Question:
Passage: Ice skater Frances Marlowe, who has just signed a lucrative contract with an ice show, is driving with her manager, Dan Morton, when her car is struck by a truck. Dr. James Kildare and his fiancée, nurse Mary Lamont, see the accident and help the victims, who are only slightly hurt, except for Frances, who has a compound fracture of the leg and a ruptured spleen. Because Kildare is certain that Frances will die from internal bleeding if he does not operate immediately, he performs surgery before the ambulance arrives. Back at New York's Blair General Hospital, Kildare gives her a transfusion under the watchful eye of his diagnostician mentor, crusty Dr. Leonard Gillespie.
Morton arrives with an insurance investigator and overhears orderly Vernon Briggs joke about a half-empty whiskey bottle being found in the car Kildare borrowed from Molly Byrd, superintendent of nurses. Weeks later, when the cast is removed from Frances' leg, she is unable to move it. In hysterics she blames the paralysis on Kildare. Gillespie and Kildare have no idea what is causing the paralysis and are shocked when Frances sues Kildare and the hospital for malpractice. Kildare must face trial and Gillespie fears that a jury of laymen will side with the patient. Hospital administrator Dr. Carew wants to settle the case out of court, but Kildare insists on going through with it to protect his standing as a doctor.
During the trial, Frances' aggressive attorney establishes that the liquor bottle was found in the car to imply that Kildare had been drinking. Further testimony makes the case seem hopeless until Vernon, who first saw the bottle, suggests during a recess where it might have come from. Kildare goes to see the driver of the truck, who admits that he hid the bottle in Kildare's car because he did not want to be accused of driving drunk, but says that Frances could have prevented the collision but seemed "paralyzed.".

Passage: Norman Pitkin is the apprentice to Mr Grimsdale an old fashioned butcher. When the store is raided by a young thug, Mr Grimsdale (at Norman's suggestion) puts his gold watch in his mouth for safe keeping. The result of which leads to Mr Grimsdale accidentally swallowing the watch and sent to hospital. Whilst visiting Mr Grimsdale, Norman (in his usual way) accidentally causes chaos around the hospital and meets a girl called Lindy who hasn't spoken since her parents were killed in an aeroplane accident. After Norman is unable to visit Lindy as he is banned from hospital he and Mr. Grimsdale join the St. John Ambulance Brigade which gives him the excuse to visit her, as the usual chaos ensues.  In the end Lindy visits him at a charity ball where the St. John Ambulance Brigade Band are performing. The ball descends into the inevitable shambles, caused entirely by Norman.  However, Norman redeems himself (and the reputation of the Brigade) as he addresses those attending the ball and everyone donates money for the charity.

Passage: A USCG pilot and his winchman Haig answer an SOS call at sea and arrive at a derelict schooner, the Requite. Haig lowers himself to the ship, where he finds three dead bodies along with one survivor, Eva, cowering in the cabin.
As the pilot attempts to retrieve Haig and Eva with a rescue basket, the line breaks, plunging the two into the ocean.  After they swim back to the boat, the pilot informs Haig that he must return to base because his fuel is borderline.  Eva and Haig spend the night on the boat, during which time she recounts the story of the storm that killed everyone else aboard. She explains to him that the strange events began soon after they found a priest drifting in the ocean, apparently a survivor of a disaster. Then, she tells Haig of the violent storm that caused all of the freakish deaths on the boat. One man was hurled through a hatch; one is hanging from the ship's mast; another vanished before her eyes; and a fourth man is in an aft compartment, floating in the air.
Eva attributes the deaths to supernatural causes, but Haig has a practical explanation for everything, including the man who appears to be floating in the air.  Early the next morning, the pilot returns along with the Coast Guard cutter Venturous.  Haig and Eva are transferred from the Requite to the deck of the Venturous, where they board the helicopter for the flight back to Miami.  At the same time, Coast Guard personnel from the Venturous investigate the wrecked schooner.
The story takes a bizarre turn when the Venturous' captain calls Haig to tell him that what they found on the ship was not what Haig reported. Right after Haig hears about the discovery, another nightmare begins. The film is an example of a twist ending.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: At 3:06 pm, on November 13, 1985, Nevado del Ruiz began to erupt, ejecting dacitic tephra more than 30 kilometres (19 mi) into the atmosphere. The total mass of the erupted material (including magma) was 35 million tonnes—only 3% of the amount that erupted from Mount St. Helens in 1980.  The eruption reached a value of 3 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index. The mass of the ejected sulfur dioxide was about 700,000 tonnes, or about 2% of the mass of the erupted solid material, making the eruption atypically sulfur-rich.The eruption produced pyroclastic flows that melted summit glaciers and snow, generating four thick lahars that raced down river valleys on the volcano's flanks. It also destroyed a small lake that was observed in Arenas crater several months before the eruption. Water in such volcanic lakes tends to be extremely salty and contain dissolved volcanic gases. The lake's hot, acidic water significantly accelerated the melting of the ice; this effect was confirmed by the large amounts of sulfates and chlorides found in the lahar flow.
The lahars, formed of water, ice, pumice, and other rocks, mixed with clay as they travelled down the volcano's flanks. They ran down the volcano's sides at an average speed of 60 km per hour, eroding soil, dislodging rock, and destroying vegetation. After descending thousands of meters down the side of the volcano, the lahars were directed into all of the six river valleys leading from the volcano. While in the river valleys, the lahars grew to almost 4 times their original volume. In the Gualí River, a lahar reached a maximum width of 50 meters (200 ft).One of the lahars virtually erased the town of Armero in Tolima, which lay in the Lagunilla River valley. Only one quarter of its 28,700 inhabitants survived. The second lahar, which descended through the valley of Chinchiná River, killed about 1,800 people and destroyed about 400 homes in the town of Chinchiná, in the department of Caldas. In total, over 23,000 people were killed and approximately 5,000 were injured. More than 5,000 homes were destroyed. The Armero tragedy, as the event came to be known, was the second-deadliest volcanic disaster in the 20th century, being surpassed only by the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée, and is the fourth-deadliest volcanic eruption in recorded history. It is also the deadliest known lahar, and Colombia's worst natural disaster. A young girl named Omayra Sánchez became a worldwide symbol of the disaster after images of her trapped under the debris of her former home, after the eruption made the news worldwide.

Passage: Harry Glicken (March 7, 1958 – June 3, 1991) was an American volcanologist. He researched Mount St. Helens in the United States before and after its 1980 eruption, and was very distraught about the death of fellow volcanologist David A. Johnston, who had switched shifts with Glicken so that the latter could attend an interview. In 1991, while conducting avalanche research on Mount Unzen in Japan, Glicken and fellow volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft were killed by a pyroclastic flow. His remains were found four days later, and were cremated in accordance with his parents' request. Glicken and Johnston remain the only American volcanologists known to have died in volcanic eruptions.
Despite a long-term interest in working for the United States Geological Survey, Glicken never received a permanent post there because employees found him eccentric. Conducting independent research from sponsorships granted by the National Science Foundation and other organizations, Glicken accrued expertise in the field of volcanic debris avalanches. He also wrote several major publications on the topic, including his doctoral dissertation based on his research at St. Helens titled "Rockslide-debris Avalanche of May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens Volcano, Washington" that initiated widespread interest in the phenomenon. Since being published posthumously by Glicken's colleagues in 1996, the report has been acknowledged by many other publications on debris avalanches. Following his death, Glicken was praised by associates for his love of volcanoes and commitment to his field.

Passage: Mount St. Helens remained dormant from its last period of activity in the 1840s and 1850s until March 1980. Several small earthquakes, beginning on March 15, indicated that magma may have begun moving below the volcano. On March 20, at 3:45 p.m. Pacific Standard Time (all times will be in PST or PDT), a shallow magnitude 4.2 earthquake centered below the volcano's north flank, signaled the volcano's violent return from 123 years of hibernation. A gradually building earthquake swarm saturated area seismographs and started to climax at about noon on March 25, reaching peak levels in the next two days, including an earthquake registering 5.1 on the Richter scale. A total of 174 shocks of magnitude 2.6 or greater were recorded during those two days.
Shocks of magnitude 3.2 or greater occurred at a slightly increasing rate during April and May with five earthquakes of magnitude 4 or above per day in early April, and eight per day the week before May 18. Initially there was no direct sign of eruption, but small earthquake-induced avalanches of snow and ice were reported from aerial observations.
At 12:36 p.m. on March 27, phreatic eruptions (explosions of steam caused by magma suddenly heating groundwater) ejected and smashed rock from within the old summit crater, excavating a new crater 250 feet (75 m) wide, and sending an ash column about 7,000 feet (2.1 km) into the air. By this date a 16,000-foot-long (3.0 mi; 4.9 km) eastward-trending fracture system had also developed across the summit area. This was followed by more earthquake swarms and a series of steam explosions that sent ash 10,000 to 11,000 feet (3,000 to 3,400 m) above their vent. Most of this ash fell between three and twelve miles (5 and 19 km) from its vent, but some was carried 150 miles (240 km) south to Bend, Oregon, or 285 miles (460 km) east to Spokane, Washington.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: Grunge is generally characterized by a sludgy electric guitar sound with a "thick" middle register and rolled-off treble tone and a high level of distortion and fuzz, typically created with small 1970s-style stompbox pedals, with some guitarists chaining several fuzz pedals together and plugging them into a tube amplifier and speaker cabinet. Grunge guitarists use very loud Marshall guitar amplifiers  and some used powerful Mesa-Boogie amplifiers, including Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl (the latter in early, grunge-oriented Foo Fighters songs ). Grunge has been called the rock genre with the most "lugubrious sound"; the use of heavy distortion and loud amps has been compared to a massive "buildup of sonic fog". or even dismissed as "noise" by one critic. As with metal and punk, a key part of grunge's sound is very distorted power chords played on the electric guitar.Whereas metal guitarists' overdriven sound generally comes from a combination of overdriven amplifiers and distortion pedals, grunge guitarists typically got all of their "dirty" sound from overdrive and fuzz pedals, with the amp just used to make the sound louder. Grunge guitarists tended to use the Fender Twin Reverb and the Fender Champion 100 combo amps (Cobain used both of these amps). The use of pedals by grunge guitarists was a move away from the expensive, studio-grade rackmount effects units used in other rock genres. The positive way that grunge bands viewed stompbox pedals can be seen in Mudhoney's use of the name of two overdrive pedals, the Univox Super-Fuzz and the Big Muff, in the title of their "debut EP Superfuzz Bigmuff".  In the song Mudride, the band's guitars were said to have "growled malevolently" through its "Cro-magnon slog".

Passage: Other key pedals used by grunge bands included four brands of distortion pedals (the Big Muff, DOD and BOSS DS-2 and BOSS DS-1 distortion pedals) and the Small Clone chorus effect, used by Kurt Cobain on "Come As You Are" and by the Screaming Trees on "Nearly Lost You". The RAT distortion pedal played a key role in Cobain's switching from quiet to loud and back to quiet approach to songwriting. The use of small pedals by grunge guitarists helped to start off the revival of interest in boutique, hand-soldered, 1970s-style analog pedals. The other effect that grunge guitarists used was one of the most low-tech effects devices, the wah-wah pedal. Both "[Kim] Thayil and Alice in Chains' Jerry Cantrell ... were great advocates of the wah wah pedal." Wah was also used by the Screaming Trees, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Mudhoney and Dinosaur Jr.Grunge guitarists played loud, with Kurt Cobain's early guitar sound coming from an unusual set-up of four 800 watt PA system power amplifiers. Guitar feedback effects, in which a highly amplified electric guitar is held in front of its speaker, were used to create high-pitched, sustained sounds that are not possible with regular guitar technique. Grunge guitarists were influenced by the raw, primitive sound of punk, and they favored "... energy and lack of finesse over technique and precision"; key guitar influences included the Sex Pistols, The Dead Boys, Celtic Frost, Voivod, Neil Young (Rust Never Sleeps, side two), The Replacements, Hüsker Dü, Black Flag and The Melvins. Grunge guitarists often downtuned their instruments for a lower, heavier sound. Soundgarden's guitarist, Kim Thayil, did not use a regular guitar amplifier; instead, he used a bass combo amp equipped with a 15-inch speaker as he played low riffs, and the bass amp gave him a deeper tone.

Passage: Conversely, another rock genre, Britpop, emerged in part as a reaction against the dominance of grunge in the United Kingdom. In contrast to the dourness of grunge, Britpop was defined by "youthful exuberance and desire for recognition". The leading Britpop bands, "Blur and Oasis[,] exist[ed] as reactionary forces to [grunge's] eternal downcast glare."  Britpop artists' new approach was inspired by Blur's tour of the United States in the spring of 1992. Justine Frischmann, formerly of Suede and leader of Elastica (and at the time in a relationship with Damon Albarn) explained, "Damon and I felt like we were in the thick of it at that point ... it occurred to us that Nirvana were out there, and people were very interested in American music, and there should be some sort of manifesto for the return of Britishness."Britpop artists were vocal about their disdain for grunge. In a 1993 NME interview, Damon Albarn of Britpop band Blur agreed with interviewer John Harris' assertion that Blur was an "anti-grunge band", and said, "Well, that's good. If punk was about getting rid of hippies, then I'm getting rid of grunge" (ironically Kurt Cobain once cited Blur as his favorite band). Noel Gallagher of Oasis, while a fan of Nirvana, wrote music that refuted the pessimistic nature of grunge. Gallagher noted in 2006 that the 1994 Oasis single "Live Forever" "was written in the middle of grunge and all that, and I remember Nirvana had a tune called 'I Hate Myself and I Want to Die,' and I was like ... 'Well, I'm not fucking having that.' As much as I fucking like him [Cobain] and all that shit, I'm not having that. I can't have people like that coming over here, on smack [heroin], fucking saying that they hate themselves and they wanna die. That's fucking rubbish.".

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Aaliyah was dating co-founder of Roc-A-Fella Records Damon Dash at the time of her death and, though they were not formally engaged, in interviews given after Aaliyah's death, Dash claimed the couple had planned to marry. Aaliyah and Dash met in 2000 through his accountant and formed a friendship. Dash has said he is unsure of how he and Aaliyah started dating and that the two just understood each other. "I don't know [how we got involved], just spending time, you know, we just saw things the same and it was new, you know what I mean? Meeting someone that is trying to do the same thing you are doing in the urban market, in the same urban market place but not really being so urban. It was just; her mind was where my mind was. She understood me and she got my jokes. She thought my jokes were funny."Dash expressed his belief that Aaliyah was the "one" and claimed the pair were not officially engaged, but had spoken about getting married prior to her death.
Aaliyah publicly never addressed the relationship between her and Dash as being anything but platonic. In May 2001, she hosted a party for Dash's 30th birthday at a New York City club, where they were spotted together and Dash was seen escorting her to a bathroom. Addressing this, Aaliyah stated that she and Dash were just "very good friends" and chose to "keep it at that" for the time being. Just two weeks before her death, Aaliyah traveled from New Jersey to East Hampton, New York to visit Dash at the summer house he shared with Jay Z.The couple were separated for long periods at a time, as Dash recalled that Aaliyah continuously shot films and would be gone for months often to come back shortly and continue her schedule. Dash was also committed to "his own thing", which did not make matters any better. Despite this, they were understanding that the time they had together was special. Dash remembered they would "be in a room full of people talking to each other and it felt like everyone was listening but it would be just us. It would be like we were the only ones in the room". Dash always felt their time together was essential and Aaliyah was the person he was interested in being with, which is why, as he claimed, they had begun speaking about engagement. The relationship was mentioned in the lyrics of Jay-Z's remix to her song "Miss You", released after her death.

Passage: After completing Romeo Must Die, Aaliyah began to work on her second film, Queen of the Damned. She played the role of an ancient vampire, Queen Akasha, which she described as a "manipulative, crazy, sexual being". Filming both Romeo Must Die and Queen of the Damned delayed the release of the album. Aaliyah had not intended for her albums to have such a gap between them. "I wanted to take a break after One in a Million to just relax, think about how I wanted to approach the next album. Then, when I was ready to start back up, "Romeo" happened, and so I had to take another break and do that film and then do the soundtrack, then promote it. The break turned into a longer break than I anticipated." Aaliyah enjoyed balancing her singing and acting careers. Though she called music a "first" for her, she also had been acting since she was young and had wanted to begin acting "at some point in my career," but "wanted it to be the right time and the right vehicle" and felt Romeo Must Die "was it".
The role was subsequently recast to Nona Gaye. Aaliyah's scenes were included in the tribute section of the Matrix Ultimate Collection series.In November 2001, Ronald Isley stated that Aaliyah and the Isley Brothers had discussed a collaboration prior to her death. She had previously covered the Isley Brothers' single "At Your Best (You Are Love)". Prior to her death, she expressed the possibility of recording songs for the Queen of The Damned soundtrack and welcomed the possibility of collaborating with Jonathan Davis. By 2001, Aaliyah had enjoyed her now seven-year career and felt a sense of accomplishment. "This is what I always wanted," she said of her career in Vibe magazine. "I breathe to perform, to entertain, I can't imagine myself doing anything else. I'm just a really happy girl right now. I honestly love every aspect of this business. I really do. I feel very fulfilled and complete.".

Passage: Immediately after Aaliyah's death, there was uncertainty over whether the music video for "Rock the Boat" would ever air. It made its world premiere on BET's Access Granted on October 9, 2001. She won two posthumous awards at the American Music Awards of 2002; Favorite Female R&B Artist and Favorite R&B/Soul Album for Aaliyah. Her second and final film, Queen of the Damned, was released in February 2002. Before its release, Aaliyah's brother, Rashad, re-dubbed some of her lines during post-production. It grossed US$15.2 million in its first weekend, ranking number one at the box office. On the first anniversary of Aaliyah's death, a candlelight vigil was held in Times Square; millions of fans observed a moment of silence; and throughout the United States, radio stations played her music in remembrance. In December 2002, a collection of previously unreleased material was released as Aaliyah's first posthumous album, I Care 4 U. A portion of the proceeds was donated to the Aaliyah Memorial Fund, a program that benefits the Revlon UCLA Women's Cancer Research Program and Harlem's Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. It debuted at number three on the Billboard 200, selling 280,000 copies in its first week. The album's lead single, "Miss You", peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. In August of the following year, clothing retailer Christian Dior donated profits from sales in honor of Aaliyah.In 2005, Aaliyah's second compilation album, Ultimate Aaliyah was released in the UK by Blackground Records. Ultimate Aaliyah is a three disc set, which included a greatest hits audio CD and a DVD. Andy Kellman of AllMusic remarked "Ultimate Aaliyah adequately represents the shortened career of a tremendous talent who benefited from some of the best songwriting and production work by Timbaland, Missy Elliott, and R. Kelly." A documentary movie Aaliyah Live in Amsterdam was released in 2011, shortly before the tenth anniversary of Aaliyah's death. The documentary, by Pogus Caesar, contained previously unseen footage shot of her career beginnings in 1995 when she was appearing in the Netherlands.In March 2012, music producer Jeffrey "J-Dub" Walker announced on his Twitter account that a song "Steady Ground", which he produced for Aaliyah's third album, would be included in the forthcoming posthumous Aaliyah album. This second proposed posthumous album would feature this song using demo vocals, as Walker claims the originals were somehow lost by his sound engineer. Aaliyah's brother Rashad later refuted Walker's claim, claiming that "no official album [is] being released and supported by the Haughton family.".

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: According to the artillery officer Anders Gyllenspak, only 40 men, including himself, survived the sinking: Major Johan Klerk, 2 trumpeters, 14 sailors and 22 soldiers, which means that more than 800 had perished. Among them were half a dozen navy and army officers as well as the chief physician of the Admiralty and the fleet apothecary. Altogether around 1,400 men died when Kronan and Svärdet were lost, and in the days following the battle, hundreds of corpses were washed up on the east coast of Öland. According to the vicar of Långlöt parish, 183 men were taken from the beaches and buried at Hulterstad and Stenåsa graveyards. Lorentz Creutz's body was identified and shipped to his estate Sarvlax near the town of Loviisa, Finland, where it was buried. The losses were even worse since Kronan was the flagship and was manned with the best sailors and gunners in the fleet. When Kronan and Svärdet went down, they took with them the navy's entire stock of 30- and 36-pounder guns. Altogether over 300 tonnes of bronze guns worth nearly 250,000 silver dalers went down with the ships, a sum that was slightly higher than the value of the ships themselves.Within a week, the news of the failure at Bornholm and the disaster at Öland reached King Charles, who immediately ordered that a commission be set up to investigate the fiasco. Charles wanted to know if Bär and other officers were guilty of cowardice or incompetence. On 13 June the King wrote that "some of our sea officers have shown such cowardly and careless behavior [that they] have placed the safety, welfare and defense of the kingdom at great peril", and that "such a great crime should be sternly punished". The commission began its work on 7 June 1676 and finished in October 1677, without passing any sentences. Admiral Johan Bär of Nyckeln and Lieutenant Admiral Christer Boije, who ran aground with Äpplet, were never again given a navy command. One of the accused, Hans Clerck of Solen, was promoted to full admiral by the King even before the commission presented its findings.

Passage: Early in March 1676, a Danish fleet of 20 ships under Admiral Niels Juel left Copenhagen. On 29 April it landed troops on Gotland, which soon surrendered. The Swedish fleet was ordered out on 4 May, but experienced adverse winds and was delayed until 19 May. Juel had by then already left Visby, the principal port of Gotland with a garrison force. He headed for Bornholm to join with a small Danish–Dutch squadron in cruising between Scania and the island of Rügen to prevent any Swedish seaborne reinforcement from reaching Pomerania. On 25–26 May the two fleets met each another in the battle of Bornholm. Despite the considerable Swedish advantage in ships, men and guns, they were unable to inflict any losses on the allied force, and lost a fireship and two minor vessels. The battle revealed the lack of coherence and organization within the Swedish ranks, which soured relations between Creutz and his officers.After the failed action, the Swedish fleet anchored off Trelleborg where King Charles was waiting with new orders to recapture Gotland. The fleet was to avoid combat with the allies at least until they reached the northern tip of Öland, where they could fight in friendly waters. When the Swedish fleet left Trelleborg on 30 May they were soon intercepted by the allied fleet, which then began a pursuit. By this time the allies had been reinforced by another small squadron and totaled 42 vessels, with 25 large and medium ships of the line. The reinforcements brought with them a new commander, the Dutch Admiral General Cornelis Tromp, one of the most renowned naval tacticians of his time. The two fleets sailed north and on 1 June passed the northern tip of Öland in a strong gale. The Swedish ships fared poorly in the rough winds, losing masts and spars. The Swedish officers formed a battle line that held together only with great difficulty. They tried to get ahead of Tromp's ships to gain the weather gage by getting between the allies and the shore, and thereby gaining an advantageous tactical position. The Dutch ships of the allied fleet managed to sail close-hauled faster than the rest of the force and slipped between the Swedes and the coast, taking up the crucial weather gage. Later that morning the two fleets closed in on each other and were soon within firing range.

Passage: The SS Claridon is an old ship that is scheduled to be scrapped after just a few more voyages. Cliff and Laurie Henderson and their daughter, Jill, are relocating to Tokyo and decide to sail there on board the ship. A fire in the boiler room is extinguished, but not before a boiler fuel supply valve is fused open. Before Chief Engineer Pringle can manually open a steam relief valve, a huge explosion rips through the boiler room and the many decks situated above it, killing him and some of the passengers and trapping Laurie under a steel beam in their state room, in addition to opening a huge hole in the side of the ship.
Cliff runs back to their state room and can't get Laurie out alone. He then finds Jill trapped on the other side of the room. He tries to use a shattered piece of the bed to get to the other side, but it falls through the huge hole made by the explosion. Third Officer Osborne believes that the crew should start loading the passengers into the lifeboats, but Captain Robert Adams is reluctant, as he never lost a ship. Cliff rescues Jill by using a board to have her crawl across the hole on. Down in the boiler room, Second Engineer Walsh reports to Captain Adams that a seam to the bulkhead has broken away. Cliff tries to get  a steward's help, but to no avail. A passenger states that he overheard his conversation, and wants to help.
Osborne reports that the boiler room is now half full. The ship then begins to transmit an SOS, on orders of Captain Adams. Cliff and a few other men return to his state room to try to help free Laurie, but find that they need a torch.
The carpenter reports to the crew that the boiler room is now two thirds full. Captain Adams makes an announcement to the passengers to put on their life jackets. They then begin loading and launching the lifeboats.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: By December 1899, Tosca was in rehearsal at the Teatro Costanzi. Because of the Roman setting, Ricordi arranged a Roman premiere for the opera, even though this meant that Arturo Toscanini could not conduct it as Puccini had hoped—Toscanini was fully engaged at La Scala in Milan. Leopoldo Mugnone was appointed to conduct. The accomplished (but temperamental) soprano Hariclea Darclée was selected for the title role; Eugenio Giraldoni, whose father had originated many Verdi roles, became the first Scarpia. The young Enrico Caruso had hoped to create Cavaradossi, but was passed over in favour of the more experienced Emilio De Marchi. The performance was to be directed by Nino Vignuzzi, with stage designs by Adolfo Hohenstein.At the time of the premiere, Italy had experienced political and social unrest for several years. The start of the Holy Year in December 1899 attracted the religious to the city, but also brought threats from anarchists and other anticlericals. Police received warnings of an anarchist bombing of the theatre, and instructed Mugnone (who had survived a theatre bombing in Barcelona), that in an emergency he was to strike up the royal march. The unrest caused the premiere to be postponed by one day, to 14 January.By 1900, the premiere of a Puccini opera was a national event. Many Roman dignitaries attended, as did Queen Margherita, though she arrived late, after the first act. The Prime Minister of Italy, Luigi Pelloux was present, with several members of his cabinet. A number of Puccini's operatic rivals were there, including Franchetti, Pietro Mascagni, Francesco Cilea and Ildebrando Pizzetti. Shortly after the curtain was raised there was a disturbance in the back of the theatre, caused by latecomers attempting to enter the auditorium, and a shout of "Bring down the curtain!", at which Mugnone stopped the orchestra. A few moments later the opera began again, and proceeded without further disruption.The performance, while not quite the triumph that Puccini had hoped for, was generally successful, with numerous encores. Much of the critical and press reaction was lukewarm, often blaming Illica's libretto. In response, Illica condemned Puccini for treating his librettists "like stagehands" and reducing the text to a shadow of its original form. Nevertheless, any public doubts about Tosca soon vanished; the premiere was followed by twenty performances, all given to packed houses.

Passage: Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900. The work, based on Victorien Sardou's 1887 French-language dramatic play, La Tosca, is a melodramatic piece set in Rome in June 1800, with the Kingdom of Naples's control of Rome threatened by Napoleon's invasion of Italy. It contains depictions of torture, murder and suicide, as well as some of Puccini's best-known lyrical arias.
Puccini saw Sardou's play when it was touring Italy in 1889 and, after some vacillation, obtained the rights to turn the work into an opera in 1895. Turning the wordy French play into a succinct Italian opera took four years, during which the composer repeatedly argued with his librettists and publisher. Tosca premiered at a time of unrest in Rome, and its first performance was delayed for a day for fear of disturbances. Despite indifferent reviews from the critics, the opera was an immediate success with the public.
Musically, Tosca is structured as a through-composed work, with arias, recitative, choruses and other elements musically woven into a seamless whole. Puccini used Wagnerian leitmotifs to identify characters, objects and ideas. While critics have often dismissed the opera as a facile melodrama with confusions of plot—musicologist Joseph Kerman called it a "shabby little shocker"—the power of its score and the inventiveness of its orchestration have been widely acknowledged. The dramatic force of Tosca and its characters continues to fascinate both performers and audiences, and the work remains one of the most frequently performed operas. Many recordings of the work have been issued, both of studio and live performances.

Passage: With the piece set to open on 26 December, Gilbert first read the libretto to the cast on 14 December, but Toole, who was playing the central role of Thespis, did not return from a tour of the British provinces until 18 December. He then appeared in nine performances at the Gaiety in the six days immediately after his return, and other actors had similar commitments. In addition, Hollingshead had committed the company to perform a pantomime at The Crystal Palace on 21 December, which included many of the performers who would be in Thespis. Lastly, Thespis was to play as the afterpiece to an H. J. Byron comedy, Dearer than Life, which shared many of its actors, including Toole and Fred Sullivan, and had to be rehearsed at the same time.Despite the short time available for rehearsals, Sullivan recalled that Gilbert insisted that the chorus play a major role, as it would do in their later Savoy operas:
Until Gilbert took the matter in hand choruses were dummy concerns, and were practically nothing more than a part of the stage setting. It was in 'Thespis' that Gilbert began to carry out his expressed determination to get the chorus to play its proper part in the performance. At this moment it seems difficult to realise that the idea of the chorus being anything more than a sort of stage audience was, at that time, a tremendous novelty. In consequence of this innovation, some of the incidents at the rehearsal of 'Thespis' were rather amusing. I remember that, on one occasion, one of the principals became quite indignant and said, 'Really, Mr. Gilbert, why should I stand here? I am not a chorus-girl!' to which Gilbert replied curtly, 'No, madam, your voice is not strong enough, or no doubt you would be.'.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: During the spring of 1990, Anjali Dutt was hired to replace Moulder, who had left to work with the bands Shakespears Sister and Ride. Dutt assisted in the recording of vocals and several guitar tracks. During this period, the band recorded in various studios, often spending a single day at a studio before deciding it was unsuitable. In May 1990, My Bloody Valentine settled on Protocol in Holloway as their primary location, and work began in earnest on the album, as well as a second EP titled Tremolo. Like Glider, Tremolo contained a song—"To Here Knows When"—that later appeared on Loveless. The band stopped recording during the summer of 1990 to tour in support of the release of Glider. When Moulder returned to the project in August, he was surprised by how little work had been completed. By that point, Creation was concerned by how much the album was costing. Moulder left again in March 1991 to work for the the Jesus and Mary Chain. In an interview with Select, Shields explained the stop-start nature of his recording, using "When You Sleep" as an example:We recorded the drums in September '89. The guitar was done in December. The bass was done in April. 1990 we're in, now. Then nothing happens for a year really." So it doesn't have vocals at this stage? "No." Does it have words? "No." Does it even have a title? "No. It has a song number. 'Song 12' it was called. And… I'm trying to remember… the melody line was done in '91. The vocals were '91. There were huge gaps though. Months and months of not touching songs. Years. I used to forget what tunings I'd used.

Passage: On March 19, 2002, Audioslave was confirmed for the seventh annual Ozzfest; despite, at that time, having neither an official name nor a release date for their debut album. A few days later, reports surfaced that the band had broken up before they had played for a public audience. Cornell's manager confirmed that the frontman had left the band, with no explanation given.Initial rumors suggested that Cornell took issue with having two managers actively involved in the project (Jim Guerinot of Rebel Waltz represented Cornell, and Peter Mensch of Q Prime handled Rage Against the Machine). According to the band, however, the split was not triggered by personal conflicts, but by their quarreling managers. After the mixing of the album was finished, roughly six weeks later, the group reformed and simultaneously fired their former management companies and hired another, The Firm. Their previous labels, Epic and Interscope, settled their differences by agreeing to alternate who released the band's albums.Meanwhile, 13 rough mixes of songs the band had created months previously were leaked to peer-to-peer filesharing networks in May 2002, under the name "Civilian" (or "The Civilian Project"). According to Morello, the songs were unfinished and, in some cases, "weren't even the same lyrics, guitar solos, performances of any kind." To MTV, he described them as "inferior sketches of works-in-progress, sent to Seattle for Chris to work on. Someone at that studio helped themselves to a copy and, after eight months, it made its way to an Italian website. Then it went global and everyone thought they had the record, which was so frustrating.".

Passage: Looking for a harder-hitting rock sound than that of All That You Can't Leave Behind, U2 began recording their eleventh studio album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, in February 2003 with producer Chris Thomas. After nine months of work, the band had an album's worth of material ready for release, but they were not satisfied with the results; Mullen said that the songs "had no magic". The group subsequently enlisted Steve Lillywhite to take over as producer in Dublin in January 2004. Lillywhite, along with his assistant Jacknife Lee, spent six months with the band reworking songs and encouraging better performances. Several other producers received credits on the album, including Lanois, Eno, Flood, Carl Glanville, and Nellee Hooper; Bono acknowledged that the involvement of multiple producers affected the record's "sonic cohesion".
Released in November 2004, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb received favourable reviews from critics. The album featured lyrics touching on life, death, love, war, faith, and family. It reached number one in 30 countries, including the US, where first-week sales of 840,000 copies nearly doubled those of All That You Can't Leave Behind, setting a personal best for the band. Overall, it sold 9 million copies globally. For the album's release, U2 partnered with Apple for several cross-promotions: the first single, "Vertigo", was featured in a television advertisement for the company's iPod music player, while a U2-branded iPod and digital box set exclusive to the iTunes Store were released. "Vertigo" was an international hit, topping the charts in Ireland and the UK, while reaching number two in Canada, number five in Australia, and number 31 in the US. The song won three Grammy Awards, including one for Best Rock Song. Other singles from the album were also hits; "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own", written as a tribute to Bono's late father, went to number one in the UK and Canada, while "City of Blinding Lights" reached number two in both regions. In March 2005, U2 were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Bruce Springsteen in their first year of eligibility. During his speech, Springsteen said the band had "beaten [the odds] by continuing to do their finest work and remaining at the top of their game and the charts for 25 years".

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: By the time El Greco arrived in Rome, Michelangelo and Raphael were dead, but their example continued to be paramount, and somewhat overwhelming for young painters. El Greco was determined to make his own mark in Rome defending his personal artistic views, ideas and style. He singled out Correggio and Parmigianino for particular praise, but he did not hesitate to dismiss Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel; he extended an offer to Pope Pius V to paint over the whole work in accord with the new and stricter Catholic thinking. When he was later asked what he thought about Michelangelo, El Greco replied that "he was a good man, but he did not know how to paint". And thus we are confronted by a paradox: El Greco is said to have reacted most strongly or even condemned Michelangelo, but found it impossible to withstand his influence. Michelangelo's influence can be seen in later El Greco works such as the Allegory of the Holy League. By painting portraits of Michelangelo, Titian, Clovio and, presumably, Raphael in one of his works (The Purification of the Temple), El Greco not only expressed his gratitude but also advanced the claim to rival these masters. As his own commentaries indicate, El Greco viewed Titian, Michelangelo and Raphael as models to emulate. In his 17th century Chronicles, Giulio Mancini included El Greco among the painters who had initiated, in various ways, a re-evaluation of Michelangelo's teachings.Because of his unconventional artistic beliefs (such as his dismissal of Michelangelo's technique) and personality, El Greco soon acquired enemies in Rome. Architect and writer Pirro Ligorio called him a "foolish foreigner", and newly discovered archival material reveals a skirmish with Farnese, who obliged the young artist to leave his palace. On 6 July 1572, El Greco officially complained about this event. A few months later, on 18 September 1572, he paid his dues to the Guild of Saint Luke in Rome as a miniature painter. At the end of that year, El Greco opened his own workshop and hired as assistants the painters Lattanzio Bonastri de Lucignano and Francisco Preboste.

Passage: Seoba Srba (English: Migration of the Serbs) is a set of four similar oil paintings by the Serbian artist Paja Jovanović that depict Serbs, led by Archbishop Arsenije III, fleeing Old Serbia during the Great Serb Migration of 1690–91. The first was commissioned in 1895 by Georgije Branković, the Patriarch of Karlovci, to be displayed at the following year's Budapest Millennium Exhibition. In the view of the Serbian clergy, it would serve to legitimize Serb claims to religious autonomy and partial self-administration in Austria-Hungary by upholding the contention that Serbs left their homeland at the behest of the Holy Roman Emperor to protect the Habsburg Monarchy's borders.
Measuring 380 by 580 centimetres (150 by 230 in), the first painting was completed in 1896, and presented to Patriarch Georgije later that year. Dissatisfied, the Patriarch asked Jovanović to adjust his work to conform with the Church's view of the migration. Though Jovanović made the changes relatively quickly, he could not render them in time for the painting to be displayed in Budapest, and it therefore had to be unveiled at the Archbishop's palace in Sremski Karlovci. Jovanović went on to complete a total of four versions of the painting, three of which survive. The first version is on display at the patriarchate building of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade, the second at the Pančevo Museum, and the fourth at Princess Ljubica's Residence, in Belgrade. Migration of the Serbs holds iconic status in Serbian popular culture, and several authors repute it to be one of Jovanović's finest achievements.

Passage: Doménikos Theotokópoulos (Greek: Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος [ðoˈminikos θeotoˈkopulos]; October 1541 –  7 April 1614), most widely known as El Greco ("The Greek"), was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" was a nickname, a reference to his Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος, Doménikos Theotokópoulos, often adding the word Κρής Krēs, Cretan.
El Greco was born in the Kingdom of Candia, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the center of Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before traveling at age 26 to Venice, as other Greek artists had done. In 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance taken from a number of great artists of the time, notably Tintoretto. In 1577, he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death. In Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best-known paintings.
El Greco's dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century. El Greco is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism, while his personality and works were a source of inspiration for poets and writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Nikos Kazantzakis. El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school. He is best known for tortuously elongated figures and often fantastic or phantasmagorical pigmentation, marrying Byzantine traditions with those of Western painting.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Huddie Ledbetter leaves his father's house just barely into his twenties and arrives at a brothel on Fannin' Street ran by Miss Eula, who nicknames him Leadbelly and has him play at the bar. For a while, she takes care of him until the police arrive, breaking up a party. Leadbelly and an old man escape via a train and Leadbelly buys a twelve-string acoustic guitar from the old man. Seeking work, he takes a job picking cotton. He soon leaves on a train to Silver City where he meets Blind Lemon and they start playing shows together.
At one show, a drunken man tells Leadbelly to keep playing, and threatens him. Leadbelly responds by smashing his guitar onto him and is arrested. He escapes from jail and leads a normal life until he and a drunken friend are playing around with a gun, and Leadbelly accidentally shoots him. He is thrown in prison where he is forced to work in a chain gang. When he tries to escape, he is caught and put in a box. His father arrives and tries to bail Leadbelly out, but fails. Before leaving, he manages to convince the warden to get Leadbelly a twelve-string acoustic guitar.
After getting the new guitar, he plays a song for Governor Pat Neff who reassures Leadbelly he will be set free. After he leaves prison, he returns to Fannin Street, sees it has lost its former glory, and he is reunited with Miss Eula. He returns to his father's home only to find that a new family lives there. A group of men attack Leadbelly and slash his throat. Leadbelly happens to stab and kill a man in self-defense but is thrown back in prison. John and Alan Lomax visit the prison and interview Leadbelly, having him play all his songs for them. After he finishes telling his life story, they tell him they will see what they can do about getting him out of prison. The film ends with a title card stating that Leadbelly was released from prison and pursued his music career.

Passage: A musician named Dixie Dwyer begins working with mobsters to advance his career but falls in love with the girlfriend of gangland kingpin Dutch Schultz.
A dancer from Dixie's neighborhood, Sandman Williams, is hired with his brother by the Cotton Club, a jazz club where most of the performers are black and the customers white. Owney Madden, a mobster, owns the club and runs it with his right-hand man, Frenchy.
Dixie becomes a Hollywood film star, thanks to the help of Madden and the mob but angering Schultz. He also continues to see Schultz's moll, Vera Cicero, whose new nightclub has been financed by the jealous gangster.
In the meantime, Dixie's ambitious younger brother Vincent becomes a gangster in Schultz's mob and eventually a public enemy, holding Frenchy as a hostage.
Sandman alienates his brother Clay at the Cotton Club by agreeing to perform a solo number there. While the club's management interferes with Sandman's romantic interest in Lila, a singer, its cruel treatment of the performers leads to an intervention by Harlem criminal "Bumpy" Rhodes on their behalf.
Dutch Schultz is violently dealt with by Madden's men while Dixie and Sandman perform on the Cotton Club's stage.

Passage: In the Mojave Desert, a policeman pulls over a 1964 Chevrolet Malibu driven by Dr. J. Frank Parnell. The policeman opens the trunk, sees a blinding flash of white light, and is instantly vaporized, leaving only his boots behind.
Otto Maddox, a young punk rocker in L.A., is fired from his job as a supermarket stock clerk. His girlfriend leaves him for his best friend. Depressed and broke, Otto is wandering the streets when a man named Bud drives up and offers him $25 to drive a car out of the neighborhood.
Otto follows Bud in the car to the Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation, where he learns that the car he drove was being repossessed. He refuses to join Bud as a "repo man," and goes to his parents' house. He learns that his burned-out ex-hippie parents have donated the money they promised him for finishing school to a crooked televangelist. He decides to take the repo job.
After repossessing a flashy red Cadillac, Otto sees a girl named Leila running down the street. He gives her a ride to her workplace, the United Fruitcake Outlet. On the way, Leila shows Otto pictures of aliens that she says are in the trunk of a Chevy Malibu. She claims that they are dangerous because of the radiation that they emit. Meanwhile, Helping Hand is offered a $20,000 bounty notice for the Malibu. Most assume that the car is drug-related, because the bounty is so far above the actual value of the car.
Parnell arrives in L.A. driving the Malibu, but he is unable to meet his waiting UFO compatriots because of a team of government agents led by a woman with a metal hand. When Parnell pulls into a gas station, Helping Hand's competitors, the Rodriguez brothers, take the Malibu. They stop for sodas because the car's trunk is so hot. While they are out of the car, a trio of Otto's punk friends, who are on a crime spree, steal the Malibu.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: Sally and Humphrey have just put a down payment on a house, when Sally loses her receptionist job after accidentally destroying the switchboard.  She applies for a Fuller Brush franchise, but needs a reference from her former employer, Harvey Simpson.  Meanwhile, Harvey is in trouble with his wife because he's come home with a suit coat smelling of Fuller Brush powder.  Mrs. Simpson thinks her husband is having an affair, so Harvey calls Humphrey to have Sally go to Harvey's house and explain everything to his wife.  With her reference letter depending on it, Sally goes to the house to find a bogus Mrs. Simpson, a dead body, and missing diamonds. Afraid the police will suspect her of foul play, Sally and Humphrey identify the real culprit and pursue her to her job dancing at a burlesque theater, and then onto a departing ocean liner.  Hilarity ensues as the pair are chased around the ship by a criminal gang trying to silence them, while they hide variously in rooms filled with leaky wine barrels, bunches of bananas, and a talking parrot who nearly gives them away.

Passage: Rosa Moline is the dissatisfied, restless wife of Lewis, a small-town Wisconsin doctor. She is easily bored, uninterested in her husband's career or in anything to do with her current circumstances. She has long desired a glamorous life, in a world where she can have expensive things and meet truly interesting people. For over a year, she has been having an affair with Neil Latimer, a Chicago businessman who owns the local hunting lodge. Tired of waiting for him to ask her to marry and move to Chicago, Rosa extorts money from Lewis' patients - who often do not have cash but pay him in produce or in other non-financial ways - to finance her trip to the city.
Lewis does not yet know about the affair, but he is used to his wife's unease with her life; he discovers the extortion and throws the cash at her, telling her that if she goes to Chicago, she need not come back. Rosa immediately leaves and fully expects Latimer to welcome her. However, he avoids her at first, then when he does meet her, he tells her he is love with another woman and intends to marry. Devastated, Rosa returns to Wisconsin, where Lewis forgives her. She soon becomes pregnant and, briefly, seems to be trying to settle down.
During a party for Moose, the man who tends to the hunting lodge, Latimer shows up. He lets Rosa know that he has changed his mind and wants to marry her. Moose overhears the couple planning for her divorce and their marriage; the next day, as everyone is heading out on a hunting trip, Moose bets that her lover will not want the baby and advises Rosa that she had better tell Latimer about it, or he will. To prevent that eventuality, she shoots and kills Moose during the hunt. She is acquitted of this act by claiming she thought he was a deer.

Passage: Captain Crowther has five of his crew replaced at short notice before a new cruise voyage begins. Not only does he get the five most incompetent crew men ever to sail the seven seas, but the passengers turn out to be a rather strange bunch too.
The SS Happy Wanderer is the cruise ship and after this voyage, Crowther hopes to get a job as captain on a transatlantic ship, promising the crew members their jobs will be safe under the new captain.  Starting off from England, the Happy Wanderer calls at unnamed ports in Spain, Italy and North Africa before going home again.
Single ladies Gladys and Flo take the cruise, with Flo hoping to find a husband. Bridget is her usual dotty and entertaining self, and one unnamed passenger never disembarks but always goes straight to the bar to drink, to forget an unidentified woman. The crew and passengers settle in as the ship leaves port and head chef Wilfred Haines finds out he is seasick. Mario Fabrizi makes a quick appearance as one of the cooks under Haines. Ed Devereaux, best known for the part of Matt Hammond in the Australian TV series 'Skippy', appears as a Young Officer.
Gladys and Flo fall for the PT instructor Mr Jenkins but nothing comes of it, especially when Flo turns out to be hopeless in the gym. Meanwhile, the new men try to impress Crowther but disaster follows disaster with him getting knocked out and covered in food at a party.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: During the 1750s  Messiah was performed increasingly at festivals and cathedrals throughout the country. Individual choruses and arias were occasionally extracted for use as anthems or motets in church services, or as concert pieces, a practice that grew in the 19th century and has continued ever since. After Handel's death, performances were given in Florence (1768), New York (excerpts, 1770), Hamburg (1772), and Mannheim (1777), where Mozart first heard it. For the performances in Handel's lifetime and in the decades following his death, the musical forces used in the Foundling Hospital performance of 1754 are thought by Burrows to be typical. A fashion for large-scale performances began in 1784, in a series of commemorative concerts of Handel's music given in Westminster Abbey under the patronage of King George III. A plaque on the Abbey wall records that "The Band consisting of DXXV [525] vocal & instrumental performers was conducted by Joah Bates Esqr." In a 1955 article, Sir Malcolm Sargent, a proponent of large-scale performances, wrote, "Mr Bates ... had known Handel well and respected his wishes. The orchestra employed was two hundred and fifty strong, including twelve horns, twelve trumpets, six trombones and three pairs of timpani (some made especially large)." In 1787 further performances were given at the Abbey; advertisements promised, "The Band will consist of Eight Hundred Performers".In continental Europe, performances of Messiah were departing from Handel's practices in a different way: his score was being drastically reorchestrated to suit contemporary tastes. In 1786, Johann Adam Hiller presented Messiah with updated scoring in Berlin Cathedral. In 1788 Hiller presented a performance of his revision with a choir of 259 and an orchestra of 87 strings, 10 bassoons, 11 oboes, 8 flutes, 8 horns, 4 clarinets, 4 trombones, 7 trumpets, timpani, harpsichord and organ. In 1789, Mozart was commissioned by Baron Gottfried van Swieten and the Gesellschaft der Associierten to re-orchestrate several works by Handel, including  Messiah (Der Messias). Writing for a small-scale performance, he eliminated the organ continuo, added parts for flutes, clarinets, trombones and horns, recomposed some passages and rearranged others. The performance took place on 6 March 1789 in the rooms of Count Johann Esterházy, with four soloists and a choir of 12. Mozart's arrangement, with minor amendments from Hiller, was published in 1803, after his death. The musical scholar Moritz Hauptmann described the Mozart additions as "stucco ornaments on a marble temple". Mozart himself was reportedly circumspect about his changes, insisting that any alterations to Handel's score should not be interpreted as an effort to improve the music. Elements of this version later became familiar to British audiences, incorporated into editions of the score by editors including Ebenezer Prout.

Passage: Johann Sebastian Bach composed the church cantata Erschallet, ihr Lieder, erklinget, ihr Saiten! (Ring out, you songs; sound, you strings!), BWV 172, in Weimar for Pentecost Sunday in 1714. Bach led the first performance on 20 May 1714 in the Schlosskirche, the court chapel in the ducal Schloss. Erschallet, ihr Lieder is an early work in a genre to which he later contributed complete cantata cycles for all occasions of the liturgical year.
Bach was appointed Konzertmeister in Weimar in the spring of 1714, a position that called for the performance of a church cantata each month. He composed Erschallet, ihr Lieder as the third cantata in the series, to a text probably written by court poet Salomon Franck. The text reflects different aspects of the Holy Spirit. The librettist included a quotation from the day's prescribed Gospel reading in the only recitative, and for the closing chorale he used a stanza from Philipp Nicolai's hymn "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern" (1599).
The work is in six movements, and scored for four vocal soloists, four-part choir, three trumpets, timpani, oboe, bassoon and a string orchestra of two violins, two violas, and basso continuo. The orchestra for the holiday occasion is festive compared to the two works previously composed in Weimar. The cantata opens with a chorus, followed by the recitative, in which words spoken by Jesus are sung by the bass as the vox Christi (voice of Christ). A bass aria with trumpets addresses the Trinity, and a tenor aria then describes the Spirit that was present at the Creation. This is followed by an intimate duet of the Soul (soprano) and the Spirit (alto), to which an oboe plays the ornamented melody of Martin Luther's hymn "Komm, Heiliger Geist, Herre Gott" and a solo cello provides the bass line. The theme of intimacy between God and Man is developed further in the following chorale, after which Bach specified an unusual repeat of the opening chorus.
While Bach served as Thomaskantor – director of church music – in Leipzig from 1723, he performed the cantata several times, sometimes in a different key and with changes in the scoring. Musicologists agree that he loved the cantata's Gospel text, "If ye love me ...", and the Pentecost hymn used in the duet, setting both the text and the hymn several times. John Eliot Gardiner writes that Bach "particularly valued" this cantata. It contains features that he used again in later compositions of cantatas, oratorios and his masses, for example movements with three trumpets and timpani in a triple meter for festive occasions, and duets as a symbol of God and man.

Passage: At first, Baylis presented both drama and opera at each of her theatres.  The companies were known as the "Vic-Wells".  However, for both aesthetic and financial reasons, by 1934, the Old Vic had become the home of the spoken drama, while Sadler's Wells housed both the opera and a ballet company, the latter co-founded by Baylis and Ninette de Valois in 1930.Lawrance Collingwood joined the company as resident conductor alongside Corri.  With the increased number of productions, guest conductors were recruited, including Geoffrey Toye and Anthony Collins. The increasing success of the new ballet company helped to subsidise the high cost of opera productions, enabling a further increase in the size of the orchestra, to 48 players. Among the singers in the opera company were Joan Cross and Edith Coates. In the 1930s, the company presented standard repertoire operas by Mozart, Verdi, Wagner and Puccini, lighter works by Balfe, Donizetti, Offenbach and Johann Strauss, some novelties, among which were operas by Holst, Ethel Smyth and Charles Villiers Stanford, and an unusual attempt at staging an oratorio, Mendelssohn's Elijah.In November 1937, Baylis died of a heart attack. Her three companies continued under the direction of her appointed successors: Tyrone Guthrie at the Old Vic, in overall charge of both theatres, with de Valois running the ballet, and Carey and two colleagues running the opera. In the Second World War, the government requisitioned Sadler's Wells as a refuge for those made homeless by air-raids. Guthrie decided to keep the opera going as a small touring ensemble of 20 performers. Between 1942 and the war's end in 1945, the company toured continuously, visiting 87 venues. Joan Cross led and managed the company, and also sang leading soprano roles in its productions when needed. The size of the company was increased to 50, and then to 80. By 1945, its members included singers from a new generation such as Peter Pears and Owen Brannigan, and the conductor Reginald Goodall.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: The Kingdom of Mysore was a kingdom in southern India, traditionally believed to have been founded in 1399 in the vicinity of the modern city of Mysore. The kingdom, which was ruled by the Wodeyar family, initially served as a vassal state of the Vijayanagara Empire. With the decline of the Vijayanagara Empire (c. 1565), the kingdom became independent. The 17th century saw a steady expansion of its territory and during the rule of Narasaraja Wodeyar I and Chikka Devaraja Wodeyar, the kingdom annexed large expanses of what is now southern Karnataka and parts of Tamil Nadu to become a powerful state in the southern Deccan.
The kingdom reached the height of its economic and military power and dominion in the latter half of the 18th century under the de facto ruler Haider Ali and his son Tipu Sultan. During this time, it came into conflict with the Marathas, the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Kingdom of Travancore and the British, which culminated in the four Anglo-Mysore Wars. Success in the first Anglo-Mysore war and a stalemate in the second was followed by defeat in the third and fourth. Following Tipu's death in the fourth war of 1799, large parts of his kingdom were annexed by the British, which signalled the end of a period of Mysorean hegemony over southern Deccan. The British restored the Wodeyars to their throne by way of a subsidiary alliance and the diminished Mysore was transformed into a princely state. The Wodeyars continued to rule the state until Indian independence in 1947, when Mysore acceded to the Union of India.
Even as a princely state, Mysore came to be counted among the more developed and urbanised regions of India. This period (1799–1947) also saw Mysore emerge as one of the important centres of art and culture in India. The Mysore kings were not only accomplished exponents of the fine arts and men of letters, they were enthusiastic patrons as well, and their legacies continue to influence music and art even today.

Passage: The Vijayanagara Empire (also called Karnata Empire, and the Kingdom of Bisnegar by the Portuguese) was based in the Deccan Plateau region in South India. It was established in 1336 by Harihara I and his brother Bukka Raya I of Sangama Dynasty. The empire rose to prominence as a culmination of attempts by the southern powers to ward off Islamic invasions by the end of the 13th century. It lasted until 1646, although its power declined after a major military defeat in the Battle of Talikota in 1565 by the combined armies of the Deccan sultanates. The empire is named after its capital city of Vijayanagara, whose ruins surround present day Hampi, now a World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India. The writings of medieval European travelers such as Domingo Paes, Fernão Nunes, and Niccolò Da Conti, and the literature in local languages provide crucial information about its history. Archaeological excavations at Vijayanagara have revealed the empire's power and wealth.
The empire's legacy includes many monuments spread over South India, the best known of which is the group at Hampi. Different temple building traditions in South and Central India came together in the Vijayanagara Architecture style. This synthesis inspired architectural innovation in Hindu temples' construction. Efficient administration and vigorous overseas trade brought new technologies such as water management systems for irrigation. The empire's patronage enabled fine arts and literature to reach new heights in Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, and Sanskrit, while Carnatic music evolved into its current form. The Vijayanagara Empire created an epoch in South Indian history that transcended regionalism by promoting Hinduism as a unifying factor.

Passage: The Kingdom of Mysore reached a peak in economic power under Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan, in the post-Mughal era of the mid-late 18th century. They embarked on an ambitious program of economic development, aiming to increase the wealth and revenue of Mysore. Under their reign, Mysore overtook the Bengal Subah as India's dominant economic power, with productive agriculture and textile manufacturing.Tipu Sultan is credited with founding state trading depots in various locations of his kingdom. In addition, he founded depots in foreign locations such as Karachi, Jeddah and Muscat, where Mysore products were sold. During Tipu's rule French technology was used for the first time in carpentry and smithing, Chinese technology was used for sugar production, and technology from Bengal helped improve the sericulture industry. State factories were established in Kanakapura and Taramandelpeth for producing cannons and gunpowder respectively. The state held the monopoly in the production of essentials such as sugar, salt, iron, pepper, cardamom, betel nut, tobacco and sandalwood, as well as the extraction of incense oil from sandalwood and the mining of silver, gold and precious stones. Sandalwood was exported to China and the Persian Gulf countries and sericulture was developed in twenty-one centers within the kingdom.The Mysore silk industry was initiated during the rule of Tipu Sultan. Later the industry was hit by a global depression and competition from imported silk and rayon. In the second half of the 20th century, it however revived and the Mysore State became the top multivoltine silk producer in India.Under Tipu Sultan, Mysore enjoyed one of the world's highest real wages and living standards in the late 18th century, higher than Britain, which in turn had the highest living standards in Europe. Mysore's average per-capita income was five times higher than subsistence level, i.e. five times higher than $400 (1990 international dollars), or $2,000 per capita. In comparison, the highest national per-capita incomes in 1820 were $1,838 for the Netherlands and $1,706 for Britain.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: Hulagu died in 1265, and was succeeded by Abaqa (1234–1282), who further pursued Western cooperation. Though a Buddhist, upon his succession he married Maria Palaiologina, an Orthodox Christian and the illegitimate daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos. Abaqa corresponded with Pope Clement IV through 1267 and 1268, sending envoys to both Clement and King James I of Aragon. In a 1268 message to Clement, Abaqa promised to send troops to aid the Christians. It is unclear if this was what led to James's unsuccessful expedition to Acre in 1269. James initiated a small crusade, but a storm descended on his fleet as they attempted their crossing, forcing most of the ships to turn back. The crusade was ultimately handled by James's two sons Fernando Sanchez and Pedro Fernandez, who arrived in Acre in December 1269. Abaqa, despite his earlier promises of assistance, was in the process of facing another threat, an invasion in Khorasan by Mongols from Turkestan, and so could only commit a small force for the Holy Land, which did little but brandish the threat of an invasion along the Syrian frontier in October 1269. He raided as far as Harim and Afamiyaa in October, but retreated as soon as Baibars' forces advanced.

Passage: In June 2006, talks concerning a territorial dispute over the Bakassi peninsula were resolved. The talks involved President Paul Biya of Cameroon, then President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and resulted in Cameroonian control of the oil-rich peninsula. The northern portion of the territory was formally handed over to the Cameroonian government in August 2006, and the remainder of the peninsula was left to Cameroon 2 years later, in 2008. The boundary change was met with a local insurgency, as some Bakassians preferred to remain Nigerian. Most militants laid down their arms in November 2009.In February 2008, Cameroon experienced its worst violence in 15 years when a transport union strike in Douala escalated into violent protests in 31 municipal areas.In May 2014, in the wake of the Chibok schoolgirl kidnapping, presidents Paul Biya of Cameroon and Idriss Déby of Chad announced they are waging war on Boko Haram, and deployed troops to the Nigerian border.Since November 2016, protesters from the predominantly English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions of the country have been campaigning for continued use of the English language in schools and courts. People were killed and hundreds jailed as a result of these protests. In 2017, Biya's government blocked the regions' access to the Internet for three months. In September, separatists started a guerilla war for the indendence of the Anglophone region as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia. The government responded with a military offensive, and the insurgency spread across the Northwest and Southwest regions. As of 2019, fighting between separatist guerillas and government forces continues. The conflict indirectly led to an upsurge in Boko Haram activities, as the Cameroonian military largely withdrew from the north to focus on fighting the Ambazonian separatists.

Passage: Abaqa died in 1282 and was briefly replaced by his brother Tekuder, who had converted to Islam. Tekuder reversed Abaqa's policy of seeking an alliance with the Franks, offering instead an alliance to the Mamluk Sultan Qalawun, who continued his own advance, capturing the Hospitaller fortress of Margat in 1285, Lattakia in 1287, and the County of Tripoli in 1289. However, Tekuder's pro-Muslim stance was not popular, and in 1284, Abaqa's Buddhist son Arghun, with the support of the Great Khan Kublai, led a revolt and had Tekuder executed. Arghun then revived the idea of an alliance with the West, and sent multiple envoys to Europe.The first of Arghun's embassies was led by Isa Kelemechi, a Nestorian scientist who had been head of Kublai Khan's Office of Western Astronomy. Kelemechi met with Pope Honorius IV in 1285, offering to "remove" the Saracens (Muslims) and divide "the land of Sham, namely Egypt" with the Franks. The second embassy, and probably the most famous, was that of the elderly cleric Rabban Bar Sauma, who had been visiting the Ilkhanate during a remarkable pilgrimage from China to Jerusalem.Through Bar Sauma and other later envoys, such as Buscarello de Ghizolfi, Arghun promised the European leaders that if Jerusalem were conquered, he would have himself baptized and would return Jerusalem to the Christians. Bar Sauma was greeted warmly by the European monarchs, but Western Europe was no longer as interested in the Crusades, and the mission to form an alliance was ultimately fruitless. England did respond by sending a representative, Geoffrey of Langley, who had been a member of Edward I's Crusade 20 years earlier, and was sent to the Mongol court as an ambassador in 1291.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Following the death of his wife in a car accident, a college professor decides to teach English Literature at an Italian University in Genova.  He is accompanied by his two daughters, aged 16 and 10.  The trio occupies a flat in the crowded Genova streets and soon adapt to the local way of life, taking day trips to the beach and hiring an Italian tutor in musical composition.
The elder daughter begins dating a local Italian teenager, surreptitiously making dates with him behind her father's back.  The younger daughter remains close to her father, and still deals with painful memories of her mother's death. A passenger in the car herself when her mother was killed, she was directly responsible for the accident and remains haunted by her image.
The Professor, while enjoying life in Genova, has to deal with the demands of being a single parent while also balancing his re-emergent love life. One romantic interest is a colleague at the university (played by Catherine Keener) with whom he shared a brief romantic relationship back at Harvard when both were students. The colleague tries to get close to the family, helping with translation and their day-to-day needs in Genova, but crossing the thin line between good advice and intrusion in their private ways in the process. Another romantic interest is a young Italian student in the professor's literature class. She is brash and idealistic and quickly makes her intentions known to the suddenly single professor.

Passage: Monte Beragon, the second husband of Mildred Pierce, is shot. The police tell Mildred that the murderer is her first husband, Bert Pierce, after he is interrogated and confesses to the crime. Mildred protests that he is too kind and gentle to commit murder, and reveals her life story to the investigating officer in flashback.
Mildred and Bert are unhappily married. Mildred must bake and sell pies and cakes to support the family after Bert splits with his business partner, Wally Fay. Bert bitterly accuses Mildred of favoring their daughters, especially Veda, over him. Their quarrel intensifies after a phone call from Bert's mistress, Maggie Biederhof, and they decide to separate.
Mildred retains custody of her two daughters, the 16-year-old Veda, a bratty social climber and aspiring pianist, and 10-year-old Kay, a tomboy. Mildred's principal goal is to provide material possessions for Veda, who longs for a social status above that of her family and is ashamed of her mother's work as a baker. When Mildred is forced to take a job as a waitress, she tries to hide the fact from Veda, but Veda learns the truth and treats her mother with derision.
Mildred meets Monte Beragon, a Pasadena society playboy and heir whose inheritance is almost depleted. Beragon owns the building that Mildred wants to purchase for a restaurant, and he pursues a romantic interest in her. While the two are at his beach house during a weekend jaunt, Kay contracts pneumonia and dies after a trip with Veda and Bert. Mildred channels her grief into work and throws herself into opening a new restaurant. With the help of her friend and former supervisor, Ida Corwin, Mildred's restaurant is a success. Wally helps Mildred buy the property, and soon she owns a chain of restaurants throughout Southern California.

Passage: Upon receiving a key from her Uncle Max, Cabella travels to Italy where she discovers the key is related to a house named Cabella near a village. While traveling she stops near a waterfall to swim and loses the key, but a mysterious man returns the key. She then travels to the village, finds the house, and uses the key to open it.
The next day she goes to the market where the mysterious man works and learns from his cousin Maria that his name is Leo and he is deaf and mute. Maria and Cabella become friends and Maria introduces her sisters Sophia and Giulia. Later that evening Maria tells Cabella that she has a crush on Lord Jai, a rich man from India that attended a boarding school. That night, Cabella has a conversation with a spirit named Angelo and has strange dreams about her mother.
The next morning, Cabella finds a basket with goods such as eggs and apples sent by Leo. Maria then takes Cabella to her sister Ambrosia's funeral because she died from a heart attack. That night Angelo visits her and confesses that she must go to the cemetery to learn more information. At the cemetery, she meets Senior Bronzini, who, according to rumors, had a relationship with a nun when he was younger. Cabella decides to leave flowers for Chiara, a woman buried next to Ambrosia who has no flowers.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: On 2 March 1714 Bach was appointed Konzertmeister (concert master) of the Weimar Hofkapelle (court chapel) of the co-reigning dukes Wilhelm Ernst and Ernst August of Saxe-Weimar. The position was created for him, possibly on his demand, giving him "a newly defined rank order" according to Christoph Wolff.From 1695, an arrangement shared the responsibility for church music at the Schlosskirche (court church) between the Kapellmeister Samuel Drese and the Vize-Kapellmeister Georg Christoph Strattner, who took care of one Sunday per month while the Kapellmeister served on three Sundays. The pattern probably continued from 1704, when Strattner was succeeded by Drese's son Johann Wilhelm. When Konzertmeister Bach also assumed the principal responsibility for one cantata a month, the Kapellmeister's workload was further reduced to two Sundays per month.The performance venue on the third tier of the court church, in German called Himmelsburg (Heaven's Castle), has been described by Wolff as "congenial and intimate", calling for a small ensemble of singers and players. Performers of the cantatas were mainly the core group of the Hofkapelle, formed by seven singers, three leaders and five other instrumentalists. Additional players of the military band were available when needed, and also town musicians and singers of the gymnasium. Bach as the concertmaster probably led the performances as the first violinist, while the organ part was played by Bach's students such as Johann Martin Schubart and Johann Caspar Vogler. Even in settings like chamber music, Bach requested a strong continuo section with cello, bassoon and violone in addition to the keyboard instrument.

Passage: As far as we know, the earliest cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach were performed in Mühlhausen from 1706 to 1708. He was employed as an organist there, but he occasionally composed cantatas, mostly for special occasions. The cantatas were based mainly on biblical texts and hymns, such as Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir, BWV 131 (a psalm setting), and the Easter chorale cantata Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4.
Bach was next appointed organist and chamber musician in Weimar on 25 June 1708 at the court of the co-reigning dukes in Saxe-Weimar, Wilhelm Ernst and his nephew Ernst August. He initially concentrated on the organ, composing major works for the instrument, including the Orgelbüchlein, the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, and the Prelude and Fugue in E major, BWV 566. He was promoted to Konzertmeister on 2 March 1714, an honour that entailed performing a church cantata monthly in the Schlosskirche. The first cantatas he composed in the new position were Himmelskönig, sei willkommen, BWV 182, for Palm Sunday, Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen, BWV 12 for Jubilate Sunday, and Erschallet, ihr Lieder, BWV 172, for Pentecost. Mostly inspired by texts by the court poet, Salomo Franck, they contain recitatives and arias. When Johann Samuel Drese, the Kapellmeister (director of music), died in 1716, Bach hoped in vain to become his successor. Bach looked for a better position and found it as Kapellmeister at the court of Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Köthen. However, the duke in Weimar did not dismiss him and arrested him for disobedience. He was released on 2 December 1717.In Köthen, Bach found an employer who was an enthusiastic musician himself. The court was Calvinist, therefore Bach's work from this period was mostly secular, including the orchestral suites, the cello suites, the sonatas and partitas for solo violin, and the Brandenburg Concertos. He composed secular cantatas for the court for occasions such as New Year's Day and the prince's birthday, including Die Zeit, die Tag und Jahre macht, BWV 134a. He later parodied some of them as church cantatas without major changes, for example Ein Herz, das seinen Jesum lebend weiß, BWV 134.

Passage: Bach is known as a prolific composer of cantatas. When he assumed the position as Thomaskantor (director of church music) in Leipzig in 1723, he began the project to write church cantatas for the occasions of the liturgical year – Sundays and feast days – a project that he pursued for three years.Bach was appointed organist and chamber musician in Weimar at the court of the co-reigning dukes in Saxe-Weimar, Wilhelm Ernst and his nephew Ernst August on 25 June 1708. He had composed sacred cantatas before, some during his tenure in Mühlhausen from 1706 to 1708. Most were written for special occasions and were based mainly on biblical texts and hymns. Examples include: Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir, BWV 131; the early chorale cantata Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4 for Easter; Gott ist mein König, BWV 71, to celebrate the inauguration of the new city council on 4 February 1708; and the Actus Tragicus for a funeral.
In Weimar, Bach first concentrated on the organ, composing major works for the instrument, including the Orgelbüchlein, the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, and the Prelude and Fugue in E major, BWV 566. Christoph Wolff suggests that Bach may have studied musical material belonging to the Hofkapelle, ("court capelle" or court orchestra), and that he copied and studied works by Johann Philipp Krieger, Christoph Graupner, Georg Philipp Telemann, Marco Giuseppe Peranda and Johann David Heinichen in the period from 1711 to 1713. In early 1713 Bach composed his first cantatas in the new style that included recitatives and arias: the so-called Hunting Cantata, BWV 208, as a homage cantata for Christian, Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels, celebrated on 23 February, and possibly the church cantata for Sexagesima (the second Sunday before Lent) Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fällt, BWV 18, on a text by Erdmann Neumeister.In 1713, he was asked to apply for the position of music director of the Marktkirche in Halle, succeeding Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow. Zachow had taught the young George Frideric Handel, and  composed many church cantatas in the new style, adopting recitatives and arias from the Italian opera. Bach was successful in his application for the position, but declined after Duke Wilhelm Ernst increased his salary and offered him a promotion.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.