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Richard Sparks

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Richard Andrew Sparks (born August 29, 1950) is an American choral conductor . He is one of the leading figures in choral music in the Pacific Northwest and in Scandinavian, especially Swedish a cappella , choral music.

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98-756: Sparks was raised in Seattle, Washington . He graduated from Shorecrest High School , and he received a bachelor of music in 1976 and a master of music in 1980, both from the University of Washington . While an undergraduate, Sparks founded Seattle Pro Musica , which he led until 1980. During this time, Seattle Pro Musica became known as a leader in the "authentic performance" of Baroque music , especially Johann Sebastian Bach 's. Sparks conducted Seattle Pro Musica in Claudio Monteverdi 's Vespro della Beata Vergine at St. Mark's Cathedral and Handel 's Messiah . In

196-446: A chorus to the lovers, functioning as an audience whose participation in the lovers' erotic encounters facilitates the participation of the reader. Marvin H. Pope, in his commentary, quotes scholars who believe the Song would have been ritually performed as part of ancient fertility cults and that it is "suggestive of orgiastic revelry". Though scholars have differed in assessing when it

294-437: A Greek poet who wrote in the first half of the 3rd century BCE; as a result of these conflicting signs, speculation ranges from the 10th to the 2nd centuries BCE, with the language supporting a date around the 3rd century. Other scholars are more skeptical about the idea that the language demands a post-exilic date. Debate continues on the unity or disunity of the book. Those who see it as an anthology or collection point to

392-475: A cluster of henna blossoms in the vineyards of En Gedi ", "an apple tree among the trees of the wood", "a lily among brambles ", while the bed they share is like a forest canopy ). The section closes with the woman telling the daughters of Jerusalem not to stir up love such as hers until it is ready. The woman recalls a visit from her lover in the springtime. She uses imagery from a shepherd's life, and she says of her lover that "he pastures his flock among

490-661: A great frenzy among the technology companies in Seattle but the bubble ended in early 2001. In 1999, the World Trade Organization held its conference in Seattle, which was met with protest activity . The protests and police reactions to them largely overshadowed the conference itself. In 2001, the city was impacted by the Mardi Gras Riots and then by the Nisqually earthquake the following day. Another boom began as

588-441: A number of technology companies, including Amazon , F5 Networks , RealNetworks , Nintendo of America , and T-Mobile . This success brought an influx of new residents with a population increase within city limits of almost 50,000 between 1990 and 2000, and saw Seattle's real estate become some of the most expensive in the country. Seattle in this period attracted attention as home to the companies opened operations in or around

686-478: A number of theaters in the city exhibiting vaudeville acts and silent movies. He went on to become one of America's greatest theater and movie tycoons. Scottish-born architect B. Marcus Priteca designed several theaters for Pantages in Seattle, which were later demolished or converted to other uses. Seattle's surviving Paramount Theatre , on which he collaborated, was not a Pantages theater. War work again brought local prosperity during World War II , centered on

784-416: A single theme", and thus not worthy of canonization. In fact, "there is a tradition that even this book was considered as one to be excluded." It was accepted as canonical because of its supposed authorship by Solomon and based on an allegorical reading where the subject matter was taken to be not sexual desire but God's love for Israel. For instance, the famed first and second century Rabbi Akiva forbade

882-462: A system of ten sephirot emanations, each symbolizing a different attribute of God, comprising both male and female. The Shechina ( indwelling Divine presence) was identified with the feminine sephira Malchut , the vessel of Kingship. This symbolizes the Jewish people, and in the body, the female form, identified with the woman in Song of Songs. Her beloved was identified with the male sephira Tiferet ,

980-595: A total area of 142.5 square miles (369 km ), 84 square miles (220 km ) of which is land and 58.1 square miles (150 km ) is water (41% of the total area). According to the Köppen climate classification system, Seattle has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate ( Csb ), while under the Trewartha system, it is labeled an oceanic climate ( Dobk ). It has cool, wet winters and mild, relatively dry summers, covering characteristics of both climate types. The climate

1078-572: Is a city on the West Coast of the United States . It is the seat of King County , Washington . With a 2023 population of 755,078 it is the most populous city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region of North America , and the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The Seattle metropolitan area 's population is 4.02 million, making it the 15th-largest in

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1176-566: Is from Kugler and Hartin's An Introduction to The Bible : The introduction calls the poem "the song of songs", a phrase that follows an idiomatic construction commonly found in Scriptural Hebrew to indicate the object's status as the greatest and most beautiful of its class (as in Holy of Holies ). The work is also referred to as the "Song of Solomon", meaning the song 'of', 'by', 'for', or '[dedicated] to' Solomon. The poem proper begins with

1274-506: Is hilly in some places. Like Rome, the city is said to lie on seven hills ; the lists vary but typically include Capitol Hill , First Hill , West Seattle , Beacon Hill , Queen Anne , Magnolia, and the former Denny Hill . The Wallingford , Delridge , Mount Baker , Seward Park , Washington Park , Broadmoor , Madrona , Phinney Ridge , Sunset Hill , Blue Ridge , Broadview , Laurelhurst , Hawthorne Hills , Maple Leaf , and Crown Hill neighborhoods are all located on hills. Many of

1372-475: Is in his garden, safe from harm, and committed to her as she is to him. The man describes his beloved; the woman describes a rendezvous they have shared. (The last part is unclear and possibly corrupted.) The people praise the beauty of the woman. The images are the same as those used elsewhere in the poem, but with an unusually dense use of place-names, e.g., pools of Hebron , gate of Bath-rabbim , tower of Damascus , etc. The man states his intention to enjoy

1470-485: Is its language: Aramaic gradually replaced Hebrew after the end of the Babylonian exile in the late 6th century BCE, and the evidence of vocabulary, morphology , idiom and syntax clearly point to a late date, centuries after King Solomon to whom it is traditionally attributed. It has parallels with Mesopotamian and Egyptian love poetry from the first half of the 1st millennium, and with the pastoral idylls of Theocritus ,

1568-452: Is most sweet, he is altogether lovely ( mahamaddim )." In his book Demystifying Islam , Muslim apologist Harris Zafar argues that the last word ( Hebrew : מַחֲּמַדִּים‪‬‪‬ , romanized :  maḥămaddîm , lit.   'lovely'), with the plural suffix "-im" (which is occasionally used to indicate intensity, and is normally understood to do so for both of the adjectives in this verse), expressing respect and greatness (as

1666-501: Is not as worthy as the day on which Song of Songs was given to Israel, for all the Writings are holy, but Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies." Other rabbinic scholars who have employed allegorical exegesis in explaining the meaning of Song of Songs are Tobiah ben Eliezer , author of Lekach Tov , and Zechariah ha-Rofé , author of Midrash ha-Hefez . The French rabbi Rashi did not believe

1764-532: Is often read from a scroll similar to a Torah scroll in style. It is also read in its entirety by some at the end of the Passover Seder and is usually printed in most Hagadahs . Some Jews have the custom to recite the entire book prior to the onset of the Jewish Sabbath. The literal subject of the Song of Songs is love and sexual longing between a man and a woman, and it has little (or nothing) to say about

1862-553: Is read as an allegory of Christ and his bride , the Church . There is widespread consensus that, although the book has no plot, it does have what can be called a framework, as indicated by the links between its beginning and end. Beyond this, however, there appears to be little agreement: attempts to find a chiastic structure have not found acceptance, and analyses dividing the book into units have employed various methods, yielding diverse conclusions. The following indicative schema

1960-457: Is ready". The next section reports a royal wedding procession. Solomon is mentioned by name, and the daughters of Jerusalem are invited to come out and see the spectacle. The man describes his beloved: Her eyes are like doves, her hair is like a flock of goats, her teeth like shorn ewes, and so on from face to breasts. Place-names feature heavily: her neck is like the Tower of David , her smell like

2058-491: Is sometimes characterized as a "modified Mediterranean" climate because it is cooler and wetter than a "true" Mediterranean climate, but shares the characteristic dry summer (which has a strong influence on the region's vegetation). Temperature extremes are moderated by the adjacent Puget Sound , greater Pacific Ocean , and Lake Washington . Thus extreme heat waves are rare in the Seattle area, as are very cold temperatures (below about 15 °F; −9 °C). The Seattle area

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2156-557: Is the cloudiest region of the Continental United States , due in part to frequent storms and lows moving in from the adjacent Pacific Ocean. Seattle is cloudy 201 days out of the year and partly cloudy 93 days. With many more "rain days" than other major American cities, Seattle has a well-earned reputation for frequent rain: In an average year, there are 150 days in which at least 0.01 inches (0.25 mm) of precipitation falls, more days than in nearly all U.S. cities east of

2254-515: The 1962 World's Fair , for which the Space Needle was built. Another major local economic downturn was in the late 1960s and early 1970s, at a time when Boeing was heavily affected by the oil crises , loss of government contracts, and costs and delays associated with the Boeing 747 . Many people left the area to look for work elsewhere, and two local real estate agents put up a billboard reading "Will

2352-608: The Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition of 1909, which is largely responsible for the layout of today's University of Washington campus. A shipbuilding boom in the early part of the 20th century became massive during World War I , making Seattle somewhat of a company town. The subsequent retrenchment led to the Seattle General Strike of 1919 , an early general strike in the country. A 1912 city development plan by Virgil Bogue went largely unused. Seattle

2450-606: The Bible . Those books reveal an abiding imbalance in the relationship between God and man, ranging from slight to enormous; but reading Songs as a theological metaphor produces quite a different outcome, one in which the two partners are equals, bound in a committed relationship. In modern times the poem has attracted the attention of feminist biblical critics, with Phyllis Trible 's foundational "Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation" treating it as an exemplary text, and

2548-763: The Canticle of Canticles or the Song of Solomon , is a biblical poem , one of the five megillot ("scrolls") in the Ketuvim ('writings'), the last section of the Tanakh . It is unique within the Hebrew Bible : it shows no interest in Law or Covenant or the God of Israel, nor does it teach or explore wisdom, like Proverbs or Ecclesiastes —although it does have some affinities to wisdom literature , as

2646-641: The Lake Washington Ship Canal (consisting of two man-made canals, Lake Union , and the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks at Salmon Bay , ending in Shilshole Bay on Puget Sound). The sea, rivers, forests, lakes, and fields surrounding Seattle were once rich enough to support one of the world's few sedentary hunter-gatherer societies. In modern times the surrounding area lends itself well to sailing, skiing, bicycling, camping, and hiking year-round. The city

2744-768: The Pacific Ring of Fire , Seattle is in a major earthquake zone . On February 28, 2001, the magnitude 6.8 Nisqually earthquake did significant architectural damage, especially in the Pioneer Square area (built on reclaimed land , as are the Industrial District and part of the city center), and caused one fatality. Other strong earthquakes occurred on January 26, 1700 (estimated at 9 magnitude), December 14, 1872 (7.3 or 7.4), April 13, 1949 (7.1), and April 29, 1965 (6.5). The 1965 quake caused three deaths in Seattle directly and one more by heart failure. Although

2842-658: The Port of Seattle is the fourth-largest port in North America in terms of container handling as of 2021 . The Seattle area has been inhabited by Native Americans (such as the Duwamish , who had at least 17 villages around Elliot Bay) for at least 4,000 years before the first permanent European settlers. Arthur A. Denny and his group of travelers, subsequently known as the Denny Party , arrived from Illinois via Portland, Oregon , on

2940-842: The Richard S. Eaton Award of Distinction from the Alberta Choral Federation. Sparks currently serves as the Chair for Conducting & Ensembles at the University of North Texas, and also leads the University Singers, and the Collegium Singers at the school. In the Fall of 2013, Sparks led the Collegium singers in yet another performance of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610. Sparks has guest-conducted

3038-752: The Rocky Mountains . However, because it often has merely a light drizzle falling from the sky for many days, Seattle actually receives significantly less rainfall (or other precipitation) overall than many other major U.S. cities like New York City , Miami , or Houston . According to the 2012–2016 American Community Survey (ACS), the racial makeup of the city was 65.7% White Non-Hispanic , 16.9% Asian , 6.8% Black or African American , 6.6% Hispanic or Latino of any race, 0.4% Native American , 0.9% Pacific Islander , 0.2% other races, and 5.6% two or more races . Seattle's population historically has been predominantly white. The 2010 census showed that Seattle

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3136-513: The Seattle Fault passes just south of the city center, neither it nor the Cascadia subduction zone has caused an earthquake since the city's founding. The Cascadia subduction zone poses the threat of an earthquake of magnitude 9.0 or greater, capable of seriously damaging the city and collapsing many buildings, especially in zones built on fill. According to the U.S. Census Bureau , the city has

3234-460: The University of Washington negatively. As schools across Washington lost funding and attendance, the university actually prospered during the time period as they focused on growing their student enrollment. While Seattle public schools were influenced by Washington's superintendent Worth McClure, they still struggled to pay teachers and maintain attendance. Seattle was the home base of impresario Alexander Pantages who, starting in 1902, opened

3332-470: The allegoric interpretation of Ambrose of Milan , Saint Augustine of Hippo stated that the Song of Songs represents the wedding between Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church, pure and virgin, within an ascetic context. Over the centuries the emphases of interpretation shifted, first reading the Song as a depiction of the love between Christ and Church, the 11th century adding a moral element, and

3430-592: The anti-Chinese riots of 1885–1886 . This violence originated with unemployed whites who were determined to drive the Chinese from Seattle; anti-Chinese riots also occurred in Tacoma . Seattle had achieved sufficient economic success when the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 destroyed the central business district. However, a far grander city center rapidly emerged in its place. Finance company Washington Mutual , for example,

3528-428: The schooner Exact at Alki Point on November 13, 1851. The settlement was moved to the eastern shore of Elliott Bay in 1852 and named "Seattle" in honor of Chief Seattle , a prominent 19th-century leader of the local Duwamish and Suquamish tribes. Seattle currently has high populations of Native Americans alongside Americans with strong Asian, African, European, and Scandinavian ancestry, and, as of 2015, hosts

3626-475: The "Holy One Blessed be He", a central principle in the beneficent heavenly flow of divine emotion. In the body, this represents the male torso, uniting through the sephira Yesod of the male sign of the covenant organ of procreation. Through beneficent deeds and Jewish observance , the Jewish people restore cosmic harmony in the divine realm, healing the exile of the Shechina with God's transcendence, revealing

3724-471: The "standard work for the knowledge of Swedish music in English-speaking areas." Sparks is married to the former Kathryn Wold, an artist who formerly directed the gallery at Pacific Lutheran University. Richard Nance composed "Set Me as a Seal," based on the Song of Songs , for their 1996 wedding. Seattle, Washington Seattle ( / s i ˈ æ t əl / see- AT -əl )

3822-527: The 12th century understanding of the Bride as the Virgin Mary , with each new reading absorbing rather than simply replacing earlier ones, so that the commentary became ever more complex. These theological themes are not found explicitly in the poem, but they come from a theological reading. Nevertheless, what is notable about this approach is the way it leads to conclusions not found in the overtly theological books of

3920-478: The 1980s, the Seattle area developed into a technology center ; Microsoft established its headquarters in the region. In 1994, Internet retailer Amazon was founded in Seattle, and Alaska Airlines is based in SeaTac, Washington , serving Seattle–Tacoma International Airport , Seattle's international airport. The stream of new software, biotechnology , and Internet companies led to an economic revival, which increased

4018-582: The Bible is that the Song of Songs is an erotic poem, and not an elaborate metaphor. In his commentary for the Anchor Bible Series , Marvin H. Pope quotes scholars who believe that the Song described a fertility cult liturgy, rooted in the fertility cults of the ancient Near Eastern cultures of Mesopotamia and Canaan, as well as their sacred marriage rites and funeral feasts. J. Cheryl Exum wrote: "The erotic desire of its protagonists, everywhere evident in

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4116-614: The Denny Party. Members of the Denny Party claimed land on Alki Point on September 28, 1851. The rest of the Denny Party set sail on the schooner Exact from Portland , Oregon, stopping in Astoria , and landed at Alki Point during a rainstorm on November 13, 1851. After a difficult winter, most of the Denny Party relocated across Elliott Bay and claimed land a second time at the site of present-day Pioneer Square , naming this new settlement Duwamps . Charles Terry and John Low remained at

4214-505: The Feminist Companion to the Bible series edited by Athalya Brenner and Carole Fontaine devoting two volumes to it. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints specifically rejects the Song of Solomon as inspired scripture. Several Islamic apologists contend that the word mahmaddim in Song of Songs 5:16 mentions Muhammad . Whereas most translators will render the first words of that verse in terms such as "His mouth

4312-558: The Legislature of Territorial Washington incorporated the Town of Seattle with a board of trustees managing the city. The Town of Seattle was disincorporated on January 18, 1867, and remained a mere precinct of King County until late 1869, when a new petition was filed and the city was re-incorporated December 2, 1869, with a mayor–council government . The corporate seal of the City of Seattle carries

4410-808: The National Youth Choir of Canada and was the first American in more than two decades to conduct the Swedish Radio Choir in 2002, 2007 and 2008. In May 2021, Sparks was one of 10 new members elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Music , alongside Marika Field, Katarina Karnéus , Jonas Knutsson, Sten Sandell, Đuro Živković , Keiko Abe , Giancarlo Andretta, Stefan Dohr , and Quincy Jones . The Academy said that "Sparks, more than any other foreign choir conductor of his generation, has been an ambassador for Swedish and Nordic choral music," and described his dissertation The Swedish Choral Miracle as

4508-715: The Pacific Ocean) to the west and Lake Washington to the east. The city's chief harbor, Elliott Bay , is part of Puget Sound, making the city an oceanic port. To the west, beyond Puget Sound, are the Kitsap Peninsula and Olympic Mountains on the Olympic Peninsula ; to the east, beyond Lake Washington and the Eastside suburbs, are Lake Sammamish and the Cascade Range . Lake Washington's waters flow to Puget Sound through

4606-661: The Seattle area and has been open to all residents of Washington since 2002. On March 20, 1970, twenty-eight people were killed when the Ozark Hotel was burned by an unknown arsonist. The Wah Mee massacre in 1983 resulted in the killing of 13 people in an illegal gambling club in the Seattle Chinatown-International District . Prosperity began to return in the 1980s beginning with Microsoft 's 1979 move from Albuquerque, New Mexico , to nearby Bellevue, Washington . Seattle and its suburbs became home to

4704-630: The Seattle area during his 1791–1795 expedition for the Royal Navy , which sought to chart the Pacific Northwest for the British. In 1851, a large party of American pioneers led by Luther Collins made a location on land at the mouth of the Duwamish River ; they formally claimed it on September 14, 1851. Thirteen days later, members of the Collins Party on the way to their claim passed three scouts of

4802-462: The Song are read on Shabbat eve or at Passover , which marks the beginning of the grain harvest as well as commemorating the Exodus from Egypt, to symbolize the love between the Jewish people and their God. Jewish tradition reads it as an allegory of the relationship between God and Israel. The entire Song of Songs in its original Hebrew is read in synagogues during the intermediate days of Passover. It

4900-424: The Song employs a number of literary conventions typical of this didactic literature and that it combines features of both ancient Near Eastern love song and wisdom genres to produce a wisdom literature about romantic love, instructing readers to pursue what she describes as a particular type of 'wise love' relationship, modelled by the lovers of the poem. Likewise, Katharine J. Dell notes a number of Wisdom motifs in

4998-455: The Song of Songs , which are considered the pinnacle of his biblical exegesis . In them, he compares the bride to the soul and the invisible groom to God: the finite soul is incessantly reaching out towards the infinite God and remains continually disappointed in this life due to the failure to achieve ecstatic union with the beloved, a vision which enraptures and can be achieved fully and perfectly only in life after death. Similarly, following

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5096-561: The Song of Songs to be an erotic poem. Song of Songs is one of the overtly mystical Biblical texts for the Kabbalah , which gave an esoteric interpretation on all the Hebrew Bible. Following the dissemination of the Zohar in the 13th century, Jewish mysticism took on a metaphorically anthropomorphic erotic element, and Song of Songs is an example of this. In Zoharic Kabbalah, God is represented by

5194-472: The Song such as parallels between the lovers and the advices and conduct of Woman Wisdom and the Loose Woman of Proverbs , among others. The Song was accepted into the Jewish canon of scripture in the 2nd century CE, after a period of controversy in the 1st century. This period of controversy was a result of many rabbis seeing this text as merely "secular love poetry, a collection of love songs gathered around

5292-469: The Song, leads me, in conclusion, to the Song's unique contribution to the conceptualization of love in the Bible: its romantic vision of love". The historian and rabbi Shaye J. D. Cohen summarises: Song of Songs [is a] collection of love poems sung by him to her and her to him: [– –] While authorship is ascribed to Solomon in its first verse and by traditionalists, [modern Bible scholarship] argues that while

5390-658: The United States. According to the ACS 1-year estimates, in 2018, the median income of a city household was $ 93,481, and the median income for a family was $ 130,656. 11.0% of the population and 6.6% of families were below the poverty line. Of people living in poverty, 11.4% were under the age of 18 and 10.9% were 65 or older. According to a 2024 study by Henley & Partners , the city of Seattle has an estimated 54,200 millionaires and 11 billionaires. Song of Songs The Song of Songs ( Biblical Hebrew : שִׁיר הַשִּׁירִים ‎ , romanized:  Šīr hašŠīrīm ), also called

5488-512: The United States. Its growth rate of 21.1% between 2010 and 2020 made it one of the country's fastest-growing large cities. Seattle is situated on an isthmus between Puget Sound , an inlet of the Pacific Ocean , and Lake Washington . It is the northernmost major city in the United States, located about 100 miles (160 km) south of the Canadian border . A gateway for trade with East Asia ,

5586-504: The abrupt shifts of scene, speaker, subject matter and mood, and the lack of obvious structure or narrative. Those who hold it to be a single poem point out that it has no internal signs of composite origins, and view the repetitions and similarities among its parts as evidence of unity. Some claim to find a conscious artistic design underlying it, but there is no agreement among them on what this might be. The question, therefore, remains unresolved. The consensus among contemporary scholars of

5684-488: The ascription to the 10th-century BCE King of Israel Solomon indicates. Instead, it celebrates sexual love, giving "the voices of two lovers, praising each other, yearning for each other, proffering invitations to enjoy". The two lovers are in harmony, each desiring the other and rejoicing in sexual intimacy . Modern scholarship tends to hold that the lovers in the Song are unmarried, which accords with its near ancient Near East context. The women of Jerusalem form

5782-617: The bigger West Coast city. Seattle had building contracts that rivaled New York City and Chicago , but also lost to Los Angeles. Seattle's eastern farm land faded due to Oregon 's and the Midwest 's, forcing people into town. Hooverville arose during the Depression, leading to Seattle's growing homeless population. Stationed outside Seattle, the Hooverville housed thousands of men but very few children and no women. With work projects close to

5880-442: The book may contain ancient material, there is no evidence that Solomon wrote it. [– –] What is a collection of erotic poems doing in the Hebrew Bible? Indeed, some ancient rabbis were uneasy about the book’s inclusion in the canon. Several scholars have also argued that, alongside its condition as love poetry, the Song of Songs also shares a number of features with Wisdom literature . For instance, Jennifer L. Andruska argues that

5978-446: The choir in Benjamin Britten 's War Requiem , Bach's Mass in B Minor and St. John Passion , Igor Stravinsky 's Les Noces , Sergei Rachmaninoff 's Vespers , Johannes Brahms 's Liebeslieder Walzer , and Giuseppe Verdi 's Requiem . During Sparks's tenure, the Choir of the West recorded five concert albums. Sparks founded Choral Arts Northwest (later Choral Arts) , a Seattle-based chamber choir ensemble, in 1993 and

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6076-429: The city emerged from the Great Recession , commencing when Amazon moved its headquarters from North Beacon Hill to South Lake Union . The move initiated a historic construction boom which resulted in the completion of almost 10,000 apartments in Seattle in 2017, more than any previous year and nearly twice as many as were built in 2016. From 2010 to 2015, Seattle gained an average of 14,511 residents per year, with

6174-430: The city's population by almost 50,000 in the decade between 1990 and 2000. The culture of Seattle is heavily defined by its significant musical history . Between 1918 and 1951, nearly 24 jazz nightclubs existed along Jackson Street, from the current Chinatown/International District to the Central District . The jazz scene nurtured the early careers of Ernestine Anderson , Ray Charles , Quincy Jones , and others. In

6272-464: The city, Hooverville grew and the WPA settled into the city. A movement of women arose from Seattle during the Great Depression , fueled in part by Eleanor Roosevelt 's 1933 book It's Up to the Women ; women pushed for recognition, not just as housewives, but as the backbone to family. Using newspapers and journals Working Woman and The Woman Today , women pushed to be seen as equal and receive some recognition. The Great Depression did not impact

6370-433: The city. In 1990, the Goodwill Games were held in the city. Three years later, in 1993, the APEC leaders was hosted in Seattle. The 1990s also witnessed a growing popularity in grunge music, a sound that was largely developed in Seattle's independent music scene. In 1993, the movie Sleepless in Seattle brought the city further national attention, as did the television sitcom Frasier . The dot-com boom caused

6468-511: The date "1869" and a likeness of Chief Seattle in left profile. That same year, Seattle acquired the epithet of the "Queen City", a designation officially changed in 1982 to the "Emerald City". Seattle has a history of boom-and-bust cycles, like many other cities near areas of extensive natural and mineral resources. Seattle has risen several times economically, then gone into precipitous decline, but it has typically used those periods to rebuild solid infrastructure. The first such boom, covering

6566-410: The daughters of Jerusalem of another dream. She was in her chamber when her lover knocked. She was slow to open, and when she did, he was gone. She searched through the streets again, but this time she failed to find him and the watchmen, who had helped her before, now beat her. She asks the daughters of Jerusalem to help her find him, and describes his physical good looks. Eventually, she admits her lover

6664-533: The early 1980s, Sparks grew interested in Swedish choral music and the work of conductor Eric Ericson . He received doctor of musical arts in choral conducting from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music , and his doctoral dissertation on postwar Swedish choral music was later published as The Swedish Choral Miracle . In 1983, Sparks became conductor of the Choir of the West and director of choral activities at Pacific Lutheran University . He remained there until 2001, during which time he directed

6762-453: The early part of the 20th century, and funded many new Seattle companies and products. In 1907, 19-year-old James E. Casey borrowed $ 100 from a friend and founded the American Messenger Company (later UPS ). Other Seattle companies founded during this period include Nordstrom and Eddie Bauer . Seattle brought in the Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm to design a system of parks and boulevards. The Gold Rush era culminated in

6860-486: The early years of the city, rode on the lumber industry. During this period the road now known as Yesler Way won the nickname "Skid Road", supposedly after the timber skidding down the hill to Henry Yesler 's sawmill. The later dereliction of the area may be a possible origin for the term which later entered the wider American lexicon as Skid Row . Like much of the U.S. West , Seattle experienced conflicts between labor and management and ethnic tensions that culminated in

6958-537: The essential unity of God. This elevation of the world is aroused from above on the Sabbath, a foretaste of the redeemed purpose of Creation. The text thus became a description, depending on the aspect, of the creation of the world, the passage of Shabbat , the covenant with Israel, and the coming of the Messianic age. " Lecha Dodi ", a 16th-century liturgical song with strong Kabbalistic symbolism, contains many passages, including its opening two words, taken directly from Song of Songs. In modern Judaism, certain verses from

7056-464: The fifth-largest LGBT community in the U.S. Logging was Seattle's first major industry, but by the late 19th century the city had become a commercial and shipbuilding center as a gateway to Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush . The city grew after World War II , partly due to the local company Boeing , which established Seattle as a center for its manufacturing of aircraft. Beginning in

7154-468: The founders of Duwamps, was the primary advocate to name the settlement Seattle after Chief Seattle ( Lushootseed : siʔaɫ , anglicized as "Seattle"), chief of the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes. The name "Seattle" appears on official Washington Territory papers dated May 23, 1853, when the first plats for the village were filed. In 1855, nominal land settlements were established. On January 14, 1865,

7252-407: The fruits of the woman's garden. The woman invites him to a tryst in the fields. She once more warns the daughters of Jerusalem against waking love until it is ready. The woman compares love to death and Sheol : love is as relentless and jealous as these two, and cannot be quenched by any force. She summons her lover, using the language used before: he should come "like a gazelle or a young stag upon

7350-411: The growth strongly skewed toward the center of the city, and unemployment dropped from roughly 9 percent to 3.6 percent. The city has found itself "bursting at the seams", with over 45,000 households spending more than half their income on housing and at least 2,800 people homeless , and with the country's sixth-worst rush-hour traffic. Seattle is located between the saltwater Puget Sound (an arm of

7448-401: The hilliest areas are near the city center, with Capitol Hill, First Hill, and Beacon Hill collectively constituting something of a ridge along an isthmus between Elliott Bay and Lake Washington. The break in the ridge between First Hill and Beacon Hill is man-made, a result of two of the many regrading projects that reshaped the topography of the city center. The topography of the city center

7546-418: The last person leaving Seattle – Turn out the lights." Seattle remained the corporate headquarters of Boeing until 2001, when the company separated its headquarters from its major production facilities; the headquarters were moved to Chicago. The Seattle area is still home to Boeing's Renton narrow-body plant and Everett wide-body plant . The company's credit union for employees, BECU , remains based in

7644-425: The late 19th and early 20th centuries were almost entirely from Guangdong Province . The Seattle area is also home to a large Vietnamese population of more than 55,000 residents, as well as over 30,000 Somali immigrants. The Seattle-Tacoma area is also home to one of the largest Cambodian communities in the United States, numbering about 19,000 Cambodian Americans, and one of the largest Samoan communities in

7742-456: The late 20th and early 21st century, the city also was the origin of several rock bands, including Foo Fighters , Heart , and Jimi Hendrix , and the subgenre of grunge and its pioneering bands, including Alice in Chains , Nirvana , Pearl Jam , Soundgarden , and others. Archaeological excavations suggest that Native Americans have inhabited the Seattle area for at least 4,000 years. By

7840-423: The lilies". The woman again addresses the daughters of Jerusalem, describing her fervent and ultimately successful search for her lover through the night-time streets of the city. When she finds him she takes him almost by force into the chamber in which she was conceived. She reveals that this is a dream, seen on her "bed at night", and ends by again warning the daughters of Jerusalem "not to stir up love until it

7938-483: The mainland U.S., with over 15,000 people having Samoan ancestry. Additionally, the Seattle area had the highest percentage of self-identified mixed-race people of any large metropolitan area in the United States, according to the 2000 United States Census Bureau. According to a 2012 HistoryLink study, Seattle's 98118 ZIP code (in the Columbia City neighborhood) was one of the most diverse ZIP Code Tabulation Areas in

8036-606: The miners in Alaska and the Yukon . Few of those working men found lasting wealth. However, it was Seattle's business of clothing the miners and feeding them salmon that panned out in the long run. Along with Seattle, other cities like Everett , Tacoma , Port Townsend , Bremerton , and Olympia , all in the Puget Sound region, became competitors for exchange, rather than mother lodes for extraction, of precious metals. The boom lasted into

8134-463: The mountain of spices". The poem seems to be rooted in festive performance, and connections have been proposed with the "sacred marriage" of Ishtar and Tammuz . It offers no clue to its author or to the date, place, or circumstances of its composition. The superscription states that it is "Solomon's", but even if this is meant to identify the author, it cannot be read as strictly as a similar modern statement. The most reliable evidence for its date

8232-469: The original landing location, reestablished their old land claim and called it "New York", but renamed "New York Alki" in April 1853, from a Chinook word meaning, roughly, "by and by" or "someday". For the next few years, New York Alki and Duwamps competed for dominance, but in time Alki was abandoned and its residents moved across the bay to join the rest of the settlers. David Swinson "Doc" Maynard , one of

8330-411: The population, Spanish was spoken by 4.5% of the population, speakers of other Indo-European languages made up 3.9%, and speakers of other languages made up 2.5%. Seattle's foreign-born population grew 40% between the 1990 and 2000 censuses. The Chinese population in the Seattle area has origins in mainland China , Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and Taiwan . The earliest Chinese-Americans that came in

8428-567: The production of Boeing aircraft. The war dispersed the city's numerous Japanese-American businessmen due to the Japanese American internment . After the World War II, however, the local economy dipped. It rose again with Boeing's growing dominance in the commercial airliner market. Seattle celebrated its restored prosperity and made a bid for world recognition with the Century 21 Exposition ,

8526-399: The relationship of God and man; in order to find such a meaning it was necessary to turn to allegory, treating the love that the Song celebrates as an analogy for the love between God and Church. The Christian church's interpretation of the Song as evidence of God's love for his people, both collectively and individually, began with Origen . Saint Gregory of Nyssa wrote fifteen Homilies on

8624-426: The scent of Lebanon . He hastens to summon his beloved, saying that he is ravished by even a single glance. The section becomes a "garden poem", in which he describes her as a "locked garden" (usually taken to mean that she is chaste). The woman invites the man to enter the garden and taste the fruits. The man accepts the invitation, and a third party tells them to eat, drink, "and be drunk with love". The woman tells

8722-465: The time the first European settlers arrived, the Duwamish people occupied at least 17 villages in the areas around Elliott Bay . The name for the modern city of Seattle in Lushootseed , dᶻidᶻəlal̓ič , meaning "little crossing-over place", comes from one of these villages, which was located at the present-day King Street Station . In May 1792, George Vancouver was the first European to visit

8820-438: The use of the Song of Songs in popular celebrations. He reportedly said, "He who sings the Song of Songs in wine taverns, treating it as if it were a vulgar song, forfeits his share in the world to come". However, Rabbi Akiva famously defended the canonicity of the Song of Songs, reportedly saying when the question came up of whether it should be considered a defiling work, "God forbid! [...] For all of eternity in its entirety

8918-408: The woman's expression of desire for her lover and her self-description to the "daughters of Jerusalem": she insists on her sun-born blackness, likening it to the "tents of Kedar " (nomads) and the "curtains of Solomon". A dialogue between the lovers follows: the woman asks the man to meet; he replies with a lightly teasing tone. The two compete in offering flattering compliments ("my beloved is to me as

9016-731: Was also changed by the construction of a seawall and the artificial Harbor Island (completed 1909) at the mouth of the city's industrial Duwamish Waterway , the terminus of the Green River . The highest point within city limits is at High Point in West Seattle, which is located near 35th Ave SW and SW Myrtle St. North of the city center, the Lake Washington Ship Canal connects Puget Sound to Lake Washington. It incorporates four natural bodies of water: Lake Union , Salmon Bay , Portage Bay , and Union Bay . Due to its location in

9114-474: Was founded in the immediate wake of the fire. The Panic of 1893 hit Seattle hard. The second and most dramatic boom resulted from the Klondike Gold Rush , which ended the depression that had begun with the Panic of 1893 . In a short time, Seattle became a major transportation center. On July 14, 1897, the S.S. Portland docked with its famed "ton of gold", and Seattle became the main transport and supply point for

9212-466: Was its artistic director until 2006. Choral Arts is known for its repertoire of sacred music and a sound inspired by Swedish choirs. From 1999-2011, Sparks was artistic director of Pro Coro Canada in Edmonton , where his repertoire has included (again) Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers and Bach's B Minor Mass , as well as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart' s Requiem and Gabriel Fauré's Requiem in D Minor . He received

9310-705: Was mildly prosperous in the 1920s but was particularly hard hit in the Great Depression, experiencing some of the country's harshest labor strife in that era. Violence during the Maritime Strike of 1934 cost Seattle much of its maritime traffic, which was rerouted to the Port of Los Angeles . The Great Depression in Seattle affected many minority groups, one being the Asian Pacific Americans; they were subject to racism, loss of property, and failed claims of unemployment due to citizenship status. Seattle

9408-485: Was one of the major cities that benefited from programs such as the Works Progress Administration , CCC , Public Works Administration , and others. The workers, mostly men, built roads, parks, dams, schools, railroads, bridges, docks, and even historical and archival record sites and buildings. Seattle faced significant unemployment, loss of lumber and construction industries as Los Angeles prevailed as

9506-448: Was one of the whitest big cities in the country, although its proportion of white residents has been gradually declining. In 1960, whites constituted 91.6% of the city's population, while in 2010 they constituted 69.5%. According to the 2006–2008 American Community Survey , approximately 78.9% of residents over the age of five spoke only English at home. Those who spoke Asian languages other than Indo-European languages made up 10.2% of

9604-521: Was written, with estimates ranging from the 10th to 2nd century BCE, linguistic analysis suggest an origin in the 3rd century. In modern Judaism , the Song is read on the Sabbath during the Passover , which marks the beginning of the grain-harvest as well as commemorating the Exodus from Biblical Egypt . Jewish tradition reads it as an allegory of the relationship between God and Israel. In Christianity , it

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