Q: A friend asked me to answer this question: What were two rooms the Great Dining room was transformed to?, using the article: The final large reception room on the first floor is the Hondecoeter Room (16), so named because of the three huge oil paintings by Melchior d'Hondecoeter (1636–1695), depicting scenes of birds in courtyards, which are fitted into the neo-Carolean panelling. The panelling was introduced to the room by the 3rd Earl Brownlow in 1876, when it was furnished as the principal dining room of the mansion. The room was initially created as a library in 1808 from the upper part of the earlier kitchen which had originally risen two stories. The West staircase (14) was originally a service stairs, and would have been plainer in decor, but by the late nineteenth century it was in regular use by the family.Either side of the Marble Hall, lie the Great Staircase (2) and the Tapestry Room (11), which contains a collection of early eighteenth century Mortlake tapestries. The Great Staircase to the east of the Marble Hall is unusually placed at Belton, as in a house of this period one would expect to find the staircase in the hall. The stairs rise in three flights around the west, north, and east walls to the former Great Dining Room above the Marble Hall. Thus the staircase served as an important state procession link between the three principal reception rooms of the house. The Great Dining Room, now the Library, has been greatly altered and all traces of Carolean decoration removed, first by James Wyatt in 1778 when it was transformed into a drawing room with a vaulted ceiling, and again in 1876, when its use was again changed, this time to a library. The room contains some 6000 volumes, a superb example of book collecting over 350 years. When Lord Tyrconnel died in 1754 a catalogue of his library identified almost 2,300 books. Almost all of these remain in the Belton library today. Rupert Gunnis attributed the carved marble chimneypiece depicting two Roman goddesses to Sir Richard Westmacott.Leading from the Library is the Queen's Room, the former "Best Bed Chamber". This panelled room was redecorated in 1841 for the visit..., what would be the answer ?
A: a drawing room

Q: A friend asked me to answer this question: What is the name of Smetana's first large-scale piece that is independent of words?, using the article: Dissatisfied with his first large-scale orchestral work, the D major Overture of 1848, Smetana studied passages from Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Weber and Berlioz before producing his Triumphal Symphony of 1853. Though this is dismissed by Rosa Newmarch as "an epithalamium for a Habsburg Prince", Smetana's biographer Brian Large identifies much in the piece that characterises the composer's more mature works. Despite the symphony's rejection by the Court and the lukewarm reception on its premiere, Smetana did not abandon the work. It was well received in Gothenburg in 1860, and a revised version was performed in Prague in 1882, without the "triumphal" tag, under Adolf Čech. The piece is now sometimes called the Festive Symphony. Smetana's visit to Liszt at Weimar in the summer of 1857, where he heard the latter's Faust Symphony and Die Ideale, caused a material reorientation of Smetana's orchestral music. These works gave Smetana answers to many compositional problems relating to the structure of orchestral music, and suggested a means for expressing literary subjects by a synthesis between music and text, rather than by simple musical illustration. These insights enabled Smetana to write the three Gothenburg symphonic poems, (Richard III, Wallenstein's Camp and Hakon Jarl), works that transformed Smetana from a composer primarily of salon pieces to a modern neo-Romantic, capable of handling large-scale forces and demonstrating the latest musical concepts. From 1862 Smetana was largely occupied with opera and, apart from a few short pieces, did not return to purely orchestral music before beginning Má vlast in 1872. In his introduction to the Collected Edition Score, František Bartol brackets Má vlast with the opera Libuše as "direct symbols of [the] consummating national struggle". Má vlast is the first of Smetana's mature large-scale works that is independent of words, and its musical ideas are bolder than anything he had tried before. To musicologist John Clapham, the cycle presents "a cross-section of Czech..., what would be the answer ?
A: Má vlast

Q: A friend asked me to answer this question: What is the last name of the person who was able to secure occasional commissions to compose theatrical works for the Gonzaga court?, using the article: (English: "The Marriage of Thetis") After Duke Vincenzo's death in February 1612, Monteverdi found himself out of favour at the Mantuan court. Vincenzo's successor Francesco had no high regard for Monteverdi, and dismissed him from his post. Upon Francesco's sudden death in December 1612, the dukedom passed to his brother Ferdinando, but Monteverdi was not recalled to the court and was appointed maestro di capella in August 1613 at St Mark's, Venice. However, he remained in contact with Striggio and other highly placed Gonzaga courtiers, through whom he was able to secure occasional commissions to compose theatrical works for the Gonzaga court. Thus, late in 1616, Striggio asked him to set to music Scipione Agnelli's libretto Le nozze di Tetide, as part of the celebrations for Duke Ferdinando's forthcoming marriage to Catherine de' Medici. This story, based on the wedding of the mythical Greek hero Peleus to the sea-goddess Thetis, had previously been offered to the Mantuan court by Peri, whose setting of a libretto by Francesco Cini had been rejected in 1608 in favour of L'Arianna.Initially, Monteverdi had little enthusiasm for Le nozze di Tetide, and sought ways of avoiding or delaying work on it. He would accept the commission, he informed Striggio on 9 December 1616, because it was the wish of the duke, his feudal lord. However, the verses he was given were not, he felt, conducive to beautiful music. He found the tale difficult to understand, and did not think he could be inspired by it. In any event he was occupied for most of December in writing a Christmas Eve mass for St Mark's. On 29 December, perhaps hoping that the commission would be withdrawn, Monteverdi told Striggio that he was ready to begin work on Le Nozze di Tetide "if you tell me to do so". In January 1617, however, he became more enthusiastic on learning that the project had been scaled down and was now being projected as a series of intermedi. He informed Striggio that what he had first considered a rather monotonous piece he now thought..., what would be the answer ?
A:
Monteverdi