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Lilian Stiles-Allen
Lilian Stiles-Allen (28 July 189015 July 1982) was a British soprano of the mid 20th century. Early life She was born Lilian Elizabeth Allen in Devonshire Street, Marylebone in 1890, and later added her mother's maiden name.''The Times'', 17 July 1982 Her musical education was at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she won the Sheriff's Prize for contraltos in 1909, and in Vienna undertaking an extensive study of Lieder. Career Her career was primarily on the concert stage, her physique being unsuited to operatic performance, but an early theatrical appearance was in the comedy '' Eastward Ho!'' in 1919. By the 1920s she was established as a leading concert soprano. Her appearances included the Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace; a revival of Sullivan's ''The Golden Legend''; ''Messiah'' with Sir Thomas Beecham and Malcolm Sargent; Verdi's Requiem (Sargent); Beethoven's Choral Symphony ( Sir Henry J. Wood); Handel's ''Solomon'' (Beecham); Samuel Coleridge-Taylor' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Symphony No
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning common today: a work usually consisting of multiple distinct sections or movements, often four, with the first movement in sonata form. Symphonies are almost always scored for an orchestra consisting of a string section (violin, viola, cello, and double bass), brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments which altogether number about 30 to 100 musicians. Symphonies are notated in a musical score, which contains all the instrument parts. Orchestral musicians play from parts which contain just the notated music for their own instrument. Some symphonies also contain vocal parts (e.g., Beethoven's Ninth Symphony). Etymology and origins The word ''symphony'' is derived from the Greek word (), meaning "agreement or concord of sound", "concert of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams, (; 12 October 1872– 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over sixty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century. Vaughan Williams was born to a well-to-do family with strong moral views and a progressive social life. Throughout his life he sought to be of service to his fellow citizens, and believed in making music as available as possible to everybody. He wrote many works for amateur and student performance. He was musically a late developer, not finding his true voice until his late thirties; his studies in 1907–1908 with the French composer Maurice Ravel helped him clarify the textures of his music and free it from Music of Germany, Teutonic influences. Vaughan Williams i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler (; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect, which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 his compositions were rediscovered by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century. Born in Bohemia (then part of the Austrian Empire) to Jewish parents of humble origins, the German-speaking Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878, he held a succession of conducting posts of rising ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Mass Of Life
''A Mass of Life'' (German: ''Eine Messe des Lebens'') is a cantata by English composer Frederick Delius, based on the German text of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical novel ''Thus Spoke Zarathustra'' (1883-1885). In 1898, Delius had written a male choir and orchestral setting of " Midnight Song" from the same work, and this was revised to form part of the ''Mass''. ''Eine Messe des Lebens'' is the largest of Delius's concert works, being written for four SATB soloists, double choir and orchestra. It was dedicated to Fritz Cassirer, who had had an important hand in choosing the passages from Nietzsche's text. Lionel Carley and others, writing in '' Grove Music Online'', describe it as the composer's "grandest project" and say that "Delius responded to Nietzsche's rich poetry in some of his most virile and exultant music, as well as in passages of a profoundly hypnotic and static calm." The work was completed in 1905. Part 2 was first performed in Munich in 1908, with a complete ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederick Delius
Delius, photographed in 1907 Frederick Theodore Albert Delius ( 29 January 1862 – 10 June 1934), originally Fritz Delius, was an English composer. Born in Bradford in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce. He was sent to Florida in the United States in 1884 to manage an orange plantation. He soon neglected his managerial duties and in 1886 returned to Europe. Having been influenced by African-American music during his short stay in Florida, he began composing. After a brief period of formal musical study in Germany beginning in 1886, he embarked on a full-time career as a composer in Paris and then in nearby Grez-sur-Loing, where he and his wife Jelka lived for the rest of their lives, except during the First World War. Delius's first successes came in Germany, where Hans Haym and other conductors promoted his music from the late 1890s. In Delius's native Britain, his music did not make regular appearances ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gurre-Lieder
' is a large cantata for five vocal soloists, narrator, chorus and large orchestra, composed by Arnold Schoenberg, on poems by the Danish novelist Jens Peter Jacobsen (translated from Danish to German by ). The title means "songs of Gurre", referring to Gurre Castle in Denmark, scene of the medieval love-tragedy (related in Jacobsen's poems) revolving around the Danish national legend of the love of the Danish king Valdemar Atterdag (Valdemar IV, 1320–1375, spelled Waldemar by Schoenberg) for his mistress Tove, and her subsequent murder by Valdemar's jealous wife Queen Helvig (a legend which is historically more likely connected with his ancestor Valdemar I). Composition In 1900, Schoenberg began composing the work as a song cycle for soprano, tenor and piano for a competition run by the ''Wiener Tonkünstler-Verein'' (Vienna Composers' Association). It was written in a lush, late-romantic style heavily influenced by Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. According to Schoenberg, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. As a Jewish composer, Schoenberg was targeted by the Nazi Party, which labeled his works as degenerate music and forbade them from being published. He immigrated to the United States in 1933, becoming an American citizen in 1941. Schoenberg's approach, bοth in terms of harmony and development, has shaped much of 20th-century musical thought. Many composers from at least three generations have consciously extended his thinking, whereas others have passionately reacted against it. Schoenberg was known early in his career for simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic styles of Brahms and Wagner. Later, hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adrian Boult
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult, CH (; 8 April 1889 – 22 February 1983) was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family, he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was conductor of the City of Birmingham Orchestra in 1924. When the British Broadcasting Corporation appointed him director of music in 1930, he established the BBC Symphony Orchestra and became its chief conductor. The orchestra set standards of excellence that were rivalled in Britain only by the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), founded two years later. Forced to leave the BBC in 1950 on reaching retirement age, Boult took on the chief conductorship of the LPO. The orchestra had declined from its peak of the 1930s, but under his guidance its fortunes were revived. He retired as its chief conductor in 1957, and later accepted the post of pre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elijah (oratorio)
''Elijah'' (german: Elias), Op. 70, MWV A 25, is an oratorio by Felix Mendelssohn depicting events in the life of the Prophet Elijah as told in the books 1 Kings and 2 Kings of the Old Testament. It premiered on 26 August 1846. Music and its style This piece was composed in the spirit of Mendelssohn's Baroque predecessors Bach and Handel, whose music he greatly admired. In 1829 Mendelssohn had organized the first performance of Bach's '' St Matthew Passion'' since the composer's death and was instrumental in bringing this and other Bach works to widespread popularity. By contrast, Handel's oratorios never went out of fashion in England. Mendelssohn prepared a scholarly edition of some of Handel's oratorios for publication in London. ''Elijah'' is modelled on the oratorios of these two Baroque masters; however, in its lyricism and use of orchestral and choral colour the style clearly reflects Mendelssohn's own genius as an early Romantic composer. The work is scored for eigh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 18094 November 1847), born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions include symphonies, concertos, piano music, organ music and chamber music. His best-known works include the overture and incidental music for '' A Midsummer Night's Dream'' (which includes his "Wedding March"), the '' Italian Symphony'', the '' Scottish Symphony'', the oratorio ''St. Paul'', the oratorio ''Elijah'', the overture ''The Hebrides'', the mature Violin Concerto and the String Octet. The melody for the Christmas carol "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" is also his. Mendelssohn's ''Songs Without Words'' are his most famous solo piano compositions. Mendelssohn's grandfather was the renowned Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, but Felix was initially raised without religion. He was baptised at the age of seven, becoming a Reformed Christi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Song Of Hiawatha (Coleridge-Taylor)
''The Song of Hiawatha'' (full name: ''Scenes from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow''), Op. 30, is a trilogy of cantatas written by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor between 1898 and 1900. The first part, ''Hiawatha's Wedding Feast'', was particularly famous for many years and made the composer's name known throughout the world. Structure ''Hiawatha's Wedding Feast'' consists of nine sections: eight for chorus and orchestra, and one, "Onaway! Awake, beloved!", for solo tenor and orchestra. Background In 1898, Coleridge-Taylor was fresh from his success with his orchestral ''Ballade in A minor'', which was performed at the Three Choirs Festival of 1898 after Edward Elgar had recommended him as "far and away the cleverest fellow going amongst the younger men". Having been greatly inspired by his reading of Longfellow's epic 1855 poem ''The Song of Hiawatha'' (even later naming his own son ''Hiawatha''), he decided to set the words to music in a choral work called ''H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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