Based on a series of eight Hogarth paintings, this opera was first performed on 11 September 1951 at Il Teatro La Fenice in Venice. In The Rake’s Progress, Stravinsky’s neo-classical style maintains a clear delineation of musical numbers separated by recitatives (accompanied by harpsichord), and as such it has often been considered a stylistic companion to the works of ...
(E’-gor Strvin’-ske) 1882–1971 Russian composer Stravinsky was a Russian composer, naturalized to French citizenship, then ultimately became American. He was one of the most formative influences on twentieth-century music. He came from a musical background (his father was principal bass singer at the Imperial Opera in St Petersburg) and studied with Rimsky-Korsakov, from whom he acquired a mastery ...
1882–1971, Russian Stravinsky, who was born in Oranienbaum, Russia, and died in New York, is one of the most important composers of the twentieth century. A master of style, he could create sound palettes as extreme and varied as any written during his lifetime, even if these extremes stemmed from his refusal to associate ...
Composed: 1869–70, completed 1874–87 Premiered: 1890, St Petersburg Libretto by the composer, after Vladimir Vasil’yevich Stasov Prologue Ignoring an eclipse of the sun, Prince Igor prepares to leave Putivl’ for a campaign against the pagan Polovtsï, accompanied by his son Vladimir. Skula and Yeroshka, two musicians, decide to desert. Igor refuses to listen to the ...
1903–76 American cellist Piatigorsky left his native Russia in 1921, having been principal cellist in the Bolshoi Theatre orchestra. In 1929, after four years with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, he embarked on a solo career. He gave the first performances of concertos by Hindemith and Walton. A player of great taste and virtuosity, he devoted much time ...
The history of musical instruments has always been very closely linked to the history of music itself. New musical styles often come about because new instruments become available, or improvements to existing ones are made. Improvements to the design of the piano in the 1770s, for instance, led to its adoption by composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ...
The cornet is very similar to the trumpet in looks and playing technique. It is thought to have been invented by the instrument maker Jean-Louis Antoine in the 1820s. Antoine, who worked for the Parisian firm Halary, was one of a number of makers experimenting with the new valve technology that was revolutionizing brass instruments at the time. His ...
A musical ensemble is a group of two or more musicians who have come together to play music. In theory, an ensemble could contain any number of instruments in any combination, but in practice, certain combinations just don’t work very well, either for musical reasons or because of the sheer practicality of getting particular instruments and players ...
The flute most familiar to us from its use in orchestral and solo music is more properly known as a ‘transverse’ or ‘side-blown’ flute. The flute family is distinct from the other woodwind instruments in that it does not use a reed to generate sound. Instead, a stream of air striking the edge of an opening in the side of ...
In one form or another, the harpsichord ruled the domestic keyboard roost throughout Europe – and later in America – from the late-sixteenth to the early-nineteenth centuries. Apart from the organ, it was the grandest and most versatile of all keyboard instruments until the advent of the mature fortepiano in the mid- to late-eighteenth century. Rise and Fall of ...
The story of classical music is not bound up simply with the traditions of any one country: it is tied up with the cultural development of Europe as a whole. This section attempts to pick out the composers from each successive age who, looked at from one point of view, exerted the greatest influence on their contemporaries and subsequent ...
1928–2007, German A master of electronic composition, Stockhausen forged a unique path by creating and reinventing musical forms while recasting the fundamentals of musical content. One of his works lasts 24 hours. Another mixes electronic sounds with the voice of a boy soprano. As composer-conductor Pierre Boulez said: ‘He invented a new kind of relationship between music’s components. He ...
(Vil’-elm Sten’-ham-här) 1871–1927 Swedish composer Like his friends Sibelius and Nielsen, the Swedish composer Stenhammar sought a national language independent of nineteenth-century Romanticism. He wrote two symphonies, two concertos for his own instrument, two operas, choral music, six fine string quartets and numerous songs, in a style that is distinctively Nordic but owes something to ...
Woodrow ‘Woody’ Herman (originally Herrmann) led several of the most exciting big bands in jazz history, hitting peaks of achievement in the 1940s that few have equalled. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1913 to German immigrants, Herman began his stage career in vaudeville as a child, but his ambition was to lead his own band. He played ...
By the turn of the twentieth century, Western classical music seemed to have reached a crisis in language. Tonality had become enfeebled by its own progressive tendency, via increasing chromaticism, toward subtler and more complex forms of expression. European society had become similarly enervated by the familiar comforts of a bourgeois existence. In many quarters across the Continent ...
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