire last sentence under the VP3 section should be removed in order to correct this?  --Dl036 (talk) 18:55, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

 * The reference in question repeatedly states the quality issues with Theora are because of code and features directly inherited from VP3, so the citation is pretty clearly relevant to VP3. The 2002 Doom9 quality comparison also directly addresses VP3, but it's only available online today in a RAR archive, and no one has yet suggested an alternative method for citing it, but in any case, it is a very real and verifiable source (that everyone selectively chooses to ignore). Rcooley (talk) 04:03, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

 * I am not selectively ignoring anything. I read through both the articles you have cited once again and neither of them suggests that Theora is comparable to MPEG-1.  Further, both documents are three years old and are speaking about earlier alpha versions of Theora.  Your reference may indeed be applicable to VP3 (as I said, I've never used it), but it's not my experience with the current state of Theora and as such I believe it is misleading. --Dl036 (talk) 20:17, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

 * I guess the only way to please both sides of the issue would be to state VP3 may be similar to MPEG-1 in quality (if a good reference for this exists), while Theora surpasses VP3 in quality (reference exists, but it would come from Xiph and not a third party). This issue is complex...-- Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves  talk / contribs (join WP:PT) 18:22, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

1) Personal opinions are not authoritative and verifiable sources, and so irrelevant here on Wikipedia. --  2) It's pure speculation to assume that just because 3 years have passed, that substantial changes have occurred...  It's possible, but the opposite is equally possible. Baring any citations to support such claims, there is no reason to assume the existing citation are incorrect in any way. -- 3) I have changed "MPEG-1" to "h.261" (which makes Theora's quality sound even worse, IMHO) and added yet another citation to substantiate that statement.  Hopefully that will resolve this insignificant sticking point.  --  If you have a source that contradicts any of the 4 sources I've now included, PLEASE mention it.  Otherwise, the statements about quality should (and will) stay as-is.  I'm not going to waste more of my time on this talk page, arguing with everyone who is trying to change facts to get it to agree with their dogma.  This is not the Xiph.org Wiki.  It's citations, or nothing at all, folks.  So far, everyone else has provided exactly that... nothing. Rcooley (talk) 23:59, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

 * The citation you have posted that compares Theora to h.261 clearly states it is the author's subjective opinion, and therefore is just as unacceptable as anyone else's speculation. I am not trying to make this the Xiph Wiki, nor do I have any vested interested in this matter.  Theora is one of a number of codecs I work with regularly, and I simply know that your likening it to MPEG-1 or h.261 is wrong (or at least out of date).  And the citations you use are, again in my opinion, either too dated or don't really support your statements.  If I had an agenda I would have continued re-editing the article before reaching a consensus on this discussion page, as you have done, but my only concern is that people reading your description will be mislead. --Dl036 (talk) 15:31, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

 * Quality comparisons between lossy codecs are inherently based on some personal opinion, as eyes (and ears) vary. He also may have wanted to state that it isn't Nokia's official position.  In any case, he specifically said his conclusion was based on tests, and he did NOT state or imply it was speculation.  Finally, using YOUR OWN opinion to decide is directly in conflict with Wikipedia's policy on Citations and Original Research.  A citation with a "subjective opinion" is not. Rcooley (talk) 19:35, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

 * Rcooley. The last edit wasn't made neither by Dl036 or me, and it was a bad idea not to read that anonymous editor's rationale, which was that neither Nokia's sensasionalist claim or Doom9's 2002 review in RAR are good references.  Also, Monty's reference which you also want to add explicity refute your own claims, so why do you keep adding those bad references back?  I don't get it.  You keep saying we need to add citations to support an argument, but then you go ahead and add bad citations, and when two different people decide to remove the argument altogether — not refute it, remove it as to avoid conflict — you keep reverting their edits.  Seriously, just cool off and listen to the other editors.  Wikipedia is run by common sense and collaboration, and I think you would do well in trying them both.-- Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves  talk / contribs (join WP:PT) 23:47, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

 * Apologies to Dl036. He seems to be logged-out half the time he edits wikipedia, so when I saw his talk post shortly thereafter, I just assumed it was his IP address and didn't really check.  (I'll remove the statement suggesting he was responsible.)  I did read the rationale for the removal and it's simply nonsense from beginning to end...  The Nokia paper says h.261 is about as good as Theora, and Monty says Theora isn't "worse than h.261".  No conflict there.  And Monty's statement was also just a recent flippant add-on, not otherwise a part of his paper.  I can't see anything wrong with the Nokia paper, and you haven't given any reasons either.  I also haven't seen any reason RAR archives of webpages don't make an appropriate source.  If it can be found online, I can't see a reason not to cite it.  I could always book/publication-cite it, but I don't see any reason to do so.  The HTML pages loads now, and readers can chose to download it, or not.  If someone could justify wanting to remove a single citation, rather than insisting on obliterating the statement (as has happened twice now) I likely wouldn't object. The other sources are adequate, but it's always better to give extra info.  "Avoiding conflict" with dogma is not a justification for removing very well-supported facts...  Rcooley (talk) 00:45, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

 * Looking at the citations: Wenger, Stephan (2007), Web Architecture and Codec Considerations for Audio-Visual Services, pp. 3, . Retrieved on 2007-12-19 seems to be the author's opinion with nothing of substance (stills, clips, graphs) backing it. And Doom9 (2002), MPEG-4 Codec shoot-out 2002 - 1st installment, . Retrieved on 2007-12-19 is far too old to be of use. I think that to compare Theora in quality specifically to H.261 We really need something more substantial than Wenger's personal opinion.   --XanderJ (talk) 10:46, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

 * Wenger is an expert, talking about the subject at hand, and therefore a verifiable source. You can't get any better than that.  Wikipedia is not a collection of side-by-side comparisons so you can "judge for yourself."  Furthermore, his conclusions are in-line and fully supported by every single other source on the subject.  The "2002 Codec shoot-out" is about VP3, not Theora.  VP3 hasn't been under active development, so the age should not be an issue at all.  I must also stress what I've said before...  even if the source was about something still developing, age should not be a disqualifying trait, unless multiple, newer sources directly refute it.  Improvement over time may be a possibility, but it is certainly not a given.  Rcooley (talk) 19:53, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

 * If a source is only about VP3, then it should not be used to describe "VP3's and Theora's performance," such a a claim is misleading. --XanderJ (talk) 09:09, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

 * Wenger works on MPEG standards and he wrote that position paper for Nokia (an MPEG company). His claim even was disputed in mainstream media. http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/100380/ - "It's incomprehensible how Wenger, who dealt with audio- and video-coding for years, arrives at the conclusion that Ogg Theora and H.261 are on the same quality level." (translated from German "Wie Wenger, der sich selbst jahrelang mit der Kodierung von Audio- und Videosignalen beschäftigt hat, zu der Ansicht gelangt, H.261 und Ogg Theora bewegten sich qualitativ auf dem gleichen Niveau, bleibt allerdings schleierhaft."). This article is written by Dr. Volker Zota, who's working at the Magazin für Computertechnik (c't), Germany's most renowned computer magazine. --Maikmerten (talk) 11:55, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

This entire section is 15 years out of date and badly needs a complete overhaul.--Spartan2600 (talk) 22:51, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

patent-free ?
Are there any proof ? I was said that near everything in video is patented (even the arithmetic sum). Moreover derf experimental theora codec lists some patents : http://svn.xiph.org/experimental/derf/theora-exp/doc/patents.txt
 * That link doesn't mean anything. Um, got any proof that Theora infringes on someone else's patents? Besides On2's, that is.

 * First of all nobody can guarantee for any product that it does not infringe some patents, which is a major problem for the whole patent system. However, as all basic coding methods used in Theora are well known since the 1980ies (meaning any patents would have expired by now) or are subject to the VP3 patents for which a license was donated up till now noone was able to come up with a patent infringed by Theora. And even if e.g. an encoder was found to use patented compression methods this doesn't mean that other encoders, players or the bitstream specification itself are having this problem, too. --Maikmerten (talk) 13:35, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Non-humans?
Ok, this is weird, but did they give licenses to other sentient beings, or just humans? You never know what will come up tomorow, you know.....
 * I don't know. However I have made the claim more neutral as below:
 * While VP3 is patented technology, On2 has irrevocably given royalty-free license of the VP3 patents to everyone, letting anyone use Theora and other VP3-derived codecs for any purpose.
 * However I still feel it might need to be reworked. If On2 did explicitly say they were releasing it to all humanity in their license agreement and therefore technically if you weren't human it wouldn't be release to you, you're welcome to change it back of course Nil Einne 13:03, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Remove history sections?
I find the current 'Development timeline' and 'History' sections too verbose and not informative. Anyone interested in the changelogs would likely be looking elsewhere, not on Wikipedia, and for everyone else it fails to be useful and just takes up space. Does anyone agree with me that they're best removed entirely? -- intgr 22:02, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
 * This information is really unnecessary and do not contribute anything to the article. 130.233.243.229 12:28, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Done. -- intgr 15:39, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Tarkin
Hi-

Should we include a link to Tarkin, as it's another codec that the Xiph.org Foundation plans to implement sometime in the future?

Stilroc 02:53, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

 * This is a late reply, but alright. Xiph does not intend to return to Tarkin any time soon.  It was pretty much dropped for Theora.  There's a link to Tarkin in the Xiph Projects template, though, so that should be enough.-- Saoshyant  talk / contribs (please join WP:Portugal or WP:SPOKEN) 13:00, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Chroma bleeding or colour bleeding?
There is no wiki page for "chroma bleeding". I was going to submit some information after researching the topic, but found little. Is this artifact more commonly referred to as "colour bleeding"? And should the the link therefore be updated to reflect this? Jwitch 13:22, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

 * Color bleeding. But I removed the text. Theora used subsampled color, like all the other video codecs anyone cares about today, and also like all the other codecs it operates in YUV space. Subsampled color will always have some bleeding potential, but the use of a color space which is not perceptually linear makes it more likely for the bleeding to be noticed.  Theora could have been designed to use a space with Y gamma corrected to perceptual linearity, but this would have required an additional set of per pixel multiplications on decode side.. removing the advantage of CPU saving hardware YUV to RGB conversion which is widely available and used. We might want to have some text on subsampled color, but to single out Theora on this matter isn't fair or accurate. --Gmaxwell 16:55, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Adoption
The video game Heroes of Might and Magic V uses ogg for its cinematics, complete with Theora for video and Vorbis for audio. Should we mention it somewhere? - Sikon 12:38, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia may not be the best place for this. Xiph's official Wiki provides pages to list players, software and games that use their formats.  I've just created the page Games that use Theora using your information.  If you'd like to add more information, I believe this is the place.-- Saoshyant  talk / contribs (please join WP:Portugal or WP:SPOKEN) 13:17, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

x264 in Matroska
With Mediacoder 0.6.0, I can convert to x264 (aka FFH.264) video /w Matroska container, but sound will only work with mp3 (still LAME). Point is everything here is open source so i may use that, because the quality at 350 kbps a lot better then Theroa. Renegadeviking

 * "Open Source" doesn't mean "free". x264 is encoding H.264, for which patent fees are collected. Lame encodes to MP3, for which patent fees are collected as well. --Maikmerten (talk) 12:19, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Opera 10 Browser to support Theora
Interesting video: http://coolastory.blogspot.com/2007/03/sv-web-builders-event-world-premier-of.html

Right at the end, the demo of Opera 10, and the mention of Theora.. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.174.171.21 (talk) 17:19, 13 April 2007 (UTC).

 * Opera released an experimental Windows version with Theora support, which may be found in here. It's recommended that you read the instructions at "A call for video on the web" if you plan to try it.-- Saoshyant  talk / contribs (please join WP:Portugal or WP:SPOKEN) 17:52, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

MPEG-4 in the intro
in the intro there is Theora competes with MPEG-4, WMV, and similar low-bitrate video compression schemes

Here we are only talking about video codec, not audio neither container. Mpeg4 is a norm for audio+video(x2)+container+many things So I guess we should change the intro to Theora competes with MPEG-4 video (H.264), VMW ...

--88.170.236.224 (talk) 14:48, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

On2 History
To whoever added the On2 history, which is cool: just wondering if we should just use one reference to the On2 news archive, rather than ten zillion individual press releases? Thoughts? Jon (talk) 06:16, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I think there should be the individual references because it is not very easy to find the related press releases on On2 website for any VP3-history fact. (Press releases about VP3 are mixed up in VP4, VP5 and other On2 press releases.) The references could be also suplemented or replaced with links to other sources (which can contain the same or other relevant information). If there is a problem with so many links, maybe the VP3 could be an individual article.--89.173.68.106 (talk) 16:35, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

FourCC identifier
According to http://www.fourcc.org/codecs.php its fourcc identifier is VP31 not VP3. Any comments? --kupirijo (talk) 21:33, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * According to http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=On2_VP3 fourcc identifiers for VP3 compression formats are VP30, VP31 and VP32. Check also some mplayer samples - fourcc VP30 and VP31 are used. 89.173.68.106 (talk) 08:51, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Editing Theora Files
Is Theora considered an 'editible' format? Theora seems to be lossy - Is there a lossless, open format for video for use as a 'source' file type? There are a couple editors listed, but they seem pretty 'fringe' - anything more mainstream? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.217.148.21 (talk) 15:49, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

 * There are editing options for Theora on Commons at . Theora is not an easy video format to edit.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 16:06, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

 * I losslessly edit Theora video files using oggz-tools. To the article I have added oggz-tools from http://www.xiph.org/oggz/ and Ogg Video Tools from http://dev.streamnik.de/oggvideotools.html. The latter I have not tried but flossmanuals claims them to be lossless too (see http://en.flossmanuals.net/TheoraCookbook/LosslessIntro). Of course converting to Theora is lossy, but once converted there are several basic editing functions that are lossless. However I would also like to know about any lossless format to simplify editing - manipulating sequences of PNGs or TIFFs is awkward and consumes storage. I just tried the lossless Lagarith codec with VirtualDub. It works as far as editing and saving as an AVI file in lossless form, but (1) VLC will not play Lagarith encoded video, and (2) I cannot find a one-step conversion to Theora OGV. -84user (talk) 20:45, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

 * There are few tools available for editing Theora files in their native format. The files can be edited in other formats and converted using freeware programs such as SUPER (a graphic interface for ffmpeg2 theora).-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 21:05, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses, folks. So, if one wanted to create a reasonably 'pure' (in terms of open source-ness) video production process, what would one use for a file format? Can't seem to find others of even equal popularity, and Theora's doesn't seem to have broad support. I'd like to set something up that would suck in video of whatever codec from multiple sources, and immediately convert it a single standard, preferably open source format that can be edited. Is Theora the closest it comes, or are there other alternatives that I'm not finding? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.217.148.21 (talk) 00:37, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

 * Most of the available Theora software is listed on Commons at . There is a dearth of editing software for Theora, which is one of the issues for the format.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 09:58, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Video size
This was added to the section with the video of the plane: ''Note also that this is the wrong way to use video in Wikipedia. The encoded size of this file is 320 pixels wide by 240 pixels tall. This article is showing the movie at 250 pixels wide, which slightly shrinks the video. However, the video is not recompressed to the smaller size on the fly, and so it still consumes the same amount of network bandwidth as if it were shown at the correct 320x240 size.It is very easy to make this mistake using video in Wikipedia articles, and it is worthwhile to illustrate the mistake here. If you want to show the video as a thumbnail the only option available is to download the video file to your computer, recompress it at the smaller size using a theora compression tool, and upload it for use alongside the original larger size file.''

 * Personally, I would avoid using thumbnail videos as they are far to small to show any worthwhile detail. The 250px size was chosen by another user in this edit as being suitable for the page. Wikipedia is rightly worried about the bandwidth consumed by streaming video, but very small thumbnails give little idea of what is in the video. See also .-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 10:33, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Whether Handbrake supports Theora
obsolete OGM maybe, but not Ogg

With this edit I changed the "Yes" in the Encoding section's table (that Handbrake supports Theora) to the above conditional maybe and included some sources. It was later reverted here as a good faith edit.

I agree that the "maybe" and the last sentence (hidden in the clarification request) is my commentary. The remaining text (except maybe the "not OGG") comes from the sources. The problem is Wikipedia requires reliable sources and needs to avoid Original Research. So, how can we best avoid misleading the readers? The Handbrake release notes themselves admit their OGM support is old. The pcworld.com article uses the word "OGM" but fails to mention that OGM is a now unsupported format. So, is the current "Yes" a product of original research itself? Regardless, the whole table is now unreferenced. What do editors suggest we could do to improve this? An extra column for Theora OGM, maybe? Or just plain "OGM yes"? -84user (talk) 11:05, 2 January 2010 (UTC) +parentheses -84user (talk) 11:45, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

 * I downloaded the latest version of HandBrake, 0.9.4. It supports only MP4, m4v and Matroska containers. The Theora capability existed in previous versions but has been removed. Because of this, it might be a good idea to remove HandBrake from the table altogether, since it is misleading to give the impression that downloading the current version will offer Theora conversion. The download page does not seem to offer past versions, so for practical purposes HandBrake is no longer a piece of Theora conversion software.-- ♦Ian Ma c  M♦  (talk to me) 11:54, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

And I also downloaded the 0.9.4 version today and can confirm that it only has MP4 and MKV output containers (could not see any m4v except as an output extension). It could read some OGV files however (not all), and it converted a test OGV file to MP4 with no errors and both a OGV and a M4V file to MKV container files with video codec set to VP3 (Theora) and audio codec set to Vorbis, also with no errors. See commons:Help talk:Converting video. If I understand this right it seems Handbrake does (sometimes) support input from Theora streams and output to Theora video and Vorbis audio, but only to the Matroska container. Yet more original research, but it now supports keeping Handbrake in the table. -84user (talk) 16:45, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

 * HandBrake seems to be aimed primarily at converting video files to MP4 formats for portable devices. Version 0.9.4 cannot output to OGG, OGM or OGV, but can have VP3 (Theora) with MKV, which is unusual. I converted a test Theora/Vorbis video to MP4 and it came out OK. On balance HandBrake should stay, but it is not the most useful piece of Theora software for the average user.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 18:01, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Circle referencing going on?
I've looked into a few of the references now, and it seems that there is basically two references to the same article. The reference:

 * Ref nr. 53 Richmond, Gary. "Firefogg: Transcoding videos to open web standards with Mozilla Firefox". http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/firefogg_transcoding_videos_open_web_standards_mozilla_firefox. Retrieved 14 February 2010.

is pointing to a post at:

 * http://hacks.stage.mozilla.com/2009/06/open-video-codecs-and-quality/

which then is just a re-post of the reference:

 * Ref nr. 49 Maxwell, Greg (13 June 2009). "YouTube / Ogg/Theora comparison". Xiph.Org Foundation. http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html. Retrieved 10 August 2009.

I'm not too into the criterias for references, but this can't be good practice. I suggest removing the #53 reference, since it doesn't add anything to the article.

Haakoo (talk) 09:16, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Better reference for HTML5 Theora controversy?
In the HTML5 video section, the citation for "However, the proposed adoption of Theora as part of the baseline video support in HTML5 resulted in controversy." is a "magazine" (actually a blog post) that is copied wholesale from a blog post from another site.

This is an unreliable source if I've ever seen one.

Can someone find a news article that could be used instead? I've been searching for the past hour or so and haven't found one yet, but I remember this being discussed on news sites in the past. --Powerlord (talk) 05:07, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

 * Possibly here from CNET. It points out that Microsoft, Apple and Google are all less than keen on Theora and prefer H.264 on quality grounds.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 07:09, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Theora may not be patent free: For immediate release
According to this article, the MPEG-LA is making some patent "claims". They're claiming that "virtually any video codec" infringes at least one submarine patent (patent application that has not yet been approved), which would be unfortunate for the project. 68.173.113.106 (talk) 22:25, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

The sample video is not Theora
At least, mplayer identifies this video file as VP8 not Theora, and running "strings" on the file gives output beginning:

which seems to indicate the container is WebM and not Ogg. 46.208.20.202 (talk) 02:00, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

 * File:I-15bis.ogg is 6.24 MB ogg/Theora on Wikimedia Commons, but Wikipedia has converted ogg videos to WebM format which will work only with HTML5 compatible browsers. It may be that some players are playing the WebM version.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 06:39, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

CPU Usage & Quality
Try as I might, NOBODY seems to have compared video-codecs in terms of quality (error-rate from original, uncompressed video) and of CPU power. NOWHERE gives a core-mark or Dhrystones value for this and all of the other codecs — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.106.56.145 (talk) 16:52, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Obsolete
I don't have a good reference saying Theora is obsolete, but the folks in the #xiph IRC channel acknowledge that it is, and that's authoritative enough for me. I provided references to the closed (obsolete) android bug, and wikipedia's own switch from Ogg Theora to WebM. —Darxus (talk) 17:43, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

 * I can't really argue here. Sourcing or otherwise, Theora is now a dinosaur format in the age of WebM.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 19:14, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Given the additional 5 years of time since Theora was said to be dead in Xiph IRC, and the fact Chrome removed support for it and Firefox is assessing the same, it's safe to say Theora is dead and we can change the article to refer to Theora in the past tense. Wiki articles for software with much more recent releases but nonetheless dead programs like the Banshee media player do so. Spartan2600 (talk) 22:58, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Theora