Joseph R. Wood
Joseph Wood (May 12, 1915 – June 3, 2000) was an American composer and music educator. He was a faculty member at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music where he taught music theory and composition from 1950 until his retirement in 1985. He performed and conducted widely, and his compositions for piano, chamber groups, and orchestra were performed around the world. Life and career Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Wood attended Bucknell University from 1932–1934. Afterwards, he began his formal music training at the Juilliard Institute of Musical Arts where he received a diploma in piano performance in 1936. Impressed with his work, the Juilliard School offered him a full four-year Juilliard fellowship from 1936–40. He continued his piano studies with Bernard Wagenear, completing his bachelor's degree in 1949. In 1942 he won first prize for his opera ''The Mother'' in the Juilliard Opera Competition. On the basis of winning the opera prize he was given a Ditson Award from Col ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Classical music, Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Definition The term is descended from Latin, wikt:compono, ''compōnō''; literally "one who puts together". The earliest use of the term in a musical context given by the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' is from Thomas Morley's 1597 ''A Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music'', where he says "Some wil be good descanters [...] and yet wil be but bad composers". 'Composer' is a loose term that generally refers to any person who writes music. More specifically, it is often used to denote people who are composers by occupation, or those who in the tradition of Western classical music. Writers of exclusively or primarily songs may be called composers, but since the 20th century the terms 'songwriter' or 'singer-songwriter' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Elevator Music
Elevator music (also known as Muzak, piped music, or lift music) is a type of background music played in rooms where many people come together (that is, with no intention whatsoever to listen to music), and during telephone calls when placed on hold. There is a specific sound associated with elevator music, but it usually involves simple instrumental themes from "soft" popular music, or "light" classical music being performed by slow strings. This type of music was produced, for instance, by the Mantovani Orchestra, and conductors such as Franck Pourcel and James Last, peaking in popularity around the 1970s. More recent types of elevator music may be computer-generated, with the actual score being composed entirely algorithmically. Other uses The term can also be used for kinds of easy listening, piano solo, jazz or middle of the road music, or what are known as "beautiful music" radio stations. This style of music is sometimes used to comedic effect in mass media such as ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Villa Montalvo
The Montalvo Arts Center is a non-profit center for the arts in Saratoga, California, United States. Open to the public, Montalvo comprises a cultural and arts center, a park, hiking trails and the historic Villa Montalvo, an Italian Mediterranean Revival mansion nestled in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The mansion and estate were constructed from 1912 to 1914 by California statesman and businessman James Duval Phelan. After Phelan's death, the entire estate was donated to California as a park and then a cultural and arts center as it exists today. The arts center maintains the estate in partnership with Santa Clara County. The mansion is a historic landmark, and in 1978 it was awarded inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places. Mansion and grounds The grounds of the villa now encompass , more than the original purchased by Phelan. The estate boasts several large structures as well as gardens and untouched natural areas. Montalvo includes t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Leon Kirchner
Leon Kirchner (January 24, 1919 – September 17, 2009) was an American composer of contemporary classical music. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he won a Pulitzer Prize for his String Quartet No. 3.Alexander L. Ringer, "Kirchner, Leon". ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001).Robert Riggs, ''Leon Kirchner: Composer, Performer, and Teacher'', Eastman Studies in Music (Rochester, New York: University of Rochester Press, 2010): 160. .Melvin Berger, ''Guide to Chamber Music'', third, corrected edition (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2001) 243, 245. .David Ewen, ''The World of Twentieth-Century Music'' (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968): 421.Anonymous, "Pulitzer Prize Winners", ''The Washington Post'' (May 2, 1967): A3.Henry Raymont, "Moderns Crowd Marlboro Scene: Listeners Show E ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ernst Krenek
Ernst Heinrich Krenek (, 23 August 1900 – 22 December 1991) was an Austrian, later American, composer of Czech origin. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including ''Music Here and Now'' (1939), a study of Johannes Ockeghem (1953), and ''Horizons Circled: Reflections on my Music'' (1974). Krenek wrote two pieces using the pseudonym Thornton Winsloe. Life Born Ernst Heinrich Křenek in Vienna (then in Austria-Hungary), he was the son of a Czech soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army. He studied there and in Berlin with Franz Schreker before working in a number of German opera houses as conductor. During World War I, Krenek was drafted into the Austrian army, but he was stationed in Vienna, allowing him to go on with his musical studies. In 1922 he met Alma Mahler, widow of Gustav Mahler, and her daughter, Anna, to whom he dedicated his Symphony No. 2, and whom he married in January 1924. That marriage ended in divorce before its first ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wallingford Riegger
Wallingford Constantine Riegger ( ; April 29, 1885 – April 2, 1961) was an American modernist composer and pianist, best known for his orchestral and modern dance music. He was born in Albany, Georgia, but spent most of his career in New York City, helping elevate the status of other American composers such as Charles Ives and Henry Cowell. Riegger is noted for being one of the first American composers to use a form of serialism and the twelve-tone technique. Life Riegger was born in 1885 to Constantine Riegger and Ida Riegger (née Wallingford). After his father's lumber mill burned down in 1888, his family moved to Indianapolis, and later to Louisville, finally settling in New York in 1900. A gifted cellist, he was a member of the first graduating class of the Institute of Musical Art, later known as the Juilliard School, in 1907, after studying under Percy Goetschius. He continued his studies at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin for three years. After returning in 191 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Roger Sessions
Roger Huntington Sessions (December 28, 1896March 16, 1985) was an American composer, teacher and musicologist. He had initially started his career writing in a neoclassical style, but gradually moved further towards more complex harmonies and postromanticism, and finally the twelve-tone serialism of the Second Viennese School. Sessions' friendship with Arnold Schoenberg influenced this, but he would modify the technique to develop a unique style involving rows to supply melodic thematic material, while composing the subsidiary parts in a free and dissonant manner. Life Sessions was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a family that could trace its roots back to the American Revolution. His mother, Ruth Huntington Sessions, was a direct descendant of Samuel Huntington, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence. Roger studied music at Harvard University from the age of 14. There he wrote for and subsequently edited the ''Harvard Musical Review''. Graduating at age 18, he went ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Walter Aschaffenburg
Walter E. Aschaffenburg (1927–2005) was a German-born American composer, who for most of his career taught composition at Oberlin Conservatory of Music. One commentator noted that he "employed the 12-tone system in some of his works, his scores are often embued with a meticulous expressivity." He regarded his greatest work as ''Bartleby'', an opera with a libretto by Jay Leyda, based on the Herman Melville story, ''Bartleby'', and premiered by Oberlin Music Theatre in 1964. He was twice awarded John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowships for Music Composition first in 1955, then again in 1973. He received the Cleveland Arts Prize, as well. In 1987, he married the pianist and music performance professor Rayna Barroll (1930–2016). Education and early career Aschaffenburg came to the United States with his family in 1938. and became a citizen in 194??. During the war he served in the United States Army. He began his formal study of music at the Hartford School o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Richard Hoffmann (composer)
Richard Hoffmann (20 April 1925 – 24 June 2021)"Richard Hoffmann, Composer and Protégé of Arnold Schoenberg, Dies at 96" by Erich Burnett, Oberlin College & Conservatory, July 15, 2021 was an American composer, and educator. He served many years as a professor at . Early life ...
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David Robertson (conductor)
David Eric Robertson (born July 19, 1958) is an American conductor. He was chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and was formerly music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra from 2005 until 2018. He is Director of Orchestral Studies at Juilliard. Biography Early life Robertson was born and raised in Malibu, California, and grew up in a music-loving family. His father was a research scientist at Hughes Laboratory and his mother studied literature, but later had a career as a baker. In grade school, he played French horn and violin, and first conducted at age 12. He later studied horn, composition, and conducting as a college student at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Career After his college years, Robertson began to receive conducting offers in Europe and performed often in both symphonic and operatic repertoire. His early career lectured under the rubric of the U.S. Information Agency in the Middle East and around the world on the subject of music. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Okinawa Prefecture
is a prefecture of Japan. Okinawa Prefecture is the southernmost and westernmost prefecture of Japan, has a population of 1,457,162 (as of 2 February 2020) and a geographic area of 2,281 km2 (880 sq mi). Naha is the capital and largest city of Okinawa Prefecture, with other major cities including Okinawa, Uruma, and Urasoe. Okinawa Prefecture encompasses two thirds of the Ryukyu Islands, including the Okinawa, Daitō and Sakishima groups, extending southwest from the Satsunan Islands of Kagoshima Prefecture to Taiwan ( Hualien and Yilan Counties). Okinawa Prefecture's largest island, Okinawa Island, is the home to a majority of Okinawa's population. Okinawa Prefecture's indigenous ethnic group are the Ryukyuan people, who also live in the Amami Islands of Kagoshima Prefecture. Okinawa Prefecture was ruled by the Ryukyu Kingdom from 1429 and unofficially annexed by Japan after the Invasion of Ryukyu in 1609. Okinawa Prefecture was officially founded in 1879 by ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |