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Five Flower Songs
Benjamin Britten's ''Five Flower Songs'', Op. 47, is a set of five part songs to poems in English by four authors which mention flowers, composed for four voices (SATB) in 1950 as a gift for the 25th wedding anniversary of Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst. It was first performed in the open air at the couple's estate Dartington Hall, with Imogen Holst conducting a student choir. The set has been frequently recorded by English and foreign chamber choirs and ensembles, including Polyphony, Cambridge Singers and the RIAS Kammerchor. History Britten composed the music as a contribution to commemorate the 25th wedding anniversary of Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst, who were both botanists, philanthropists, and fond of flowers. Leonard Elmhirst was an agronomist who developed depressed rural regions such as in India and Devon county. Dorothy Elmhirst was a wealthy American, supporting education and women's rights. They had gardens at their estate, Dartington Hall. Britten wrote the par ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Part Song
A part song, part-song or partsong is a form of choral music that consists of a song to a secular or non-liturgical sacred text, written or arranged for several vocal parts. Part songs are commonly sung by an SATB choir, but sometimes for an all-male or all-female ensemble. This music is usually homophonic, meaning that the highest part carries the melody and the other voices or parts supply the accompanying harmonies, in contrast to songs that are contrapuntal, as are madrigals. Part songs are intended to be sung a cappella, that is without accompaniment, unless an instrumental accompaniment is particularly specified. The part song was created in Great Britain, first growing from, and then gradually superseding, the earlier form of glee, as well as being particularly influenced by the choral works of Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847). This was linked with the growth of choral societies during the 19th century which were larger groups than glee clubs had been.Hillier, Paul. Pref ... [...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] |
Stephen Layton
Stephen David Layton (born 23 December 1966) is an English conductor. Biography Layton was raised in Derby, where his father was a church organist. He was a chorister at Winchester Cathedral, and subsequently won scholarships to Eton College and then King's College, Cambridge as an organ scholar under Stephen Cleobury. Whilst studying at Cambridge, Layton founded the mixed-voice choir Polyphony in 1986. He was appointed the musical director of the Holst Singers in 1993, replacing Hilary Davan Wetton, who had founded the group in 1978. Layton has been assistant organist at Southwark Cathedral, and musical director of Wokingham Choral Society. From 1997, he was organist and subsequently director of music at the Temple Church. From 1999 to 2004 he was chief conductor of the Netherlands Kammerkoor. From 2000 to 2012 he was chief guest conductor of the Danish National Vocal Ensemble. In 2006, he became director of music at Trinity College, Cambridge. In November 2009, the City ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chandos Records
Chandos Records is a British independent classical music recording company based in Colchester. It was founded in 1979 by Brian Couzens. Background Chandos Records arose from a band music publisher Chandos Music, founded in 1963, and Chandos Productions, a record production company which produced LPs for Classics for Pleasure, and, especially, RCA Records, RCA's work in the UK. Its first record was Bloch's Sacred Service (ABR1001). Important early recordings were made with Mariss Jansons, Nigel Kennedy and the King's Singers – before they moved to bigger contracts with EMI.Anderson C. "Thirty years of Chandos. Ralph and Brian Couzens talk about th ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Spicer (musician)
Paul Spicer (born 6 June 1952) is an English composer, conductor, and organist. He taught choral conducting at the Royal College of Music and conducted the RCM Chamber Choir between 1995 and 2008. Until his retirement in July 2022 he also taught at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and conducted their chamber choir which records for Somm Records. He also teaches at Oxford and Durham universities. Since 2004 he has been the conductor of the Petersfield Festival. He was Senior Producer for BBC Radio 3 for the Midlands Region based in Birmingham between 1984 and 1990 after which he moved to be artistic director of the Lichfield Festival. He also produced for various record companies over many years. He founded the Finzi Singers in 1984 making many recordings for Chandos Records. He conducts the Birmingham Bach Choir and the Whitehall Choir in London. His compositions include two oratorios for Easter and for Advent with libretti by the Dr Tom Wright and a choral symphony 'Unfinished ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louis Halsey
Louis Arthur Owen Halsey (born 1929) is an English composer, arranger and choral conductor. He founded the Elizabethan Singers and the Louis Halsey Singers. Career Halsey was born in London in 1929 Retrieved 26 June 2017Robert Evans, Maggie Humphrey, eds., ''Dictionary of Composers for the Church in Great Britain and Ireland'' Retrieved 26 June 2017 (or 1926 according to some sources). He studied music at the and sang i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elizabethan Singers
The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia (a female personification of Great Britain) was first used in 1572, and often thereafter, to mark the Elizabethan age as a renaissance that inspired national pride through classical ideals, international expansion, and naval triumph over Spain. This "golden age" represented the apogee of the English Renaissance and saw the flowering of poetry, music and literature. The era is most famous for its theatre, as William Shakespeare and many others composed plays that broke free of England's past style of theatre. It was an age of exploration and expansion abroad, while back at home, the Protestant Reformation became more acceptable to the people, most certainly after the Spanish Armada was repelled. It was also the end of the period when England was a separate r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Accelerando
''Accelerando'' is a 2005 science fiction novel consisting of a series of interconnected short stories written by British author Charles Stross. As well as normal hardback and paperback editions, it was released as a free e-book under the CC BY-NC-ND license. ''Accelerando'' won the Locus Award in 2006, and was nominated for several other awards in 2005 and 2006, including the Hugo, Campbell, Clarke, and British Science Fiction Association Awards. Title In Italian, ''accelerando'' means "speeding up" and is used as a tempo marking in musical notation. In Stross' novel, it refers to the accelerating rate at which humanity in general, and/or the novel's characters, head towards the technological singularity. Plot introduction The book is a collection of nine short stories telling the tale of three generations of a family before, during, and after a technological singularity. It was originally written as a series of novelettes and novellas, all published in ''Asimov's Science ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Grimes
''Peter Grimes'', Op. 33, is an opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten, with a libretto by Montagu Slater based on the section "Peter Grimes", in George Crabbe's long narrative poem '' The Borough''. The "borough" of the opera is a fictional small town that bears some resemblance to Crabbe's – and later Britten's – home of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, on England's east coast. The work was conceived while Britten was living in the US in the early years of the Second World War and completed when he returned to Britain in 1943. It was first performed at Sadler's Wells in London on 7 June 1945, conducted by Reginald Goodall, and was a critical and popular success. It is still widely performed, both in Britain and internationally, and has become part of the standard repertoire. Among the tenors who have performed the title role in the opera house, or on record, or both are Britten's partner Peter Pears, who sang the part at the premiere, and Allan Clayton, Ben Heppner, Jonas Kaufmann, P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared with other types of figurative language, such as antithesis, hyperbole, metonymy, and simile. One of the most commonly cited examples of a metaphor in English literature comes from the "All the world's a stage" monologue from '' As You Like It'': All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances And one man in his time plays many parts, His Acts being seven ages. At first, the infant... :—William Shakespeare, '' As You Like It'', 2/7 This quotation expresses a metaphor because the world is not literally a stage, and most humans are not literally actors and actresses playing roles. By asserting that the world is a stage, Shakespeare uses points of comparison between the world an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allegro (music)
In musical terminology, tempo (Italian, 'time'; plural ''tempos'', or ''tempi'' from the Italian plural) is the speed or pace of a given piece. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece (often using conventional Italian terms) and is usually measured in beats per minute (or bpm). In modern classical compositions, a "metronome mark" in beats per minute may supplement or replace the normal tempo marking, while in modern genres like electronic dance music, tempo will typically simply be stated in BPM. Tempo may be separated from articulation and meter, or these aspects may be indicated along with tempo, all contributing to the overall texture. While the ability to hold a steady tempo is a vital skill for a musical performer, tempo is changeable. Depending on the genre of a piece of music and the performers' interpretation, a piece may be played with slight tempo rubato or drastic variances. In ensembles, the tempo is often ind ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Movement (music)
A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately as stand-alone pieces, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession. A movement is a section Section, Sectioning or Sectioned may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * Section (music), a complete, but not independent, musical idea * Section (typography), a subdivision, especially of a chapter, in books and documents ** Section sig ..., "a major structural unit perceived as the result of the coincidence of relatively large numbers of structural phenomena". Sources Formal sections in music analysis {{music-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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