Anthem

An anthem is a musical composition of celebration, usually used as a symbol for a distinct group, particularly the national anthems of countries. Originally, and in music theory and religious contexts, it also refers more particularly to short sacred choral work and still more particularly to a specific form of Anglican church music.

Etymology

Anthem is derived from the Greek ἀντίφωνα (antíphōna) via Old English antefn. Both words originally referred to antiphons, a call-and-response style of singing. The adjectival form is "anthemic".

History

Anthems were originally a form of liturgical music. In the Church of England, the rubric appoints them to follow the third collect at morning and evening prayer. Several anthems are included in the British coronation service. The words are selected from Holy Scripture or in some cases from the Liturgy and the music is generally more elaborate and varied than that of psalm or hymn tunes. Being written for a trained choir rather than the congregation, the Anglican anthem is analogous to the motet of the Roman Catholic and Lutheran Churches but represents an essentially English musical form. Anthems may be described as "verse", "full", or "full with verse", depending on whether they are intended for soloists, the full choir, or both.

Anthem (Chess song)

"Anthem" is a song from the concept album and subsequent musical Chess by Tim Rice, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus. The song describes the feelings of Soviet Russian challenger, Anatoly Sergievsky, when he defects. The song was originally sung by Tommy Körberg on the original concept album]] and as Anatoly in the original West End cast. It was later covered by various artists including Josh Groban on his album Stages and Kerry Ellis.

Plot

Distracted by the loss of Florence's love, Freddie flounders in the chess tournament, leaving himself just one more loss away from losing his title. Florence leaves Freddie, who sends The Arbiter a letter of resignation, resulting in Anatoly's becoming the new world champion. Anatoly immediately defects from the Soviet Union and seeks asylum at the British embassy. Florence, accompanies Anatoly, reflecting on their newfound romance. Walter tips off the press about this scandal. When the mob of reporters ambush Anatoly to ask why he is deserting his country, he tells them in this song that he will never truly leave his country because his land's only borders lie around his heart.

Anthem (N-Joi song)

"Anthem," is a song by the British electronic music group N-Joi. The piano-heavy driven single, which also serves as their debut track, has gone on to become one of their most famous signature songs in the act's career, as well as seeing it chart numerous times since its 1990 release.

Background

The track, which was originally released in 1990, has charted on both the UK and US charts. In its first release, it peaked at number 8 on the UK Pop Chart, but in the United States it had better success on Billboard's Hot Dance Club Play Chart, where it made two trips to the top 5, reaching number 4 in 1991 with the original mixes, and again in 1996, where it was rereleased with new remixes as "The New Anthem" (under the expanded credited "N-Joi featuring Mark Franklin and Nigel Champion"). The updated version would be their second number one in the US, following "Mindflux."

Although the single and the video also features Nigerian singer/actress Saffron, who did the live performances for the act (and whose career would take off after this track), "Anthem" actually features samples of three songs: "Peanut Butter" by Gwen Guthrie (using the lyrics "I'm In Love With You, Want You to Love Me, Too"; Saffron performs the same lyrics in the act's live shows), "I Found Love" by Darlene Davis (using the lyrics "True Love Can Be Hard To Find") and "Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)" by Soul II Soul. Because of this, the artists (and their writers) also receive credits on the single.

Ida (film)

Ida (pronounced [ˈida]) is a 2013 Polish drama film directed by Paweł Pawlikowski and written by Pawlikowski and Rebecca Lenkiewicz. Set in Poland in 1962, it is about a young woman on the verge of taking vows as a Catholic nun. Orphaned as an infant during the German occupation of World War II, she must now meet her aunt. The former Communist state prosecutor and only surviving relative tells her that her parents were Jewish. The two women embark on a road trip into the Polish countryside to learn the fate of their family. Called a "compact masterpiece" and an "eerily beautiful road movie", the film has also been said to "contain a cosmos of guilt, violence and pain", even if certain historical events (German occupation of Poland, the Holocaust and Stalinism) remain unsaid: "none of this is stated, but all of it is built, so to speak, into the atmosphere: the country feels dead, the population sparse".

Ida won the 2015 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, becoming the first Polish film to do so. It had earlier been selected as Best Film of 2014 by the European Film Academy and as Best Film Not in the English Language of 2014 by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).

Ila (Hinduism)

Ila (Sanskrit: इल) or Ilā (Sanskrit: इला) is an androgyne in Hindu mythology, known for their sex changes. As a man, he is known as Ila or Sudyumna and as a woman, is called Ilā. Ilā is considered the chief progenitor of the Lunar dynasty of Indian kings - also known as the Ailas ("descendants of Ilā").

While many versions of the tale exist, Ila is usually described as a daughter or son of Vaivasvata Manu and thus the sibling of Ikshvaku, the founder of the Solar Dynasty. In versions in which Ila is born female, she changes into a male form by divine grace soon after her birth. After mistakenly entering a sacred grove as an adult, Ila is either cursed to change his/her gender every month or cursed to become a woman. As a woman, Ilā married Budha, the god of the planet Mercury and the son of the lunar deity Chandra (Soma), and bore him a son called Pururavas, the father of the Lunar dynasty. After the birth of Pururavas, Ilā is transformed into a man again and fathered three sons.

Iterative deepening A*

Iterative deepening A* (IDA*) is a graph traversal and path search algorithm that can find the shortest path between a designated start node and any member of a set of goal nodes in a weighted graph. It is a variant of iterative deepening depth-first search that borrows the idea to use a heuristic function to evaluate the remaining cost to get to the goal from the A* search algorithm. Since it is a depth-first search algorithm, its memory usage is lower than in A*, but unlike ordinary iterative deepening search, it concentrates on exploring the most promising nodes and thus doesn't go to the same depth everywhere in the search tree. Unlike A*, IDA* doesn't utilize dynamic programming and therefore often ends up exploring the same nodes many times.

While the standard iterative deepening depth-first search uses search depth as the cutoff for each iteration, the IDA* uses the more informative where is the cost to travel from the root to node and is a problem-specific heuristic estimate of the cost to travel from to the solution. As in A*, the heuristic has to have particular properties to guarantee optimality (shortest paths); see Properties, below.