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A-flat Minor
A-flat minor is a minor scale based on A♭ (musical note), A, consisting of the pitches A, B♭ (musical note), B, C♭ (musical note), C, D♭ (musical note), D, E♭ (musical note), E, F♭ (musical note), F, and G♭ (musical note), G. Its key signature has seven flats. Its Relative key, relative major is C-flat major (or enharmonically B major), its parallel key, parallel major is A-flat major, and its enharmonic equivalent is G-sharp minor. The A-flat natural minor scale is: : Changes needed for the melodic and harmonic versions of the scale are written in with accidentals as necessary. The A-flat Harmonic minor scale, harmonic minor and Melodic minor scale, melodic minor scales are: : : Music in A-flat minor Although A-flat minor occurs in modulation in works in other keys, it is only rarely used as the principal key of a piece of music. Some well-known uses of the key in classical and romantic piano music include: * The Funeral March in Ludwig van Beethoven's P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
C-flat Major
C-flat major (or the key of C-flat) is a major scale based on C♭ (musical note), C, consisting of the pitches C, D♭ (musical note), D, E♭ (musical note), E, F♭ (musical note), F, G♭ (musical note), G, A♭ (musical note), A, and B♭ (musical note), B. Its key signature has seven Flat (music), flats. Its Relative key, relative minor is A-flat minor (or enharmonically G-sharp minor), and its Parallel key, parallel minor is C-flat minor, usually replaced by B minor, since C-flat minor's three Double-flat, double-flats make it impractical to use. The direct enharmonic equivalent of C-flat major is B major, a key signature with five sharps. The C-flat major scale is: C-flat major is the only major or minor key, other than theoretical keys, which has "flat" or "sharp" in its name, but whose tonic note is the enharmonic equivalent of a Natural (music), natural note (a white key on a keyboard instrument). Use in harp music C-flat major is the home key of the harp, with a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
B Major
B major (or the key of B) is a major scale based on B. The pitches B, C, D, E, F, G, and A are all part of the B major scale. Its key signature has five sharps. Its relative minor is G-sharp minor, its parallel minor is B minor, and its enharmonic equivalent is C-flat major. The B major scale is: Although B major is usually considered a remote key (due to its distance from C major in the circle of fifths and fairly large number of sharps), Frédéric Chopin regarded its scale as the easiest of all to play on the piano, as its black notes fit the natural positions of the fingers well; as a consequence he often assigned it first to beginning piano students, leaving the scale of C major until last because he considered it the hardest of all scales to play completely evenly (because of its complete lack of black notes). Few large-scale works in B major exist: these include Haydn's Symphony No. 46. The aria "La donna è mobile" from Verdi's opera ''Rigoletto'' is in the ke ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iberia (Albéniz)
''Iberia'' is a suite for piano composed between 1905 and 1909 by the Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz. It is composed of four books of three pieces each; a complete performance lasts about 90 minutes. It is Albéniz's best-known work and considered his masterpiece. It was highly praised by Claude Debussy and Olivier Messiaen, who said: "''Iberia'' is the wonder for the piano; it is perhaps on the highest place among the more brilliant pieces for the king of instruments". Stylistically, this suite falls squarely in the school of Impressionism, especially in its musical evocations of Spain. It is considered one of the most challenging works for the piano: "There is really nothing in Isaac Albeniz's ''Iberia'' that a good three-handed pianist could not master, given unlimited years of practice and permission to play at half tempo. But there are few pianists thus endowed." Composition Book 1 Dedicated to Ernest Chausson's wife. * ''Evocación'' ("Evocation", A minor and A major), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isaac Albéniz
Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz y Pascual (; 29 May 1860 – 18 May 1909) was a Spanish virtuoso pianist, composer, and conductor. He is one of the foremost composers of the Post-Romantic era who also had a significant influence on his contemporaries and younger composers. He is best known for his piano works based on Spanish folk music idioms. Isaac Albéniz was close to the Generation of '98. Transcriptions of many of his pieces, such as ''Asturias (Leyenda)'', ''Granada'', ''Sevilla'', '' Cadiz'', '' Córdoba'', '' Cataluña'', ''Mallorca'', and Tango in D, are important pieces for classical guitar, though he never composed for the guitar. The personal papers of Albéniz are preserved in, among other institutions, the Library of Catalonia. Life Born in Camprodon, province of Girona, to Ángel Albéniz (a customs official) and his wife, Maria de los Dolores Pascual, Albéniz was a child prodigy who first performed at the age of four. At age seven, after apparently tak ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Concerto For Two Pianos And Orchestra (Bruch)
The Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra, Op. 88a, was written by Max Bruch in 1912. It is in 4 movements, written in the rarely seen key of A-flat minor, and takes about 25 minutes to perform. It is sometimes referred to as Bruch's Double Concerto, although this could also refer to his Concerto for Clarinet, Viola, and Orchestra, Op. 88 (1911). There are claims that the two-piano concerto is based on the earlier concerto, but thematically these two works seem to have little or nothing in common, and this supposed relationship seems to be an erroneous assumption based purely on the works having similar opus numbers. Structure The movements are: * I. ''Andante sostenuto'' * II. ''Andante con moto – Allegro molto vivace'' * III. ''Adagio ma non troppo'' * IV. ''Andante – Allegro''. History In 1911, Bruch had heard the American duo-pianist sisters Rose and Ottilie Sutro play his Fantasy in D minor for 2 pianos, Op. 11, and was so delighted that he agreed to write a double conc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Max Bruch
Max Bruch (6 January 1838 – 2 October 1920) was a German Romantic composer, violinist, teacher, and conductor who wrote more than 200 works, including three violin concertos, the first of which has become a prominent staple of the standard violin repertoire. Early life and education Max Bruch was born in 1838 in Cologne to Wilhelmine (), a singer, and August Carl Friedrich Bruch, an attorney who became vice president of the Cologne police. Max had a sister, Mathilde ("Till"). He received his early musical training under the composer and pianist Ferdinand Hiller, to whom Robert Schumann dedicated his Piano Concerto in A minor. The Bohemian composer and piano virtuoso Ignaz Moscheles recognized the aptitude of Bruch. At the age of nine, Bruch wrote his first composition, a song for his mother's birthday. From then on, music was his passion. His studies were enthusiastically supported by his parents. He wrote many minor early works including motets, psalm settings, piano pieces ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trois Morceaux Dans Le Genre Pathétique
''Trois morceaux dans le genre pathétique'' Op. 15 (''Three Pieces in the Pathetic Style'') is a three-movement suite for piano composed by the French composer, Charles-Valentin Alkan, published in 1837. The suite also bears the title ''Souvenirs'' (''Memories''). The 3 movements are ''Aime-moi'' (''Love Me''), ''Le vent'' (''The Wind''), and ''Morte'' (''Dead Woman''). Description ''Aime-moi'' ''Aime-moi'' (Love me), in A minor, features repeated chords, tremolos, and arpeggios. The first theme is similar of that to Chopin's style. Between the beginning of the piece and the climax in the middle, the subdivision of the beat gradually increases. It starts with eighth notes, changes to triplets, and then sixteenth notes, and then five notes per beat, etc. until it climaxes with thirty-second notes (eight per beat). After this climax, the main theme recapitulates, but is soon succeeded by a more intense melody in octaves along with triplet sixteenth notes in the left hand (six n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles-Valentin Alkan
Charles-Valentin Alkan (; 30 November 1813 – 29 March 1888) was a French Jewish composer and virtuoso pianist. At the height of his fame in the 1830s and 1840s he was, alongside his friends and colleagues Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt, among the leading pianists in Paris, a city in which he spent virtually his entire life. Alkan earned many awards at the Conservatoire de Paris, which he entered before he was six. His career in the salons and concert halls of Paris was marked by his occasional long withdrawals from public performance, for personal reasons. Although he had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances in the Parisian artistic world, including Eugène Delacroix and George Sand, from 1848 he began to adopt a reclusive life style, while continuing with his compositions – virtually all of which are for the keyboard. During this period he published, among other works, his collections of large-scale studies in all the major keys (Op. 35) and all the mino ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert (; 31 January 179719 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast ''oeuvre'', including more than 600 secular vocal works (mainly lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred music, opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...s, incidental music, and a large body of piano and chamber music. His major works include "Erlkönig (Schubert), Erlkönig" (D. 328), the Trout Quintet, Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667 (''Trout Quintet''), the Symphony No. 8 (Schubert), Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 (''Unfinished Symphony''), the Symphony No. 9 (Schubert), "Great" Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944, the String Quintet (Schubert), String Quintet (D. 956), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piano Sonata No
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys (small levers) that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings. It was invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700. Description The word "piano" is a shortened form of ''pianoforte'', the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument, which in turn derives from ''clavicembalo col piano e forte'' (key cimbalom with quiet and loud)Pollens (1995, 238) and ''fortepiano''. The Italian musical terms ''piano'' and ''forte'' indicate "soft" and "loud" respectively, in this context referring to the variations in volume (i.e., loudness) produced in response to a pianist's touch or pressure on the keys: the grea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ludwig Van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical music repertoire and span the transition from the Classical period to the Romantic era in classical music. His career has conventionally been divided into early, middle, and late periods. His early period, during which he forged his craft, is typically considered to have lasted until 1802. From 1802 to around 1812, his middle period showed an individual development from the styles of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and is sometimes characterized as heroic. During this time, he began to grow increasingly deaf. In his late period, from 1812 to 1827, he extended his innovations in musical form and expression. Beethoven was born in Bonn. His musical talent was obvious at an early age. He was initially harshly and intensively tau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Melodic Minor Scale
In music theory, the minor scale is three scale patterns – the natural minor scale (or Aeolian mode), the harmonic minor scale, and the melodic minor scale (ascending or descending) – rather than just two as with the major scale, which also has a harmonic form but lacks a melodic form. In each of these scales, the first, third, and fifth scale degrees form a minor triad (rather than a major triad, as in a major scale). In some contexts, ''minor scale'' is used to refer to any heptatonic scale with this property (see Related modes below). Natural minor scale Relationship to relative major A natural minor scale (or Aeolian mode) is a diatonic scale that is built by starting on the sixth degree of its relative major scale. For instance, the A natural minor scale can be built by starting on the 6th degree of the C major scale: : Because of this, the key of A minor is called the ''relative minor'' of C major. Every major key has a relative minor, which starts on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
