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Were the Crusades an early example of European colonialism? What value did the crusading frontier hold for the knights who fought to defend it? What was the relationship between the Crusades and the knightly culture of chivalry?
In 1615 Katharina Kepler, illiterate mother of the astronomer Johannes Kepler, was accused of being a witch. At that time in Germany, there was a witch ‘craze’. Over half of the c.50,000 executions in Europe for witchcraft between 1500 and 1700 took place in Germany.
Shostakovich had considered the career of a concert pianist, yet his piano music studiously avoids the virtuosity he had assiduously cultivated as a young performer. Almost all his piano writing is in some way experimental and conceptual.
Serial murderer Myra Hindley is often portrayed as an “evil icon”. Her crimes of sadistic murder against children continue to shock. There are few artistic sights so terrifying as the giant portrait of Hindley composed of the handprints of children.
On 17 August 1982, the first commercial CD was released. Digital recording and editing have changed the face of music by making recordings easy to originate and share. But has this affected musical quality, and what are the financial and artistic consequences?
Prokofiev’s piano music struck his contemporaries as matching the new era: its dynamism was compared to sport (“football music”), and its grinding repeated patterns to industrial sounds (“machine music”).
Canons of taste and value in other media, such as literature, art and music, have been challenged in recent decades by proponents of sexual and ethnic equality.
Mata Hari was an erotic dancer who, in 1917, was executed by the French army for treason. She has been portrayed as the ultimate femme fatale, extracting information from hapless men through exploiting her sensual charms.
The English Reformation – unlike many of the other Reformations convulsing sixteenth-century Europe – was at heart more about politics and law than about religion.
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