Nowth Upon Nacht
''Nowth upon Nacht'' is a song for voice and piano by John Cage. It was composed in 1984 in memoriam for Cathy Berberian, the celebrated soprano singer, wife of composer Luciano Berio. The text is from page 555–6 of James Joyce's ''Finnegans Wake'',Not in every edition though. The words in the original 1939 text of ''Finnegans Wake'' ar"now upon nacht" Moreover, there are variants of the text which do not follow the 628-page layout, and in these, the quotation cannot be found on page 556. describing the darkest part of the night, and the activities of the characters, each written in a style reflecting their personalities. It follows the lyrical account of Infantina Isobel, who "night by silentsailing night ..evencalm lay sleeping", which Cage used earlier in ''The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs.'' Joyce switches to guttural Germanic language, to describe Joe Sackerson, the drunken Scandinavian watchman of the pub: The vocal line is declamatory and uses a small number of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives. Cage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition ''4′33″'', which is performed in the absence of deliberate sound; musicians who present the work do nothing aside from being present for the duration specified by the title. The content of the composition is not "four minutes and 33 seconds of silence," as is often assumed, but rather the sounds of the environment heard by the audience during performance. The work's challenge t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cathy Berberian
Catherine Anahid Berberian (July 4, 1925 – March 6, 1983) was an American mezzo-soprano and composer based in Italy. She worked closely with many contemporary avant-garde music composers, including Luciano Berio, Bruno Maderna, John Cage, Henri Pousseur, Sylvano Bussotti, Darius Milhaud, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, and Igor Stravinsky. She also interpreted works by Claudio Monteverdi, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Kurt Weill, Philipp zu Eulenburg and others. As a recital curator, she presented several vocal genres in a classical context, including arrangements of songs by The Beatles by Louis Andriessen as well as folk songs from several countries and cultures. As a composer, she wrote ''Stripsody'' (1966), in which she exploits her vocal technique using comic book sounds (onomatopoeia), and ''Morsicat(h)y'' (1969), a composition for the keyboard (with the right hand only) based on Morse code. Biography Cathy Berberian was born in Attleboro, Massachusetts to Armenian parents, Yervant and L ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio (24 October 1925 – 27 May 2003) was an Italian composer noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition ''Sinfonia'' and his series of virtuosic solo pieces titled ''Sequenza''), and for his pioneering work in electronic music. His early work was influenced by Igor Stravinsky and experiments with serial and electronic techniques, while his later works explore indeterminacy and the use of spoken texts as the basic material for composition. Biography Berio was born in Oneglia (now part of Imperia), on the Ligurian coast of Italy. He was taught piano by his father and grandfather, who were both organists. During World War II, he was conscripted into the army, but on his first day, he injured his hand while learning how a gun worked and spent time in a military hospital. Following the war, Berio studied at the Milan Conservatory under Giulio Cesare Paribeni and Giorgio Federico Ghedini. He was unable to continue studying the piano because of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Joyce's novel ''Ulysses'' (1922) is a landmark in which the episodes of Homer's ''Odyssey'' are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, particularly stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection ''Dubliners'' (1914), and the novels ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' (1916) and ''Finnegans Wake'' (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, letters, and occasional journalism. Joyce was born in Dublin into a middle-class family. He attended the Jesuit Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare, then, briefly, the Christian Brothers-run O'Connell School. Despite the chaotic family life imposed by his father's unpredictable finances, he excelled at the Jesuit ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Finnegans Wake
''Finnegans Wake'' is a novel by Irish literature, Irish writer James Joyce. It is well known for its experimental style and reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the Western canon. It has been called "a work of fiction which combines a body of fables ... with the work of analysis and deconstruction". Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years and published in 1939, ''Finnegans Wake'' was Joyce's final work. The entire book is written in a largely idioglossia, idiosyncratic language, which blends standard English words with Neologism, neologistic portmanteau words, Irish language, Irish mannerisms and puns in multiple languages to unique effect. Many critics believe the technique was Joyce's attempt to recreate the experience of sleep and dreams, reproducing the way concepts, people and places become amalgamated in dreaming. It is an attempt by Joyce to combine many of his aesthetic ideas, with references to other works and outside ideas woven into the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Wonderful Widow Of Eighteen Springs
''The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs'' is a song for voice and closed piano by John Cage. It was composed in late 1942 and quickly became a minor classic in Cage's oeuvre. The text was a reworked version of a passage from James Joyce's ''Finnegans Wake''. General information The song was commissioned by singer Janet Fairbank, who later became known for pioneering contemporary music. Cage chose to set a passage from page 556 of ''Finnegans Wake'', a book he bought soon after its publication in 1939. The composition is based, according to Cage himself, on the impressions received from the passage.John Cage. Liner notes to ''The 25-Year Retrospective Concert of the Music of John Cage'' (1959), private issue recording by George Avakian (K08Y 1499–1504) ''The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs'' marks the start of Cage's interest in Joyce and is the first piece among many in which he uses the writer's work. The vocal line only uses three Pitch (music), pitches, while the piano r ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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List Of Compositions By John Cage
This is a list of compositions by John Cage (1912–1992), arranged in chronological order by year of composition. List of works Apprenticeship period (1932–36) * ''Greek Ode'', for voice and piano (1932) * ''First Chapter of Ecclesiastes'' (''The Preacher''), for voice and piano (1932, possibly incomplete) * ''Three Easy Pieces'' (1. Round in A minor, 2. Duo in G major, 3. Infinite canon in F minor), for piano (1933) * ''Three Songs for voice and piano'', (1932–33) * '' Sonata for Clarinet'' (1933) * ''Sonata for Two Voices'', for two instruments with specified ranges (1933) * ''Composition for 3 Voices'' for three unspecified instruments (1934) * ''Solo with obbligato accompaniment of two voices in canon, and six short inventions on the subjects of the solo'', for three or more instruments (1934, six inventions revised rchestrated1958) * ''Three pieces'', for two flutes (1935) * ''Quartet'', for any four percussion instruments (1935) * ''Two pieces'', for piano (1935?, re ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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A Flower
''A Flower'' is a song for voice and closed piano by John Cage. It was composed in 1950, for a choreography by Louise Lippold, wife of sculptor Richard Lippold. There is no text; the singer vocalises a small number of phonemes such as "uh", "wah", etc., without vibrato. Instructions given in the score include, for some passages, "like a pigeon" and "like a wild duck". The entire vocal line is constructed of just four pitches, except for a single bar near the end where a fifth pitch is used. The pianist plays by hitting the piano lid in various ways - with his fingers, with his knuckles, etc. The composition is somewhat similar to the earlier work for voice and closed piano, ''The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs''. Editions * Edition Peters 6711. (c) 1960 by Henmar Press. See also * List of compositions by John Cage * Nowth upon Nacht ''Nowth upon Nacht'' is a song for voice and piano by John Cage. It was composed in 1984 in memoriam for Cathy Berberian, the celebrated so ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1984 Compositions
Events January * January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888. * January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). * January 10 ** The United States and the Vatican City, Vatican (Holy See) restore full diplomatic relations. ** The Victoria, Seychelles, Victoria Agreement is signed, institutionalising the Indian Ocean Commission. *January 24 – Steve Jobs launches the Macintosh 128K, Macintosh personal computer in the United States. February * February 3 ** Dr. John Buster and the research team at Harbor–UCLA Medical Center announce history's first embryo transfer from one woman to another, resulting in a live birth. ** STS-41-B: Space Shuttle Challenger, Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' is launched on the 10th Space Shuttle mission. * February 7 – Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered spac ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Compositions By John Cage
Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include visuals and digital space *Composition (music), an original piece of music and its creation *Composition (visual arts), the plan, placement or arrangement of the elements of art in a work * ''Composition'' (Peeters), a 1921 painting by Jozef Peeters *Composition studies, the professional field of writing instruction * ''Compositions'' (album), an album by Anita Baker *Digital compositing, the practice of digitally piecing together a video Computer science *Function composition (computer science), an act or mechanism to combine simple functions to build more complicated ones *Object composition, combining simpler data types into more complex data types, or function calls into calling functions History *Composition of 1867, Austro-Hungarian/ ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |