A Flower
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A Flower
''A Flower'' is a song for voice and closed piano by John Cage. It was composed in 1950, for a choreography by Louise Lippold, wife of sculptor Richard Lippold. There is no text; the singer vocalises a small number of phonemes such as "uh", "wah", etc., without vibrato. Instructions given in the score include, for some passages, "like a pigeon" and "like a wild duck". The entire vocal line is constructed of just four pitches, except for a single bar near the end where a fifth pitch is used. The pianist plays by hitting the piano lid in various ways - with his fingers, with his knuckles, etc. The composition is somewhat similar to the earlier work for voice and closed piano, ''The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs''. Editions * Edition Peters 6711. (c) 1960 by Henmar Press. See also * List of compositions by John Cage * Nowth upon Nacht ''Nowth upon Nacht'' is a song for voice and piano by John Cage. It was composed in 1984 in memoriam for Cathy Berberian, the celebrated so ...
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Song
A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetition and variation of sections. Written words created specifically for music, or for which music is specifically created, are called lyrics. If a pre-existing poem is set to composed music in classical music it is an art song. Songs that are sung on repeated pitches without distinct contours and patterns that rise and fall are called chants. Songs composed in a simple style that are learned informally "by ear" are often referred to as folk songs. Songs that are composed for professional singers who sell their recordings or live shows to the mass market are called popular songs. These songs, which have broad appeal, are often composed by professional songwriters, composers, and lyricists. Art songs are composed by trained classical compose ...
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Piano
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 ...
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John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives. Cage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition ''4′33″'', which is performed in the absence of deliberate sound; musicians who present the work do nothing aside from being present for the duration specified by the title. The content of the composition is not "four minutes and 33 seconds of silence," as is often assumed, but rather the sounds of the environment heard by the audience during performance. The work's challenge t ...
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Choreography
Choreography is the art or practice of designing sequences of movements of physical bodies (or their depictions) in which Motion (physics), motion or Visual appearance, form or both are specified. ''Choreography'' may also refer to the design itself. A choreographer is one who creates choreographies by practising the art of choreography, a process known as choreographing. It most commonly refers to dance choreography. In dance, ''choreography'' may also refer to the design itself, which is sometimes expressed by means of dance notation. Dance choreography is sometimes called ''dance composition''. Aspects of dance choreography include the compositional use of organic unity, rhythmic or non-rhythmic articulation, theme and variation, and repetition. The choreographic process may employ improvisation for the purpose of developing innovative movement ideas. In general, choreography is used to design dances that are intended to be performed as concert dance. The art of choreograph ...
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Richard Lippold
Richard Lippold (May 3, 1915 – August 22, 2002) was an American sculptor, known for his geometric constructions using wire as a medium. Life Lippold was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He studied at the University of Chicago, and graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in industrial design in 1937. Lippold worked as an industrial designer from 1937 to 1941. After he became a sculptor, Lippold taught at several universities, including Hunter College at the City University of New York, from 1952 to 1967. When describing Lippold's floor-to-ceiling sculpture "Trinity", the American artist Howard Newman said: Lippold was an engineering genius, but we've been dealing with a piece that had reached the threshold of catastrophe,...People's mouths fall open when they see it going back up, like they're watching a spider spin a web of blazing gold,...The more that goes up, the more exquisite it gets. The 14th and 15th of John Cage's famous ''Sonatas and Interludes'' for pr ...
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The Wonderful Widow Of Eighteen Springs
''The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs'' is a song for voice and closed piano by John Cage. It was composed in late 1942 and quickly became a minor classic in Cage's oeuvre. The text was a reworked version of a passage from James Joyce's ''Finnegans Wake''. General information The song was commissioned by singer Janet Fairbank, who later became known for pioneering contemporary music. Cage chose to set a passage from page 556 of ''Finnegans Wake'', a book he bought soon after its publication in 1939. The composition is based, according to Cage himself, on the impressions received from the passage.John Cage. Liner notes to ''The 25-Year Retrospective Concert of the Music of John Cage'' (1959), private issue recording by George Avakian (K08Y 1499–1504) ''The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs'' marks the start of Cage's interest in Joyce and is the first piece among many in which he uses the writer's work. The vocal line only uses three Pitch (music), pitches, while the piano r ...
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List Of Compositions By John Cage
This is a list of compositions by John Cage (1912–1992), arranged in chronological order by year of composition. List of works Apprenticeship period (1932–36) * ''Greek Ode'', for voice and piano (1932) * ''First Chapter of Ecclesiastes'' (''The Preacher''), for voice and piano (1932, possibly incomplete) * ''Three Easy Pieces'' (1. Round in A minor, 2. Duo in G major, 3. Infinite canon in F minor), for piano (1933) * ''Three Songs for voice and piano'', (1932–33) * '' Sonata for Clarinet'' (1933) * ''Sonata for Two Voices'', for two instruments with specified ranges (1933) * ''Composition for 3 Voices'' for three unspecified instruments (1934) * ''Solo with obbligato accompaniment of two voices in canon, and six short inventions on the subjects of the solo'', for three or more instruments (1934, six inventions revised rchestrated1958) * ''Three pieces'', for two flutes (1935) * ''Quartet'', for any four percussion instruments (1935) * ''Two pieces'', for piano (1935?, re ...
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Nowth Upon Nacht
''Nowth upon Nacht'' is a song for voice and piano by John Cage. It was composed in 1984 in memoriam for Cathy Berberian, the celebrated soprano singer, wife of composer Luciano Berio. The text is from page 555–6 of James Joyce's ''Finnegans Wake'',Not in every edition though. The words in the original 1939 text of ''Finnegans Wake'' ar"now upon nacht" Moreover, there are variants of the text which do not follow the 628-page layout, and in these, the quotation cannot be found on page 556. describing the darkest part of the night, and the activities of the characters, each written in a style reflecting their personalities. It follows the lyrical account of Infantina Isobel, who "night by silentsailing night ..evencalm lay sleeping", which Cage used earlier in ''The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs.'' Joyce switches to guttural Germanic language, to describe Joe Sackerson, the drunken Scandinavian watchman of the pub: The vocal line is declamatory and uses a small number of ...
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Compositions By John Cage
Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include visuals and digital space *Composition (music), an original piece of music and its creation *Composition (visual arts), the plan, placement or arrangement of the elements of art in a work * ''Composition'' (Peeters), a 1921 painting by Jozef Peeters *Composition studies, the professional field of writing instruction * ''Compositions'' (album), an album by Anita Baker *Digital compositing, the practice of digitally piecing together a video Computer science *Function composition (computer science), an act or mechanism to combine simple functions to build more complicated ones *Object composition, combining simpler data types into more complex data types, or function calls into calling functions History *Composition of 1867, Austro-Hungarian/ ...
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