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Les Noces
''Les Noces'' (French for The Wedding; russian: Свадебка, ''Svadebka'') is a ballet and orchestral concert work composed by Igor Stravinsky for percussion, pianists, chorus, and vocal soloists. The composer gave it the descriptive title "Choreographed Scenes with Music and Voices" and dedicated it to impresario Sergei Diaghilev. Though initially intended to serve as a ballet score, it is often performed without dance. The ballet premiered under the musical direction of Ernest Ansermet at the Ballets Russes with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska on 13 June 1923, in Paris. Several versions of the score have been performed, either substituting orchestra for the percussion and pianos or using pianolas in accordance with a version of the piece that Stravinsky abandoned without completing. Composition Stravinsky first conceived of writing the ballet in 1913 and completed it in short score by October 1917. He wrote the libretto himself using Russian wedding lyrics taken prima ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bronislava Nijinska
Bronislava Nijinska (; pl, Bronisława Niżyńska ; russian: Бронисла́ва Фоми́нична Нижи́нская, Bronisláva Fomínična Nižínskaja; be, Браніслава Ніжынская, Branislava Nižynskaja; – February 21, 1972) was a Polish ballet dancer, and an innovative choreographer. She came of age in a family of traveling, professional dancers. Her own career began in Saint Petersburg. Soon she joined Ballets Russes which ventured to success in Paris. She met war-time difficulties in Petrograd and revolutionary turbulence in Kiev. In France again, public acclaim for her works came quickly, cresting in the 1920s. She then enjoyed continuing successes in Europe and the Americas. Nijinska played a pioneering role in the broad movement that diverged from 19th-century classical ballet. Her introduction of modern forms, steps, and motion, and a minimalist narrative, prepared the way of future works. Following serious home training, she entered t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luthéal
The luthéal is a kind of hybrid piano which extended the "register" possibilities of a piano by producing cimbalom-like sounds in some registers, exploiting harmonics of the strings when pulling other register-stops, and also some registers making other objects, which were lowered just above the strings, resound. The instrument became obsolete partly because most of its mechanics were too sensitive, needing constant adjustment. The only pieces in the general repertoire to feature the luthéal are ''L'enfant et les sortilèges'' (1920–25) and ''Tzigane'' (1924), by Maurice Ravel. History The attachment was created by the Belgian organ builder Georges Cloetens, who first patented it on 28 January 1919 and named it the "Jeu de harpe tirée". Cotte, Roger J. V. 2001. "Luthéal iano-Luthéal. ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers. Maurice Ravel used it in ''Tzigane'' for violin an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stephen Walsh (writer)
Stephen Walsh (born 6 June 1942) is a British journalist, broadcaster, musicologist, and classical music biographer. He is the author of biographies of Stravinsky, Mussorgsky, and Debussy, as well as books on Schumann, Bartók, and the music of Stravinsky. As of 2021, he is an emeritus professor of Cardiff University. Biography Walsh was born in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire in 1942. He was educated at Kingston Grammar School, St. Paul's School, London, and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge where he read English. He worked as a music critic for ''The Times'', ''Financial Times'', and the ''Daily Telegraph'', and as a frequent broadcaster for the BBC on classical music topics. From 1966 to 1985, he was deputy music critic of ''The Observer'', overlapping with a senior lectureship at Cardiff University from 1976. He later held a chair at the university. He retired from Cardiff in 2013, since when he has continued his career as a freelance author and biographer. Walsh is best k ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tress
Tress may refer to: People *Arthur Tress (born 1940), American photographer *David Tress (born 1955), British artist *Kyle Tress (born 1940), American skeleton racer *Mike Tress (1909-1967), national president of Agudath Israel of America *Oliver Tress (born 1967), British businessman, founder of Oliver Bonas *Ronald Tress (1915-2006), British professor and director *Tress Bucyanayandi, Ugandan agriculturalist and politician *Tress MacNeille (born 1951), American voice actress Other *Tress 90 (1990-1996), meant as the replacement for INFOTRYGD, a case-worker support system, the largest IT failure in Norwegian history. * Ladies'-tresses, a genus of orchids *Autumn Ladies'-tresses ''Spiranthes spiralis'', commonly known as autumn lady's-tresses, is an orchid that grows in Europe and adjacent North Africa and Asia. It is a small grey-green plant. It forms a rosette of four to five pointed, sessile, ovate leaves about in le ..., the latest-blooming native species of orchid * Tress ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scene (drama)
A scene is a dramatic part of a story, at a specific time and place, between specific characters. The term is used in both filmmaking and theatre, with some distinctions between the two. Theatre In drama, a scene is a unit of action, often a subdivision of an act. French scene A "French scene" is a scene in which the beginning and end are marked by a change in the presence of characters onstage, rather than by the lights going up or down or the set being changed.George, Kathleen (1994) ''Playwriting: The First Workshop'', Focal Press, , p. 154 Obligatory scene From the French ''scène à faire'', an obligatory scene is a scene (usually highly charged with emotion) which is anticipated by the audience and provided by an obliging playwright. An example is ''Hamlet'' 3.4, when Hamlet confronts his mother. Film In filmmaking and video production, a scene is generally thought of as a section of a motion picture in a single location and continuous time made up of a serie ... [...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] |
Diaghilev
Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev ( ; rus, Серге́й Па́влович Дя́гилев, , sʲɪˈrɡʲej ˈpavləvʲɪdʑ ˈdʲæɡʲɪlʲɪf; 19 August 1929), usually referred to outside Russia as Serge Diaghilev, was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, from which many famous dancers and choreographers would arise. The active years of Diaghilev’s career can be divided into two periods: the one in St Petersburg (1898–1906) and the other in emigration (1906–1929). Biography Sergei Diaghilev was born in Selishchi to a noble officer . His mother died from childbed fever soon after his birth. In 1873, Pavel met and married Elena Panaeva, who loved Sergei and raised him as her own child. The in Perm was a local cultural centre, and the Diaghilevs housed a musical evening every second Thursday, Modest Mussorgsky being one of the most frequent guests. Sergei Diaghilev composed his first romance at the age of 15. When he enter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unpitched Percussion Instrument
An unpitched percussion instrument is a percussion instrument played in such a way as to produce sounds of indeterminate pitch, or an instrument normally played in this fashion. Unpitched percussion is typically used to maintain a rhythm or to provide accents, and its sounds are unrelated to the melody and harmony of the music. Within the orchestra unpitched percussion is termed auxiliary percussion, and this subsection of the percussion section includes all unpitched instruments of the orchestra however they are played, for example the pea whistle and siren. A common and typical example of an unpitched instrument is the snare drum, which is perceived as unpitched for three reasons: * The snares produce sounds similar to white noise, masking definite frequencies. * The drum heads produce inharmonic sounds. * The strongest frequencies that are present are unrelated to pitched sounds produced by other instruments in the ensemble. Although the drum is ''tuned'' by the player, thi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys (small levers) that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings. It was invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700. Description The word "piano" is a shortened form of ''pianoforte'', the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument, which in turn derives from ''clavicembalo col piano e forte'' (key cimbalom with quiet and loud)Pollens (1995, 238) and ''fortepiano''. The Italian musical terms ''piano'' and ''forte'' indicate "soft" and "loud" respectively, in this context referring to the variations in volume (i.e., loudness) produced in response to a pianist's touch or pressure on the keys: the grea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pitched Percussion Instrument
A pitched percussion instrument (also known as a melodic or tuned percussion instrument) is a percussion instrument used to produce musical notes of one or more pitches, as opposed to an unpitched percussion instrument which is used to produce sounds of indefinite pitch. Pitching of percussion instruments is achieved through a variety of means. *Membranophones (such as timpani) are tuned by altering the surface tension of the face that is struck. *Idiophones (such as crotales) gain their pitch through the physical characteristics (such as composition, density, and physical dimensions) of each respective bar. The term ''pitched percussion'' is now preferred to the traditional term ''tuned percussion'': * Many ''untuned'' percussion instruments (such as the bass drum) are ''tuned'' by the player, but this tuning does not relate to a particular pitch. * ''Untuned'' percussion instruments can and frequently do make sounds that could be used as pitched notes in an appropriate co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Percussion Instrument
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Excluding zoomusicological instruments and the human voice, the percussion family is believed to include the oldest musical instruments.''The Oxford Companion to Music'', 10th edition, p.775, In spite of being a very common term to designate instruments, and to relate them to their players, the percussionists, percussion is not a systematic classificatory category of instruments, as described by the scientific field of organology. It is shown below that percussion instruments may belong to the organological classes of ideophone, membranophone, aerophone and cordophone. The percussion section of an orchestra most commonly contains instruments such as the timpani, snare drum, bass drum, tambourine, belonging to the membranophones, and cym ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Choir
A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which spans from the medieval era to the present, or popular music repertoire. Most choirs are led by a conductor, who leads the performances with arm, hand, and facial gestures. The term ''choir'' is very often applied to groups affiliated with a church (whether or not they actually occupy the quire), whereas a ''chorus'' performs in theatres or concert halls, but this distinction is not rigid. Choirs may sing without instruments, or accompanied by a piano, pipe organ, a small ensemble, or an orchestra. A choir can be a subset of an ensemble; thus one speaks of the "woodwind choir" of an orchestra, or different "choirs" of voices or instruments in a polychoral composition. In typical 18th century to 21st century oratorios and masses, 'choru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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