Quercus robur (sometimes considered Q. pedunculata or "Q. robur") is commonly known as the English oak or pedunculate oak or French oak. It is native to most of Europe, and to Anatolia to the Caucasus, and also to parts of North Africa.

Q. robur (Latin quercus, "oak" + robur "strength, hard timber") is the type species of the genus (the species by which the oak genus Quercus is defined), and a member of the white oak section Quercus section Quercus. The populations in Italy, southeast Europe, and Asia Minor and the Caucasus are sometimes treated as separate species, Q. brutia Tenore, Q. pedunculiflora K. Koch and Q. haas Kotschy respectively.

A close relative is the Sessile Oak (Q. petraea), which shares much of its range. Q. robur is distinguished from this species by its leaves having only a very short stalk 3–8 mm long, and by its pedunculate (stalked) acorns. The two often hybridise in the wild, the hybrid being known as Quercus × rosacea.

Quercus robur is a large deciduous tree 25–35 m (80–115 ') tall (exceptionally to 50 m (160 '))^{[citation needed]}, and thick, with circumference of grand oaks from 4 m (13') to exceptional 12m (40'). Majesty Oak with the circumference of 12,2 m (40') is the thickest tree in Great Britain, but Kaive Oak in Latvia with the circumference of 10,2 m (33,5') is the thickest tree in Northern Europe. Q. robur has lobed and nearly sessile (very short-stalked) leaves 7–14 cm long. Flowering takes place in mid spring, and their fruit, called acorns, ripen by the following autumn. The acorns are 2–2.5 cm long, pedunculate (having a peduncle or acorn-stalk, 3–7 cm long) with one to four acorns on each peduncle.

Ernesto Lecuona y Casado (August 6, 1895 - November 29, 1963) was a Cuban composer and pianist of Canarian father and Cuban mother, and worldwide fame. He composed over six hundred pieces, mostly in the Cuban vein, and was a pianist of exceptional quality.

Lecuona was born in Guanabacoa, Havana, Cuba. He started studying piano at an early age, under his sister Ernestina Lecuona, a famed composer in her own right. He later studied at the Peyrellade Conservatoire under Antonio Saavedra and the famous Joaquin Nin. Lecuona graduated from the National Conservatory of Havana with a Gold Medal for interpretation when he was sixteen. And he performed outside of Cuba at the Aeolian Hall (New York) in 1916.

He first travelled to Spain in 1924 on a concert tour with violinist Marta de la Torre; his successful piano recitals in 1928 at Paris coincided with a rise in interest in Cuban music.

He was a prolific composer of songs and music for stage and film. His works consisted of zarzuela, Afro-Cuban and Cuban rhythms, suites and many songs which are still very famous. They include Siboney (Canto Siboney), Malagueña and The Breeze And I (Andalucía). In 1942, his great hit, Always in my heart (Siempre en mi Corazon) was nominated for an Oscar for Best Song; however, it lost to White Christmas. Lecuona was a master of the symphonic form and conducted the Ernesto Lecuona Symphonic Orchestra, employing soloists including Cuban pianist and composer Carmelina Delfin. The Orchestra performed in the Cuban Liberation Day Concert at Carnegie Hall on October 10, 1943. The concert included the world premiere of Lecuona's Black Rhapsody. Lecuona gave help and the use of his name to the popular touring group, the Lecuona Cuban Boys, though he did not play as a member of the band. He did sometimes play piano solos as the first item on the bill.

Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda.

Neruda became known as a poet while still a teenager. He wrote in a variety of styles including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and erotically-charged love poems such as the ones in his 1924 collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language." Neruda always wrote in green ink as it was his personal colour of hope.

On July 15, 1945, at Pacaembu Stadium in São Paulo, Brazil, he read to 100,000 people in honor of Communist revolutionary leader Luís Carlos Prestes. During his lifetime, Neruda occupied many diplomatic positions and served a stint as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When Chilean President González Videla outlawed communism in Chile in 1948, a warrant was issued for Neruda's arrest. Friends hid him for months in a house basement in the Chilean port of Valparaíso. Later, Neruda escaped into exile through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina. Years later, Neruda was a close collaborator to socialist President Salvador Allende. When Neruda returned to Chile after his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Allende invited him to read at the Estadio Nacional before 70,000 people.

Javier Busto Sagrado (born 1949) was born in Hondarribia in the Basque Country of Spain.

Busto graduated as a medical doctor from Valladolid University. In 1995 he created and founded the women's choir Kanta Cantemus Korua. Known internationally as a composer of music and as a choral conductor, he has presented his compositions at the Fourth World Symposium on Choral Music in Sydney, Australia in 1996, and was guest conductor of the Tokyo Cantat in 2000. His choirs have won first place awards in France, Italy, Austria, and Germany. Busto has served on the jury of composition and choral competitions in Spain, France, Italy and Japan.

Busto's compositions are published in Sweden, Germany, Spain and the US.

Franz Friedrich Richard Genée (February 7, 1823 – June 15, 1895) was a Prussian born Austrian librettist, playwright, and composer.

Genée was born in Danzig. One of his best known works was the libretto of Karl Millöcker's operetta Der Bettelstudent, which he co-wrote with Friedrich Zell (the pseudonym of Camillo Walzel). In 1857 he was conductor of the philharmonic orchestra In Mainz.

In 1876, Genée composed the operetta Der Seekadette. The operetta featured a game of chess in its second act and later lent its name to the chess opening trap found in the match the Seekadettenmatt (German for naval cadet mate). The move is usually known in English as the Légal Trap. He died at Baden bei Wien.