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Elegy For J.F.K.
''Elegy for J.F.K.'' is a piece of vocal music composed by the Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky in 1964, commemorating the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Composition background After the outbreak of World War II and his emigration to Los Angeles, California, in 1939, Stravinsky continued to work within the neo-classical framework he had adopted since about 1920 (following his Russian period of 1907–1919), but beginning in the early 1950s turned to various serial techniques, which he used until his death in 1971. Music overview and analysis ''Elegy for J. F. K.'' is scored for baritone or mezzo-soprano accompanied by three clarinets (two B clarinets and an alto clarinet in E), and is a twelve-tone serial composition. The text, in four ''haiku'' stanzas each of 17 syllables, was written at Stravinsky's request by W. H. Auden in memory of assassinated President John F. Kennedy, and Stravinsky chose to repeat the opening stanza at the end. ''Elegy'' ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernist music. Stravinsky's compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: ''The Firebird'' (1910), ''Petrushka'' (1911), and ''The Rite of Spring'' (1913). The last transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure and was largely responsible for Stravinsky's enduring reputation as a revolutionary who pushed the boundaries of musical design. His "Russian phase", which continued with works such as '' Renard'', ''L'Histoire du soldat,'' and ''Les noces'', was followed in the 1920s by a period ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agon (ballet)
''Agon'' is a 22-minute ballet for twelve dancers with music by Igor Stravinsky. It was choreographed by George Balanchine. Stravinsky began composition in December 1953 but was interrupted the next year; he resumed work in 1956 and concluded on April 27, 1957. The music was premiered in Los Angeles at UCLA's Royce Hall on June 17, 1957, conducted by Robert Craft. Stravinsky himself conducted the sessions for the work's first recording the following day on June 18, 1957. ''Agon'' was first performed on stage by the New York City Ballet at the City Center of Music and Drama on December 1, 1957. The composition's long gestation period covers an interesting juncture in Stravinsky's composing career, in which he moved from a diatonic musical idiom to one based on twelve-tone technique; the music of the ballet thus demonstrates a unique symbiosis of musical idioms. The ballet has no story, but consists of a series of dance movements in which various groups of dancers interact in pairs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boosey & Hawkes
Boosey & Hawkes is a British music publisher purported to be the largest specialist classical music publisher in the world. Until 2003, it was also a major manufacturer of brass, string and woodwind musical instruments. Formed in 1930 through the merger of two well-established British music businesses, it controls the copyrights to much major 20th-century music, including works by Leonard Bernstein, Benjamin Britten, Aaron Copland, Sergei Prokofiev, and Igor Stravinsky. It also publishes many prominent contemporary composers, including John Adams, Karl Jenkins, James MacMillan, Mark-Anthony Turnage, and Steve Reich. With subsidiaries in Berlin and New York, it also sells sheet music via its online shop. History Pre-merger Boosey & Hawkes was founded in 1930 through the merger of two respected music companies, Boosey & Company and Hawkes & Son. The Boosey family was of Franco–Flemish origin. Boosey & Company traces its roots back to John Boosey, a bookseller in London i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music. Born in Montbrison, Loire, Montbrison in the Loire department of France, the son of an engineer, Boulez studied at the Conservatoire de Paris with Olivier Messiaen, and privately with Andrée Vaurabourg and René Leibowitz. He began his professional career in the late 1940s as music director of the Renaud-Barrault theatre company in Paris. He was a leading figure in avant-garde music, playing an important role in the development of integral serialism (in the 1950s), Aleatoric music, controlled chance music (in the 1960s) and the electronic transformation of instrumental music in real time (from the 1970s onwards). His tendency to revise earlier compositions meant that his body of work was relatively small, but it included pieces regarded by many as lan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cathy Berberian
Catherine Anahid Berberian (July 4, 1925 – March 6, 1983) was an American mezzo-soprano and composer based in Italy. She worked closely with many contemporary avant-garde music composers, including Luciano Berio, Bruno Maderna, John Cage, Henri Pousseur, Sylvano Bussotti, Darius Milhaud, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, and Igor Stravinsky. She also interpreted works by Claudio Monteverdi, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Kurt Weill, Philipp zu Eulenburg and others. As a recital curator, she presented several vocal genres in a classical context, including arrangements of songs by The Beatles by Louis Andriessen as well as folk songs from several countries and cultures. As a composer, she wrote ''Stripsody'' (1966), in which she exploits her vocal technique using comic book sounds (onomatopoeia), and ''Morsicat(h)y'' (1969), a composition for the keyboard (with the right hand only) based on Morse code. Biography Cathy Berberian was born in Attleboro, Massachusetts to Armenian parents, Yervant and L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tempo (journal)
''Tempo'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal that specialises in music of the 20th century and contemporary music. It was established in 1939 as the 'house magazine' of the music publisher Boosey & Hawkes. ''Tempo'' was the brain-child of Arnold Schoenberg's pupil Erwin Stein, who worked for Boosey & Hawkes as a music editor. The journal's first editor was Ernest Chapman and it was intended to be a bi-monthly publication. Issues 1 to 4 appeared from January to July 1939; but owing to the outbreak of World War II there was a hiatus in publication until August 1941, when issue 5 appeared, and another until February 1944, when regular publication resumed with issue 6 on a roughly quarterly basis. Meanwhile, the New York City office of Boosey & Hawkes set up a separate American edition which produced six issues in 1940–1942 (numbered 1–6, independent of the UK numbering) and an unnumbered 'wartime edition' in February 1944. In 1946, the journal was enlarged and r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abraham And Isaac (Stravinsky)
''Abraham and Isaac'' is a sacred ballad for baritone and orchestra composed in 1962–63 by Igor Stravinsky. History When the Israel Festival Committee asked Stravinsky for a new work, he decided to set the story of Abraham and Isaac to a text in Hebrew, a language with which he was not familiar. The philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin, who was a friend of the composer, helped Stravinsky to understand the sounds and structure of the text. Work was begun in 1962 and the score, which is dedicated to the people of the State of Israel, was completed on 3 March 1963. The work was premiered on 23 August 1964 in Binyanei Ha'Ooma, Jerusalem, by Ephraim Biran, baritone, and the Israel Festival Orchestra, conducted by Robert Craft. Scoring ''Abraham and Isaac'' is set for baritone solo and a chamber orchestra consisting of two flutes, alto flute, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, bass clarinet, two bassoons, horn, two trumpets, tenor trombone, bass trombone, tuba, and string quintet. Analysis Alth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Threni (Stravinsky)
''Threni: id est Lamentationes Jeremiae Prophetae'', usually referred to simply as ''Threni'', is a musical setting by Igor Stravinsky of verses from the Book of Lamentations in the Latin of the Vulgate, for solo singers, chorus and orchestra. It is important among Stravinsky's compositions as his first and longest completely dodecaphonic work, but is not often performed. It has been described as "austere" but also as a "culminating point" in his career as an artist, "important both spiritually and stylistically" and "the most ambitious and structurally the most complex" of all his religious compositions, and even "among Stravinsky's greatest works". Stravinsky composed ''Threni'' in 1957–1958 for the Venice Biennale, and it was first performed there in September 1958. A performance in Paris two months later was a disaster, attributed to inadequate performers and insufficient rehearsals. It led to mutual recriminations between Stravinsky, Pierre Boulez and Robert Craft. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrew Kuster
Andrew Thomas Kuster is an American writer, composer, and conductor. Biography Kuster was born in Madison, Wisconsin, the son of Thomas and Judy Kuster. He grew up in New Ulm, Minnesota. After attending Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, Minnesota, he earned a Bachelor of Music in Composition from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. At St. Olaf he studied composition with Arthur Campbell and performed with the St. Olaf Choir under Kenneth Jennings and Anton Armstrong. He earned a Master of Music in Composition from Minnesota State University, Mankato, where he studied with Steve Heitzeg. In 2000, he received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in the Literature and Performance of Choral Music from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he studied with Joan Catoni Conlon, Lawrence Kaptein, Lynn Whitten, William Kearns, and Alan Luhring. He worked as a text reviewer for the Text Creation Partnership at the University of Michigan and as staff editor for the Kurt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Craft
Robert Lawson Craft (October 20, 1923 – November 10, 2015) was an American conductor and writer. He is best known for his intimate professional relationship with Igor Stravinsky, on which Craft drew in producing numerous recordings and books. Life Craft was born in Kingston, New York, to Raymond and Arpha Craft, and studied music at the Juilliard School. He became particularly interested in early music, such as that of Claudio Monteverdi, Carlo Gesualdo, and Heinrich Schütz, and in contemporary music by the composers of the Second Viennese School and others. Craft met Stravinsky in 1948, and from then until the composer's death in 1971, Craft worked with Stravinsky in a variety of roles, eventually evolving into a full artistic partnership. Craft compiled the libretti for Stravinsky's '' The Flood'' and ''A Sermon, a Narrative and a Prayer'', and lived with Igor and Vera Stravinsky in Hollywood and later in New York City. He remained close to the composer's widow until her de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Perspectives Of New Music
''Perspectives of New Music'' (PNM) is a peer-reviewed academic journal specializing in music theory and analysis. It was established in 1962 by Arthur Berger and Benjamin Boretz (who were its initial editors-in-chief). ''Perspectives'' was first published by the Princeton University Press, initially supported by the Fromm Music Foundation.David Carson Berry, "''Journal of Music Theory'' under Allen Forte's Editorship," ''Journal of Music Theory'' 50/1 (2006), 21, n49. The first issue was favorably reviewed in the ''Journal of Music Theory'', which observed that Berger and Boretz had produced "a first issue which sustains such a high quality of interest and cogency among its articles that one suspects the long delay preceding the yet-unborn Spring 1963 issue may reflect a scarcity of material up to their standard". However, as the journal's editorial "perspective" coalesced, Fromm became—in the words of David Gable—disenchanted with the "exclusive viewpoint hatcame to dominate" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cultural Depictions Of John F
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tylor, Edward. (1871). Primitive Culture. Vol 1. New York: J.P. Putnam's Son Culture is often originated from or attributed to a specific region or location. Humans acquire culture through the learning processes of enculturation and socialization, which is shown by the diversity of cultures across societies. A cultural norm codifies acceptable conduct in society; it serves as a guideline for behavior, dress, language, and demeanor in a situation, which serves as a template for expectations in a social group. Accepting only a monoculture in a social group can bear risks, just as a single species can wither in the face of environmental change, for lack of functional responses to the change. Thus in military culture, valor is counted a typical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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