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cantata

(Encyclopedia)cantata kəntäˈtə [key] [Ital.,=sung], composite musical form similar to a short unacted opera or brief oratorio, developed in Italy in the baroque period. The term was first used in 1620 to refer ...

Kelly, Gene

(Encyclopedia)Kelly, Gene, 1912–96, American dancer, choreographer, movie actor, and director, b. Pittsburgh as Eugene Curran Kelly. Kelly started dancing on Broadway in 1938 and first gained fame in the title ro...

International Peace Bureau

(Encyclopedia)International Peace Bureau (IPB), organization est. 1891 in Bern, Switerland, by Fredrik Bajer and other members of the third World Peace Congress. Dedicated to promoting world peace, it brought toget...

Amacher, Maryanne

(Encyclopedia)Amacher, Maryanne, 1938–2009, American avant-garde composer, b. Kane, Pa. She studied composition with Georg Rochberg at the Univ. of Pennsylvania (B.F.A., 1964), and privately with Karlheinz Stockh...

Suzman, Helen

(Encyclopedia)Suzman, Helen, 1917–2009, South African politician and anti-apartheid activist, b. Helen Gavronsky, grad. Univ. of Witwatersrand (1940). The daughter of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, she taught at h...

Leppard, Raymond John

(Encyclopedia)Leppard, Raymond John, 1927–2019, English-American conductor, composer, musicologist, and harpsicordist, b. London. A prominent scholar as well as a conductor, he was especially known for “realizi...

Ai Ch'ing

(Encyclopedia)Ai Ch'ing or Ai Qing both: īˈ chĭngˈ [key], pseud. of Chiang Hai-ch'eng or Jiang Haicheng, 1910–96, Chinese poet. After studying painting in France (1929–32), where he discovered realist liter...

ultrasonics

(Encyclopedia)ultrasonics, study and application of the energy of sound waves vibrating at frequencies greater than 20,000 cycles per second, i.e., beyond the range of human hearing. The application of sound energy...

artificial intelligence

(Encyclopedia)artificial intelligence (AI), the use of computers to model the behavioral aspects of human reasoning and learning. Research in AI is concentrated in some half-dozen areas. In problem solving, one mus...

Krutch, Joseph Wood

(Encyclopedia)Krutch, Joseph Wood kro͝och [key], 1893–1970, American author, editor, and teacher, b. Knoxville, Tenn., grad. Univ. of Tennessee, 1915, Ph.D. Columbia, 1923. He was on the editorial staff of the N...

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