Renée

Renée (often spelled without the accent in non-French speaking countries) is a French feminine given name.

Renée is the female form of René, with the extra –e making it feminine according to French grammar. The name Renée is the French form of the late Roman name Renatus and the meaning is reborn or born again. In medieval times, the meaning was associated with the Christian concept of being spiritually born again through baptism.

Renee was among the top 100 names given to girls in the United States in the late 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s and the early 1980s. It ranked as the 734th most popular name given to American girls in 2008 and is continuing to fall in popularity.

Given name

Tod

Tod or TOD may refer to:

See also

Der Tod und das Mädchen

Der Tod und das Mädchen (English: Death and the Maiden), D.531; Op. 7, No. 3, is a lied composed by Franz Schubert in February 1817. It was published by Cappi und Diabelli in Vienna in November 1821. The text is derived from a poem written by German poet Matthias Claudius. The song is set for voice and piano.

Composition

The piece begins with an introduction in D minor; the first eight bars in the time signature 2/2. Both hands play chords. The section is quiet (pianissimo) and slow (mäßig), and presents the musical theme of Death.

The Maiden enters in the ninth bar on an anacrusis. This section is more agitated than the first; it is marked piano and "somewhat faster" (etwas geschwinder). The melody gradually increases in pitch, chromatically at points. The piano accompaniment is syncopated, playing chords of quavers alternating in the left and right hand. A diminished chord in the first bar of the third line (ich bin noch jung) creates an eerie mood. In the eighth bar of the maiden's song, on the word rühre ("touch"), the quavers stop and the rhythm of the opening section returns. Then an imperfect cadence leads to a rest with fermata. This brings the second section to a total of 13 bars in length.

Franz Schubert

Franz Peter Schubert (German pronunciation: [ˈfʁant͡s ˈʃuːbɐt]; 31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828) was an Austrian composer. Schubert died before his 32nd birthday, but was extremely prolific during his lifetime. His output consists of over six hundred secular vocal works (mainly Lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music and a large body of chamber and piano music. Appreciation of his music while he was alive was limited to a relatively small circle of admirers in Vienna, but interest in his work increased significantly in the decades following his death. Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms and other 19th-century composers discovered and championed his works. Today, Schubert is ranked among the greatest composers of the late Classical and early Romantic eras and is one of the most frequently performed composers of the early nineteenth century.

Biography

Early life and education

Schubert was born in Himmelpfortgrund (now a part of Alsergrund), Vienna, Archduchy of Austria on 31 January 1797. His father, Franz Theodor Schubert, the son of a Moravian peasant, was a parish schoolmaster; his mother, Elisabeth (Vietz), was the daughter of a Silesian master locksmith and had been a housemaid for a Viennese family before marriage. Of Franz Theodor's fourteen children (one of them illegitimate, born in 1783), nine died in infancy.

Sweeney Todd

Sweeney Todd is a fictional character who first appeared as the protagonist of the Victorian penny dreadful The String of Pearls (1846–47).

The tale became a staple of Victorian melodrama and London urban legend, and has been retold many times since, most notably in the Tony award-winning Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler.

Claims that Sweeney Todd was a historical person are strongly disputed by scholars, although possible legendary prototypes exist.

Plot synopsis

In the original version of the tale, Todd is a barber who dispatches his victims by pulling a lever as they sit in his barber chair. His victims fall backward down a revolving trapdoor into the basement of his shop, generally causing them to break their necks or skulls. In case they are alive, Todd goes to the basement and "polishes them off" (slitting their throats with his straight razor). In some adaptations, the murdering process is reversed, with Todd slitting his customers' throats before dispatching them into the basement through the revolving trapdoor. After Todd has robbed his dead victims of their goods, Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime (in some later versions, his friend and/or lover), assists him in disposing of the bodies by baking their flesh into meat pies and selling them to the unsuspecting customers of her pie shop. Todd's barber shop is situated at 186 Fleet Street, London, next to St. Dunstan's church, and is connected to Mrs. Lovett's pie shop in nearby Bell Yard by means of an underground passage. In most versions of the story, he and Mrs. Lovett hire an unwitting orphan boy, Tobias Ragg, to serve the pies to customers.