IN: John Adams (October 30 [O.S. October 19] 1735 - July 4, 1826) was an American statesman and Founding Father who served as the first Vice President (1789-97) and second President of the United States (1797-1801). He was a lawyer, diplomat, political theorist, and a leader of the movement for American independence from Great Britain. He was also a dedicated diarist and correspondent, particularly with his wife and closest advisor Abigail. Adams collaborated with his cousin, revolutionary leader Samuel Adams, but he established his own prominence prior to the American Revolution.

John Adams was born on October 30, 1735 (October 19, 1735 Old Style, Julian calendar) to John Adams Sr. (1691-1761) and Susanna Boylston (1708-1797). He had two younger brothers, Peter and Elihu. Adams' birthplace was then in Braintree, Massachusetts (now Quincy, Massachusetts), and is preserved at Adams National Historical Park. Adams' mother was from a leading medical family of present-day Brookline, Massachusetts. His father was a deacon in the Congregational Church, a farmer, a cordwainer, and a lieutenant in the militia. His great-grandfather, Henry Adams, emigrated to Massachusetts from Braintree, Essex, England around 1638. John Sr. also served as a selectman (town councilman) and supervised the building of schools and roads. Adams often praised his father and recalled their close relationship.  Though raised in modest surroundings, Adams felt an acute responsibility to live up to his family's heritage of reverence. He was a direct descendant of Puritans who came to the American wilderness in the 1630s, established a colonial presence in America, and profoundly affected the culture, laws, and traditions of their region. Journalist Richard Brookhiser wrote that Adams' Puritan ancestors "believed they lived in the Bible. England under the Stuarts was Egypt; they were Israel fleeing ... to establish a refuge for godliness, a city upon a hill." By the time of John Adams' birth in 1735, Puritan tenets such as predestination were no longer as widely accepted, and many of their stricter practices had moderated with time, but Adams "considered them bearers of freedom, a cause that still had a holy urgency." It was a value system which he believed in and wished to live up to. Adams emphatically recalled that his parents "held every Species of Libertinage in... Contempt and horror," and portrayed "pictures of disgrace, or baseness and of Ruin" from any debauchery.  Adams, as the eldest child, was under a mandate from his parents to obtain a formal education. This began at age six at a Dame school for boys and girls, which was conducted at a teacher's home and centered upon The New England Primer. Shortly thereafter, Adams attended Braintree Latin School under Joseph Cleverly, where studies included Latin, rhetoric, logic, and arithmetic. Adams' reflections on early education were in the negative mostly, including incidents of truancy, a dislike for his master, and a desire to become a farmer. All questions on the matter ended when his father commanded that he remain in school saying, "You shall comply with my desires." Deacon Adams also retained a new school master named Joseph Marsh, and his son responded positively.

what did he study there?

OUT: where studies included Latin, rhetoric, logic, and arithmetic.


IN: Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (born Leon Dudley Sorabji; 14 August 1892 - 15 October 1988) was an English composer, music critic, pianist and writer. He was one of the 20th century's most prolific piano composers. As a composer and pianist, Sorabji was largely self-taught, and he distanced himself from the main currents of contemporary musical life early in his career. He developed a highly idiosyncratic musical language, with roots in composers as diverse as Busoni, Debussy and Szymanowski, and he dismissed large portions of the established and contemporary repertoire.

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji was born Leon Dudley Sorabji in Chingford, Essex (now Greater London), on 14 August 1892. His father, Shapurji Sorabji, was a civil engineer of Parsi parentage from Bombay, India, born on 18 August 1863. His mother, Madeleine Marguerite Mathilde Sorabji (nee Madeline Matilda Worthy; 13 August 1866 - 5 May 1959), was English. She is said to have been a singer, pianist and organist, but no evidence has been found to support these claims. They married on 18 February 1892. Shapurji Sorabji had married in India in 1880 but, as no record of his first wife's death or his divorce from her has yet been traced, it is possible that he married the composer's mother bigamously.  Very little is known of Sorabji's biography, particularly his early life and musical beginnings. He studied music with Charles Arthur Trew from the early 1910s until around 1915, during a private education that is thought to have ended at about the same time. He reportedly started to learn the piano from his mother at an early age, and he later received help (but no lessons) from his mother's friend Emily Edroff-Smith.  The first significant insight into Sorabji's life comes from his correspondence with Peter Warlock, which began in 1913. At least partly as a result of Warlock's influence, Sorabji began to focus on composition and music criticism. In those letters he showed great interest in interacting with the world of musicians--an attitude that changed dramatically in later years. The first significant instance of such interaction took place in November 1919. Sorabji had sent several of his scores, including that of his First Piano Sonata, to Ernest Newman, who paid them no attention. Sorabji then played the piece to Ferruccio Busoni, who expressed some reservations about the work, but gave him a letter of recommendation, which helped Sorabji get it published.  Already as a teenager, Sorabji took great interest in recent developments in art music--in the work of Schoenberg, Scriabin, Mahler and Debussy, among others--at a time when they received scant attention in the United Kingdom. This interest, along with his ethnicity, cemented his reputation as an outsider. He and his music had their detractors, but some musicians received his work positively: Frederick Delius, who heard a 1930 radio broadcast of Sorabji playing his own piece Le jardin parfume: Poem for Piano Solo, sent a letter of admiration to Sorabji; the French-Swiss pianist Alfred Cortot expressed interest in performing Sorabji's piano concertos; and Alban Berg reportedly took an interest in Sorabji's music.  Although Sorabji performed some of his works in the UK and abroad in the 1920s, the most important period of his pianistic career was a result of his friendship with the Scottish composer Erik Chisholm. Their first meeting took place when Sorabji went to Glasgow to premiere his Piano Sonata No. 4 on 1 April 1930 for Chisholm's Active Society for the Propagation of Contemporary Music. In the Society's concerts Sorabji played some of the longest works he had written to date: in addition to the Fourth Piano Sonata, he premiered Opus clavicembalisticum and Piano Toccata No. 2 and gave a performance of his Nocturne, "Jami". The two remained friends until Chisholm's death in 1965, although their correspondence became less frequent after Chisholm moved to South Africa.

What music did he study early on in life?

OUT:
Very little is known of Sorabji's biography, particularly his early life and musical beginnings.