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Memory (Cats Song)
"Memory" is a show tune composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, with lyrics by Trevor Nunn based on poems by T. S. Eliot. It was written for the 1981 musical ''Cats'', where it is sung primarily by the character Grizabella as a melancholic remembrance of her glamorous past and as a plea for acceptance. "Memory" is the climax of the musical and by far its best-known song, having achieved mainstream success outside of the musical. According to musicologist Jessica Sternfeld, writing in 2006, it is "by some estimations the most successful song ever from a musical." Elaine Paige originated the role of Grizabella in the West End production of ''Cats'' and was thus the first to perform the song publicly on stage. "Memory" was named the Best Song Musically and Lyrically at the 1982 Ivor Novello Awards. In 2020, Jessie Thompson of the ''Evening Standard'' wrote, "Paige’s version set the standard and enabled Memory to become one of the most recognisable musical theatre songs of all time." ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Show Tune
A show tune is a song originally written as part of the score of a work of musical theatre or musical film, especially if the piece in question has become a standard, more or less detached in most people's minds from the original context. Though show tunes vary in style, they do tend to share common characteristics—they usually fit the context of a story being told in the original musical, they are useful in enhancing and heightening choice moments. A particularly common form of show tune is the "I Want" song, which composer Stephen Schwartz noted as being particularly likely to have a lifespan outside the show that spawned it. Show tunes were a major venue for popular music before the rock and roll and television era; most of the hits of such songwriters as Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and George Gershwin came from their shows. (Even into the television and rock era, a few stage musicals managed to turn their show tunes into major pop music hits, sometimes aided by fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Lloyd Webber
William Southcombe Lloyd Webber (11 March 1914 – 29 October 1982) was an English organist and composer, who achieved some fame as a part of the modern classical music movement whilst commercially facing mixed opportunities. Besides his long and prestigious career, composing works ranging from choral pieces to instrumental items and more, he is known for being the father of both fellow composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and virtuoso cellist Julian Lloyd Webber. He also notably served as a teacher, instructing pupils on music theory at the Royal College of Music for many years until his death in 1982. Childhood Webber was born in London. The son of William Charles Henry Webber, a self-employed plumber, he was fortunate that his father was a keen organ 'buff' who spent what little money he had travelling to hear various organs in and around the capital. Often he would take his son with him and, before long, young William started to play the organ himself and developed a keen inter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Don Black (lyricist)
Donald Blackstone (born 21 June 1938) known by pen name Don Black is an English lyricist. His works have included numerous musicals, movie, television themes and hit songs. He has provided lyrics for John Barry, Charles Strouse, Matt Monro, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Quincy Jones, Hoyt Curtin, Lulu, Jule Styne, Henry Mancini, Meat Loaf, Michael Jackson, Elmer Bernstein, Michel Legrand, Hayley Westenra, A. R. Rahman, Marvin Hamlisch and Debbie Wiseman. AllMusic stated that "Black is perhaps best-known for his collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber, and for the James Bond theme songs he co-wrote with composer John Barry: ' Thunderball', ' Diamonds Are Forever' and ' The Man with the Golden Gun'." Early life He was born Donald Blackstone in London, the youngest of five children of Russian Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, Morris and Betsy (née Kersh) Blackstone. His father worked as a garment presser and his mother in a clothes shop and during his childhood the family lived in a cou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Possum's Book Of Practical Cats
''Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats'' (1939) is a collection of whimsical light poems by T. S. Eliot about feline psychology and sociology, published by Faber and Faber. It serves as the basis for Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1981 musical '' Cats''. Eliot wrote the poems in the 1930s and included them, under his assumed name "Old Possum", in letters to his godchildren. They were collected and published in 1939, with cover illustrations by the author, and quickly re-published in 1940, illustrated in full by Nicolas Bentley. They have also been published in versions illustrated by Edward Gorey (1982), Axel Scheffler (2009) and Rebecca Ashdown (2014). Contents The contents of ''Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats'', along with the names of the featured cats where appropriate, are: * "The Naming of Cats" * "The Old Gumbie Cat" ( Jennyanydots) * "Growltiger's Last Stand" * "The Rum Tum Tugger" * "The Song of the Jellicles" * "Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer" * "Old Deuteronomy" * " (Of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Popular Music
Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia'' It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional or "folk" music. Art music was historically disseminated through the performances of written music, although since the beginning of the recording industry, it is also disseminated through recordings. Traditional music forms such as early blues songs or hymns were passed along orally, or to smaller, local audiences. The original application of the term is to music of the 1880s Tin Pan Alley period in the United States. Although popular music sometimes is known as "pop music", the two terms are not interchangeable. Popular music is a generic term for a wide variety of genres of music that appeal to the tastes of a large segment of the population, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Time Signature
The time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, or measure signature) is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats (pulses) are contained in each measure (bar), and which note value is equivalent to a beat. In a music score, the time signature appears at the beginning as a time symbol or stacked numerals, such as or (read ''common time'' or ''four-four time'', respectively), immediately following the key signature (or immediately following the clef symbol if the key signature is empty). A mid-score time signature, usually immediately following a barline, indicates a change of meter. There are various types of time signatures, depending on whether the music follows regular (or symmetrical) beat patterns, including simple (e.g., and ), and compound (e.g., and ); or involves shifting beat patterns, including complex (e.g., or ), mixed (e.g., & or & ), additive (e.g., ), fractional (e.g., ), and irrational met ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chord Progression
In a musical composition, a chord progression or harmonic progression (informally chord changes, used as a plural) is a succession of chords. Chord progressions are the foundation of harmony in Western musical tradition from the common practice era of Classical music to the 21st century. Chord progressions are the foundation of Western popular music styles (e.g., pop music, rock music), traditional music, as well as genres such as blues and jazz. In these genres, chord progressions are the defining feature on which melody and rhythm are built. In tonal music, chord progressions have the function of either establishing or otherwise contradicting a tonality, the technical name for what is commonly understood as the "key" of a song or piece. Chord progressions, such as the common chord progression I–vi–ii–V, are usually expressed by Roman numerals in Classical music theory. In many styles of popular and traditional music, chord progressions are expressed using the name and " ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Figure (music)
__NOTOC__ A musical figure or figuration is the shortest phrase in music; a short succession of notes, often recurring. It may have melodic pitch, harmonic progression, and rhythmic meter. The 1964 '' Grove's Dictionary'' defines the figure as "the exact counterpart of the German 'motiv' and the French 'motif: it produces a "single complete and distinct impression". To the self-taught Roger Scruton, however, a figure is distinguished from a motif in that a figure is background while a motif is foreground: Allen Forte describes the term ''figuration'' as being applied to two distinct things: A phrase originally presented or heard as a motif may become a figure that accompanies another melody, such as in the second movement of Claude Debussy's ''String Quartet''. It is perhaps best to view a figure as a motif when it has special importance in a piece. According to White, motives are, "significant in the structure of the work," while figures or figurations are not and, "may ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turn (music)
In music, ornaments or embellishments are musical flourishes—typically, added notes—that are not essential to carry the overall line of the melody (or harmony), but serve instead to decorate or "ornament" that line (or harmony), provide added interest and variety, and give the performer the opportunity to add expressiveness to a song or piece. Many ornaments are performed as "fast notes" around a central, main note. There are many types of ornaments, ranging from the addition of a single, short grace note before a main note to the performance of a virtuosic and flamboyant trill. The amount of ornamentation in a piece of music can vary from quite extensive (it was often extensive in the Baroque period, from 1600 to 1750) to relatively little or even none. The word ''agrément'' is used specifically to indicate the French Baroque style of ornamentation. Improvised vs. written In the Baroque period, it was common for performers to improvise ornamentation on a given melodic li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musical Phrasing
Musical phrasing is the method by which a musician shapes a sequence of notes in a passage of music to allow expression, much like when speaking English a phrase may be written identically but may be spoken differently, and is named for the interpretation of small units of time known as phrases (half of a period). A musician accomplishes this by interpreting the music—from memory or sheet music—by altering tone, tempo, dynamics, articulation, inflection, and other characteristics. Phrasing can emphasise a concept in the music or a message in the lyrics, or it can digress from the composer's intention, aspects of which are commonly indicated in musical notation called phrase marks or phrase markings. For example, accelerating the tempo or prolonging a note may add tension. Giuseppe Cambini—a composer, violinist, and music teacher of the Classical period—had this to say about bowed string instruments, specifically violin, phrasing: Intuitive and analytical phrasin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musicologist
Musicology (from Greek μουσική ''mousikē'' 'music' and -λογια ''-logia'', 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some music research is scientific in focus (psychological, sociological, acoustical, neurological, computational). Some geographers and anthropologists have an interest in musicology so the social sciences also have an academic interest. A scholar who participates in musical research is a musicologist. Musicology traditionally is divided in three main branches: historical musicology, systematic musicology and ethnomusicology. Historical musicologists mostly study the history of the western classical music tradition, though the study of music history need not be limited to that. Ethnomusicologists draw from anthropology (particularly field research) to understand how and why people make music. Systematic musicology includes music theory, aesthe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boléro
''Boléro'' is a 1928 work for large orchestra by French composer Maurice Ravel. At least one observer has called it Ravel's most famous composition. It was also one of his last completed works before illness forced him into retirement. Composition The work's creation was set in motion by a commission from the dancer Ida Rubinstein, who asked Ravel for an orchestral transcription of six pieces from Isaac Albéniz's set of piano pieces, ''Iberia''. While working on the transcription, Ravel was informed that Spanish conductor Enrique Fernández Arbós had already orchestrated the movements, and that copyright law prevented any other arrangement from being made. When Arbós heard of this, he said he would happily waive his rights and allow Ravel to orchestrate the pieces. But Ravel decided to orchestrate one of his own works instead, then changed his mind and decided to compose a completely new piece based on the ''bolero'', a Spanish dance musical form. While on vacation at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
