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Vasyl Sukhomlynsky

Vasyl Olexandrovych Sukhomlynsky (Василь Олександрович Сухомлинський, Васи́лий Алекса́ндрович Сухомли́нский; in transliteration from Russian: Vasily Aleksandrovich Sukhomlinsky or Vasilii Aleksandrovich Sukhomlinskii) (September 28, 1918 – September 2, 1970) was a Ukrainian humanistic educator in the Soviet Union who saw the aim of education in producing a truly humane being.

Biography
Sukhomlynsky was born in a peasant family in the village of Omelnyk, Vasyliv volost of Oleksandriia uezd (today Oleksandriia Raion of Kirovohrad Oblast in Ukraine). In 1933 he finished a seven-year school of primary education after which his mother escorted him to Kremenchuk where he enrolled into a local medical college (tekhnikum). However, he quit the medical school and enrolled into Robitfak which he finished in short term. In 1935 he started to work as a teacher not far from his native village. In 1938 Sukhomlynsky enrolled into the Poltava Pedagogical Institute out of which he graduated the same year. Upon graduation, he returned to native lands where he worked as a teacher of the Ukrainian language and literature in the Onufriivka middle school. During World War II he volunteered to the front-lines in 1941 and as a junior politruk was severely wounded in January 1942 during the defense of Moscow. He was transferred to a military hospital in the Ural Mountains where he continued his medical treatment. During that time he continuously requested his return to the front-lines while the medical commission could not recognize him even conditionally available for that. He was appointed a principal of a middle school in the town of Uva (Republic of Udmurtia). In 1944 when the native lands were liberated of Nazi Germany he was appointed as a director of the Regional People's Education (RAINO). In 1948, he became principal of the Pavlysh Secondary School in the settlement of Pavlysh (upon his own request) – a post he held to the end of his life.

Educational philosophy
The core of Sukhomlynsky's system of education was his approach to moral education, which involved sensitising his students to beauty in nature, in art and in human relations, and encouraging students to take responsibility for the living environment which surrounded them.

Sukhomlynsky taught his students that the most precious thing in life is a human being and that there is no greater honor than to bring joy to other people. He taught them that to bring joy to other people, and especially to their families, they should strive to create beauty in themselves and in the environment. There was thus a very close connection between moral and aesthetic education in Sukhomlynsky's approach.

Another aspect of being truly human was the development of the intellect, so that the horizons of the mind grew ever wider, gradually encompassing the whole world and reaching into the depths of space. Sukhomlynsky could not agree with those who sought to give education a purely utilitarian focus, who thought that knowledge was worthwhile only if it found direct application in the workplace. For him, the study of foreign languages and of astronomy were essential in order for a person to appreciate the world of which they were a part, and to broaden their minds.

The foundation of all personal growth is health, and Sukhomlynsky gave a great deal of his attention to ensuring that children enjoyed optimum health, especially in early childhood, when character is formed. He took children out into nature often, combining physical exercise with lessons in thought and in the appreciation of beauty. Especially in the primary school, he thought it important that children's thought be associated with vivid images, such as were to be found in the fields, forests and waterways within walking distance of the school. If thought were divorced from the children's direct experiences, it would exhaust them.

It was also important that children's learning, the work of their intellects, be associated with practical works which put their knowledge to use. Only if children's knowledge was used to improve their environment and the lives of people around them, would it lead to the formation of an active philosophy of life, to a practical moral stance.

Sukhomlynsky's holistic educational philosophy thus rested on five pillars: health education, moral education, aesthetic education, intellectual education, and work education.

Educating the heart
Sukhomlynsky sought to prolong children's childhood, to keep them optimistic and open to the world, to preserve the freshness of their emotional responses to the world. He showed them that although they were small, they could do a lot to care for the environment in which they lived and to bring happiness to the people they met. He sought to refine their sense of beauty, being very selective in the impressions he fed to their young minds. He took them to the most beautiful natural settings he could find. He taught them to listen to the music of nature, the rustle of grasses and of leaves, the song of the lark. He played them music inspired by such natural sounds, and showed them paintings of natural beauty. He did not swamp them with a surfeit of images and sounds, but allowed each new exposure to beauty to be memorable.

He taught them to become more aware of the inner world of other people, to read others' eyes, to recognize feelings of joy, of sorrow or confusion. He tried to ensure that children took joy home from school to their families, to ensure that every child uncovered some latent talent or ability at which they could excel. Not every child could excel academically, but each could shine at something and find a way to bring joy to others. This was the foundation of their self-respect and their moral development.

For his achievements in the field of education, Sukhomlynsky was bestowed the title of Hero of Socialist Labor in 1968. He was also a recipient of two Orders of Lenin, Order of the Red Star, Ushinsky and Makarenko Medals.

In 1969 Sukhomlynsky wrote the book "Сердце отдаю детям", ("Serdtse otdayu detyam"); English translations: To Children I Give My Heart, by  Holly Martin Smith, 1982, ISBN 0714717487 and My Heart I Give to Children, by Alan Leslie Cockerill, 2016, ISBN 098058857X. For this book he was awarded the State Prize of the Ukrainian SSR in 1974 (posthumously).

title: Vasyl Sukhomlynsky


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Louise Wener

Louise Jane Wener (born 30 July 1966, Gants Hill, London, England) is an English writer, singer, songwriter and guitarist of the band Sleeper.

Life
Wener is the younger daughter of Donald Wener, an Inland Revenue tax inspector from East Ham who had served in the RAF, and Audrey (née Dixon), a bank clerk and former nurse. Wener attended Manchester University where she met Jon Stewart which led to the formation of Sleeper. Her elder sister was the writer Sue Margolis. Their brother, Geoff, managed Sleeper after attending Cambridge University.

Sleeper recorded three full-length albums prior to splitting: Smart, The It Girl, and Pleased to Meet You. After the band split up in 1998, Wener began a writing career, and has written four novels: Goodnight Steve McQueen, The Big Blind (also known as The Perfect Play), The Half Life of Stars, and Worldwide Adventures In Love. Her autobiography, Different for Girls: My True-life Adventures in Pop (also known as Just For One Day: Adventures in Britpop), was published in June 2010. Wener co-wrote a BBC Radio 4 drama series, Queens of Noise, with Roy Boulter of The Farm. It ran for two five-programme series in the 10.45am Woman's Hour drama slot, focusing on the rise of a fictional indie band, Velveteens.

In addition to writing herself, Wener has taught novel-writing. With her partner, Sleeper drummer Andy Maclure, she formed another band, Huge Advance, although they only played in and around their residential suburb of Crouch End. By 2011, she and Maclure had married and moved to Brighton, where Maclure teaches at a music college. They have a son and a daughter. Wener has written an article about motherhood for The Guardian.

Sleeper reformed in 2017 to play in four British cities in July and August as part of the Star Shaped Festival. They went on to headline an eleven-date tour in 2018. The band have since recorded two new albums, The Modern Age, released in March 2019, and   This Time Tomorrow, released in December 2020.

In 2021, Wener teamed up with the Greater Manchester indie band The Lottery Winners to record "Bad Things", an R&B-laced indie-pop track from the Leigh band's eight-track EP Start Again (with "Bad Things" being credited to The Lottery Winners feat. Sleeper, rather than featuring Louise Wener).

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

title: Louise Wener


text:
Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts

The Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) at Edith Cowan University (ECU) is a performing arts school in Perth, Western Australia. Established in 1980, it is notable for being the most comprehensive performing arts school in Australia by disciplines of study and has produced some of Australia's most prominent graduates in the field.

It is scheduled to re-locate to the currently under-construction Perth CBD campus following completion in late 2025. The ECU City campus, which is designed by Lyons and will be located in Yagan Square, is planned to have six performance venues which are projected to have 300 performances annually. The campus will be accessible by public transport, being built on top of the underground Perth Busport opposite the Perth railway station.

As of 2019, the executive dean of the school is Prof David Shirley. Prior to being assigned, he was the director of the Manchester School of Theatre and chair of the Federation of Drama Schools in the United Kingdom.

Courses
It offers study and research programs in acting, screen performance, arts and cultural management, dance (classical ballet and contemporary dance), music (in various fields of instrumental and voice performance, composition and school teacher education), theatre (including directing and musical theatre), production (including production design, costume design, lighting, props and scenery, sound and stage management) and other fields of performing arts.

It also offers a vocational program in Aboriginal performance and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) research program with an integrated "performance, exhibition, event or an embodiment of some form". Broadcasting is now taught in the School of Communications and Arts of ECU. Originally an initiative of the state government, the Academy receives funding from both the State and Commonwealth governments.

Public performances
The performing arts school showcases a large number of performances across all fields annually that are open to the public. This events are mostly held at WAAPA's own theatres and facilities in Mount Lawley. Performances and events are also held at various external venues such as the Rosemount Hotel, Government House Ballroom, Ellington Jazz Club, Luna Cinema, Subiaco Arts Centre, Studio Underground, Blue Room Theatre and the Albany Entertainment Centre.

Venues and facilities
The WAAPA buildings and facilities form part of the Edith Cowan University campus in Mount Lawley, a suburb in Perth, Western Australia.

The academy currently has eight public performance spaces. These include the 297-seat Geoff Gibbs Theatre proscenium, the 200-seat Richard Gill Auditorium, the 194-seat court style Roundhouse Theatre, an outdoor amphitheater, Enright Studio, dance studios and a jazz studio..

Four more purpose built dance/rehearsal studio spaces were created: A recording studio, electronics studio, and four production workshops for design and costume making were also added to the existing workshops and behind the scenes production facilities.

Twelve large rehearsal and dance studios, numerous music and ensemble studios, a specialised visual and performing arts library collection, and numerous exhibition spaces.

Fully equipped broadcasting facilities and studios for television and radio. An environment has been created where broadcasting students can gain first hand experience of working within a media environment.

Academic appointments
Academic teaching appointments are made on the basis of qualifications, recent professional experience, industry profile, and reputation. WAAPA invites international professionals to Perth as artists in residence to work with students on productions and performances and to provide performance and professional advice through workshops.

Notable past teaching appointments include the Australian conductor Richard Gill as dean of the Western Australian Conservatorium of Music from 1985 to 1990. When Gill moved to take up an appointment as Director of Chorus at Opera Australia, Edward Applebaum filled the appointment.

Notable alumni

 * Hollie Andrew
 * Luke Arnold
 * Viva Bianca
 * Andrew Bibby
 * Shalom Brune-Franklin
 * Jeremy Callaghan
 * Fiona Campbell
 * Jarrod Carland
 * Vivien Carter
 * Karina Carvalho
 * Bryn Chapman Parish
 * Dustin Clare
 * Sam Corlett
 * Jai Courtney
 * Martin Crewes
 * Cassie Davis
 * Charmaine Dragun
 * Stella Donnelly
 * Lucy Durack
 * Georgie Gardner
 * Mark Gasser
 * Marcus Graham
 * Kerrie Anne Greenland
 * Haruhisa Handa
 * Georgina Haig
 * Geraldine Hakewill
 * Karla Hart
 * Hugh Jackman
 * Jim Jefferies
 * Kate Jenkinson
 * Hélène Joy
 * Kučka
 * Gerald Lepkowski
 * Ewen Leslie
 * Ben Lewis
 * Meg Mac
 * Tammy MacIntosh
 * Suzie Mathers
 * Tim McGarry
 * Ainsley Melham
 * Jonathan Messer
 * William McInnes
 * Lisa McCune
 * Tim Minchin
 * Seann Miley Moore
 * Dacre Montgomery
 * Frances O'Connor
 * Ben O'Toole
 * Linda May Han Oh
 * Taryn Onofaro
 * Paul Paddick
 * Karin Page
 * Nicholas Papademetriou
 * Kevin Penkin
 * Eddie Perfect
 * Chris Piechocki
 * Gemma Pranita
 * Dominic Purcell
 * Daina Reid
 * Matthew Lee Robinson
 * Gretel Scarlett
 * Kris Stewart
 * Roza Terenzi
 * Pria Viswalingam
 * Erica Wardle
 * Nic Westaway


text: Category:Elections in Bangladesh

title: Category:Elections in Bangladesh


text:
Leonardo AW609

The Leonardo AW609, formerly the AgustaWestland AW609, and originally the Bell-Agusta BA609, is a twin-engined tiltrotor VTOL aircraft with an overall configuration similar to that of the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey. It is capable of landing vertically like a helicopter while having a range and speed in excess of conventional rotorcraft. The AW609 is aimed at the civil aviation market, in particular VIP customers and offshore oil and gas operators. It has progressed from a concept in the late 1990s, to development and testing, and is working towards certification in the 2020s.

Origins and program changes

The BA609 drew on experience gained from Bell's earlier experimental tiltrotor, the XV-15. In 1996, Bell and Boeing formed a partnership to develop a civil tiltrotor aircraft. In March 1998, Boeing pulled out of the project. In September 1998, Agusta became a partner in the development program. This led to the establishment of the Bell/Agusta Aerospace Company (BAAC), a joint venture between Bell Helicopter and AgustaWestland, to develop and manufacture the aircraft, which was named Bell-Agusta AB-609; the two companies simultaneously worked on a conventional medium helicopter project (the Agusta-Bell AB139).

The Italian government subsidized Agusta's development of a military tiltrotor, and as the AW609 has civilian aspects, the European Commission requires AgustaWestland to pay back progressive amounts per aircraft to the Italian state to avoid a distortion of competition. , Bell continues to perform contract work on the AW609 program, while considering commercial potential for the bigger V-280 tiltrotor, where military production may reach larger numbers and hence reduce unit cost. In 2016, Bell preferred the 609 for commercial applications and kept the V-280 for military use only. Bell stated that conventional helicopters were not part of Bell's future for military customers.

The aircraft's purpose is to take off and land vertically, but fly faster than a helicopter. Over 45 different aircraft have flown proving VTOL and STOL capabilities, of which the V-22, Harrier "jump jet" family, Yakovlev Yak-38 and Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II jets have proceeded to production. By 2008, Bell had estimated that very light jets and large offshore helicopters like the Sikorsky S-92 had reduced the potential market for tiltrotors. Also in 2008, it was reported that limited funding of the program by both Bell and AgustaWestland had resulted in slow flight testing progress.

In September 2009, AgustaWestland chief executive Giuseppe Orsi said that corporate parent Finmeccanica had authorised buying Bell Helicopter out of the program to speed it up, as Bell was dissatisfied with the commercial prospects and wanted to spend the resources on other programs. In 2013 AgustaWestland estimated a market of 700 aircraft over 20 years. By 2011, negotiations centred on the full transfer of technologies shared with the V-22, however Bell stated that no technology was shared with the V-22. At the 2011 Paris Air Show, AgustaWestland stated that it will assume full ownership of the programme, redesignating the aircraft as "AW609", and that Bell Helicopter will remain in the role of component design and certification. In November 2011, the exchange of ownership was completed, following the granting of regulatory approval - media estimated that the transfer happened at little cost.

Testing

On 6 December 2002, the first ground tests of the BA609 prototype began. The first flight took place on 7 March 2003 in Arlington, Texas, flown by test pilots Roy Hopkins and Dwayne Williams. After 14 hours of helicopter-mode flight testing, the prototype was moved to a ground testing rig to study the operational effects of the conversion modes. Following the completion of ground-based testing, on 3 June 2005 the prototype resumed flight testing, focusing on the expansion of its flight envelope. On 22 July 2005, the first conversion from helicopter to aeroplane mode while in flight took place.

By October 2008, 365 flight-hours had been logged by two prototype aircraft. The AW609 demonstrated a safe dual-engine failure in normal cruise flight on 15 May 2009. By February 2012, this had risen to 650 hours, and it was reported that 85 per cent of the AW609's flight envelope had been explored. Test pilot Paul Edwards has stated that the AW609 was not susceptible to the vortex ring state phenomena, naturally slipping out of the vortex on its own since both rotors will not simultaneously enter the vortex ring state.

In 2011, AgustaWestland began construction of a third prototype. That prototype was still not fully assembled by February 2015. The company plans to conduct test flights in Italy in the summer of 2015. AgustaWestland planned to then disassemble it and ship it to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to prepare it for tests of the de-icing system in Minnesota. A fourth prototype, to be used in the development and testing of new avionics and control systems, was also underway. By November 2012, over 700 flight hours had been accumulated by the two operational prototypes. In January 2014, it was reported that in excess of 850 flying hours had been accumulated by the two prototypes. Accumulated flight data is used to further develop representative simulators, which are in turn being used to support the development program.

By March 2015, the two prototype aircraft had accumulated 1,200 hours, of about 2,000 hours necessary for certification. Two more aircraft were expected to fly that year. Flight test maximums had progressed to a weight of 18000 lb, a speed of 293 kn, and 30000 ft altitude. In 2015, AgustaWestland reported that the AW609 flew 1161 km from Yeovil, UK, to Milan, Italy, in 2 hours 18 minutes. In September 2015, the first AW609 prototype was reportedly nearing the end of its service life, while a third prototype was finishing construction at the company's Vergiate facility and a fourth prototype was being built in Philadelphia.

On 30 October 2015, the second of the two prototypes (N609AG) crashed near AgustaWestland's Vergiate facility in north west Italy, killing both pilots.

Certification

In 2002, Type certification of the aircraft was projected for 2007. In 2007, certification was projected for 2011. In August 2012, the aircraft was forecast to receive Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) certification in early 2016. The company expected to achieve FAA certification in 2017. Some delays were caused by lack of funding for the FAA, others by the V-22 troubles, while AgustaWestland also spent time increasing performance and reducing cost.

In 2012, the FAA stated that the AW609 was to be certified in compliance with both helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft rules. New codes were to be developed to cover the transition phase between the two modes. Of the 217 Pilot Training Tasks, 10 are unique tiltrotor tasks. AW609 Certification Basis is established by the FAA under the provisions of Part 21.17(b) for "Special Class Aircraft" along with a portion of Part 25 (fixed-wing aircraft) and 29 (helicopter) and new specific tiltrotor parts in a new category called "powered lift". In January 2013, the FAA defined US tiltrotor noise rules to comply with ICAO rules, expecting the AW609 to be available within 10 years. Noise certification will cost $588,000, which is the same as for a large helicopter.

In February 2014, the AW609 conducted its first customer demonstration flights, in both airplane and helicopter modes, and began certification flights.

In early summer 2014, the AW609 performed FAA-monitored autorotation tests. More than 79 power-off conversions from airplane mode to helicopter mode were made across 10 flight hours. During these tests, it was found that the minimum operating requirements for successful autorotation include the altitude being 3000 ft, and that the system keeps rotor rpm above the minimum 70% for stable recovery. The test pilots received the Iven C. Kincheloe Award for their role in the tests.

In February 2023, pilots from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) flew the AW609 tiltrotor, representing the first time the regulator's pilots had flown the type. The Leonardo company described the flight as a pre-TIA (type inspection authorization) activity, as it moves towards the final stage of the certification process. EASA pilots subsequently commenced familarisation flights in March 2023 with certification and entry into service projected to be sometime in 2024.

Further developments
At the Farnborough Air Show in July 2012, AgustaWestland announced a higher-weight variant of the AW609, up to 17500 lb This model would trade some of its vertical takeoff performance for increased payload capacity. Officials from AgustaWestland have suggested that this short take off and vertical landing (STOVL) variant may be an attractive option for search and rescue and maritime operators. According to senior vice-president of marketing Roberto Garavaglia, the Italian government is interested in acquiring several AW609s for coastal patrol duties. Due to an agreement with Bell, these may not feature armament.

In June 2013, AgustaWestland announced that work to integrate design changes as part of a major modernisation would delay the AW609's certification by up to one year. These design changes primarily involved aerodynamic improvements, aimed at achieving a 10% reduction in drag and a significant reduction in overall weight, increasing the AW609's performance and capabilities. Separate improvement programs were underway on the aircraft's engines and avionics systems. In 2015, AgustaWestland announced the development of external fuel tanks which would permit 800 nmi flights carrying six passengers over three hours.

In 2013, AgustaWestland was considering a US-based final assembly point for production AW609s. Managing director Robert LaBelle stated that 35% of the customers for the tiltrotor are expected to come from the US market. Reportedly, the primary production line was to be located in Italy while a second production line in the US was under consideration. In 2015 AgustaWestland announced that the AW609 will be produced at its Philadelphia facility, the production site for the AW139, AW119 KXe and AW169. Two to three AW609 aircraft will be assembled there beginning in 2017, and once production matures, a second final assembly line is being considered for Italy. Leonardo has a flight simulator in Philadelphia to assist pilot training in the peculiarities of flying a tiltrotor.

In 2015, Bristow Helicopters and AgustaWestland agreed to develop dedicated offshore oil and gas transport, and search and rescue configurations for the AW609. In March 2015, Bristow Group signed a joint development agreement with AgustaWestland at Heli-Expo, which will allow Bristow to exclusively direct the direction of the tiltrotor for offshore missions such as oil and gas operations. The changes could extend beyond the AW609 to potentially affect the design of larger and more advanced models that AgustaWestland is planning to introduce in the early 2020s. The introduction of tiltrotors would allow for point-to-point operations, flying oil company personnel to platforms from major population centers with a greater margin of safety. Industry journalists viewed the agreement as an approval of the tiltrotor technology from the commercial industry, where previously only the military were interested.

In the early 2020s there was interest in a military version; an AW609 for utility, medevac, or search and rescue versions began to be discussed more seriously.

Design

The AW609 is a tiltrotor aircraft capable of performing vertical landings whereas conventional fixed-wing aircraft cannot, allowing the type to serve locations such as heliports or very small airports, while possessing twice the speed and the range of any available helicopter. AgustaWestland promotes the type as "...combining the benefits of a helicopter and a fixed-wing aircraft into one aircraft". The AW609 appears to be outwardly similar to the military-orientated V-22 Osprey. However, the two aircraft share few components. Unlike the V-22, the AW609 has a pressurised cabin.

As of 2013, multiple cabin configurations have been projected, including a standard nine-passenger layout, a six-to-seven-passenger VIP/executive cabin, and a search and rescue model featuring a hoist/basket and four single seats. Medevac and patrol/surveillance-orientated variants have been proposed. For increased passenger comfort, the cabin is pressurised and equipped with soundproofing. Access to the cabin is via a 35 in, two-piece clamshell door, center-set into the fuselage underneath the wings.

The AW609 is powered by a pair of Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6C-67A turboshaft engines, which each drive a three-bladed proprotor. These engines possess roughly twice the horsepower of the similarly sized AgustaWestland AW169 helicopter. Both of the engine and proprotor pairs are mounted on a load-bearing rotatable pylon at the wing's ends, allowing the proprotors to be positioned at various angles. In helicopter mode, the proprotors can be positioned between a 75- and 95-degree angle from the horizontal, with 87 degrees being the typical selection for hovering vertically. In airplane mode, the proprotors are rotated forward and locked in position at a zero-degree angle, spinning at 84% RPM. The flight control software reportedly handles much of the complexity of the transitioning between helicopter and airplane modes. Automated systems guide pilots to the correct tilt angle and air speed settings.

When flying in airplane mode, the majority of lift is produced by the AW609's wings, which are slightly forward-swept. Both the wing and the main fuselage are made largely of composite materials. The 34 ft wings feature flaperon control surfaces which are normally automatically controlled. In vertical flight, the flaperons drop to a 66-degree downwards angle to reduce the wing area being encountered by downwash from the proprotors. A high-mounted rudderless vertical stabiliser is attached the rear of the fuselage to stabilise flight while in aircraft mode.

In the event of a single engine failure, either engine can provide power to both proprotors via a drive shaft. The AW609 is also capable of autorotation. The AW609 has been designed to achieve Full Transport Category/Class 1 performance, to operate safely even when flown under single engine conditions. It is equipped with a de-icing system, and is to be certified for flying into known icing conditions. Building on experiences with the V-22, the AW609 is outfitted with a sink rate warning system.

Avionics include a triple-redundant digital fly-by-wire flight control system, a head-up display system, and Full Authority Digital Engine Controls (FADEC). The cockpit has been designed so that the AW609 can be flown by a single pilot in instrument flight rules conditions. Several of the aircraft's controls, such as blade pitch, are designed to resemble and function their counterparts on conventional rotorcraft, enabling helicopter pilots to transition to the type more easily.

Elements of the aircraft's controls feature touchscreen interfaces. Shortly following AgustaWestland's full acquisition of the program, a substantial modernisation of the AW609's design was initiated in 2012. These changes included new engines and the redesigning of the cockpit. As part of the design refresh, new flight management systems, Northrop Grumman inertial and GPS navigation systems, and other avionics from Rockwell Collins were adopted.

Sales potential and service entry
Bell/Agusta aimed the aircraft "at the government and military markets". Another key market for the AW609 has been offshore oil and gas operations, which require aircraft capable of traversing the increasing distances involved. In 2001, Bell estimated a market for 1,000 aircraft. Bell/Agusta stated in 2007 that they intend for the BA609 to compete with corporate business jets and helicopters, and that the BA609 would be of interest to any operator that has a mixed fleet of fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft. In 2004, Lt. Gen. Michael Hough, USMC deputy commandant for aviation, requested that Bell conduct studies into arming the BA609, potentially to act as an escort for V-22s. However, AgustaWestland's deal with Bell for taking over the BA609 program precludes the aircraft from carrying arms.

In 2001, Terry Stinson, then chairman and CEO of Bell Helicopters, declared that the aircraft will cost "at least US$10 million". In 2004, Don Barbour, then executive marketing director, stated that "early orders had been taken at a price of between $8 and $10 million." Since 1999, orders have been at a price to be confirmed no later than 24 months before aircraft delivery. In 2012, industry reporters estimated that the final price tag may come to $30 million per unit. Inn 2015, some believed the price to be only around $24 million.

In 1999, there were 77 confirmed orders. In 2012, there were 70 orders, depending on the final unit price. , there were 60 orders for the AW609. The company intends to have production facilities ready for completing orders right after FAA certification.

Bristow Helicopters intends to order 10 or more. Michael Bloomberg, the U.S. billionaire businessman and politician, is "near the top" of the list of buyers who have put a deposit down on the AW609 tiltrotor aircraft. In February 2015, the Italian Army released a white paper documenting its vision of future procurement efforts. It included the intention to procure a force of tiltrotor aircraft for rapid troop-transport and medical evacuation duties. It has been speculated in the media that the AW609 is a likely candidate for the requirement. In November 2015, United Arab Emirates selected a search and rescue variant of the AW609, signing a memorandum of understanding for three, with an option for three more. As of May 2019, no contract with the UAE has been signed.

Currently being built at AWPC Philadelphia, in March 2022, Leonardo projected entry into service as early as 2023. In 2023, the AW609 entered the final stage of flight certification, and it is estimated this process could be completed as early as 2025.

Notable accidents and incidents
On 30 October 2015, the second of the two prototypes (N609AG), which first flew in 2006, crashed near AgustaWestland's Vergiate facility in North West Italy, killing long-time test pilots Pietro Venanzi and Herb Moran. The aircraft broke up in midair after 27 minutes of flight, on a flight plan that included high speed testing. Investigators consider the most likely cause to be changes in flight control laws and tail changes. These led to a "Dutch roll" instability while diving at 542 km/h where previously only 285 kn had been achieved. The Italian authorities seized the third prototype in May 2016, and returned it for flight testing in July.

The final report stated that during a high-speed dive with a left turn, "slight lateral-direction oscillations" started on roll-out and grew in amplitude and frequency. The pilot attempted to correct the roll with "counterphase input roll manoeuvres and then pedal inputs", but this did not dampen the oscillations. They instead became divergent, bringing the sideslip angle at 10.5°, well above the 4° maximum allowed, "inducing contact of the right proprotor with the right wing due to excessive flapping of the proprotor blades". This severed fuel and hydraulic lines in the wing leading edge, triggering a fire.

Specifications (BA609)

title: Leonardo AW609


text:
Chuck Close

Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits using a very large format camera. He adapted his painting style and working methods in 1988, after being paralyzed by an occlusion of the anterior spinal artery.

Early life and education
Chuck Close was born in Monroe, Washington. His father, Leslie Durward Close, died when Chuck was 11 years old. His mother's name was Mildred Wagner Close. As a child, Close had a neuromuscular condition that made it difficult to lift his feet and a bout with nephritis that kept him out of school for most of sixth grade. Even when in school, he did poorly due to his dyslexia, which was not diagnosed at the time.

Most of his early works were very large portraits based on photographs, using photorealism or hyperrealism, of family and friends, often other artists. Close said he had prosopagnosia (face blindness), and suggested that this condition is what first inspired him to do portraits.

In an interview with Phong Bui in The Brooklyn Rail, Close described an early encounter with a Jackson Pollock painting at the Seattle Art Museum: "I went to the Seattle Art Museum with my mother for the first time when I was 14. I saw this Jackson Pollock drip painting with aluminum paint, tar, gravel and all that stuff. I was absolutely outraged, disturbed. It was so far removed from what I thought art was. However, within 2 or 3 days, I was dripping paint all over my old paintings. In a way I've been chasing that experience ever since."

Close attended Everett Community College in 1958–1960. Local writer John Patric was an early anti-establishment intellectual influence on him, and a role model for the iconoclastic and theatric artist's persona Close learned to project in subsequent years.

In 1962, Close received his B.A. from the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1961, he won a coveted scholarship to the Yale Summer School of Music and Art, and the following year entered the graduate degree program at Yale University, where he received his MFA in 1964. Among Close's classmates at Yale were Brice Marden, Vija Celmins, Janet Fish, Richard Serra, Nancy Graves, Jennifer Bartlett, Robert Mangold, and Sylvia Plimack Mangold.

After Yale, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna on a Fulbright grant. When he returned to the United States, he worked as an art teacher at the University of Massachusetts. Close moved to New York City in 1967 and established himself in SoHo.

Style
Throughout his career, Close expanded his contribution to portraiture through the mastery of such varied drawing and painting techniques as ink, graphite, pastel, watercolor, conté crayon, finger painting, and stamp-pad ink on paper; printmaking techniques, such as mezzotint, etching, woodcuts, linocuts, and silkscreens; as well as handmade paper collage, Polaroid photographs, daguerreotypes, and Jacquard tapestries. His early airbrush techniques inspired the development of the ink jet printer.

Close had been known for his skillful brushwork as a graduate student at Yale University. There, he emulated Willem de Kooning and seemed "destined to become a third-generation abstract expressionist, although with a dash of Pop iconoclasm". After a period in which he experimented with figurative constructions, Close began a series of paintings derived from black-and-white photographs of a female nude, which he copied onto canvas and painted in color. As he explained in a 2009 interview with Cleveland, Ohio's The Plain Dealer newspaper, he made a choice in 1967 to make art hard for himself and force a personal artistic breakthrough by abandoning the paintbrush. "I threw away my tools", Close said. "I chose to do things I had no facility with. The choice not to do something is in a funny way more positive than the choice to do something. If you impose a limit to not do something you've done before, it will push you to where you've never gone before." One photo of Philip Glass was included in his resulting black-and-white series in 1969, redone with watercolors in 1977, again redone with stamp pad and fingerprints in 1978, and also done as gray handmade paper in 1982.

Working from a gridded photograph, he built his images by applying one careful stroke after another in multi-colors or grayscale. He worked methodically, starting his loose but regular grid from the left hand corner of the canvas. His works are generally larger than life and highly focused. "One demonstration of the way photography became assimilated into the art world is the success of photorealist painting in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is also called super-realism or hyper-realism and painters like Richard Estes, Denis Peterson, Audrey Flack, and Close often worked from photographic stills to create paintings that appeared to be photographs. The everyday nature of the subject matter of the paintings likewise worked to secure the painting as a realist object."

Close said he had prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, in which he had difficulty recognizing new faces. By painting portraits, he was better able to recognize and remember faces. On the subject, Close said, "I was not conscious of making a decision to paint portraits because I have difficulty recognizing faces. That occurred to me twenty years after the fact when I looked at why I was still painting portraits, why that still had urgency for me. I began to realize that it has sustained me for so long because I have difficulty in recognizing faces."

Although his later paintings differed in method from his earlier canvases, the preliminary process remained the same. To create his grid work copies of photos, Close put a grid on the photo and on the canvas and copied cell by cell. Typically, each square within the grid is filled with roughly executed regions of color (usually consisting of painted rings on a contrasting background) which give the cell a perceived 'average' hue which makes sense from a distance. His first tools for this included an airbrush, rags, razor blade, and an eraser mounted on a power drill. His first picture with this method was Big Self Portrait, a black and white enlargement of his face to a 107.5 x canvas, made in over four months in 1968, and acquired by the Walker Art Center in 1969. He made seven more black and white portraits during this period. He has been quoted as saying that he used such diluted paint in the airbrush that all eight of the paintings were made with a single tube of Mars Black acrylic.

His later work branched into non-rectangular grids, topographic map style regions of similar colors, CMYK color grid work, and using larger grids to make the cell by cell nature of his work obvious even in small reproductions. The Big Self Portrait is so finely done that even a full page reproduction in an art book is still indistinguishable from a regular photograph.

"The Event"
On December 7, 1988, Close felt a strange pain in his chest. That day he was at a ceremony honoring local artists in New York City and was waiting to be called to the podium to present an award. Close delivered his speech and then made his way across the street to Beth Israel Medical Center where he had a seizure which left him paralyzed from the neck down. The cause was diagnosed as a spinal artery collapse. He had also experienced neuromuscular problems as a child. Close called that day "The Event". For months, Close was in rehab strengthening his muscles with physical therapy; he soon had slight movement in his arms and could walk, yet only for a few steps. He relied on a wheelchair thereafter. Close spoke candidly about the effect disability had on his life and work in the book Chronicles of Courage: Very Special Artists written by Jean Kennedy Smith and George Plimpton and published by Random House.

However, Close continued to paint with a brush strapped onto his wrist, creating large portraits in low-resolution grid squares created by an assistant. Viewed from afar, these squares appear as a single, unified image which attempt photo-reality, albeit in pixelated form. Although the paralysis restricted his ability to paint as meticulously as before, Close had, in a sense, placed artificial restrictions upon his hyperrealist approach well before the injury. That is, he adopted materials and techniques that did not lend themselves well to achieving a photorealistic effect. Small bits of irregular paper or inked fingerprints were used as media to achieve astoundingly realistic and interesting results. Close proved able to create his desired effects even with the most difficult of materials to control. Close made a practice, during his final years, of portraying artists who are similarly invested in portraiture, like Cecily Brown, Kiki Smith, Cindy Sherman, and Zhang Huan.

Prints
Close was a printmaker throughout his career, with most of his prints published by Pace Editions, New York. He made his first serious foray into print making in 1972, when he moved himself and family to San Francisco to work on a mezzotint at Crown Point Press for a three-month residency. To accommodate him, Crown Point found the largest copper plate it could (36 inches wide) and purchased a new press, allowing Close to make a work that was 3 feet by 4 feet. In 1986 he went to Kyoto to work with Tadashi Toda, a highly respected woodblock printer.

In 1995, curator Colin Westerbeck used a grant from the Lannan Foundation to bring Close together with Grant Romer, director of conservation at the George Eastman House. From that time on, Close also continued to explore difficult photographic processes such as daguerreotype in collaboration with Jerry Spagnoli and sophisticated modular/cell-based forms such as tapestry. Close's photogravure portrait of artist Robert Rauschenberg, "Robert" (1998), appeared in a 2009 exhibition at the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York, featuring prints from Universal Limited Art Editions. In the daguerreotype photographs, the background defines the limit of the image plane as well as the outline of the subject, with the inky pitch-black setting off the light, reflective quality of the subject's face.

In a 2014 interview with Terrie Sultan, Close said: "I've had two great collaborators in the God knows how many years I've been making prints. One was the late Joe Wilfer, who was called the 'prince of pulp' ... and now I'm working with Don Farnsworth in Oakland at...Magnolia Editions: I do the watercolor prints with him, I do the tapestries with him. These are the most important collaborations of my life as an artist."

Since 2012, Magnolia Editions has published an ongoing series of archival watercolor prints by Close which use the artist's grid format and the precision afforded by contemporary digital printers to layer water-based pigment on Hahnemuhle rag paper such that the native behavior of watercolor is manifested in each print: "The edges of each pixel bleed with cyan, magenta, and yellow, creating a kind of three-dimensional fog effect behind the intended color swatches." The watercolor prints are created using more than 10,000 of Close's hand-painted marks which were scanned into a computer and then digitally rearranged and layered by the artist using his signature grid. These works were called Close's first major foray into digital imagery, with the artist himself having said, "It's amazing how precise a computer can be working with light and color and water." A New York Times review noted that the "exaggerated breakdown of the image, particularly when viewed at close range," that characterizes Close's work "is also apparent in... [watercolor print] portraits of the artists Cecily Brown, Kiki Smith, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker and Zhang Huan."

Tapestries
Close's wall-size tapestry portraits, in which each image is composed of thousands of combinations of woven colored thread, depict subjects including Kate Moss, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Lucas Samaras, Philip Glass, Lou Reed, Roy Lichtenstein, and Close himself. They are produced in collaboration with Donald Farnsworth. Although many are translated from black-and-white daguerreotypes, all of the tapestries use multiple colors of thread. No printing is involved in their creation; colors and values appear to the viewer based on combinations of more than 17,800 colored warp (vertical) and weft (horizontal) threads, in an echo of Close's typical grid format. Close's tapestry series began with a 2003 black-and-white portrait of Philip Glass. In August 2013 he debuted two color self-portraits at Guild Hall in East Hampton, New York. In reviewing this exhibition, Marion Weiss wrote, "Close's Jacquard tapestries are not obviously fragmented, but are created by repeating multicolor warp and weft threads that are optically blended. Thus, portraits of Lou Reed and Roy Lichtenstein, for example, seem 'whole.' It's only when we get closer that we see the individual threads, which are woven together."

Commissions
In 2010, Close was commissioned by MTA Arts & Design to create twelve large mosaics, totaling more than 2000 ft2, for the 86th Street subway station on the New York City Subway's Second Avenue Line in Manhattan.

Vanity Fair's 20th Annual Hollywood edition in March 2014 featured a portfolio of 20 Polaroid portraits of movie stars shot by Close, including Robert De Niro, Scarlett Johansson, Helen Mirren, Julia Roberts, and Oprah Winfrey. Close requested that his subjects be ready to be photographed without makeup or hair-styling and used a large-format 20 in × 24 in Polaroid camera for the close-ups.

A fragment of Close's portrait of singer-songwriter Paul Simon was used as the cover art for his 2016 album Stranger to Stranger. The right eye appears on the cover; the entire portrait is in the liner notes.

Close donated an original print of his "Self Portrait" in 2002 to the public library in Monroe, Washington, his hometown.

Exhibitions
Close's first solo exhibition, held in 1967 at the University of Massachusetts Art Gallery, Amherst, featured paintings, painted reliefs, and drawings based on photographs of record covers and magazine illustrations. The exhibition captured the attention of the university administration which promptly closed it, citing the male nudity as obscene. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) came to the defense of Close and a landmark court case ensued. A Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice decided in favor of the artist against the university. When the university appealed Close chose not to return to Boston, and ultimately the decision was overturned by an appeals court. (Close was later awarded an Honorary Doctorate of the Arts by the University of Massachusetts in 1995.)

Close credited the Walker Art Center and its then-director Martin Friedman for launching his career with the purchase of Big Self-Portrait (1967–1968) in 1969, the first painting he sold. His first one-man show in New York City was in 1970 at Bykert Gallery. His first print was the focus of a "Projects" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1972. In 1979 his work was included in the Whitney Biennial and the following year his portraits were the subject of an exhibition at the Walker Art Center. His work has since been the subject of more than 150 solo exhibitions including a number of major museum retrospectives. After Close abruptly canceled a major show of his work scheduled for 1997 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art announced that it would present a major midcareer retrospective of the artist's work in 1998 (curated by Kirk Varnedoe and later traveling to the Hayward Gallery, London, and other galleries in 1999). In 2003 the Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston presented a survey of his prints, which travelled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the following year. His most recent retrospective – "Chuck Close Paintings: 1968/2006", at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid in 2007 – travelled to the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aachen, Germany, and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. He also participated in almost 800 group exhibitions, including documentas V (1972) and VI (1977), the Venice Biennale (1993, 1995, 2003), and the Carnegie International (1995).

In 2013, Close's work was featured in an exhibit at White Cube in Bermondsey, London. "Process and Collaboration" displayed not only a number of finished prints and paintings but included plates, woodblocks, and mylar stencils which were used to produce a number of prints.

In December 2014, his work was exhibited in Australia at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, which he visited.

In 2016, Close's work was the subject of a retrospective at the Schack Art Center in Everett, Washington, where he attended high school and community college.

In 2021, a solo exhibition «Chuck Close. Infinite», held at the Gary Tatintsian Gallery in Moscow, featured the artist's works in various techniques including oil painting, mosaic, and tapestry. The show became the artist's last lifetime exhibition.

Close's work is in the collections of most of the great international museums of contemporary art, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Tate Modern in London, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis who published Chuck Close: Self-Portraits 1967–2005 coauthored with curators Siri Engberg and Madeleine Grynsztejn.

On July 23, 2023, The New York Times reported that a long lost painting by Close may have been recovered.

Recognition
The recipient of the National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton in 2000, the New York State Governor's Art Award, and the Skowhegan Arts Medal, among many others, Close received over 20 honorary degrees including one from Yale University, his alma mater. In 1990, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate Academician, and became a full Academician in 1992. New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg appointed the artist to the municipality's Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission, a body mandated by the City Charter to advise the mayor and the cultural affairs commissioner. Close painted President Clinton in 2006 and photographed President Barack Obama in 2012. In 2010 he was appointed by Obama to the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities. He resigned from the President's Committee in August 2017, co-signing a letter of resignation that said in reference to President Donald Trump, "Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions."

In 2005, composer Philip Glass wrote a musical portrait of Close. The composition, a 15-minute piece for solo piano, was the idea of Bruce Levingston, a concert pianist, who commissioned it through the Premiere Commission and who performed the piece at a recital at Alice Tully Hall that year.

Art market
Close was represented by the Pace Gallery (in New York City) from 1977, and subsequently by White Cube (in London) from 1999.

The artist's most expensive works sold at auction:

 * $4,300,000 – John, 1971. Sotheby's, May 10, 2005.
 * $2,850,000 – Phil, 1983. Sotheby's, Nov 14, 2006.
 * $2,700,000 – Eric, 1990. Sotheby's, May 10, 2005.
 * $2,500,000 – Gwynne, 1982. Christie's, May 11, 2004.
 * $2,405,000 – Self–Portrait, 2007. Christie's, Nov 09, 2015.

Fundraising and community service
In 1992, Close was one of 10 artists who volunteered to mentor economically deprived teens in a summer long photography program, Art Works: Teenagers and Artists Collaborate on the Polaroid 20 x 24 Camera, produced by artist and curator Janeil Engelstad, The Education Project and Polaroid.

In 2007, Close was honored by the New York Stem Cell Foundation and donated artwork for an exclusive online auction.

In September 2012, Magnolia Editions published two tapestry editions and three print editions by Close depicting President Barack Obama. The first tapestry was unveiled at the Mint Museum in North Carolina in honor of the Democratic National Convention. These tapestries and prints were sold as a fundraiser to support the Obama Victory Fund. A number of the works were signed by both Close and Obama. Close previously sold work at auction to raise funds for the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Al Gore.

In October 2013, Close donated a watercolor print of Genevieve Bahrenburg and a watercolor print self-portrait to ARTWALK NY, a cause that benefits the Coalition for the Homeless. In the same year work by Close was also sold to benefit the Lunchbox Fund.

Close was one of eight artists who volunteered in 2013 to participate in President Barack Obama's Turnaround Arts initiative, which aims to improve low-performing schools by increasing student "engagement" through the arts. Close mentored 34 students in the sixth through eighth grades at Roosevelt School in Bridgeport, Connecticut, one of eight schools in the nation to participate in this public-private partnership developed in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Education and the White House Domestic Policy Council. Close was honored by mayor Bill Finch with a key to the city at the November 7 reception at the Housatonic Community College Museum of Art, where five of Close's watercolor prints were exhibited alongside artwork by students participating in the program.

In the media
In 1998, PBS broadcast documentary filmmaker Marion Cajori's Emmy-nominated short, "Chuck Close: A Portrait in Progress." In 2007, Cajori made "Chuck Close", a full-length expansion of the first film. British art critic Christopher Finch wrote a biography, Chuck Close: Life, which was published in 2010, a sequel of sorts to Finch's 2007 book, Chuck Close: Work, a career-spanning monograph.

Another documentary film was made on Close in 1998, titled Chuck Close: Eye To Eye: ART/New York No. 48, by his classmate at Yale University Paul Tschinkel.

Close appeared on The Colbert Report on August 12, 2010, where he said that he watches the show every night.

Close was the subject of a Heinemann book, Rocks in His Shoes: The Story of Chuck Close, by Myka-Lynne Sokoloff, written for the Fountas & Pinnell Leveled Literacy Intervention series.

Sexual harassment allegations
On December 20, 2017, The New York Times and The Huffington Post published stories detailing two women accusing Close of sexual misconduct, saying Close invited the women to his studio to pose for what they thought would be portraits, and then Close asked them to pose nude and made vulgar comments to them. Their accounts were of alleged sexual harassment in 2007 and 2013. In response to the accusations, Close issued a statement to The New York Times, saying, "If I embarrassed anyone or made them feel uncomfortable, I am truly sorry, I didn't mean to. I acknowledge having a dirty mouth, but we're all adults". On January 16, 2018, Hyperallergic published the accounts of four more women who alleged Close harassed them. Their accounts were of alleged sexual harassment from 2001, 2009, and 2013. Most of the allegations were from women in their 20s, during the time that Close was in his 60s and 70s. Many of the allegations were from college students, including from Yale University. Following the allegations, the Dean of the Yale School of Art, Marta Kuzma, decided that "in the best interest of the students, faculty, and greater community of the Yale School of Art that Mr. Close will no longer serve as a member of the Dean's Council".

The National Gallery of Art cancelled a Chuck Close exhibition, planned to open May 2018, due to the allegations.

After Close died, his neurologist, Thomas M. Wisniewski, said that Close's inappropriate sexual behavior, alleged to have occurred from at least 2001 to 2013, could be attributed to his 2015 diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia. Wisniewski said that Close "was very disinhibited and did inappropriate things, which were part of his underlying medical condition", and that this type of dementia "destroys that part of the brain that governs behavior and inhibits base instincts", adding that "sexual inappropriateness and disastrous financial decisions are common presenting symptoms".

Personal life
Close lived and worked in Bridgehampton and Long Beach, New York (both on the south shore of Long Island), and New York City's East Village. He had two daughters with Leslie Rose. They divorced in 2011. Close married artist Sienna Shields in 2013. They later divorced.

Close was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia in 2015. He died on August 19, 2021, in Oceanside, New York, at the age of 81, from congestive heart failure.

title: Chuck Close


text: Category:Elections in Barbados

title: Category:Elections in Barbados


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title: User:Dittaeva/Sandbox


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François-Louis Français

François-Louis Français (1814–1897), usually known as Louis Français, was a French painter, lithographer and illustrator who became one of the most commercially successful landscape painters of the 19th century. A former pupil of Gigoux, he began his career by studying lithography and wood engraving, becoming a prolific illustrator and printmaker. His work as an illustrator is to be found in around forty books and numerous magazines from the late 1830s to the 1860s. Français also produced a large number of pen and ink drawings, enhanced by sepia, notable for their attention to detail and for their technical adroitness and conciseness.

Français is associated with the Barbizon School of painting, a movement to represent art in nature in a Romantic, Realist context. In 1836 whilst at Barbizon he met the landscape painter Camille Corot and began a ten-year association as a friend and acolyte. Français's paintings possess some of the prominent features of the work of Corot in his use of tonal colours, loose brushwork and an emphasis on softness of form. Français exhibited first at the Paris Salon in 1837 and regularly thereafter until his death in 1897. He lived from 1846 to 1849 in Italy, where he experimented with a brighter palette. His work developed neo-classical sentiments with mythical creatures appearing within a realist landscape. Whilst this bought him commercial success it alienated some critics who were harsh in their judgement of his work. A well respected and decorated artist within France, he was also internationally well known during his lifetime exhibiting abroad in Geneva and London but following his death in 1897, his reputation declined and there are relatively few of his paintings on show in public galleries beyond France.

Early years
François-Louis Français was born in Plombières-les-Bains in the Vosges region on 17 November 1814. He was the son of Jean Français, a mercer and Marie-Anne Français (née Vançon). He showed aptitude in drawing from an early age and attended classes in Plombières. His family wished to encourage him and in 1829 found him a job in a bookshop in Paris where he could build up contacts with a view to becoming an illustrator. Initially he worked as a copyist, produced caricatures and drew models at the Académie Suisse. In 1831 he began studying painting and his first known landscapes are from this period. It was a period of struggle during which he made a precarious living mainly by drawing on stone and designing woodcut vignettes for book illustration. The publishing firm of Paulin employed him and in 1833 offered Français the opportunity to illustrate some of the ornate letters in Alain-René Lesage's Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane published in January 1835. The main illustrator of Lesage's work was Jean Gigoux, an eminent painter and illustrator and impressed by Français' potential he invited him to work at his Parisian atelier.

Illustrator and printmaker
As an illustrator Français had a long career, until 1860, during which he drew vignettes for numerous books and magazines. It was a lucrative occupation and allowed financial security whilst he simultaneously developed his painting techniques. His illustrations for a new edition of Bernardin's romantic novel Paul et Virginie in 1835 were recognised as a high watermark of romantic illustration and began a profitable and prolific collaboration with the wood-engraver Tony Johannot, the culmination of which was around two hundred vignettes, including around fifty landscapes. He worked with his friends Henri Baron and Célestin Nanteuil on illustrations for Les Artistes anciens et modernes. Together they founded the revue Les artistes contemporains and worked in collaboration on numerous engravings for the publishing firm Bertauts, often using the monogram B.N.F. to identify their ownership.

A noteworthy commission were the illustrations in L'abbé Jean-Jacques Bourassé's ''La Touraine. Histoire et monuments'' where Français provided forty wood engravings, five engraved plates and eleven beautiful ornate letters, for which he and his collaborator Karl Girardet, earned a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle in 1855. Amongst the many prints that he supervised were those done after Corot's landscape, Sunset (1840), Diaz's Bathers (1847) and several of his own paintings. Many prints were reused, for example, Un Chemin (A Road) was first published in Paris by Augustin Challamel for the Paris salon of 1842. Ten years later a second state was published by Marchant for the series, Les Peintres vivants.

Painting career
In 1834 Français went to live at Barbizon and painted in the nearby Forest of Fontainbleu. He was part of the Barbizon school of artists dedicated to painting directly from nature, often en plein air, who settled in the area around the Auberge Ganne Inn. In a radical departure from formalism in art, nature itself became the subject of the painting. as many artists met at the Inn to discuss ideas and to set forth to paint in the Forest. Français met and befriended fellow artist Louis Cabat and in 1836 he became acquainted with Camille Corot, eighteen years older than Français and with whom he formed a strong personal bond of friendship and as a personal adviser, who was willing to offer technical advice and to introduce Français to some influential people. Under Corot's influence Français developed a style of landscape painting using tonal colours to express light that are reminiscent of Corot. Français was never able to capture Corot's delicacy at depicting the human form but he developed exponentially into a fine landscape painter, albeit one that maintained an element of formalism. This formality was not surprising from a student of Gigoux but Français is known to have studied and admired the work of the early baroque painter Claude Lorrain’s work at The Louvre. The occasional use of neo-classical subjects and the placing of mythological figures within the landscape that Français sometimes adopted bear a resemblance to the oeuvre of Lorrain. In 1837 Français exhibited at the Salon for the first time, presenting Sous les saules (Under the Willows) (1837: Tours museum), a painting where the figures are by Henri Baron. The exhibition catalogue listed 2,130 entries but Français' painting was noticed and commented upon favourably. In the mid-1840s, Français travelled regularly with Baron and their friend Nanteuil, to Bougival, a village on the Seine increasingly famous for its scenery and light changes. The paintings from this period, several of which were transposed to lithographs, are often signed Français, Elèves de Bougival (Student of Bougival). Soleil couchant (1845, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon), an autumnal landscape of the river at Bougival, was presented at the 1845 Salon of Charles Baudelaire, one of three that the poet organised. Baudelaire praised the canvas, as an example, of how to capture the poetic realism of nature.

In 1846 Français travelled to Italy for the first time staying in various locations: Rome (1846/9), Genoa (1846), Pisa (1846), Florence (1846/7), Frascati (1847), Ariccia (1848) and Tivoli (1848/49). This extended sojourn enabled Français to develop his style. His palette became more luminous and he began to paint in the closely set strokes that would be a feature of his later work. He acquired a passion for painting the light and would return to Italy throughout his career. He accumulated numerous drawings, sketches and watercolours often in gouache which enabled him to execute some of his best known canvases from the period that included Fontaine à Ariccia (Fountain at Ariccia) (1848, Paris Mus d ‘Orsay). Returning to France he travelled and painted extensively throughout France in the 1850s. He regularly visited Plombières and the Loire valley, where he favoured realistic forest landscapes and riverbanks scenes. Français was often in the company of other artists during these visits and with Corot, Courbet, Jongkind and the locally born Boudin, he was part of école de Honfleur (Honfleur school) that was drawn to paint the light and landscapes around Honfleur in Normandy. The images created during this interlude, by Français and his fellow artists, later inspired Jongkind and Claude Monet to open the Impressionist School of St. Simeon at Honfleur in 1862. Les Hêtres de la côte de Grâce près de Honfleur (1859) is a fine example of his work in Normandy in the 1850s. It features a weathered tree distorted by the coastal winds that buffet the coast. As always with Français there is precision in the detail. Much of the painting features a forbidding sky that pays debt to Français' knowledge of Constable.

Career after 1860
Français was a successful painter by the 1860s. He had a regular income, not least from his patron the Alsatian industrialist Alfred Hartmann, the younger brother of Frédéric Hartmann, Théodore Rousseau’s long-suffering and most important patron of the Second Empire. His paintings were invariably accepted at the Parisian salons. They were not always well received by some critics. His painting, Bois sacré, (Sacred wood) (1864), now at the Lille, Palais des Beaux-Arts was heavily criticised, as not up to standard by some observers, who objected to the admittedly dominant, mythical figures at the centre of a realist canvas. His patron Hartmann didn’t like it either, as he made clear in a letter to Rousseau. Le Bois sacré was one of a series of popular realism landscapes containing neo-classical themes that Français produced in the 1860s, often from sketches made following an Italian visit such as that to Naples in 1859 and to Pompeii in 1864-5.

He continued to travel extensively throughout his life and in common with many well-off French people would spend his winters in warmer southern climes, after 1873 in Nice, often with his companion Rose Maireau, an engraver who exhibited her work at Petit Palais shortly after it opened in 1900. In 1878, after six years of intermittent work he completed a series of decorative panels for the font of the new Second Empire church of Sainte-Trinité, Paris The avowed socialism of Français’ youth had receded to that of patriarch of the Third Republic. Also in 1878 Le Mont Cervin et Le Lac de Némi (The Matterhorn and the Lake of Némi) was awarded the Médaille d'honneur at the Paris Salon. A year after in 1879 Français was a founding member of the Société d'aquarellistes français (Society of French Watercolourists), the aim of which was to exhibit the watercolour paintings of the members, initially limited to just forty. The Society ceased in 1896.

At the 1884 Salon, he exhibited L'Étang de Clisson (Forest of Clisson) following a visit to the Loire valley. An evocation of the upper Loire, the preparatory drawings for which are at the Metropolitan Museum, the finished canvas has a freshness and a poetic naturalism reminiscent of Français’ work in the 1850s. One of his most successful later paintings is Vue d'Antibes (1894) where he returned with some effect to the landscapes and skies of Corot and Millet.

Français entered his final decade as a man with a considerable artistic reputation. In 1890 he was the first landscape artist to be elected to the Chair of the Académie Française, the same year he won the Médaille d'honneur at the Société des Artistes Français where he exhibited two landscapes. He had international recognition which eluded many French artists. He exhibited at Geneva in 1857, 1858 and 1861 and in London in 1862 and 1874. Following his death a rather grand memorial was erected to his memory at Plombières-les-Bains. His former studio in Plombières is now the Musée Louis Français

François-Louis Français died in Plombières on 18 May 1897.

title: François-Louis Français


text: User talk:67.176.84.41

title: User talk:67.176.84.41


text:
Thick-billed longspur

The thick-billed longspur, also known as McCown's longspur (Rhynchophanes mccownii), is a small ground-feeding bird in the family Calcariidae, which also contains the other longspurs and snow buntings. It is found in North America and is the only species in the genus Rhynchophanes.

Taxonomy
The thick-billed longspur was described in 1851 by the American amateur ornithologist George Newbold Lawrence under the English name rufous-winged lark bunting. He placed it in the genus Plectrophanes and coined the binomial name Plectrophanes mccownii. It was moved into its own genus Rhynchophanes in 1858 by Spencer Baird on account of its bill size and short spur, but was moved to Calcarius after a hybrid with the chestnut-collared longspur was discovered. It was once again placed in its own genus after a 2003 genetic study found it was more closely related to the snow buntings than the other longspurs.

"McCown's longspur" is no longer used by the American Ornithological Society, instead being changed to "thick-billed longspur", a literal translation of its genus name, Rhynchophanes. The name change was announced after the most recent updates of the Clements and International Ornithological Congress taxonomies, the latter of which still uses "McCown's longspur". The IOC has followed suit with the name change.

The name "McCown" refers to Captain John P. McCown, an American army officer who collected the specimen in 1851 that led to the species first being scientifically described. McCown later fought for the Confederacy, which led to controversy starting in 2018, with parallels drawn to the removal of Confederate memorials. The pressure to change the name increased following the George Floyd protests and Black Birder's Week (itself a response to the Central Park birdwatching incident).

Description
The thick-billed longspur is about 15 cm long, has a wingspan of 28 cm and weighs around 25 g. It has a large cone-shaped bill, a streaked back, a rust-coloured shoulder and a white tail with a dark tip. In breeding plumage, the male has a white throat and underparts, a grey face and nape and a black crown. Breeding females are largely gray, with a pale bill and rusty tinged median coverts and scapulars. Non-breeding males are similar to females but with crowns spotted rather than streaked, and more chestnut on their median coverts and scapulars.

Juveniles are seen briefly in late summer and are more uniformly sandy, with a streaked upper breast and white belly.

Distribution and habitat
Thick-billed longspurs breed in the northwestern Great Plains states and southern Prairie Provinces. They prefer the sparsely vegetated habitat of the semi-arid shortgrass steppes, which provide a mix of perennial shortgrasses and cacti. The breeding range of thick-billed longspurs has drastically reduced; historically, it stretched farther south into Oklahoma, and east into Minnesota and Manitoba.

Their non-breeding range stretches from south Oklahoma into Texas and Northern Mexico. Here, they prefer open habitats with sparse vegetation such as shortgrass prairie, plowed fields, grazed pastures and dried lake beds.

Behavior
The male produces a distinctive tinkling song, often in flight. The calls include a dry rattle.

Nests are constructed in a shallow depression on the ground, and incubate the eggs for about 12 days. Both parents feed the young, and fledglings leave the nest about 10 days after hatching, before they can properly fly. Outside the breeding season, thick-billed longspurs occur in flocks, sometimes with other species like Lapland longspur and horned lark.

The diet consists of seeds and insects.

Conservation
The numbers and range of these birds have declined since the early 1900s, likely due to habitat loss.

title: Thick-billed longspur


text:
Mass Rapid Transit

Mass Rapid Transit in general refers to a fully grade separated heavy-rail metro system.

The term may also specifically refer to:
 * Chennai Mass Rapid Transit System, a rapid transit system in Chennai, India
 * Jakarta Mass Rapid Transit, a rapid transit system in Jakarta, Indonesia
 * Kaohsiung Mass Rapid Transit or Kaohsiung Metro, a rapid transit and light rail system in Kaohsiung, Taiwan
 * Mass Rapid Transit Authority of Thailand, a government agency responsible for overseeing the operation of rapid transit systems in Thailand
 * Mass Rapid Transit (Bangkok) or Metropolitan Rapid Transit, Thailand
 * Mass Rapid Transit (Malaysia), a rapid transit system in Greater Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru, Malaysia
 * Mass Rapid Transit Corporation (Malaysia), the developer and asset owner of the Mass Rapid Transit project
 * Mass Rapid Transit (Singapore), a rapid transit system in Singapore
 * Taichung Mass Rapid Transit or Taichung Metro, a rapid transit system in Taichung, Taiwan
 * Taipei Mass Rapid Transit or Taipei Metro, a rapid transit system in Taipei, Taiwan
 * Taoyuan Mass Rapid Transit System or Taoyuan Metro, a rapid transit system in Taoyuan, Taiwan

title: Mass Rapid Transit


text:
Brace position

To assume a brace position or crash position is an instruction that can be given to prepare for a crash, such as on an aircraft; the instruction to "Brace for impact!" or "Brace! Brace!" is often given if the aircraft must make an emergency landing on land or water. There are many different ways to adopt the brace position, with many countries adopting their own version based on research performed by their own aviation authority or that of other countries. The most common in passenger airliners being the forward-facing seat version, in which the person bracing places their head against or as close as possible to the surface it is likely to strike (and in the process bending over to some degree), placing their feet firmly on the floor, and their hands either on their head or the seat in front.

Types of brace position
There are many different ways to adopt the brace position, with many countries adopting their own version based on research performed by their own aviation authority or that of other countries. There is commonality among all brace positions despite these variations.

Forward-facing seat
For a forward seated passenger wearing only a lap belt, common recommendations for the brace position include:
 * Place your head on, or as close as possible to, the surface it is most likely to strike. (For example, the bulkhead or seat in front.)
 * Bend forward at the waist to some degree to avoid jackknifing or submarining (sliding) forward in the seat and out from under the belt.
 * Place both feet on the floor, either flat or on the balls of the feet.

In the United Kingdom, the brace-for-impact position for forward-facing passengers was optimised following the Kegworth air disaster in 1989. In that incident, the pilot announced "Prepare for crash landing" 10 seconds before impact, and the resulting injuries—from both those who did and did not adopt the brace position—would later be studied. The UK Civil Aviation Authority funded an engineering–medical joint research team, led by Nigel Rock of Hawtal Whiting Engineering Consultants and Prof. Angus Wallace of the Nottingham University Hospital and aided by Wing Commander David Anton of the Royal Air Force Institute of Aviation Medicine. Crash data was supplemented by medical information from the University of Nottingham and testing at the Institute of Aviation Medicine. The work used mathematical modelling derived from the automobile industry to analyse the human body under crash conditions. (See "Further reading" below.)

This work led to the formation of the International Board for Research into Aircraft Crash Events (IBRACE) on 21 November 2016.

The brace position as set out to airlines in the UK for passengers in forward-facing seats is based on extensive analytical work arising from Kegworth. It is subtly different from that in the United States and some other countries. Passengers should place their feet and knees together with their feet firmly on the floor (either flat or on the balls of their feet) and tucked behind the knees to prevent shins and legs from being broken against the base of the seat in front. They should bend as far forward as possible, resting their head against the seat in front if it is within reach and place their hands on the back of their head, with the hands one on top of another (rather than interlocked). Their elbows should then be brought in. This prevents both flailing of the arms in the crash sequence and protects the head from flying debris. The head should be as far below the top of the seats as possible to prevent injury from any collapsing overhead compartments.

The brace procedure for the forward-facing seat in the United States is similar to that of the UK, but rather than placing the hands on the back of the head, passengers are advised to place them on the top of the seat in front, one hand holding the other wrist and resting the head in the space between the arms. If the seat in front is not within reach then passengers are advised to either grab their ankles or place their hands under their legs and grab the opposite forearm.

Jumpseats
Flight attendant brace positions are somewhat different due to the design of aircraft jumpseats. So far, there has been little research into the best brace position for flight attendants, though airlines have adopted positions that are very similar to one another.

In rear-facing seats, the attendant should be sitting with their back and head firmly against the back of the jumpseat, their knees and feet together and slightly in front of or behind the knee (depending on the individual airline's procedures)—commonly referred to as "toes to tail". In European carriers, the hands can be placed behind the head and hands one on top of the other and the elbows brought in to meet, taking care that the forearm does not cover the ear and restrict hearing. This position provides the flight attendant protection to the face from any flying debris (as it will impact their elbows) yet still provides them with the ability to view the cabin and not muffle their commands. In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) does not recommend placing the hands behind the neck as their research suggests such actions can cause unnecessary loading on the neck and spine during an impact. Instead, US flight attendants are typically taught to sit on their hands, palms facing the ceiling, underneath their upper legs. Other variations include clasping the hands on the knees or using one arm to "hug" the opposing arm.

For forward-facing jumpseats, the position is the same but with the feet behind the knees. Some airlines also require flight attendants to tuck their chin in to their chest ("Bow to the captain") to reduce the likelihood of whiplash injuries.

There is also a third brace position for flight attendants, the "normal" or "semi" brace position. This is adopted by the attendant for every take-off and landing; it provides them with protection from any sudden emergencies and allows them to adopt the full brace position quickly should they need to. The only difference between the normal brace and the full brace position is that the attendants will either fold their arms across their stomach or immobilize them by placing their hands under their thighs with the palms up. This position forms part of every flight attendant's sixty second review—a technique adopted by airlines whereby the attendant will go over various factors in their head during the take-off and landing sequence. Things such as "How do I open my door?", "Where is the next nearest exit?", "Am I over land or water?" and "what commands will I shout" are just a few of the questions an attendant will ask themselves. The belief is that this mental review focuses the attendant on the safety-critical role they have during take-off and landing and will result in faster decision-making and adaptation to the scenario.

Newer brace positions are being adopted by many U.S. airlines in which the flight attendants do not sit on their hands. Instead, they place their hands flat on top of their thighs. This new position is being adopted because in the event of a crash, sitting on hands can cause injury and/or crushing.

Infants
If carrying an infant on a lap, it is generally recommended that above positions should be adopted as well as possible, cradling the child with one arm and using this to also protect the child's head. In the UK, lap children are instructed to wear an infant safety belt which is a separate seat belt with a loop that connects to the parent's belt; however, in the United States such belts are not permitted by FAA regulations. The FAA believes that such baby belts significantly increase the risk of injury to the child. In the early era of commercial aviation, the recommended brace position for children was on the floor against a bulkhead; this has since been amended due to the position's lack of protection. The safest position for an infant is in an aviation-certified child safety seat.

Routine instruction
Many government aviation administrations or regulatory bodies mandate the depiction of how to adopt the brace position on aircraft safety cards and in-flight safety demonstrations. Examples are a 1993 ruling by the United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority (issued in a Notice to Air Operator Certificate Holders 1993) and CAO 020.11 (section 14.1.3) issued by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority of Australia. The FAA has not required this instruction on flights to, from, or within the United States.

The depiction of how to adopt the brace position is not a basic standard set forth by the International Civil Aviation Organization.

Successful use
A 2015 study by the Federal Aviation Administration has concluded that brace positions, particularly the forward-facing seat position, significantly reduce the risk of head and neck injuries in impacts. When Scandinavian Airlines Flight 751 crashed in 1991, all passengers aboard survived; a "significant factor" to this outcome was the passengers' universal adoption of the brace position. During the "Miracle on the Hudson" emergency water landing of US Airways Flight 1549 in 2009, the pilot warned "Brace for impact" and flight attendants chanted, "Brace! Brace! Brace! Heads down! Stay down!" All 155 people on board survived with no life-threatening injuries. In a press interview, one of the surviving crew members of the LaMia Flight 2933 crash in 2016 said that he had survived because he followed the emergency protocols by putting his carry-on suitcase between his legs and sitting in the brace position.

Conspiracy theories
Conspiracy theories and urban legends spread through the internet since the 2000s suggest that the brace position is ineffective at stopping injuries or deaths, and that the actual intention behind its adoption is to kill passengers in crashes, either to ensure a painless death, preserve their remains, or to avoid lawsuits against the airline. Such claims have been debunked by the MythBusters, by fact-checking website Snopes and by aviation professionals.

title: Brace position


text:
Glen Rangwala

Glen Rangwala is a University Lecturer and fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge University in England. Trained in political theory and international law, he completed a doctorate on political and legal rhetoric in the Arab Middle East. His academic work focuses on Palestinian politics from 1967 to 1977, and the rhetorical relations between the West Bank resident population and the leadership of the Palestinian resistance movement in exile. He has co-written a monograph, Iraq in Fragments (Cornell University Press, 2006), on the fragmentation of the Iraqi polity following the invasion of 2003. He has also published on international humanitarian law, comparative human rights law, Iraq and nuclear weapons. He is a member of the Labour Party and an editor of Labour Briefing.

He is involved with Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq (dissolved and replaced by Cambridge Solidarity with Iraq in October 2003) and Arab Media Watch. In the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war Rangwala wrote articles in newspapers and appeared on British TV, especially in the context of the "dodgy dossier" prepared by Tony Blair's government. Rangwala had discovered that this dossier was mostly plagiarised from a postgraduate student's thesis and articles in Jane's Intelligence Review (with minor falsifications)  and traced back the people who had edited the dossier. He submitted written evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs when it investigated the British government's information policy leading to the Iraq war. He has since published a number of articles on the Iraq war, especially in The Independent.

Together with Dan Plesch, he contributed an article to A Case to Answer, a report commissioned by MP Adam Price on which impeachment procedures against Tony Blair are based. The report assembles evidence that Blair misled the British Parliament and people over reasons for the 2003 war on Iraq mainly from the PM's own statements and evidence disclosed by the Hutton Inquiry and the Butler Report.

title: Glen Rangwala


text:
1729 in music

The year 1729 in music involved some significant events.

Events

 * George Frideric Handel becomes co-manager of the King's Theatre, London.
 * Pietro Locatelli settles in Amsterdam, where he will spend the rest of his life.
 * Johann Sebastian Bach premieres his First Köthen Funeral Music at Evening on March 23 and his Funeral Cantata Klagt, Kinder, klagt es aller Welt, BWV 244a before midday on March 24 both at the St. James Church, Köthen for the funeral services of his former employer, Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Köthen.
 * April 15 Johann Sebastian Bach repeats his St Matthew Passion BWV 244b (BC D 3a) St. Thomas Church, Leipzig

Classical music

 * Johann Sebastian Bach – Sehet, wir geh'n hinauf gen Jerusalem, BWV 159, Premiered Feb. 27 in Leipzig
 * John Baston – 6 Recorder Concertos
 * Joseph Bodin de Boismortier – 5 Sonatas and Concerto for Cello, Viola or Bassoon, Op. 26
 * Antonio Caldara
 * Naboth, sacred oratorio
 * Vicino a un rivoletto (published in 12 Cantatas, GB-Lcm MS 104)
 * Fortunato Chelleri – 6 Fuge per l'Organo e 6 Sonate per il Cembalo
 * Michel Richard Delalande – Motets de feu De La Lande (Motets of the late De La Lande), a collection of grand motets
 * John Loeillet – 12 Solos, Op.3 (for Recorder and basso continuo)
 * Jean-Joseph Mouret – Symphony de Fanfare
 * Nicolas Pacotat - Delicta quis intelligit, a mass for four voices
 * Georg Philipp Telemann
 * Der getreue Music-Meister (editor, continued from 1728) Hamburg: [Telemann].
 * Ein Mensch ist in seinem Leben, TWV 4:18
 * Antonio Vivaldi
 * 6 Flute Concertos, Op.10
 * Op. 12, a collection of violin concerti, published in Amsterdam
 * Cello Concerto in B minor, RV 424
 * Andrea Zani – 6 Sinfonias and 6 Concertos, Op.2
 * Jan Dismas Zelenka – Laudate pueri, ZWV 81

Opera

 * Tomaso Albinoni – La fortezza al cimento
 * Giovanni Battista Costanzi – Carlo Magno
 * John Gay – The Beggar's Opera
 * George Frederic Handel – Lotario, premiered Dec. 2 in London
 * Johann Adolf Hasse – Tigrane
 * Giovanni Battista Mancini – Endimione
 * Giuseppe Maria Orlandini – Adelaide, premiered Feb. 8 in Venice
 * Nicola Porpora – Semiramide riconosciuta, first version premiered Dec. 26 in Venice
 * Leonardo Vinci – Semiramide riconosciuta, premiered Feb. 6 in Rome
 * Antonio Vivaldi – L'Atenaide, RV 702, premiered Dec. 29 in Florence

Births

 * April 13 – Thomas Percy, lyricist and ballad-writer (died 1811)
 * May 3 – Florian Leopold Gassmann, opera composer (died 1774)
 * May 23 – Giuseppe Parini, poet and librettist (died 1799)
 * September 29 – Georg Wilhelm Gruber composer (died 1796)
 * October 1 – Anton Adlgasser, composer (died 1777)
 * October 16 – Pierre van Maldere, violinist and composer (died 1768)
 * October 17 – Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny, composer (died 1817)
 * December 1 – Giuseppe Sarti, opera composer (died 1802)
 * December 3 – Antonio Soler, composer (died 1783)
 * Date Unknown
 * Antoine Albanèse, composer (died 1800)
 * John Cunningham, librettist and playwright (died 1773)
 * Pietro Pompeo Sales, composer (died 1797)
 * Ignatius Sancho, composer (died 1780)

Deaths

 * January 19 – William Congreve, librettist (born 1670)
 * July 16 – Johann David Heinichen, German composer (born 1683)
 * June 27 – Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, French harpsichordist and composer (b. 1665)
 * July 31 – Nicola Francesco Haym, Roman opera librettist, composer and bibliographer working in London (born 1678)
 * September 17 – Giovanni Antonio Guido, composer (born 1680)
 * November 22 – Pieter Bustijn, composer (born 1648)
 * date unknown
 * Attilio Ariosti, Bolognese composer working in London (born 1666)
 * Liebhold, composer (born c. 1670)
 * Vaughan Richardson, composer and organist

title: 1729 in music