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Atmosphères
''Atmosphères'' is a piece for orchestra, composed by György Ligeti in 1961. It is noted for eschewing conventional melody and metre in favor of dense sound textures. After ''Apparitions'', it was the second piece Ligeti wrote to exploit what he called a " micropolyphonic" texture. It gained further exposure after being used in Stanley Kubrick's film '' 2001: A Space Odyssey''. History ''Atmosphères'' was commissioned in 1961 by the Southwest German Radio (SWF) and had its world premiere on 22 October 1961 by Hans Rosbaud conducting the SWF Symphony Orchestra at the Donaueschingen Festival. Ligeti dedicated the piece to the memory of Mátyás Seiber, a fellow Hungarian-born composer who had been killed in a car crash the previous year. The SWF recorded this performance for broadcast, and this recording has been released commercially on CD several times. Paul Griffiths writes that this performance made Ligeti a "talking point". Ligeti says that after this and his earlier piec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
György Ligeti
György Sándor Ligeti (; ; 28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century" and "one of the most innovative and influential among progressive figures of his time". Born in Transylvania, Romania, he lived in the Hungarian People's Republic before emigrating to Austria in 1956. He became an Austrian citizen in 1968. In 1973 he became professor of composition at the Hamburg Hochschule für Musik und Theater, where he worked until retiring in 1989. He died in Vienna in 2006. Restricted in his musical style by the authorities of Communist Hungary, only when he reached the West in 1956 could Ligeti fully realise his passion for avant-garde music and develop new compositional techniques. After experimenting with electronic music in Cologne, Germany, his breakthrough came with orchestral works such as ''Atmosphères'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Micropolyphony
Micropolyphony is a kind of polyphonic musical texture developed by György Ligeti which consists of many lines of dense canons moving at different tempos or rhythms, thus resulting in tone clusters vertically. According to David Cope, "micropolyphony resembles cluster chords, but differs in its use of moving rather than static lines"; it is "a simultaneity of different lines, rhythms, and timbres". Differences between micropolyphonic texture and conventional polyphonic texture can be explained by Ligeti's own description: The earliest example of micropolyphony in Ligeti's work occurs in the second movement (mm 25–37) of his orchestral composition ''Apparitions''. He used the technique in a number of his other works, including ''Atmosphères'' for orchestra; the first movement of his ''Requiem'' for soprano, mezzo-soprano, mixed choir, and orchestra; the unaccompanied choral work ''Lux aeterna''; and ''Lontano'' for orchestra. Micropolyphony is easier with larger ensembles or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vibrato
Vibrato (Italian language, Italian, from past participle of "wikt:vibrare, vibrare", to vibrate) is a musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch (music), pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. Vibrato is typically characterised in terms of two factors: the amount of pitch variation ("extent of vibrato") and the speed with which the pitch is varied ("rate of vibrato"). In singing it can occur spontaneously through variations in the larynx. The vibrato of a string instrument and wind instrument is an imitation of that vocal function. Vibrato and tremolo The terms vibrato and tremolo are sometimes incorrectly used interchangeably, although (in the classical world) they are properly defined as separate effects with vibrato defined as a periodic variation in the pitch (frequency) of a musical note, and tremolo as a fast repetition of the same note (usually a semiquaver) in order to produce the audible effect of a longer note, es ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Das Rheingold
''Das Rheingold'' (; ''The Rhinegold''), WWV 86A, is the first of the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (English: ''The Ring of the Nibelung''). It was performed, as a single opera, at the National Theatre Munich on 22 September 1869, and received its first performance as part of the ''Ring'' cycle at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, on 13 August 1876. Wagner wrote the ''Ring'' librettos in reverse order, so that ''Das Rheingold'' was the last of the texts to be written; it was, however, the first to be set to music. The score was completed in 1854, but Wagner was unwilling to sanction its performance until the whole cycle was complete; he worked intermittently on this music until 1874. The 1869 Munich premiere of ''Das Rheingold'' was staged, much against Wagner's wishes, on the orders of his patron, King Ludwig II of Bavaria. Following its 1876 Bayreuth premiere, the ''Ring'' cycle was introduced into the worldwide repertory, with perf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clytus Gottwald
Clytus Gottwald (20 November 1925 – 18 January 2023) was a German composer, conductor, and musicologist who focused on choral music. He was considered by music critics to be a key figure in contemporary choral music, and is known for his arrangements for vocal ensembles of up to 16 voices. He founded and conducted the Schola Cantorum Stuttgart for this music. Life and work Gottwald was born in Ober Salzbrunn on 20 November 1925. After military service and being a prisoner of war in the United States, he studied voice with Gerhard Hüsch and choral conducting with Kurt Thomas. As a choir director, he was initially an assistant to Marcel Couraud from 1954 to 1958. From 1958 to 1970 he was cantor at the Paulus-Kirche in Stuttgart, conducting the . Gottwald studied Protestant theology, sociology, and musicology in Tübingen and Frankfurt. In 1961 he completed his dissertation on the Renaissance composer Johannes Ghiselin in Frankfurt. As a musicologist, he edited numerous sch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antonio Janigro
Antonio Janigro (21 January 19181 May 1989) was an Italian cellist and conductor. Biography Born in Milan, he began studying piano when he was six and cello when he was eight. Initially taught by Giovanni Berti, Janigro enrolled in the Verdi Conservatory of Milan, where he was instructed by Gilberto Crepax. By 1934 Janigro was studying under Diran Alexanian and Pablo Casals at the École Normale in Paris. He graduated from the school in 1934 and began performing solo and in recitals with Dinu Lipatti, Paul Badura-Skoda and Alfredo Rossi. "Al Conservatorio: Sciostacovic", journal La Stampa, 04/04/1948, Italia. An unfortunately timed vacation in |
Ernest Bour
Ernest Bour (20 April 1913 - 20 June 2001) was a noted conductor. Born in Thionville, Moselle (in north-eastern Lorraine, then part of Germany), Bour studied at both the University and the Conservatoire of Strasbourg. His conducting teachers included Fritz Münch and Hermann Scherchen. Perhaps his most heard recording is of Ligeti's ''Atmospheres'' with the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra aka Sinfonieorchester des Südwestfunks Baden-Baden heard on the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey. After serving as chorus master for the radio choruses of Geneva and Strasbourg, he was appointed conductor of the Orchestre de Mulhouse in 1941. In 1950 he became conductor of the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra and in 1955 of the Strasbourg Opera House, where he had conducted the premiere of Delannoy's '' Puck'' in 1949. He was principal conductor of the SWF Symphony Orchestra in Baden-Baden from 1964 to 1979. He conducted the European premiere of Berio's Sinfonia during the 196 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Friedrich Cerha
Friedrich Cerha (born 17 February 1926) is an Austrian composer, conductor and music educator. Education and Career Cerha was born in Vienna, Austria, and educated at the Viennese Music Academy (violin with Váša Příhoda, composition with Alfred Uhl, music education) and received a doctorate from the University of Vienna (musicology, German culture and language, philosophy). In 1958 he founded the ensemble "die reihe" with Kurt Schwertsik, which was an important instrument for the spreading of contemporary music in Austria. In addition to composing, Cerha earned a reputation as an interpreter of the works of Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern. This work included the completion of Alban Berg's unfinished three-act opera'' Lulu.'' Cerha orchestrated sections of the third act using Berg's notes as a reference. The opera was premiered by Pierre Boulez in Paris in 1979. Alongside his career as a composer, Cerha taught at the University of Music and Performing Arts in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gruppen
''Gruppen'' (german: Groups) for three orchestras (1955–57) is amongst the best-known compositions of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is Work Number 6 in the composer's catalog of works. ''Gruppen'' is "a landmark in 20th-century music ... probably the first work of the post-war generation of composers in which technique and imagination combine on the highest level to produce an undisputable masterpiece". History Early in 1955 Stockhausen received a commission from WDR for a new orchestral composition, but his ongoing work on ''Gesang der Jünglinge'' prevented him from starting right away. In August and September, he took the opportunity to retreat to an inexpensive rented room in the attic of a parsonage in Paspels, Switzerland, recommended to him by a colleague, Paul Gredinger. Surrounded by the splendour of the Graubünden alps, he created the entire plan of ''Gruppen'', "with a completely new conception of musical time". The surroundings provided more than ju ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gesang Der Jünglinge
''Gesang der Jünglinge'' (literally "Song of the Youths") is an electronic music work by Karlheinz Stockhausen. It was realized in 1955–56 at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk studio in Cologne and is Work Number 8 in the composer's catalog. The vocal parts were supplied by 12-year-old Josef Protschka. It is exactly 13 minutes, 14 seconds long. The work, routinely described as "the first masterpiece of electronic music" and "an opus, in the most emphatic sense of the term", is significant in that it seamlessly integrates electronic sounds with the human voice by means of matching voice resonances with pitch and creating sounds of phonemes electronically. In this way, for the first time ever it successfully brought together the two opposing worlds of the purely electronically generated German ''elektronische Musik'' and the French ''musique concrète'', which transforms recordings of acoustical events. ''Gesang der Jünglinge'' is also noted for its early use of spatiality; it was o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groundbreaking work in electronic music, for introducing controlled chance ( aleatory techniques) into serial composition, and for musical spatialization. He was educated at the Hochschule für Musik Köln and the University of Cologne, later studying with Olivier Messiaen in Paris and with Werner Meyer-Eppler at the University of Bonn. One of the leading figures of the Darmstadt School, his compositions and theories were and remain widely influential, not only on composers of art music, but also on jazz and popular music. His works, composed over a period of nearly sixty years, eschew traditional forms. In addition to electronic music—both with and without live performers—they range from miniatures for musical boxes through works for s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sound Mass
In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the brain. Only acoustic waves that have frequencies lying between about 20 Hz and 20 kHz, the audio frequency range, elicit an auditory percept in humans. In air at atmospheric pressure, these represent sound waves with wavelengths of to . Sound waves above 20 kHz are known as ultrasound and are not audible to humans. Sound waves below 20 Hz are known as infrasound. Different animal species have varying hearing ranges. Acoustics Acoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of mechanical waves in gasses, liquids, and solids including vibration, sound, ultrasound, and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an ''acoustician'', while someone working in the field of acoustical e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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