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Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 18094 November 1847), 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'' and ''Scottish'' Symphonies, the oratorios '' St. Paul'' and ''Elijah'', the ''Hebrides'' Overture, the mature Violin Concerto, the String Octet, and the melody used in the Christmas carol "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing". Mendelssohn's ''Songs Without Words'' are his most famous solo piano compositions. Mendelssohn's grandfather was the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, but Felix was initially raised without religion until he was baptised aged seven into the Reformed Christian church. He was recognised early as a musical prodigy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wedding March (Mendelssohn)
Felix Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" in C major, written in 1842, is one of the best known of the pieces from his suite of incidental music (Op. 61) to Shakespeare's play ''A Midsummer Night's Dream''. It is one of the most frequently used wedding marches, generally being played on a church pipe organ. At weddings in many Western countries, this piece is commonly used as a recessional, though frequently stripped of its episodes in this context. It is frequently teamed with the " Bridal Chorus" from Richard Wagner's opera '' Lohengrin'', or with Jeremiah Clarke's " Prince of Denmark's March", both of which are often played for the entry of the bride. The first known instance of Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" being used at a wedding was when Dorothy Carew wed Tom Daniel at St Peter's Church, Tiverton, England, on 2 June 1847 when it was performed by organist Samuel Reay. However, it did not become popular at weddings until it was selected by Victoria, The Princess Royal for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Octet (Mendelssohn)
The String Octet in E-flat major, Opus number, Op. 20, Mendelssohn-Werkverzeichnis, MWV R 20, was written by the 16-year-old Felix Mendelssohn during the fall of 1825 and completed on October 15. Written for four violins, two violas, and two cellos, this work created a new chamber music genre. Conrad Wilson summarizes much of its reception ever since: "Its youthful verve, brilliance and perfection make it one of the miracles of nineteenth-century music." This was one of the first works of Mendelssohn to be very well received. Background Mendelssohn wrote his octet and gave a signed score to his friend and violin teacher as a birthday present. Rietz copied parts from the score to use for the premiere. The string octet was a fairly new genre of chamber music at the time, the most widely known genre of chamber music still being the string quartet. The genre was rapidly gaining popularity among other composers. When Mendelssohn composed his octet, it was a rather new genre, and he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christmas Carol
A Christmas carol is a Carol (music), carol on the theme of Christmas, traditionally sung at Christmas itself or during the surrounding Christmas and holiday season. The term noel has sometimes been used, especially for carols of French origin. Christmas carols may be regarded as a subset of the broader category of Christmas music. History The first known Christmas hymns may be traced to 4th-century Rome. Latin hymns such as Veni redemptor gentium, written by Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan, were austere statements of the theological doctrine of the Incarnation in opposition to Arianism. Corde natus ex Parentis (''Of the Father's Heart Begotten, Of the Father's heart begotten'') by the Spanish poet Prudentius (d. 413) is still sung in some churches today. In the 9th and 10th centuries, the Christmas sequence (or prose) was introduced in Northern European monasteries, developing under Bernard of Clairvaux into a Sequence (liturgy), sequence of rhymed stanzas. In the 12th cent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hector Berlioz
Louis-Hector Berlioz (11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a French Romantic music, Romantic composer and conductor. His output includes orchestral works such as the ''Symphonie fantastique'' and ''Harold en Italie, Harold in Italy'', choral pieces including the Requiem (Berlioz), Requiem and ''L'Enfance du Christ'', his three operas ''Benvenuto Cellini (opera), Benvenuto Cellini'', ''Les Troyens'' and ''Béatrice et Bénédict'', and works of hybrid genres such as the "dramatic symphony" ''Roméo et Juliette (Berlioz), Roméo et Juliette'' and the "dramatic legend" ''La Damnation de Faust''. The elder son of a provincial physician, Berlioz was expected to follow his father into medicine, and he attended a Parisian medical college before defying his family by taking up music as a profession. His independence of mind and refusal to follow traditional rules and formulas put him at odds with the conservative musical establishment of Paris. He briefly moderated his style ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles-Valentin Alkan
Charles-Valentin Alkan (; 30 November 1813 – 29 March 1888) was a French composer and virtuoso pianist. At the height of his fame in the 1830s and 1840s he was, alongside his friends and colleagues Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt, among the leading pianists in Paris, a city in which he spent virtually his entire life. Alkan earned many awards at the Conservatoire de Paris, which he entered before he was six. His career in the salons and concert halls of Paris was marked by his occasional long withdrawals from public performance, for personal reasons. Although he had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances in the Parisian artistic world, including Eugène Delacroix and George Sand, from 1848 he began to adopt a reclusive life style, while continuing with his compositions – virtually all of which are for the keyboard. During this period he published, among other works, his collections of large-scale studies in all the major keys (Op. 35) and all the minor keys ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' ("total work of art"), whereby he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. The drama was to be presented as a continuously sung narrative, without conventional operatic structures like Aria, arias and Recitative, recitatives. He described this vision in a List of prose works by Richard Wagner, series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt (22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor and teacher of the Romantic music, Romantic period. With a diverse List of compositions by Franz Liszt, body of work spanning more than six decades, he is considered to be one of the most prolific and influential composers of his era, and his piano works continue to be widely performed and recorded. Liszt achieved success as a concert pianist from an early age, and received lessons from the esteemed musicians Carl Czerny and Antonio Salieri. He gained further renown for his performances during tours of Europe in the 1830s and 1840s, developing a reputation for technical brilliance as well as physical attractiveness. In a phenomenon dubbed "Lisztomania", he rose to a degree of stardom and popularity among the public not experienced by the virtuosos who preceded him. During this period and into his later life, Liszt was a friend, musical promoter and benefactor to many composer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
St Matthew Passion
The ''St Matthew Passion'' (), BWV 244, is a '' Passion'', a sacred oratorio written by Johann Sebastian Bach in 1727 for solo voices, double choir and double orchestra, with libretto by Picander. It sets the 26th and 27th chapters of the Gospel of Matthew (in the Luther Bible) to music, with interspersed chorales and arias. It is widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of Baroque sacred music. The original Latin title translates to "The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the Evangelist Matthew". Markus Rathey. 2016. ''Bach's Major Vocal Works. Music, Drama, Liturgy'', Yale University Press History The ''St Matthew Passion'' is the second of two Passion settings by Bach that have survived in their entirety, the first being the '' St John Passion'', first performed in 1724. Versions and contemporaneous performances Little is known with certainty about the creation process of the ''St Matthew Passion''. The available information derives from extant early ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (German: Help:IPA/Standard German, [ˈjoːhan zeˈbasti̯an baχ]) ( – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque music, Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety of instruments and forms, including the orchestral ''Brandenburg Concertos''; solo instrumental works such as the Cello Suites (Bach), cello suites and Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin (Bach), sonatas and partitas for solo violin; keyboard works such as the ''Goldberg Variations'' and ''The Well-Tempered Clavier''; organ works such as the ' and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and choral works such as the ''St Matthew Passion'' and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Reception of Johann Sebastian Bach's music, Bach Revival, he has been widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music. The Bach family had already produced several composers when Joh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Easter Sonata
The ''Easter Sonata'' () is a piano sonata In music a sonata (; pl. ''sonate'') literally means a piece ''played'' as opposed to a cantata (Latin and Italian ''cantare'', "to sing"), a piece ''sung''. The term evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms until th ... in the key of A major, composed by Fanny Mendelssohn. It was lost for 150 years and when found attributed to her brother Felix Mendelssohn, Felix, before finally being recognized as hers. It premiered in her name on 7 September 2012, played by Andrea Lam. It received a second performance by Sofya Gulyak on 8 March 2017 for BBC Radio 3. It was the second sonata composed by Fanny Mendelssohn and was completed in 1828. During most of her lifetime, Fanny Mendelssohn's works remained unpublished. A few were published under her brother's name, with her knowledge and consent. The ''Easter Sonata'' was not published, but is mentioned as her work in her diary and letters written to her family membe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fanny Mendelssohn
Fanny Mendelssohn (14 November 1805 – 14 May 1847) was a German composer and pianist of the early Romantic era who was known as Fanny Hensel after her marriage. Her compositions include a string quartet, a piano trio, a piano quartet, an orchestral overture, four cantatas, more than 125 pieces for the piano and over 250 lieder, most of which were unpublished in her lifetime. Although lauded for her piano technique, she rarely gave public performances outside her family circle. She grew up in Berlin and received a thorough musical education from teachers including her mother, as well as the composers Ludwig Berger and Carl Friedrich Zelter. Her younger brother Felix Mendelssohn, also a composer and pianist, shared the same education and the two developed a close relationship. Owing to her family's reservations and to social conventions of the time about the roles of women, six of her songs were published under her brother's name in his Opus 8 and 9 collections. In 1829, sh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Child Prodigy
A child prodigy is, technically, a child under the age of 10 who produces meaningful work in some domain at the level of an adult expert. The term is also applied more broadly to describe young people who are extraordinarily talented in some field. The term ''wunderkind'' (from German ''Wunderkind''; literally "wonder child") is sometimes used as a synonym for child prodigy, particularly in media accounts. ''Wunderkind'' also is used to recognise those who achieve success and acclaim early in their adult careers. Generally, prodigies in all domains are suggested to have relatively elevated Intelligence quotient, IQ, extraordinary memory, and exceptional attention to detail. Significantly, while math and physics prodigies may have higher IQs, this may be an impediment to art prodigies. Examples Chess prodigies Deliberate practice K. Anders Ericsson emphasised the contribution of deliberate practice over their innate talent to prodigies' exceptional performance in chess ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
