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Incises
''Incises'' (1994/2001) and ''Sur Incises'' (1996/1998) are two related works of the French composer Pierre Boulez. The pitches of the row used in ''Incises'' and ''Sur Incises'' are based on the Sacher hexachord, the same as those used in the rows for ''Répons'', ''Messagesquisse'', and ''Dérive 1''. ''Incises'' ''Incises'' ("Interpolations") for solo piano was composed in 1994 as a test piece for the Umberto Micheli Piano Competition, where it was first performed on 21 October 1994. Boulez revised it in 2001. ''Incises'' was Boulez's first work for solo piano since his Third Piano Sonata of 1955–57/63. The piece lasts less than ten minutes. The work plays with contrasts of gestures and textures, for instance, repeated pitches or chords in an even tempo interrupted by violent melodic arcs, or sparse chordal interjections without discernible rhythm over long held sonorities. Reviewing of a 2005 performance of ''Incises'', Tim Page described it: "''Incises'' is charged wi ... [...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] |
Répons
''Répons'' is a composition by French composer Pierre Boulez for a large chamber orchestra with six percussion soloists and live electronics. The six soloists play harp, cimbalom, vibraphone, glockenspiel/xylophone, and two pianos. It was premiered on 18 October 1981 at the Donaueschingen Festival. The composer expanded it until its completion in 1985. The work is dedicated to "on his 80th birthday". ''Répons'' was the first significant work to come out of Boulez's endeavors at IRCAM, an institute in Paris devoted to making technological advances in electronic music. It has been celebrated for its integration of the electronic and the acoustic. Its title, ''Répons'', reflects the fact that the composition is constructed on various types of ''responses'': the acoustic sounds and electronic responses to them as well as the medieval idea of responsorial mirroring between players and speakers in different parts of the concert hall. Tom Service of ''The Guardian'' has called it "Bou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Sacher
Paul Sacher (28 April 190626 May 1999) was a Swiss conductor, patron and billionaire businessperson. At the time of his death Sacher was majority shareholder of pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-La Roche and was considered the third richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of US$13 billion. He founded and conducted the Basler Kammerorchester (1926–1987). He commissioned notable works of composers of the 20th century and premiered them with the chamber orchestra. While better known for his interest in new music, he was also devoted to music of baroque and classical eras; he founded the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, institute for early music, in 1933. Biography Sacher studied under Felix Weingartner, among others. In 1926 he founded the chamber orchestra Basler Kammerorchester, which specialized in both modern (twentieth-century) and pre-classical (mid-eighteenth-century) repertory. In 1928 he founded the Basel Chamber Choir. Both the orchestra and choir gave their las ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sacher Hexachord
The Sacher hexachord (6-Z11, musical cryptogram on the name of Swiss conductor Paul Sacher) is a hexachord notable for its use in a set of twelve compositions (''12 Hommages à Paul Sacher'') created at the invitation of Mstislav Rostropovich for Sacher's seventieth birthday in 1976. The twelve compositions include Pierre Boulez's ''Messagesquisse'', Hans Werner Henze's ''Capriccio'', Witold Lutosławski's ''Sacher Variation'', and Henri Dutilleux's ''Trois strophes sur le nom de Sacher''. ''Messagesquisse'' is dedicated to Sacher, but Boulez's ''Répons'', ''Dérive 1'', ''Incises'', and '' Sur Incises'' all use rows with the same pitches.Edward Campbell, ''Boulez, Music and Philosophy'', . (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010): 206. . The hexachord's complement is its Z-relation, 6-Z40. See also *Schoenberg hexachord 6-Z44 (012569), known as the Schoenberg hexachord, is Arnold Schoenberg's signature hexachord, as one transposition contains the pitches ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grawemeyer Award For Music Composition
The Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition () is an annual prize instituted by Henry Charles Grawemeyer, industrialist and entrepreneur, at the University of Louisville in 1984. The award was first given in 1985. Subsequently, the Grawemeyer Award was expanded to other categories: ''Ideas Improving World Order'' (instituted in 1988), ''Education'' (1989), ''Religion'' (1990) and ''Psychology'' (2000). The prize fund was initially an endowment of US$9 million from the Grawemeyer Foundation. The initial awards were for $150 000 each, increasing to $200 000 for the year 2000 awards. After the economic crash of 2008, the prize was reduced to $100,000. The selection process includes three panels of judges. The first is a panel of faculty from the University of Louisville, who hosts and maintains the perpetuity of the award. The second is a panel of music professionals, often involving conductors, performers, and composers (most frequently the previous winner). The final ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ensemble InterContemporain
The Ensemble intercontemporain (EIC) is a French music ensemble, based in Paris, that is dedicated to contemporary music. Pierre Boulez founded the EIC in 1976 for this purpose, the first permanent organization of its type in the world. Organization and purpose The EIC consists of thirty one full-time soloists in various instruments. They exist to fill a need for musicians who can work with new playing techniques and composition styles prevalent in this kind of music. The Ensemble is resident at the Philharmonie de Paris, under its current artistic director Matthias Pintscher and assistant director Julien Leroy, with their activities financed by the French Ministry of Culture and the city of Paris. The EIC performs about thirty times a year in their home city, and tour extensively both in France and abroad, especially at international festivals. These concerts regularly include the premieres of new compositions, often commissioned by the Ensemble itself, which gives preference ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steel Drums
The steelpan (also known as a pan, steel drum, and sometimes, collectively with other musicians, as a steelband or steel orchestra) is a musical instrument originating in Trinidad and Tobago. Steelpan musicians are called pannists. Description The modern pan is a chromatically pitched percussion instrument made from 55 gallon industrial drums. ''Drum'' refers to the steel drum containers from which the pans are made; the steel drum is more correctly called a ''steel pan'' or ''pan'' as it falls into the idiophone family of instruments, and so is not a drum (which is a membranophone). Some steelpans are made to play in the Pythagorean musical cycle of fourths and fifths. Pan is played using a pair of straight sticks tipped with rubber; the size and type of rubber tip varies according to the class of pan being played. Some musicians use four pansticks, holding two in each hand. This grew out of Trinidad and Tobago's early 20th-century Carnival percussion groups known as ta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tubular Bells
Tubular bells (also known as chimes) are musical instruments in the percussion family. Their sound resembles that of church bells, carillon, or a bell tower; the original tubular bells were made to duplicate the sound of church bells within an ensemble.James Blades and James Holland. "Tubular bells". Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed August 18, 2015Oxfordmusiconline.com/ref> Each bell is a metal tube, in diameter, tuned by altering its length. Its standard range is C4–F5, though many professional instruments reach G5. Tubular bells are often replaced by studio chimes, which are a smaller and usually less expensive instrument. Studio chimes are similar in appearance to tubular bells, but each bell has a smaller diameter than the corresponding bell on tubular bells. Tubular bells are sometimes struck on the top edge of the tube with a rawhide- or plastic-headed hammer. Often, a sustain pedal will be attached to allow extended ringing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crotales
Crotales (, ), sometimes called antique cymbals, are percussion instruments consisting of small, tuned bronze or brass disks. Each is about in diameter with a flat top surface and a nipple on the base. They are commonly played by being struck with hard mallets. However, they may also be played by striking two disks together in the same manner as finger cymbals, or by bowing. Their sound is rather like a small tuned bell, only with a much brighter sound and a much longer resonance. Similar to tuned finger cymbals, crotales are thicker and larger; they also have slight grooves in them. The name comes from the Greek ''crotalon'', for a castanet or rattle. Modern crotales are arranged chromatically and have a range of up to two octaves. They are typically available in sets (commonly one octave) but may also be purchased individually. Crotales are treated as transposing instruments; music for crotales is written two octaves lower than the sounding pitch to minimize ledger lines. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Structures (Boulez)
''Structures I'' (1952) and ''Structures II'' (1961) are two related works for two pianos, composed by the French composer Pierre Boulez. History The first book of ''Structures'' was begun in early 1951, as Boulez was completing his orchestral work ''Polyphonie X'', and finished in 1952. It consists of three movements, or "chapters", labelled ''Ia'', ''Ib'', and ''Ic'', composed in the order ''a'', ''c'', ''b''. The first of the second book's two "chapters" was composed in 1956, but chapter2 was not written until 1961. The second chapter includes three sets of variable elements, which are to be arranged to make a performing version. A partial premiere of book2 was performed by the composer and Yvonne Loriod at the Wigmore Hall, London, in March 1957. This was Boulez's first appearance in the UK as a performer. The same performers gave the premiere of the complete second book, with two different versions of chapter2, in a chamber-music concert of the Donaueschinger Musiktage on S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthony Tommasini
Anthony Carl Tommasini (born April 14, 1948) is an American music critic and author who specializes in classical music. Described as "a discerning critic, whose taste, knowledge and judgment have made him a must-read", Tommasini was the chief classical music critic for ''The New York Times'' from 2000 to 2021. Also a pianist, he has released two CDS and two books on the music of his colleague and mentor, the composer and critic Virgil Thomson. A classical music enthusiast since his youth, Tommasini attended both Yale University and Boston University to study piano, and then taught music at Emerson College. In 1986 he left academia to write music criticism for ''The Boston Globe''. Tommasini joined the ''Times'' in 1996 and became their chief classical music critic in 2000 for over two decades. He traveled to cover important premieres of contemporary classical music, encouraged diversity in both classical repertoire and ensembles, and wrote books covering influential operas and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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