title: Ruby Dee

text: Dee was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2007 for her portrayal of Mama Lucas in "American Gangster". She won the Screen Actors Guild award for the same performance. At 85 years of age, Dee is currently the third oldest nominee for Best Supporting Actress, behind Gloria Stuart and Judi Dench (both 87) when nominated for her role in "American Gangster". This was Dee's only Oscar nomination.


title: Ruby Dee

text: On February 12, 2009, Dee joined the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College orchestra and chorus, along with the Riverside Inspirational Choir and NYC Labor Choir, in honoring Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday at the Riverside Church in New York City. Under the direction of Maurice Peress, they performed Earl Robinson's "The Lonesome Train: A Music Legend for Actors, Folk Singers, Choirs, and Orchestra", in which Dee was the narrator.


title: Ruby Dee

text: Dee's last role in a theatrically released film was in the Eddie Murphy comedy "A Thousand Words", in which she portrayed the mother of Murphy's protagonist. Perhaps, her penultimate film role is in "1982", which premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival and was released on home video on March 1, 2016. It is unknown whether her final role will ever be seen, as "King Dog" was in production at the time of her death, and no release date has ever been announced.


title: Ruby Dee

text: Ruby Wallace married blues singer Frankie Dee Brown in 1941, and began using his middle name as her stage name. The couple divorced in 1945. Three years later she married actor Ossie Davis, whom she met while costarring in Robert Ardrey's 1946 Broadway play "Jeb". Together, Dee and Davis wrote an autobiography in which they discussed their political activism and their decision to have an open marriage (later changing their views). Together they had three children: son, blues musician Guy Davis, and two daughters, Nora Day and Hasna Muhammad. Dee was a breast cancer survivor of more than three decades.


title: Ruby Dee

text: In 1979, the Supersisters trading card set was produced and distributed; one of the cards featured Dee's name and picture.


title: Ruby Dee

text: Dee and Davis were well-known civil rights activists in the Civil Rights Movement. Dee was a member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the NAACP, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Delta Sigma Theta sorority, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She was also as an active member of the Harlem Writers Guild for over 40 years. In 1963, Dee emceed the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Dee and Davis were both personal friends of both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, with Davis giving the eulogy at Malcolm X's funeral in 1965. In 1970, she won the Frederick Douglass Award from the New York Urban League.


title: Ruby Dee

text: In 1999, Dee and Davis were arrested at 1 Police Plaza, the headquarters of the New York Police Department, protesting the police shooting of Amadou Diallo.


title: Ruby Dee

text: In early 2003, "The Nation" published "Not in Our Name", an open proclamation vowing opposition to the impending US invasion of Iraq. Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis were among the signatories, along with Robert Altman, Noam Chomsky, Susan Sarandon, and Howard Zinn, among others.


title: Ruby Dee

text: In November 2005, Dee was awarded – along with her late husband – the Lifetime Achievement Freedom Award, presented by the National Civil Rights Museum located in Memphis. Dee, a long-time resident of New Rochelle, New York, was inducted into the New Rochelle Walk of Fame which honors the most notable residents from throughout the community's 325-year history. She was also inducted into the Westchester County Women's Hall of Fame on March 30, 2007, joining such other honorees as Hillary Clinton and Nita Lowey. In 2009, she received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Princeton University.


title: Ruby Dee

text: Dee died on June 11, 2014, at her home in New Rochelle, New York, from natural causes at the age of 91. In a statement, Gil Robertson IV of the African-American Film Critics Association said, "the members of the African American Film Critics Association are deeply saddened at the loss of actress and humanitarian Ruby Dee. Throughout her seven-decade career, Dee embraced different creative platforms with her various interpretations of black womanhood and also used her gifts to champion for Human Rights."


title: Ruby Dee

text: "She very peacefully surrendered", said her daughter Nora Day. "We hugged her, we kissed her, we gave her our permission to go. She opened her eyes. She looked at us. She closed her eyes, and she set sail." Following her death, the marquee on the Apollo Theater read: "A TRUE APOLLO LEGEND RUBY DEE 1922–2014".


title: Ruby Dee

text: Dee was cremated, and her ashes are held in the same urn as that of Davis, with the inscription "In this thing together". A public memorial celebration honoring Dee was held on September 20, 2014, at the Riverside Church in Upper Manhattan. Their shared urn was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.


title: Diego Boneta

text: He gained wider recognition after starring in "Rock of Ages" (2012) alongside Tom Cruise and the "Netflix" biographical series "" (2018).


title: Diego Boneta

text: He recorded his self-titled debut album with his first single, "Responde" in 2005. A Brazilian version of the album with songs in Portuguese was recorded in 2006. In 2008, he released his second album titled "Indigo".


title: Diego Boneta

text: Boneta was born in Mexico City, the son of two engineers, Lauro González, born in Mexico City, and Astrid Boneta, born in the United States of Puerto Rican and Spanish origin. His father is Mexican. He has two siblings. Although he never knew his maternal grandfather, Otto Boneta, a songwriter and psychiatrist, Diego credits him with his musical talents. Boneta grew up in Los Angeles, California and Mexico City.


title: Diego Boneta

text: Boneta speaks Spanish and English fluently. Boneta has triple citizenship, the other two being from the United States and Spain.


title: Diego Boneta

text: During his stint in "Rebelde", he released his debut album, titled "Diego", in Mexico, Chile and Brazil in 2005. The album was available for digital sale on April 3, 2006 and released in the United States on April 24. The first single, "Responde", became a top ten single in various countries including Argentina and Brazil. His songs were synchronized in the telenovela "Rebelde" and, once finished, he went on an international tour with Mexican pop group RBD as a guest. "It was a really cool experience, because in countries like Brazil or Romania everybody sang my songs in Spanish," he said.


title: Diego Boneta

text: When promoting his first album in Mexico he opened three concerts (in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey) for Hilary Duff in 2006.


title: Diego Boneta

text: His second album, titled "Indigo", was released on 25 March 2008. It features the single "Perdido en Ti" and "Losing Me", and is produced by Mitch Allan and written by Mitch Allan and Kara DioGuardi. On 5 May 2008, "Losing Me" and "Perdido En Ti" became iTunes Free Single of the Week.


title: Diego Boneta

text: He started his career in Mexico singing and acting. He worked extensively in television and appeared in the reality show "Código F.A.M.A.". He did two children's telenovelas: "Alegrijes y rebujos" and "Misión S.O.S" with Allison lozz which were shown on Univision. He was also in the teenage-oriented telenovela "Rebelde".


title: Diego Boneta

text: In 2010, at the age of 20 years, he appeared in the TV series "Pretty Little Liars" as Alex Santiago and in "90210" as Javier Luna which was "practically me with a different name" where he could sing and compose, mainly "Siempre tú" which came out at the end of the second season and the beginning of the third. His first film came in 2011 as Tyler Adams in the teen flick "Mean Girls 2" opposite Meaghan Martin and Jennifer Stone. Martin was the only actor he knew at that time, he recalled it was really easy to work with her because they were friends. Also the film gave him the opportunity to experience high school since he didn't get to, because he was tutored and working.


title: Diego Boneta

text: As he shot into the spotlight he became the cover model of "TROIX" magazine's 'March Men Madness' 2011 issue, introducing him as "Prince Charming".


title: Diego Boneta

text: His big Hollywood break came when he starred in Adam Shankman's movie adaptation of the hit Broadway musical "Rock of Ages" alongside Tom Cruise and Julianne Hough. He played Drew Boley, a young upstart in Los Angeles in the late 1980s with dreams of becoming a rock star. Of Boneta's audition, Shankman called him the "next big thing" and compared him to Zac Efron, Channing Tatum, and Liam Hemsworth.


title: Diego Boneta

text: In 2012, Diego starred in the "MTV" series "Underemployed". In this 12-episode series, Boneta played Miles González, a hilarious stripper. In 2014, Boneta was featured in Abercrombie & Fitch's "Making of a Star" campaign. As a result, photos of Boneta shot by Bruce Weber were featured in A&F stores worldwide.


title: Diego Boneta

text: In 2015, Boneta played warrior Amram in the mini-series "The Dovekeepers", and recorded the song "The Warrior" that aired in the opening of the series. Between September and December 2015, he starred in Ryan Murphy's comedy and horror series "Scream Queens" for the Fox network. The show featured an all star cast including Ariana Grande, Keke Palmer, Nick Jonas, Emma Roberts, Jamie Lee Curtis and Lea Michele.


title: Diego Boneta

text: Boneta plays Luis Miguel, the Grammy award-winning artist in the TV bio-musical series, "". The show is based on the early career of the famous Mexican artist that became an icon around the world. The series officially premiered on April 22, 2018 on Telemundo and Netflix, with its second season premiering in April 2021.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome (AWS) is a set of symptoms that can occur following a reduction in alcohol use after a period of excessive use. Symptoms typically include anxiety, shakiness, sweating, vomiting, fast heart rate, and a mild fever. More severe symptoms may include seizures,and delirium tremens (DTs). Symptoms typically begin around six hours following the last drink, are worst at 24 to 72 hours, and improve by seven days.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Alcohol withdrawal may occur in those who are alcohol dependent. This may occur following a planned or unplanned decrease in alcohol intake. The underlying mechanism involves a decreased responsiveness of GABA receptors in the brain. The withdrawal process is typically followed using the Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment for Alcohol scale (CIWA-Ar).


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: The typical treatment of alcohol withdrawal is with benzodiazepines such as chlordiazepoxide or diazepam. Often the amounts given are based on a person's symptoms. Thiamine is recommended routinely. Electrolyte problems and low blood sugar should also be treated. Early treatment improves outcomes.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: In the Western world about 15% of people have problems with alcoholism at some point in time. Alcohol depresses the central nervous system, slowing cerebral messaging and altering the way signals are sent and received. Progressively larger amounts of alcohol are needed to achieve the same physical and emotional results. The drinker eventually must consume alcohol just to avoid the physical cravings and withdrawal symptoms. About half of people with alcoholism will develop withdrawal symptoms upon reducing their use, with four percent developing severe symptoms. Among those with severe symptoms up to 15% die. Symptoms of alcohol withdrawal have been described at least as early as 400 BC by Hippocrates. It is not believed to have become a widespread problem until the 1700s.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Signs and symptoms of alcohol withdrawal occur primarily in the central nervous system. The severity of withdrawal can vary from mild symptoms such as insomnia, trembling, and anxiety to severe and life-threatening symptoms such as alcoholic hallucinosis, delirium tremens, and autonomic instability.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Withdrawal usually begins 6 to 24 hours after the last drink. It can last for up to one week. To be classified as alcohol withdrawal syndrome, patients must exhibit at least two of the following symptoms: increased hand tremor, insomnia, nausea or vomiting, transient hallucinations (auditory, visual or tactile), psychomotor agitation, anxiety, generalized tonic–clonic seizures, and autonomic instability.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: The severity of symptoms is dictated by a number of factors, the most important of which are degree of alcohol intake, length of time the individual has been using alcohol, and previous history of alcohol withdrawal. Symptoms are also grouped together and classified:


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Six to 12 hours after the ingestion of the last drink, withdrawal symptoms such as shaking, headache, sweating, anxiety, nausea or vomiting may occur. Twelve to 24 hours after cessation, the condition may progress to such major symptoms as confusion, hallucinations (with awareness of reality), while less severe symptoms may persist and develop including tremor, agitation, hyperactivity and insomnia.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: At 12 to 48 hours following the last ethanol ingestion, the possibility of generalized tonic–clonic seizures should be anticipated, occurring in 3-5% of cases. Meanwhile, none of the earlier withdrawal symptoms will typically have abated. Seizures carry the risk of major complications and death for the alcoholic.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Although the person's condition usually begins to improve after 48 hours, withdrawal symptoms sometimes continue to increase in severity and advance to the most severe stage of withdrawal, delirium tremens. This occurs in 5 to 20% of patients experiencing detoxification and one third of untreated cases, which is characterized by hallucinations that are indistinguishable from reality, severe confusion, seizures, high blood pressure, and fever that can persist anywhere from 4 to 12 days.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: A protracted alcohol withdrawal syndrome occurs in many alcoholics when withdrawal symptoms continue beyond the acute withdrawal stage but usually at a subacute level of intensity and gradually decreasing with severity over time. This syndrome is sometimes referred to as the post-acute-withdrawal syndrome. Some withdrawal symptoms can linger for at least a year after discontinuation of alcohol. Symptoms can include a craving for alcohol, inability to feel pleasure from normally pleasurable things (known as anhedonia), clouding of sensorium, disorientation, nausea and vomiting or headache.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Insomnia is a common protracted withdrawal symptom that persists after the acute withdrawal phase of alcohol. Insomnia has also been found to influence relapse rate. Studies have found that magnesium or trazodone can help treat the persisting withdrawal symptom of insomnia in recovering alcoholics. Insomnia can be difficult to treat in these individuals because many of the traditional sleep aids (e.g., benzodiazepine receptor agonists and barbiturate receptor agonists) work via a GABA receptor mechanism and are cross-tolerant with alcohol. However, trazodone is not cross-tolerant with alcohol. The acute phase of the alcohol withdrawal syndrome can occasionally be protracted. Protracted delirium tremens has been reported in the medical literature as a possible but unusual feature of alcohol withdrawal.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Chronic use of alcohol leads to changes in brain chemistry especially in the GABAergic system. Various adaptations occur such as changes in gene expression and down regulation of GABA receptors. During acute alcohol withdrawal, changes also occur such as upregulation of alpha4 containing GABA receptors and downregulation of alpha1 and alpha3 containing GABA receptors. Neurochemical changes occurring during alcohol withdrawal can be minimized with drugs which are used for acute detoxification. With abstinence from alcohol and cross-tolerant drugs these changes in neurochemistry may gradually return towards normal. Adaptations to the NMDA system also occur as a result of repeated alcohol intoxication and are involved in the hyper-excitability of the central nervous system during the alcohol withdrawal syndrome. Homocysteine levels, which are elevated during chronic drinking, increase even further during the withdrawal state, and may result in excitotoxicity. Alterations in ECG (in particular an increase in QT interval) and EEG abnormalities (including abnormal quantified EEG) may occur during early withdrawal. Dysfunction of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis and increased release of corticotropin-releasing hormone occur during both acute as well as protracted abstinence from alcohol and contribute to both acute and protracted withdrawal symptoms. Anhedonia/dysphoria symptoms, which can persist as part of a protracted withdrawal, may be due to dopamine underactivity.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Kindling is a phenomenon where repeated alcohol detoxifications leads to an increased severity of the withdrawal syndrome. For example, binge drinkers may initially experience no withdrawal symptoms, but with each period of alcohol use followed by cessation, their withdrawal symptoms intensify in severity and may eventually result in full-blown delirium tremens with convulsive seizures. Alcoholics who experience seizures during detoxification are more likely to have had previous episodes of alcohol detoxification than patients who did not have seizures during withdrawal. In addition, people with previous withdrawal syndromes are more likely to have more medically complicated alcohol withdrawal symptoms.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Kindling can cause complications and may increase the risk of relapse, alcohol-related brain damage and cognitive deficits. Chronic alcohol misuse and kindling via multiple alcohol withdrawals may lead to permanent alterations in the GABA receptors. The mechanism behind kindling is sensitization of some neuronal systems and desensitization of other neuronal systems which leads to increasingly gross neurochemical imbalances. This in turn leads to more profound withdrawal symptoms including anxiety, convulsions and neurotoxicity.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Binge drinking is associated with increased impulsivity, impairments in spatial working memory and impaired emotional learning. These adverse effects are believed to be due to the neurotoxic effects of repeated withdrawal from alcohol on aberrant neuronal plasticity and cortical damage. Repeated periods of acute intoxication followed by acute detoxification has profound effects on the brain and is associated with an increased risk of seizures as well as cognitive deficits. The effects on the brain are similar to those seen in alcoholics who have detoxified repeatedly but not as severe as in alcoholics who have no history of prior detox. Thus, the acute withdrawal syndrome appears to be the most important factor in causing damage or impairment to brain function. The brain regions most sensitive to harm from binge drinking are the amygdala and prefrontal cortex.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: People in adolescence who experience repeated withdrawals from binge drinking show impairments of long-term nonverbal memory. Alcoholics who have had two or more alcohol withdrawals show more frontal lobe cognitive dysfunction than those who have experienced one or no prior withdrawals. Kindling of neurons is the proposed cause of withdrawal-related cognitive damage. Kindling from repeated withdrawals leads to accumulating neuroadaptive changes. Kindling may also be the reason for cognitive damage seen in binge drinkers.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Many hospitals use the Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment for Alcohol (CIWA) protocol in order to assess the level of withdrawal present and therefore the amount of medication needed. When overuse of alcohol is suspected but drinking history is unclear, testing for elevated values of carbohydrate-deficient transferrin or gammaglutamyl transferase can help make the diagnosis of alcohol overuse and dependence more clear. The CIWA has also been shortened (now called the CIWA-Ar), while retaining its validity and reliability, to help assess patients more efficiently due to the life-threatening nature of alcohol withdrawal.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Other conditions that may present similarly include benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome (a condition also mainly caused by GABA receptor adaptation).


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Benzodiazepines are effective for the management of symptoms as well as the prevention of seizures. Certain vitamins are also an important part of the management of alcohol withdrawal syndrome. In those with severe symptoms inpatient care is often required. In those with lesser symptoms treatment at home may be possible with daily visits with a health care provider.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Benzodiazepines are the most commonly used medication for the treatment of alcohol withdrawal and are generally safe and effective in suppressing symptoms of alcohol withdrawal. This class of medication is generally effective in symptoms control, but need to be used carefully. Although benzodiazepines have a long history of successfully treating and preventing withdrawal, there is no consensus on the ideal one to use. The most commonly used agents are long-acting benzodiazepines, such as chlordiazepoxide and diazepam. These are believed to be superior to other benzodiazepines for treatment of delirium and allow for longer periods between doses. However, benzodiazepines with intermediate half-lives like lorazepam may be safer in people with liver problems. Benzodiazepines showed a protective benefit against alcohol withdrawal symptoms, in particular seizure, compared to other common methods of treatment.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: The primary debate between use of long-acting benzodiazepines and short-acting is that of ease of use. Longer-acting drugs, such as diazepam, can be administered less frequently. However, evidence does exist that "symptom-triggered regimens" such as those used when treating with lorazepam, are as safe and effective, but have decreased treatment duration and medication quantity used.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Although benzodiazepines are very effective at treating alcohol withdrawal, they should be carefully used. Benzodiazepines should only be used for brief periods in alcoholics who are not already dependent on them, as they share cross tolerance with alcohol. There is a risk of replacing an alcohol addiction with benzodiazepine dependence or adding another addiction. Furthermore, disrupted GABA benzodiazepine receptor function is part of alcohol dependence and chronic benzodiazepines may prevent full recovery from alcohol induced mental effects. The combination of benzodiazepines and alcohol can amplify the adverse psychological effects of each other causing enhanced depressive effects on mood and increase suicidal actions and are generally contraindicated except for alcohol withdrawal.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Alcoholics are often deficient in various nutrients, which can cause severe complications during alcohol withdrawal, such as the development of Wernicke syndrome. To help to prevent Wernicke syndrome, these individuals should be administered a multivitamin preparation with sufficient quantities of thiamine and folic acid. During alcohol withdrawal, the prophylactic administration of thiamine, folic acid, and pyridoxine intravenously is recommended before starting any carbohydrate-containing fluids or food. These vitamins are often combined into a banana bag for intravenous administration.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Very limited evidence indicates that topiramate or pregabalin may be useful in the treatment of alcohol withdrawal syndrome. Limited evidence supports the use of gabapentin or carbamazepine for the treatment of mild or moderate alcohol withdrawal as the sole treatment or as combination therapy with other medications; however, gabapentin does not appear to be effective for treatment of severe alcohol withdrawal and is therefore not recommended for use in this setting. A 2010 Cochrane review similarly reported that the evidence to support the role of anticonvulsants over benzodiazepines in the treatment of alcohol withdrawal is not supported. Paraldehyde combined with chloral hydrate showed superiority over chlordiazepoxide with regard to life-threatening side effects and carbamazepine may have advantages for certain symptoms. Long term anticonvulsant medications are not usually recommended in those who have had prior seizures due to withdrawal.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: There are three medications used to help prevent a return to drinking: naltrexone, acamprosate, and disulfiram. They are used after withdrawal has occurred.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Clonidine may be used in combination with benzodiazepines to help some of the symptoms. No conclusions can be drawn concerning the efficacy or safety of baclofen for alcohol withdrawal syndrome due to the insufficiency and low quality of the evidence.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Antipsychotics, such as haloperidol, are sometimes used in addition to benzodiazepines to control agitation or psychosis. Antipsychotics may potentially worsen alcohol withdrawal as they lower the seizure threshold. Clozapine, olanzapine, or low-potency phenothiazines (such as chlorpromazine) are particularly risky; if used, extreme caution is required.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: While intravenous ethanol could theoretically be used, evidence to support this use, at least in those who are very sick, is insufficient.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Failure to manage the alcohol withdrawal syndrome appropriately can lead to permanent brain damage or death. It has been proposed that brain damage due to alcohol withdrawal may be prevented by the administration of NMDA antagonists, calcium antagonists, and glucocorticoid antagonists.


title: Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

text: Continued use of benzodiazepines may impair recovery from psychomotor and cognitive impairments from alcohol. Cigarette smoking may slow down or interfere with recovery of brain pathways in recovering alcoholics.


title: End of Days (film)

text: End of Days is a 1999 American action horror film directed by Peter Hyams and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gabriel Byrne, Robin Tunney, Kevin Pollak, Rod Steiger, CCH Pounder, Miriam Margolyes and Udo Kier. The film follows former New York Police Department detective Jericho Cane (Schwarzenegger) after he saves a banker (Byrne) from an assassin, finds himself embroiled in a religious conflict, and must protect an innocent young woman (Tunney) who is chosen by evil forces to conceive the Antichrist with Satan.


title: End of Days (film)

text: The film was released by Universal Pictures and by Buena Vista International on November 24, 1999. It has grossed $66.9 million in North America and $145.1 million elsewhere, for a worldwide total of $212 million. The film received largely negative reviews.


title: End of Days (film)

text: In 1979, the Pope sends a priest on a mission to protect a newborn baby, Christine York, identified in New York City by satanists as one chosen to be the mother of Satan's child. However, a few Vatican knights (led by a corrupt cardinal) insist that she must be killed.


title: End of Days (film)

text: In 1999, Satan possesses an investment banker. Alcoholic former NYPD detective Jericho Cane, depressed since his wife and daughter's contract killings, works for a private security company and blames God for his plight. Jericho and friend Bobby Chicago are assigned to protect the possessed banker. A priest, Thomas Aquinas, fails to kill the banker. Jericho captures Aquinas and, after hearing his ramblings, gives him to the New York City Police Department (NYPD). Marge Francis, an NYPD detective and Jericho's former colleague, tells Jericho that Aquinas has no tongue.


title: End of Days (film)

text: Jericho and Bobby investigate Aquinas' apartment, where they find his tongue in a jar and messages and symbols written in blood on the walls. Aquinas turns out to be trained by the Vatican and was sent to New York before disappearing. Jericho questions Father Kovak, a priest who knew Aquinas. Kovak responds in a vague and unsatisfying manner. Satan enters Aquinas' hospital, and crucifies him on the ceiling. After he is brought down and presumed dead, Jericho and Chicago read in Latin "Christ in New York" carved into his skin. They begin searching for any similar names and come across Christine York in her apartment.


title: End of Days (film)

text: Jericho and Chicago rescue her from being killed by the Vatican knights. However, Satan then appears and immolates Chicago. Jericho and Christine flee from him. Marge and another officer, both revealed to be Satanists, demand Jericho surrenders Christine. Jericho kills them both and escapes with Christine. Satan resurrects Marge to rally the other Satanists to do his bidding. Taking refuge in the church, Father Kovak tells Jericho and Christine that Satan must impregnate her by midnight on New Year's Eve to usher in the "end of days". Christine accepts Kovak's protection, and Jericho leaves her there.


title: End of Days (film)

text: Satan confronts Jericho in his apartment and tries to tempt him into giving up Christine in exchange for resurrecting his dead family. After Jericho resists his temptations, Chicago arrives at his apartment, and the two agree to retrieve Christine from the church.


title: End of Days (film)

text: Back at the church, Jericho stops the cardinal and his knights from killing Christine. Satan reappears and kills the Vatican clergy. Chicago betrays Jericho, leaving him to be beaten and crucified by a mob of Satanists, revealing that he made a pact with Satan in exchange for his resurrection. After Chicago leaves with Christine, Kovak finds and rescues Jericho. After his recovery, Jericho tracks down Satan to his lair, kills Marge once again and rescues Christine. In the ensuing fight, he convinces Chicago to resist Satan's influence. Satan later kills Chicago for breaking their pact. Jericho destroys the lair, escapes with Christine into a subway tunnel and boards a train. Satan follows them, killing the train's driver. Jericho fires another grenade, destroying the train car Satan was in. Satan abandons the banker's irreparably damaged body to pursue Jericho and Christine, leaving him to die.


title: End of Days (film)

text: Jericho and Christine arrive at another church, where he renews his faith in God and prays for strength. Satan as a massive, winged creature appears and possesses Jericho. Satan, now in Jericho's body, attempts to rape Christine. Responding to her pleas, Jericho is able to resist long enough to deliberately impale himself on a nearby sword, sacrificing himself to prevent Satan's endgame. At the stroke of midnight, Satan is sent back to hell. Jericho sees his wife and daughter waiting for him in the afterlife and dies peacefully. Christine tearfully embraces him as the world celebrates a new millennium.


title: End of Days (film)

text: Directors Sam Raimi and Guillermo del Toro were offered "End of Days", but turned it down due to other projects. Marcus Nispel was going to direct the film, but he left because of budget and script problems and was replaced by Peter Hyams.


title: End of Days (film)

text: The role of Jericho Cane was written for Tom Cruise, but he chose to work on "Magnolia" and Arnold Schwarzenegger was then cast in March 1998. Liv Tyler was the first choice for the role of Christine York, but she declined over contractual issues. Kate Winslet was then set to play the character, but she dropped out and Robin Tunney replaced her. According to Hyams,


title: End of Days (film)

text: Jim Cameron was the kind of godfather of me doing that film, because of his relationship with Schwarzenegger. He told me I was doing it! ... "End Of Days" was going to be Marcus Nispel, but it wasn't working somehow, but they had Arnold and a start date, and Jim came to me and told me I had to do it. This was the first picture Arnold had made for a couple of years. I think he had a heart thing. So this was Arnold coming back. And he wanted to try to make something good, and to take some chances. I applauded that. And we had very, very good actors around him, like Gabriel Byrne and Kevin Pollak and Rod Steiger. It was a very enjoyable experience. Half way through shooting I told Arnold I thought he should die in this movie. Of course Universal blanched at the idea, so I shot the ending both ways, and everybody agreed that the dying ending was the better one.


title: End of Days (film)

text: As early as 2016, actress Miriam Margolyes had complained about Arnold Schwarzenegger's behavior on set. In 2022, Margolyes' reports caught wind again when she accused Arnold Schwarzenegger of deliberately farting in her face while on set. Schwarzenegger has yet to respond to the allegations.


title: End of Days (film)

text: The film's soundtrack primarily contains tracks by industrial rock and alternative metal bands. It features the first song released by the "new line-up" of Guns N' Roses, which is "Oh My God". During the editing of "End of Days", soundtrack songs were overlaid in scenes that are usually silent in thriller films. In several scenes, a sample from Spectrasonics' "Symphony of Voices" is heard. The score for the film is composed by John Debney and conducted by Pete Anthony.


title: End of Days (film)

text: Jericho dies, and Christine tearfully embraces his body and thanks him for saving her life. Suddenly, God removes the sword from Jericho's body and heals his wounds, bringing him back to life. Christine is surprised and glad Jericho is back, and they embrace before leaving the church together.


title: End of Days (film)

text: "End of Days" opened on November 24, 1999, in third place behind "Toy Story 2" and "The World Is Not Enough". It earned $20.5 million in its opening weekend, combining with $31 million from its five-day Wednesday opening. The film grossed $66,889,043 in the United States and about $212 million worldwide, against a budget estimated at $100 million. Although it was profitable because of strong international revenue and DVD sales, its final numbers fell short of Universal Studios' expectations. Schwarzenegger received a salary of $25 million for his role in the film.


title: End of Days (film)

text: "End of Days" received largely negative reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 11%, based on reviews from 101 critics. The site's consensus states: "An overblown thriller with formulaic action scenes and poor acting." Metacritic gives it an average score of 33/100, based on reviews from 33 critics. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: End of Days (film)

text: "Newsweek" wrote that "Peter Hyams's lurid, FX-happy thriller slams pieces of a dozen other movies into a noxious new compound. It has to be seen to be believed, but who'd want to?" while Mark Kermode called it "idiotic beyond the point of redemption, this sinfully stupid farrago manages to insult audiences and critics, Christians and Satanists alike, reducing 2000 years of fertile mythology to the level of an incoherent pop video.". "USA Today" called Schwarzenegger's performance "among his worst" noting that he "seems to have trouble with his lines and doesn't get to make his trademark wisecracks". "Los Angeles Times"' Eric Harrison called it "bloodless as a cyborg, and it feels as if it has been assembled according to diagrams supplied by someone who studied every successful sci-fi action thriller and then multiplied the findings by 10". "The New York Times" wrote that "End of Days" is "as incoherent about its mysticism as it is about anything else".


title: End of Days (film)

text: However, there were a few mixed reviews. San Francisco Chronicle stated that while "there are moments in "End of Days" when Schwarzenegger seems to be gunning for an Oscar. Those moments play like comic relief", ""End of Days" is an intense but silly thriller". James Berardinelli called it "a deliciously bad motion picture" while Roger Ebert stated that ""End of Days" involves a head-on collision between the ludicrous and the absurd" giving it two stars out of four. In a retrospective editorial twenty years since the film's release, Bloody Disgusting highlighted how the film "is always fascinating and entertaining".


title: End of Days (film)

text: Schwarzenegger later said he thought Hyams was "the wrong director" for the film. "He did not have the potential... I think visually and intellectually to really do something with that movie, but he was recommended by James Cameron, so we thought 'Well he must know.'"


title: End of Days (film)

text: "End of Days" was nominated for three Razzie Awards—Worst Actor (Arnold Schwarzenegger), Worst Supporting Actor (Gabriel Byrne) and Worst Director (Peter Hyams)—and was pre-nominated for Worst Picture, but it was withdrawn shortly before the awards ceremony.


title: End of Days (film)

text: It also received a nomination from the Motion Picture Sound Editors for Best Sound Editing - Effects & Foley as well as two nominations in the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards for Favorite Actor - Action/Science Fiction and for Favorite Supporting Actor - Action/Science-Fiction for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kevin Pollak respectively.


title: Teresa Teng

text: Teng Li-Chun (; 29 January 1953 – 8 May 1995), commonly known as Teresa Teng, was a Taiwanese singer, actress, musician and philanthropist. Referred to by some as "Asia's eternal queen of pop," Teng became a cultural icon for her contributions to Mandopop, giving birth to the phrase, "Wherever there are Chinese people, there is the music of Teresa Teng," and is cited by many as one of the most successful Asian artists of all time.


title: Teresa Teng

text: With a career spanning almost 30 years, Teng established herself as a dominant and influential force in Asia throughout most of her career, including East Asia, Southeast Asia, and, to some extent, South Asia. She is often hailed as Asia's first pop superstar and by some as the pioneer of contemporary Chinese pop music—a major force in the development of the Chinese music industry by incorporating western and eastern styles into her music, replacing the most revolutionary songs then prevalent in mainland China and laying the foundation for modern Chinese popular music. Besides, Teng was also instrumental in bridging the cultural gap across Chinese-speaking nations and was the first artist to connect Japan to much of East and Southeast Asia by singing Japanese pop songs. In Taiwan, she was famous for entertaining the armed forces and singing patriotic songs that appealed to the natives of the island. She was nicknamed "the patriotic entertainer" and "the soldiers' sweetheart."


title: Teresa Teng

text: She recorded more than 1,700 songs throughout her career, starting when she was 14 years old, not only in Mandarin, but also in Hokkien, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Japanese, Indonesian, English, and Italian. To date, her songs have been covered by hundreds of artists all over the world.


title: Teresa Teng

text: According to available IFPI statistics, Teng has sold over 48 million albums as of 2010 (excluding the sales data in mainland China). In 1986, "Time" named her one of the seven greatest female singers in the world. In 2009, in a poll by a Chinese government web portal, Teng was selected as the "most influential cultural figure in China since 1949" by 8.5 million netizens. In 2010, on the eve of "March 8th International Women's Day," she was voted "the most influential woman in modern China" by the Chinese media and radio stations in and outside the country. Teng was inducted into the "Popular Music Hall of Fame" at the Koga Masao Music Museum in Japan in 2007.


title: Teresa Teng

text: Teng was born to Waishengren parents in Baozhong Township, Yunlin County, Taiwan on January 29, 1953. Her father was a soldier in the Republic of China Armed Forces from Daming, Hebei, and her mother was from Dongping, Shandong—who fled to Taiwan after communists took over the mainland in 1949.


title: Teresa Teng

text: The only daughter among five children, Teng was raised in a poverty-stricken family and spent her early childhood in military dependents' villages, first in Yunlin and then in Pingtung. Her father retired in 1957, and then worked selling cakes to make ends meet. She received her early education at "Luzhou Elementary School" in the Luzhou District, Taipei County, Taiwan.


title: Teresa Teng

text: Teng was exposed to music at an early age through her music-loving parents. Her father was a Peking opera enthusiast, and her mother appreciated Huangmei opera, often accompanying her daughter to Chinese movie theatres and opera houses. At the age of six, she began her voice lessons through an acquaintance of her father’s, who instructed an air force band. Considering the martial environment of 1950s Taiwan, her first mentor introduced her to singing before military audiences, a practice she continued throughout her life. Her first major prize was in 1964, when she sang "Visiting Yingtai" from Shaw Brothers' Huangmei opera movie, "The Love Eterne", at an event hosted by the Broadcasting Corporation of China. Following year, she went to attend "Ginling Girls' High School" in Sanchong Township, Taipei County to further her studies. However, due to conflict between her performances and studies, she dropped out of school in the second year and pursued her career as a singer professionally. She was soon able to support her family with her singing.


title: Teresa Teng

text: Teng's career commenced in 1967 as a host of the television show "One Star a Day," which aired for 20 minutes from Tuesday to Sunday. She then appeared in television dramas and movies, including a leading role in the 1967 film "Thank You, Manager". At the age of 14, Teng withdrew from school to focus on music. She signed with a local company, "Yeu Jow Records", and began to release a series of long-playing albums of "a go-go" dance tunes and cover versions of western pop songs as well as local Taiwanese, Chinese, and Southeast Asian folk tunes. However, due to the lack of extra copyright royalties to increase her income, she committed to singing in night clubs around Taiwan. She debuted at Paris Night, an upscale Taipei nightclub, and set a record for performing onstage there for 70 consecutive days, giving a 90-minute performance every single day. Her albums sold well, and soon she got an opportunity to record a theme song for "Jingjing", Taiwan's first televised series and did a promotional tour that attracted quite a bit of attention in the media. Her first taste of fame came in 1968, when performance on the popular Taiwanese music program "The Gathering of Stars" led to a record contract. She released several albums within the next few years under the Life Records label in Hong Kong. During these years, she recorded several top hits, such as "Remembering Mama" and "The Moment I See You, I Smile". She held concerts in Southeast Asia, drawing big crowds throughout the region. Soon, her earnings from performing and recording afforded her family a comfortable life; they moved from Luzhou District to Beitou District, Taipei, where they bought a home.


title: Teresa Teng

text: Her popularity boomed in Asia in the 1970s after she released several albums in multiple languages. In April 1979, she held her first concert in Vancouver, Canada. On her next trip, she toured major US cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles. In 1980, she was invited to perform at Lincoln Center in New York and the Los Angeles Music Center in California, becoming the first singer of Chinese descent to make a headline there. Upon her return to Taiwan, Teng went on a Southeast Asian tour in 1981, drawing 35,000 attendees in Malaysia. She continues to hold large-scale concerts in Hong Kong and the Southeast Asian region almost every year. In 1983, she performed a series of concerts at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. They met with tremendous success. Teng gave many free concerts throughout most of her career to help the less fortunate or raise funds for charities. The funds collected from her concerts were donated to public welfare.


title: Teresa Teng

text: For most of the previous three decades, China was both economically and culturally closed to the rest of the world. Her songs began to trickle into mainland China around 1974 with the availability of radios. In 1977, her song "The Moon Represents My Heart" became one of the earliest foreign songs to arrive in the mainland. In 1978, with economic reform and the opening of borders, cassette recorders and pirated recordings of her songs began to flow from coastal cities to the rest of the country. Her popularity soon skyrocketed. In Taiwan, her songs became a propaganda tool for the KMT's psychological war against the Chinese Communist Party. Teng's songs were blasted from the sea-facing speakers from Kinmen Island to the residents of mainland China at a much higher volume. This propaganda practise continued throughout the 1980s. In the early 1980s, continuing political tension between mainland China and Taiwan led to her music, along with that of other singers from Taiwan and Hong Kong, being banned for some years in mainland China, describing it as too "bourgeois" and "corrupt" by Chinese authorities. In spite of the ban, Teng's songs defied the censorship and penetrated China's iron curtain. Her songs continued to be played everywhere, from nightclubs to government buildings, and the ban was soon lifted. Teng became almost as well known in mainland China as the country's leader. Her fans nicknamed her "Little Deng" because she had the same family name as Deng Xiaoping; there was a saying that, by day, everyone listened to "old Deng" because they had to. At night, everyone listened to "Little Teng" because they wanted to. Shanghai Party Newspaper, "Wen Hui Bao," remarked, fearing that her songs may erode the revolutionary spirit of the (Communist) Chinese. Faced with this solid wall of popularity, China ceased its restrictions on her music from the mid-1980s onward.


title: Teresa Teng

text: Teng's contract with Polydor ended in 1981, and she signed a contract with Taurus Records in 1983 and made a successful comeback appearance in Japan. In 1983, Teng released her most critically acclaimed album, "Dandan youqing", translated as "Light Exquisite Feeling," which sets 12 poems from the Tang and Song dynasties into music, blending modern and traditional styles. It became Teng's first album to include entirely new songs, without any covers. The most popular single from the album is "Wishing We Last Forever". Teng apparently felt a deep attachment to the mainland, where her roots were, as she immersed herself in the classics of the Tang and Song periods. In the television special, she spoke of her desire to contribute to the transmission of "Chinese" culture. Dressed in her period clothing, she commented:I have one small wish. I hope everyone will like these songs so that the flourishing begonias within China's 10 million square kilometres and the treasures of this 5000-year old culture can be handed down generation through song. And through this, I hope our posterity will never forget the happiness, sadness, and glory of being a "Chinese" person.


title: Teresa Teng

text: The album received a positive response from both the public and critics, commending her outstanding interpretation of the ancient poems and successfully projecting classical Chinese literature into a contemporary popular music style. It was well accepted in Southeast Asia and went gold on the first day of its release in Hong Kong. Yang Yanxing, a professor at Tianjin Conservatory of Music, greatly praised the album, describing it as "the finest work of the Chinese music circle". In March 2012, Pu Xiqian from the "China News Service" called the album a "perfect combination of poems and music". Later, Teng started working on completing a sequel to the album. She spent five years composing ancient poems and lyrics. However, due to changes in the surroundings of music, as well as her deteriorating health and other reasons, she failed to realise her wish.


title: Teresa Teng

text: In 1987, Teng released the Mandarin version of the album "I Only Care About You." After that, owing to her health issues, she basically stopped participating in commercial activities and gradually entered a semi-retired state.


title: Teresa Teng

text: Teng performed in Paris during the 1989 Tiananmen student protests on behalf of the students and expressed her support. On May 27, 1989, over 300,000 people attended the Concert for Democracy in China () at the Happy Valley Racecourse in Hong Kong. One of the highlights was her rendition of "My Home Is on the Other Side of the Mountain".


title: Teresa Teng

text: Though Teng performed in many countries around the world, she never performed in mainland China. During her 1980 TTV concert, when asked about such a possibility, she responded by stating that the day she performs on the mainland will be the day the Three Principles of the People are implemented there—in reference to either the pursuit of Chinese democracy or reunification under the banner of the ROC.


title: Teresa Teng

text: In 1975, Teng collaborated with Polygram Records of Hong Kong. Her album "Island Love Songs: Goodbye My Love (1975)" won her the Ten-Star Prize and the opportunity to star in a movie musical of her own. The album was awarded platinum at Hong Kong's first Golden Album Awards. In 1976, Teng held her first Hong Kong concert at Lee Theatre, which was a tremendous success. She continued performing in concerts for the next 5 years, attracting big crowds throughout this time. In 1978, her albums "Teresa Teng's Greatest Hits" and "Love Songs of the Island 3" won her second Golden Album Award. She released her first Cantonese album, "Antagonist," in 1980, which became the best-seller of the year; its single, "Forget Him", became one of the most famous Cantonese pop songs at that time. The album received platinum at the Golden Album Awards. In 1982, her dual-album of "Teresa Teng's Concert Live" became another platinum after hitting the market. She became a household name in Hong Kong and held a concert at Queen Elizabeth Stadium the same year. Her second album, "The Long Journey of Life", released in 1983, achieved even greater success than her predecessor. It became her fifth consecutive album to be awarded platinum, a record-breaking win against all singers in Hong Kong. Her popularity reached its peak by the end of 1983 with six straight sold-out concerts at the Hong Kong Coliseum. These concerts broke all sorts of Hong Kong records and played to a combined total audience of about 100,000 people. This monumental concert, rightly named "A Billion Applause Concert", was performed in both Taiwan and Hong Kong from December 29, 1983, to January 3, 1984, in honor of her 15th year as a performer. One year later, she was awarded a special medal by PolyGram Hong Kong as a tribute to her success for having sold more than 5 million copies in Hong Kong.


title: Teresa Teng

text: Teng entered the Japanese market in 1973. On March 1, 1974, Teng released her first Japanese single "No Matter Tonight or Tomorrow", which marked the beginning of her career in Japan. The single initially received a lukewarm market response and was ranked 75th on the Oricon Chart with sales of approximately 30,000. The Watanabe firm considered giving up using her name. However, considering her success in Asia, the record company decided to release two or three consecutive singles to test the market further. On July 1, 1974, Teng's second single "Airport" was released. The sales of 'Airport' were huge, totaling 700,000 copies. Teresa then released a number of successful singles including "The Night Ferry" and "Goodbye, My Love". In 1979, she was caught with a fake Indonesian passport while entering Japan and was deported and banned from entering the country for one year.


title: Teresa Teng

text: After a long absence, Teresa returned to the Japanese market on September 21, 1983, and released her first single "Tsugunai" (Atonement) after her comeback on 21 January 1984. The single didn't receive good response initially; however, after a month, sales started to pick up, and seven months later, "Tsugunai" eventually ranked 8th on the Oricon Chart and 1st on Japan Cable Broadcasting Chart. By the end of the year, sales surpassed 700,000 copies and final sales reached a million copies. Teng won the top award of 'Singer of the year' from Japan Cable Award. "Tsugunai" won the most popular song category and stayed on the Oricon Chart for nearly a year. The success broke all the sales records of her previous period (1974–1979). On February 21, 1985, her next single, "Aijin" (Lover) topped the Oricon Chart and Japan cable broadcasting request chart in the first week of its release. The song remained #1 for fourteen consecutive weeks and sales broke the 1.5 million mark. With "Aijin" Teresa won the 'Singer of the year' for the second time. Moreover, she was invited to perform in Kouhaku Uta Gassen, which represented the highest honor in the Japanese music world. Her next single "Toki no Nagare ni Mi o Makase" was released on 21 February 1986. The single topped both the Oricon and Japan Cable Broadcasting Chart and sales of the single reached 2.5 million in Asian market becoming one of the most popular singles in Japan that year. She won the "Japan Cable Award" for the third time in a row. Teng was invited to perform in "Kouhaku Uta Gassen" for the second time. She became the first-ever artist to achieve three consecutive wins of this "Grand Prix", also known as "Japan Cable Award". Teng also remains the only foreign singer to win this award for three consecutive years in the history of Japanese music (1984–1986). Teng gave her last solo concert at the NHK Hall in Tokyo in 1985 before semi-retiring from entertainment circle.


title: Teresa Teng

text: As one of Taiwan's most famous cultural exports, Teng was born to a military family in 1953, whose father served as a member of the Republic of China Armed Forces during World War 2. After the regime collapsed on the mainland, the Nationalist government switched to Taiwan as their base after 1949. As a child, Teng grew up in this martial environment of the 1950s. Her first mentor introduced her to singing before military audiences, a practise she continued throughout her life. In those years, she gave many performances for soldiers and sang patriotic songs on television programs. In February 1979, while attempting to enter Japan, she was caught using a fake Indonesian passport she bought on the black market. The incident was criticised both in Taiwan and Japan. She was barred for one year from entering the country by Japan's minister of justice. In 1980, a year after the incident, she was allowed to return to Taiwan on condition of cooperation with the Taiwanese government. She performed for the Taiwanese troops again, and the income from her performances was donated to the "Funds for Self-Improvement and Patriotism." In August 1981, she performed for the troops for one month, touring military sites all over Taiwan. She visited the generals of the army, navy, and air force and sang for them. These performances were broadcast on TTV’s special program named "Teresa Teng on the Frontline." Due to her vigorous devotion to soldiers in Taiwan, she was awarded the "Patriotic Entertainer" medal by the government information office. These frequent performances for the troops garnered her the nickname "the soldiers’ sweetheart" by the media. In 1988, the death of President Chiang Ching-kuo marked the end of martial rule in Taiwan. In the early 1990s, Teng returned to entertain the troops again, with her last performance being in 1994.


title: Teresa Teng

text: Teng began charity performances at a very young age. One of her first performances came on August 17, 1968, when she sang at the charity fair in Zhongshan Hall in Taipei, for the relief of the earthquake in the Philippines. The charity sale was donated on the spot. She was invited next year by the wife of the then-President of Singapore Yusof Ishak to a charity performance at the Singapore national opera house. In the same year, she even achieved the honor of performing at the Ten-Star Charity Performance, held by the Singaporean authorities. In 1971, she became the youngest person ever to be awarded the title of the "Charity Queen" of Hong Kong's Bai Hua You Arts Auction for making charity sales. On June 8, 1973, she participated in the "Far East Top Ten Stars Charity Gala" in Singapore, performed 4 performances, and raised $400,000 to be used as scholarships for poor students. Teng continued performing for philanthropic causes throughout the 1970s in Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. In 1980, she raised over US$1 million for Yan Chai Hospital in Hong Kong and donated the proceeds of her show in Taiwan to that country's national trust fund. In January 1982, Teng held a concert at the Queen Elizabeth Stadium in Hong Kong, and the first proceeds were used for charitable donations; in August, she donated NT$160,000 to build a water tower in a Village in northern Thailand and introduce a drinking water system. In 1985, Teng held a solo concert at the NHK Hall in Tokyo, Japan, proceeds of which were donated to charity. She made a special trip to Hong Kong in July 1991 to participate in the disaster relief program of ATV's "Love for East China" as a special charity performance guest to raise funds. Teng gave her last performance in 1994 in Taiwan, one year before her unexpected passing away.


title: Teresa Teng

text: Teng died from severe asthma, though doctors and her partner Paul Quilery had speculated that she died from a heart attack due to a side effect of an overdose of unspecified amphetamines while on holiday in Chiang Mai, Thailand, at the age of 42 on May 8, 1995. This could never be confirmed, as Teng's family and Paul all agreed to decline an autopsy to be performed. Quilery was buying groceries when the attack occurred. He was aware that Teng relied on the same medication for minor attacks in the two months before her death. She complained of having respiratory difficulties since the beginning of the year.


title: Teresa Teng

text: Teng's death produced a unified sense of loss throughout all of Asia, according to "Billboard". Her funeral in Taiwan became the largest state-sponsored funeral in the country's history, second only to that of ROC leader Chiang Kai-shek. Over 200,000 people lined up outside the funeral home, waiting to give the last farewell to the singer. Her funeral was broadcast on television stations across many Asian countries, while radio stations in Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong devoted their entire programming schedules to her music for two days. Teng was given state honors at her funeral, with Taiwan's flag draped around her coffin. Hundreds of high-ranking officials and dignitaries, including commanders from three branches of the military, attended the funeral and carried her coffin to her grave. A day of national mourning was declared and president Lee Teng-hui was among the thousands in attendance. Teng was posthumously awarded the Ministry of Defense's highest honor for civilians, the KMT's "Hua-hsia Grade One Medal," the Overseas Chinese Affairs' Commission's "Hua Guang Grade One Medal," and the president's commendation. She was buried in a mountainside tomb at Chin Pao San, a cemetery in Jinshan, New Taipei City (then Taipei County) overlooking the north coast of Taiwan.


title: Teresa Teng

text: According to her maiden name character, Yun, the cemetery was named "Yun Yuan". The gravesite features a Teng's golden life-size statue and a large electronic piano keyboard set in the ground that can be played by visitors who step on the keys. On the tombstone, the head of Teresa Teng is carved. The coffin lid behind the tombstone is polished with black marble. Behind the coffin lid is a stone sculpture. The upper half is a lying portrait of the singer, and the right side of the lower half is inlaid with a color photo of her, with the words "Deng Lijun, 1953-1995" written on the left side. On the right side of the coffin lid, there is a huge stone with the words "Yunyuan" inscribed by James Soong, chairman of the People First Party. On the left side of the coffin lid, there is a stone stele on which is engraved with the epitaph: "Here lies a superstar who dedicated her life to singing." The memorial is often visited by her fans.


title: Teresa Teng

text: In May 1995, Shanghai Radio host Dalù dedicated the Sunday morning broadcast to the Taiwanese singer, who died a few days earlier. Spreading her songs was banned in mainland China and the journalist was formally warned for this act.


title: Teresa Teng

text: In 1995, a tribute album, "A Tribute to Teresa Teng," was released, which contained covers of Teng's songs by prominent Chinese rock bands.


title: Teresa Teng

text: In May 2002, a wax figure of Teng was unveiled at Madame Tussauds Hong Kong. A house she bought in 1986 in Hong Kong at No. 18 Carmel Street, Stanley also became a popular fan site soon after her death. Plans to sell the home to finance a museum in Shanghai were made known in 2002, and it was subsequently sold for HK $32 million. It closed on what would have been her 51st birthday on January 29, 2004.


title: Teresa Teng

text: Throughout her 30-year career and up to this point, Teng is acknowledged by many as one of the most successful and influential figures in the history of Asian music and popular culture, considering her deep impact on the whole of Chinese society with an influence extending beyond music to include both political and cultural spheres, while her Asia-wide reach is often said to be driven by the multi-lingual abilities that made her an icon in all of Asia, helping usher in the era of region-wide pop superstardom that became today's norm.


title: Teresa Teng

text: Teng enjoyed the repertoire of one of the biggest singers in the world in her heyday of the 1970s and 1980s. She is credited by some as an enlightener and a pioneer of Chinese vocal performance art and modern popular music. Her profound influence on Asian popular music and the Chinese cultural sphere during the latter half of the 20th century and thereafter led her to be recognized as Asia's first pop superstar.


title: Teresa Teng

text: Prior to the 1980s, foreign music and art were prohibited in mainland China for most of three decades, and love songs were virtually unknown, aside from political and red songs, which heavily dominated the country's cultural domain. These were commonly revolutionary model operas performed to cheer up the party and military. Jin Zhaojun, a prominent Chinese music critic, characterised the music style during this period as "overly masculine and lacking in femininity," in which people were denied a whole range of basic human emotions and modes of expression. Teng's work on different musical styles, which integrates Chinese components with western-style pop and jazzy compositions, opened the roads to the musical creations of later generations. Musicians began to study the new forms of music that entered the mainland through foreign cassettes and tape recorders, such as orchestration and singing style. She became the earliest guide for composers on how to arrange music for popular songs, and numerous musicians reproduced their work by imitating her. Another aspect of Teng's influence was the establishment of a "breath singing method". Jin pointed out that, before this, alongside more authentic folk singing, the Chinese also had a "national singing" between bel canto and folk singing. Teng taught that people could also sing with another part of their voice, which was later named "popular singing". Teng's songs were focused on a wide range of issues, most primarily love and human relations—the most lacking elements in mainland culture at the time. By the early 1970s, as rates of radio ownership began to increase, especially of cheap and portable transistor models, listening to Teng's music became the primary attraction. Writer Ah Cheng recalled hearing her music for the first time in 1975 as a sort of excitement and extreme addiction that he and his friends would press their ears to the wooden frame of a shortwave radio only to get her voice heard. His account of his internal exile in the mountains of Yunnan is better representative of this phenomenon:Yunnan was endowed with a magnificent geographical gift: you could hardly hear central people's radio, and the newspaper would take days to make its way into the mountains and then be collected at the party's secretary's house, where you could ask him to tear off a strip when you wanted to roll up a cigarette. For people who listen to enemy radio, radio from the center or the official newspaper was merely a supplemental reference. But listening to enemy radio was not about political news so much as entertainment. I remember that whenever the Australian national station broadcast a radio play of the Taiwanese film The Story of a Small Town everyone would bring their own radio because the shortwave signal would tend to drift and that way we could cover the entire frequency range and make sure we had continuous sound from at least one receiver at a time. The boys and girls sitting around that grass hut would be in tears! Especially when Teresa Teng's voice rang out, emotions would rise to a fever pitch – her voice was to die for.In 1977, Teng's popular love song "The Moon Represents My Heart" was released; it became one of the first foreign songs to break into the country. Teng's songs over the following decade revolutionized Chinese popular culture, which marked the end of the extremely tight control exercised in the preceding three decades by the communist party over Chinese society and culture.


title: Teresa Teng

text: Wu'erkaixi, a Chinese political commentator of Uyghur heritage who is now living under political refuge in Taiwan, asserted that the youngsters who listened to her songs discovered the desire for the pursuit of freedom through her singing voice. Therefore, (he felt that) when Deng Lijun was gone, it wasn't just the loss of a singer but also the end of an era for better living space and political freedom brought by her. He further added: "To the Chinese, Deng Lijun was a great person. If Deng Xiao-ping brought economic freedom to China, she brought liberation of the body and free-thinking to China."


title: Teresa Teng

text: According to Nobel Peace Prize laureate and writer Liu Xiaobo, "Teng's romantic songs reawakened our soft centers by dismantling the cast-iron frame work of our "revolutionary wills", melting our cold, unfeeling hearts, and liberating our long-suppressed human softness and tenderness." Filmmaker Jia Zhangke said, "Teng's songs represented a massive transformation in the cultural landscape of China at that time. Prior to the 1980s, China had no popular culture to speak of. The closest thing we had were revolutionary model operas and things made in that mould. Everything around us was structured collectively, but Teng's songs, on the other hand, were entirely new at the time... they evoked individualism, changing everything." Regarding her contribution to the development of the music industry in China, Wang Xiaofeng at "Sanlian Life Weekly" wrote, "Teng not only pioneered the development of popular music but also stimulated the rapid development of audio-video companies at that time." He stated that listening to tapes was one of the main cultural activities and that they were luxury goods, but this did not stop ordinary people from consuming them. In 1979, there were only a few audio-video distribution companies in the Mainland. By 1982, it had increased to 300, indicating Teng's music as the trailblazer for this change.


title: Teresa Teng

text: Teng enjoyed overwhelming popularity in Japan and Southeast Asia throughout most of her career, and to some extent South Asia, achieving a "cult status" in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China, and Japan, where she became a "barometer of cross-strait relations," in rising geopolitical tensions at the time, and one of the first artists to break through language barrier and gain acceptance and accolades among various cultures. This paved the way for other Asian musicians and opened the door for artists in Asia to international success that were previously confined to national boundaries. Her songs have been covered by several hundreds of singers all over the world; among them few notable ones are Faye Wong, Leslie Cheung, Jon Bon Jovi, Siti Nurhaliza, Shila Amzah, Katherine Jenkins, Im Yoon-ah, David Archuleta, Agnez Mo, Greek singer Nana Mouskouri, English vocal group Libera (choir), Jewish singer Noa (singer), Grammy Award-winning American musician Kenny G, Kiwi pianist Carl Doy, Cuba's leading a cappella musical band Vocal Sampling, and among others. Her songs are also featured in various international films, such as "Rush Hour 2", "The Game", "Prison On Fire", "Year of the Dragon", "Formosa Betrayed", "Gomorrah", and "Crazy Rich Asians".


title: Teresa Teng

text: In 1974, Teng entered the Japanese market, two years after Japan severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan. She was extremely popular in Japan throughout the 1970s and 1980s, having lived off her royalties in the country after semi-retiring in the late '80s. During this tenure, Teng recorded and performed Japanese pop songs, often termed as Kayokyoku by Japanese media, and helped connect Japan to much of East Asia, particularly Taiwan, China, and some of Southeast Asia, helping bridge the gap between them, some of which were later covered in Mandarin, as reported by "Nippon" and "Billboard".


title: Teresa Teng

text: Hirano Kumiko, an author at "Nippon" writes:For Japanese, Teresa Teng was more than just a popular singer. By performing kayōkyoku, she connected Japan to its Asian neighbors. She taught us about the profundity of Chinese culture, whether in her birthplace of Taiwan, her ancestral home of China, or Hong Kong, which she loved throughout her life. We, her Japanese fans, will never forget her velvety voice and the brief, beautiful radiance of her life.In 2007, she was inducted into the "Popular Music Hall of Fame" at the Koga Masao Music Museum in Japan, making her the only non-Japanese national to do so.


title: Teresa Teng

text: In 2015, on an occasion to commemorate the 20th death anniversary of the singer, Nikkei Asia writer Akira Tada wrote, "Asia has undergone significant changes in the past 20 years, with the flow of people, goods, and information having increased considerably. At the same time, new political frictions have developed. Teng, who continues to be loved across national and ethnic boundaries, still shines as a voice uniting Asia through song." In 2018, The Guardian wrote, "In 20th-century pop music, the voice of Elvis Presley is as iconic and identifiable in the west as that of Teresa Teng is in the east." Andrew N. Weintraub and Bart Barendregt described her as "a model of inter-Asian modernity whose voice crossed linguistic, national and generational borders," whereas John F. Copper called her "the most heard singer in the world ever" during her time.


title: Teresa Teng

text: Numerous musical and non-musical figures have cited Teng as an idol and a major influence on their work. These include singer Faye Wong, Jay Chou, Jane Zhang, Kazukiyo Nishikiori of Japanese pop group Shonentai, Tetsuya Murakami of The Gospellers, Junko Akimoto, Rimi Natsukawa, Father of Chinese rock Cui Jian, Music producer Li Dun, Writer and literary critic Liu Xiaobo, Poet and writer Xu Pei, Manga artist Kenshi Hirokane, Filmmaker Jia Zhangke, and as well as the painter and sculptor Jian Guo, and many others.


title: Teresa Teng

text: Considered a "brilliant linguist" by "The New York Times", Teng was named one of the world's seven greatest female singers by "Time" magazine in 1986. In a national survey by NHK in 1997, her song "Toki no Nagare ni Mi o Makase" was voted 16th among the 100 greatest Japanese songs of all time and "The Moon Represents My Heart" stood first in the 10 best Chinese songs of all time in a poll by Radio Hong Kong in 1999. In 2009, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China, a government web portal conducted an online poll to choose "The Most Influential Cultural Figure in China since 1949". Over 24 million people voted, and Teng came out as the winner with 8.5 million votes. On the eve of the "March 8th International Women's Day" in 2010, she was voted "the most influential woman in modern China" by Chinese-language newspapers and radio stations in and outside China. The same year, CNN listed her among the 20 most influential music artists of the past 50 years. In 2011, her song "The Moon Represents My Heart" topped the online survey to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of China.


title: Teresa Teng

text: The 1996 Hong Kong film "", directed by Peter Chan, features the tragedy and legacy of Teng in a subplot to the main story. The movie won best picture in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and at the Seattle Film Festival in the United States. In 2007, TV Asahi produced a drama series entitled "Teresa Teng Monogatari" () to commemorate the 13th anniversary of her death. Actress Yoshino Kimura starred as Teng.


title: Teresa Teng

text: In 2003, Teng's burial mound and commemorative statue were erected in Fushou Garden, Qingpu District, Shanghai.


title: Teresa Teng

text: In 2015, the Daming County government in Handan City, Hebei province, China, built a "Lijun Town" dedicated to her. It renovated Teng's ancestral home to its original appearance. Teng's singing can be heard in every corner of the town. The city also features the "Teresa Teng Hanging Garden" and the "Teresa Teng Art Center", including a statue of the singer. Visitors can enjoy her music through artificial intelligence technology.


title: Teresa Teng

text: On January 29, 2018, a Google Doodle was released across Japan, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, India, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Sweden, Bulgaria, Canada, and Iceland to honor the singer on what would be her 65th birthday.


title: Teresa Teng

text: To date, Teng's stamps have been issued by several countries across the world, including Papua New Guinea, Timor, Argentina, Tuva Republic, Abkhazia, Grenada, Sakha Republic, Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Mali, and North Korea, in addition to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China.


title: Teresa Teng

text: Like her maternal grandmother Mary Chang (), Teng grew up Roman Catholic. As a child, she often spent her time playing around St. Joseph Catholic Church in Lujhou, at where she received baptism.


title: Teresa Teng

text: In 1971, Teng met her first boyfriend, Lin Zhenfa, a Malaysian paper tycoon. Lin liked Teng very much, often accompanying her to snack at night and writing poems for her. Within a few years, they fell in love. In 1976, Lin died of a heart attack. Later, Teresa recorded the song "Goodbye, My Love," dedicated to him, who had just died.


title: Teresa Teng

text: In 1980, while auditing classes at UCLA after her deportation from Japan, Teng met Jackie Chan, who was filming in Hollywood. However, due to their personality differences, they parted ways but remained friends.


title: Teresa Teng

text: In 1981, Teng met Beau Kuok, a Malaysian businessman and the son of multi-billionaire Robert Kuok. They were engaged in 1982, but Teng called off the engagement due to prenuptial agreements which stipulated that she had to quit and sever all ties with the entertainment industry, as well as fully disclose her biography and all her past relationships in writing. Teresa was still willing to accept the second and third conditions, only to keep the chance to release her own records. However, the Kuok family declined her request, and the marriage was canceled.


title: Teresa Teng

text: In 1990, Teng met French photographer Paul Quilery in France. They dated for five years and got engaged a month before Teng's passing away on May 8, 1995.


title: Béla Bartók

text: Béla Viktor János Bartók (; ; 25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist, and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as Hungary's greatest composers. Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of comparative musicology, which later became ethnomusicology.


title: Béla Bartók

text: Bartók was born in the Banatian town of Nagyszentmiklós in the Kingdom of Hungary (present-day Sânnicolau Mare, Romania) on 25 March 1881. On his father's side, the Bartók family was a Hungarian lower noble family, originating from Borsodszirák, Borsod. His paternal grandmother was a Catholic of Bunjevci origin, but considered herself Hungarian. Bartók's father (1855–1888) was also named Béla. Bartók's mother, Paula (née Voit) (1857–1939), also spoke Hungarian fluently. A native of Turócszentmárton (present-day Martin, Slovakia), she also had Hungarian and Slovak ancestry.


title: Béla Bartók

text: Béla displayed notable musical talent very early in life: according to his mother, he could distinguish between different dance rhythms that she played on the piano before he learned to speak in complete sentences. By the age of four he was able to play 40 pieces on the piano and his mother began formally teaching him the next year.


title: Béla Bartók

text: In 1888, when he was seven, his father, the director of an agricultural school, died suddenly. His mother then took Béla and his sister, Erzsébet, to live in Nagyszőlős (present-day Vynohradiv, Ukraine) and then in Pressburg ("Pozsony", present-day Bratislava, Slovakia). Béla gave his first public recital aged 11 in Nagyszőlős, to positive critical reception. Among the pieces he played was his own first composition, written two years previously: a short piece called "The Course of the Danube". Shortly thereafter, accepted him as a pupil.


title: Béla Bartók

text: From 1899 to 1903, Bartók studied piano under István Thomán, a former student of Franz Liszt, and composition under János Koessler at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest. There he met Zoltán Kodály, who made a strong impression on him and became a lifelong friend and colleague. In 1903, Bartók wrote his first major orchestral work, "Kossuth", a symphonic poem which honored Lajos Kossuth, hero of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848.


title: Béla Bartók

text: The music of Richard Strauss, whom he met in 1902 at the Budapest premiere of "Also sprach Zarathustra", strongly influenced his early work. When visiting a holiday resort in the summer of 1904, Bartók overheard a young nanny, Lidi Dósa from Kibéd in Transylvania, sing folk songs to the children in her care. This sparked his lifelong dedication to folk music.


title: Béla Bartók

text: From 1907, he also began to be influenced by the French composer Claude Debussy, whose compositions Kodály had brought back from Paris. Bartók's large-scale orchestral works were still in the style of Johannes Brahms and Richard Strauss, but he wrote a number of small piano pieces which showed his growing interest in folk music. The first piece to show clear signs of this new interest is the String Quartet No. 1 in A minor (1908), which contains folk-like elements. He began teaching as a piano professor at the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. This position freed him from touring Europe as a pianist and enabled him to work in Hungary. Among his notable students were Fritz Reiner, Sir Georg Solti, György Sándor, Ernő Balogh, Gisela Selden-Goth, and Lili Kraus. After Bartók moved to the United States, he taught Jack Beeson and Violet Archer.


title: Béla Bartók

text: In 1908, he and Kodály traveled into the countryside to collect and research old Magyar folk melodies. Their growing interest in folk music coincided with a contemporary social interest in traditional national culture. Magyar folk music had previously been categorised as Gypsy music. The classic example is Franz Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsodies" for piano, which he based on popular art songs performed by Romani bands of the time. In contrast, Bartók and Kodály discovered that the old Magyar folk melodies were based on pentatonic scales, similar to those in Asian folk traditions, such as those of Central Asia, Anatolia and Siberia.


title: Béla Bartók

text: Bartók and Kodály set about incorporating elements of such Magyar peasant music into their compositions. They both frequently quoted folk song melodies "verbatim" and wrote pieces derived entirely from authentic songs. An example is his two volumes entitled "For Children" for solo piano, containing 80 folk tunes to which he wrote accompaniment. Bartók's style in his art music compositions was a synthesis of folk music, classicism, and modernism. His melodic and harmonic sense was influenced by the folk music of Hungary, Romania, and other nations. He was especially fond of the asymmetrical dance rhythms and pungent harmonies found in Bulgarian music. Most of his early compositions offer a blend of nationalist and late Romanticism elements.


title: Béla Bartók

text: In 1909, at the age of 28, Bartók married Márta Ziegler (1893–1967), aged 16. Their son, Béla Bartók III, was born the next year. After nearly 15 years together, Bartók divorced Márta in June 1923. Two months after his divorce, he married Ditta Pásztory (1903–1982), a piano student, ten days after proposing to her. She was aged 19, he 42. Their son, Péter, was born in 1924.


title: Béla Bartók

text: Raised as a Catholic, by his early adulthood Bartók had become an atheist. He later became attracted to Unitarianism and publicly converted to the Unitarian faith in 1916. Although Bartók was not conventionally religious, according to his son Béla Bartók III, "he was a nature lover: he always mentioned the miraculous order of nature with great reverence." As an adult, Béla III later became lay president of the Hungarian Unitarian Church.


title: Béla Bartók

text: In 1911, Bartók wrote what was to be his only opera, "Bluebeard's Castle", dedicated to Márta. He entered it for a prize by the Hungarian Fine Arts Commission, but they rejected his work as not fit for the stage. In 1917 Bartók revised the score for the 1918 première, and rewrote the ending. Following the 1919 revolution in which he actively participated, he was pressured by the Horthy regime to remove the name of librettist Béla Balázs from the opera, as Balázs was of Jewish origin, was blacklisted, and had left the country for Vienna. "Bluebeard's Castle" received only one revival, in 1936, before Bartók emigrated. For the remainder of his life, although devoted to Hungary, its people and its culture, he never felt much loyalty to the government or its official establishments.


title: Béla Bartók

text: After his disappointment over the Fine Arts Commission competition, Bartók wrote little for two or three years, preferring to concentrate on collecting and arranging folk music. He found the phonograph an essential tool for collecting folk music for its accuracy, objectivity, and manipulability. He collected first in the Carpathian Basin (then the Kingdom of Hungary), where he notated Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian, and Bulgarian folk music. The developmental breakthrough for Bartok arrived when he collaboratively collected folk music with Zoltán Kodály through the medium of an Edison machine on which they would study classification possibilities (for individual folk songs) and record hundreds of cylinders. Bartok's compositional command of folk elements is expressed in such an authentic and undiluted a manner because of the scales, sounds, and rhythms that were so much a part of his native Hungary that he automatically saw music in these terms. He also collected in Moldavia, Wallachia, and (in 1913) Algeria. The outbreak of World War I forced him to stop the expeditions, but he returned to composing with a ballet called "The Wooden Prince" (1914–16) and the String Quartet No. 2 in (1915–17), both influenced by Debussy.


title: Béla Bartók

text: Bartók's "libretto" for "The Miraculous Mandarin", another ballet, was influenced by Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg and Richard Strauss. Though started in 1918, the story's sexual content kept it from being performed until 1926. He next wrote his two violin sonatas (written in 1921 and 1922, respectively), which are among his most harmonically and structurally complex pieces.


title: Béla Bartók

text: In March 1927, he visited Barcelona and performed the "Rhapsody for piano" Sz.26 with the Orquestra Pau Casals at the Gran Teatre del Liceu. During the same stay, he attended a concert by the Cobla Barcelona at the Palau de la Música Catalana. According to the critic Joan Llongueras, “he was very interested in the sardanas, above all, the freshness, spontaneity and life of our music [...] he wanted to know the mechanism of the tenoras and the tibles, and requested data on the composition of the cobla and extension and characteristics of each instrument ”.


title: Béla Bartók

text: In 1927–28, Bartók wrote his Third and Fourth String Quartets, after which his compositions demonstrated his mature style. Notable examples of this period are "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta" (1936) and Divertimento for String Orchestra (1939). The Fifth String Quartet was composed in 1934, and the Sixth String Quartet (his last) in 1939. In 1936 he travelled to Turkey to collect and study Turkish folk music. He worked in collaboration with Turkish composer Ahmet Adnan Saygun mostly around Adana.


title: Béla Bartók

text: In 1940, as the European political situation worsened after the outbreak of World War II, Bartók was increasingly tempted to flee Hungary. He strongly opposed the Nazis and Hungary's alliance with Germany and the Axis powers under the Tripartite Pact. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Bartók refused to give concerts in Germany and broke away from his publisher there. His anti-fascist political views caused him a great deal of trouble with the establishment in Hungary. Having first sent his manuscripts out of the country, Bartók reluctantly emigrated to the U.S. with his wife, Ditta Pásztory, in October 1940. They settled in New York City after arriving on the night of 29–30 October via a steamer from Lisbon. After joining them in 1942, their younger son, Péter Bartók, enlisted in the United States Navy where he served in the Pacific during the remainder of the war and later settled in Florida where he became a recording and sound engineer. His elder son, by his first marriage, Béla Bartók III, remained in Hungary and later worked as a railroad official until his retirement in the early 1980s.


title: Béla Bartók

text: Although he became an American citizen in 1945, shortly before his death, Bartók never felt fully at home in the United States. He initially found it difficult to compose. Although he was well known in America as a pianist, ethnomusicologist and teacher, he was not well known as a composer. There was little American interest in his music during his final years. He and his wife Ditta gave some concerts, although demand for them was low. Bartók, who had made some recordings in Hungary, also recorded for Columbia Records after he came to the US; many of these recordings (some with Bartók's own spoken introductions) were later issued on LP and CD.


title: Béla Bartók

text: Supported by a research fellowship from Columbia University, for several years, Bartók and Ditta worked on a large collection of Serbian and Croatian folk songs in Columbia's libraries. Bartók's economic difficulties during his first years in America were mitigated by publication royalties, teaching and performance tours. While his finances were always precarious, he did not live and die in poverty as was the common myth. He had enough friends and supporters to ensure that there was sufficient money and work available for him to live on. Bartók was a proud man and did not easily accept charity. Despite being short on cash at times, he often refused money that his friends offered him out of their own pockets. Although he was not a member of the ASCAP, the society paid for any medical care he needed during his last two years, to which Bartók reluctantly agreed. The first symptoms of his health problems began late in 1940, when his right shoulder began to show signs of stiffening. In 1942, symptoms increased and he started having bouts of fever. Bartók's illness was at first thought to be a recurrence of the tuberculosis he had experienced as a young man, and one of his doctors in New York was Edgar Mayer, director of Will Rogers Memorial Hospital in Saranac Lake but medical examinations found no underlying disease. Finally, in April 1944, leukemia was diagnosed, but by this time, little could be done.


title: Béla Bartók

text: As his body slowly failed, Bartók found more creative energy, and he produced a final set of masterpieces, partly thanks to the violinist Joseph Szigeti and the conductor Fritz Reiner (Reiner had been Bartók's friend and champion since his days as Bartók's student at the Royal Academy). Bartók's last work might well have been the String Quartet No. 6 but for Serge Koussevitzky's commission for the Concerto for Orchestra. Koussevitsky's Boston Symphony Orchestra premièred the work in December 1944 to highly positive reviews. The Concerto for Orchestra quickly became Bartók's most popular work, although he did not live to see its full impact.


title: Béla Bartók

text: In 1944, he was also commissioned by Yehudi Menuhin to write a Sonata for Solo Violin. In 1945, Bartók composed his Piano Concerto No. 3, a graceful and almost neo-classical work, as a surprise 42nd birthday present for Ditta, but he died just over a month before her birthday, with the scoring not quite finished. He had also sketched his Viola Concerto, but had barely started the scoring at his death, leaving completed only the viola part and sketches of the orchestral part.


title: Béla Bartók

text: Béla Bartók died at age 64 in a hospital in New York City from complications of leukemia (specifically, of secondary polycythemia) on 26 September 1945. His funeral was attended by only ten people. Aside from his widow and their son, other attendees included György Sándor.


title: Béla Bartók

text: Bartók's body was initially interred in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. During the final year of communist Hungary in the late 1980s, the Hungarian government, along with his two sons, Béla III and Péter, requested that his remains be exhumed and transferred back to Budapest for burial, where Hungary arranged a state funeral for him on 7 July 1988. He was re-interred at Budapest's Farkasréti Cemetery, next to the remains of Ditta, who died in 1982, one year after what would have been Béla Bartók's 100th birthday.


title: Béla Bartók

text: The two unfinished works were later completed by his pupil Tibor Serly. György Sándor was the soloist in the first performance of the Third Piano Concerto on 8 February 1946. Ditta Pásztory-Bartók later played and recorded it. The Viola Concerto was revised and published in the 1990s by Bartók's son; this version may be closer to what Bartók intended. Concurrently, Peter Bartók, in association with Argentinian musician Nelson Dellamaggiore, worked to reprint and revise past editions of the Third Piano Concerto.


title: Béla Bartók

text: Bartók's music reflects two trends that dramatically changed the sound of music in the 20th century: the breakdown of the diatonic system of harmony that had served composers for the previous two hundred years; and the revival of nationalism as a source for musical inspiration, a trend that began with Mikhail Glinka and Antonín Dvořák in the last half of the 19th century. In his search for new forms of tonality, Bartók turned to Hungarian folk music, as well as to other folk music of the Carpathian Basin and even of Algeria and Turkey; in so doing he became influential in that stream of modernism which used indigenous music and techniques.


title: Béla Bartók

text: One characteristic style of music is his Night music, which he used mostly in slow movements of multi-movement ensemble or orchestral compositions in his mature period. It is characterised by "eerie dissonances providing a backdrop to sounds of nature and lonely melodies". An example is the third movement (Adagio) of his "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta". His music can be grouped roughly in accordance with the different periods in his life.


title: Béla Bartók

text: The works of Bartók's youth were written in a classical and early romantic style touched with influences of popular and romani


title: Béla Bartók

text: music. Between 1890 and 1894 (nine to 13 years of age) he wrote 31 piano pieces with corresponding opus numbers. Although most of these were simple dance pieces, in these early works Bartók began to tackle some more advanced forms, as in his ten-part programmatic "A Duna folyása" ("The Course of the Danube", 1890–94), which he played in his first public recital in 1892.


title: Béla Bartók

text: In Catholic grammar school Bartók took to studying the scores of composers "from Bach to Wagner", his compositions then advancing in style and taking on similarities to Schumann and Brahms. Following his matriculation into the Budapest Academy in 1890 he composed very little, though he began to work on exercises in orchestration and familiarized himself thoroughly with the operas of Wagner. In 1902 his creative energies were revitalized by the discovery of the music of Richard Strauss, whose tone poem "Also sprach Zarathustra", according to Bartók, "stimulated the greatest enthusiasm in me; at last I saw the way that lay before me." Bartók also owned the score to "A Hero's Life", which he transcribed for the piano and committed to memory.


title: Béla Bartók

text: Under the influence of Strauss, Bartók composed in 1903 "Kossuth", a symphonic poem in ten tableaux on the subject of the 1848 Hungarian war of independence, reflecting the composers growing interest in musical nationalism. A year later he renewed his opus numbers with the "Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra" serving as Opus 1. Driven by nationalistic fervor and a desire to transcend the influence of prior composers, Bartók began a lifelong devotion to folk music which was sparked by his overhearing nanny Lidi Dósa's singing of Transylvanian folk songs at a Hungarian resort in 1904. Bartók began to collect Magyar peasant melodies, later extending to the folk music of other peoples of the Carpathian Basin, Slovaks, Romanians, Rusyns, Serbs and Croatians. His compositional output would gradually prune away romantic elements in favour of an idiom that embodied folk music as intrinsic and essential to its style. Later in life he would have this to say on the incorporation of folk and art music:The question is, what are the ways in which peasant music is taken over and becomes transmuted into modern music? We may, for instance, take over a peasant melody unchanged or only slightly varied, write an accompaniment to it and possibly some opening and concluding phrases. This kind of work would show a certain analogy with Bach's treatment of chorales. ... Another method ... is the following: the composer does not make use of a real peasant melody but invents his own imitation of such melodies. There is no true difference between this method and the one described above. ... There is yet a third way ... Neither peasant melodies nor imitations of peasant melodies can be found in his music, but it is pervaded by the atmosphere of peasant music. In this case we may say, he has completely absorbed the idiom of peasant music which has become his musical mother tongue.


title: Béla Bartók

text: Bartók became first acquainted with Debussy's music in 1907 and regarded his music highly. In an interview in 1939 Bartók said


title: Béla Bartók

text: Debussy's great service to music was to reawaken among all musicians an awareness of harmony and its possibilities. In that, he was just as important as Beethoven, who revealed to us the possibilities of progressive form, or as Bach, who showed us the transcendent significance of counterpoint. Now, what I am always asking myself is this: is it possible to make a synthesis of these three great masters, a living synthesis that will be valid for our time? Debussy's influence is present in the Fourteen Bagatelles (1908). These made Ferruccio Busoni exclaim "At last something truly new!". Until 1911, Bartók composed widely differing works which ranged from adherence to romantic-style, to folk song arrangements and to his modernist opera "Bluebeard's Castle". The negative reception of his work led him to focus on folk music research after 1911 and abandon composition with the exception of folk music arrangements.


title: Béla Bartók

text: His pessimistic attitude towards composing was lifted by the stormy and inspiring contact with Klára Gombossy in the summer of 1915. This interesting episode in Bartók's life remained hidden until it was researched by Denijs Dille between 1979 and 1989. Bartók started composing again, including the Suite for piano opus 14 (1916), and "The Miraculous Mandarin" (1918) and he completed "The Wooden Prince" (1917).