Early life in vaudeville Keaton was born Joseph Frank Keaton into a vaudeville family. He was named "Joseph" to continue a tradition on his father's side—he was sixth in a line bearing the name Josep ...
Six months into the second American tour, Chaplin was invited to join the New York Motion Picture Company. A representative who had seen his performances thought he could replace Fred Mace, a star of ...
Lang was born in Vienna as the second son of Anton Lang (1860–1940), an architect and construction company manager, and his wife Pauline "Paula" Lang née Schlesinger (1864–1920). Fritz Lang was bap ...
Murnau was born in Bielefeld, Province of Westphalia, and grew up in Kassel from the time he was seven. He had two brothers, Bernhard and Robert, and two stepsisters, Ida and Anna. Murnau's mother Oti ...
Eisenstein was born to a middle-class family in Riga, Latvia (then part of the Russian Empire as Liwland Governorate) but his family moved frequently in his early years, as Eisenstein continued to do ...
This complex film consists of four distinct, but parallel, stories—intercut with increasing frequency as the film builds to a climax—that demonstrate mankind's persistent intolerance throughout the ...
The box office gross of The Birth of a Nation is not known, and was long subject to exaggeration. In 1940, Time magazine reported the film's cumulative gross as more than $15 million. The Encyclopedia ...
Part 1: Civil War America The film follows two juxtaposed families: the Northern Stonemans, consisting of the abolitionist Congressman Austin Stoneman, based on the Reconstruction-era Congressman Thad ...
Early life and education Griffith was born in Crestwood, Kentucky to Mary Perkins and Jacob "Roaring Jake" Griffith, who were of Anglo-Welsh ancestry. His father served as a Confederate Army colonel i ...
In the 1830s, conductor Fran?ois Antoine Habeneck, began rehearsing a selected group of musicians in order to perform the symphonies of Beethoven, which had not been heard in their entirety in Paris. ...
The typical symphony orchestra consists of four groups of similar musical instruments called the woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings. Other instruments such as the piano and celesta may sometime ...
The organ has had an important place in classical music throughout its history. Antonio de Cabezón, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, and Girolamo Frescobaldi were three of the most important composers and ...
Pipe organs use wind moving through pipes to produce sounds. Since the 16th century, pipe organs have used various materials of pipes, which can vary widely in timbre and volume. The pipes are divided ...
Almost every modern piano has 52 white keys and 36 black keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7 ...
See also: Fortepiano and Bartolomeo CristoforiGrand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and actio ...
