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Offstage Instrument Or Choir Part In Classical Music
An offstage instrument or choir part in classical music is a sound effect used in orchestral and opera which is created by having one or more instrumentalists (trumpet players, also called an "offstage trumpet call", horn players, woodwind players, percussionists, other instrumentalists) from a symphony orchestra or opera orchestra play a note, melody, or rhythm from behind the stage, or having a choir of singers sing a melody from behind the stage. This creates a distant, muted effect which composers use to suggest "celestial voices", melancholy, or nostalgia, or to create a haunting or mysterious effect. Some composers use larger offstage groups, (such as the 14 offstage brass instruments in Richard Strauss' ''Alpine Symphony'') that they can create antiphonal effects, in which the main orchestra and the offstage instruments alternate their parts. In some works, the offstage instruments are arrayed in the balconies or amidst the audience, which is a more forceful sound, since the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orchestra
An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, cello, and double bass * woodwinds, such as the flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, and bassoon * Brass instruments, such as the horn, trumpet, trombone, cornet, and tuba * percussion instruments, such as the timpani, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, tambourine, and mallet percussion instruments Other instruments such as the piano, harpsichord, and celesta may sometimes appear in a fifth keyboard section or may stand alone as soloist instruments, as may the concert harp and, for performances of some modern compositions, electronic instruments and guitars. A full-size Western orchestra may sometimes be called a or philharmonic orchestra (from Greek ''phil-'', "loving", and "harmony"). The actual number of musicians employ ... [...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] |
Ludwig Van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical music repertoire and span the transition from the Classical period to the Romantic era in classical music. His career has conventionally been divided into early, middle, and late periods. His early period, during which he forged his craft, is typically considered to have lasted until 1802. From 1802 to around 1812, his middle period showed an individual development from the styles of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and is sometimes characterized as heroic. During this time, he began to grow increasingly deaf. In his late period, from 1812 to 1827, he extended his innovations in musical form and expression. Beethoven was born in Bonn. His musical talent was obvious at an early age. He was initially harshly and intensively tau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sir Malcolm Arnold
Sir Malcolm Henry Arnold (21 October 1921 – 23 September 2006) was an English composer. His works feature music in many genres, including a cycle of nine symphonies, numerous concertos, concert works, chamber music, choral music and music for brass band and wind band. His style is tonal and rejoices in lively rhythms, brilliant orchestration, and an unabashed tunefulness. He wrote extensively for the theatre, with five ballets specially commissioned by the Royal Ballet, as well as two operas and a musical. He also produced scores for more than a hundred films, among these ''The Bridge on the River Kwai'' (1957), for which he won an Oscar. Early life Malcolm Arnold was born in Northampton, Northamptonshire, England, the youngest of five children from a prosperous Northampton family of shoemakers. Although shoemakers, his family was full of musicians; both of his parents were pianists, and his aunt was a violinist. His great great grandfather was the composer William Hawes, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cliché
A cliché ( or ) is an element of an artistic work, saying, or idea that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even to the point of being weird or irritating, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel. In phraseology, the term has taken on a more technical meaning, referring to an expression imposed by conventionalized linguistic usage. The term is often used in modern culture for an action or idea that is expected or predictable, based on a prior event. Typically pejorative, "clichés" may or may not be true. Some are stereotypes, but some are simply truisms and facts. Clichés often are employed for comedic effect, typically in fiction. Most phrases now considered clichéd originally were regarded as striking but have lost their force through overuse. The French poet Gérard de Nerval once said, "The first man who compared woman to a rose was a poet, the second, an imbecile." A cliché is often a vivid d ... [...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] |
Quiet City (music)
''Quiet City'' is a composition for trumpet, oboe or cor anglais, and string orchestra by Aaron Copland. History In 1939, Copland wrote incidental music for the play '' Quiet City'' by Irwin Shaw. He later worked some of it into a ten-minute composition designed to be performed independently of the play. The piece premiered on January 28, 1941, by conductor Daniel Saidenberg and his Saidenberg Little Symphony in New York City. The original score for the play was composed for trumpet, alto saxophone, B clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), and piano. According to Copland, the piece was "an attempt to mirror the troubled main character of Irwin Shaw's play", who had abandoned his Jewishness and his poetic aspirations in order to pursue material success by anglicizing his name, marrying a rich socialite, and becoming the president of a department store. The man, however, was continually recalled to his conscience by the haunting sound of his brother's trumpet playing. Continuing the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland (, ; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Composers". The open, slowly changing harmonies in much of his music are typical of what many people consider to be the sound of American music, evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit. He is best known for the works he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s in a deliberately accessible style often referred to as "populist" and which the composer labeled his "vernacular" style. Works in this vein include the ballets ''Appalachian Spring'', ''Billy the Kid'' and ''Rodeo'', his ''Fanfare for the Common Man'' and Third Symphony. In addition to his ballets and orchestral works, he produced music in many other genres, including chamber music, vocal works, opera and film scores. After some initial studies with composer Rubin Goldmark, Copland ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ein Heldenleben
''Ein Heldenleben'' (''A Hero's Life''), Op. 40, is a tone poem by Richard Strauss. The work was completed in 1898. It was his eighth work in the genre, and exceeded any of its predecessors in its orchestral demands. Generally agreed to be autobiographical in nature despite contradictory statements on the matter by the composer, the work contains more than thirty quotations from Strauss's earlier works, including ''Also sprach Zarathustra'', ''Till Eulenspiegel'', ''Don Quixote'', ''Don Juan'', and ''Death and Transfiguration''. Background Strauss began work on the piece while staying in a Bavarian mountain resort in July 1898. He proposed to write a heroic work in the mould of Beethoven's ''Eroica'' Symphony: "It is entitled 'A Hero's Life', and while it has no funeral march, it does have lots of horns, horns being quite the thing to express heroism. Thanks to the healthy country air, my sketch has progressed well and I hope to finish by New Year's Day."Glass, Herbert''Ein ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gregorian Chant
Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song in Latin (and occasionally Greek) of the Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed mainly in western and central Europe during the 9th and 10th centuries, with later additions and redactions. Although popular legend credits Pope Gregory I with inventing Gregorian chant, scholars believe that it arose from a later Carolingian synthesis of the Old Roman chant and Gallican chant. Gregorian chants were organized initially into four, then eight, and finally 12 modes. Typical melodic features include a characteristic ambitus, and also characteristic intervallic patterns relative to a referential mode final, incipits and cadences, the use of reciting tones at a particular distance from the final, around which the other notes of the melody revolve, and a vocabulary of musical motifs woven together through a process called centonization to create families of related ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Pines Of Rome
''Pines of Rome'' ( it, Pini di Roma, link=no), P 141, is a tone poem in four movements for orchestra completed in 1924 by the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi. It is the second of his three tone poems about Rome, following ''Fontane di Roma'' (1916) and preceding ''Feste Romane'' (1928). Each movement depicts a setting in the city with pine trees, specifically those in the Villa Borghese gardens, near a catacomb, on the Janiculum Hill, and along the Appian Way. The premiere was held at the Teatro Augusteo in Rome on 14 December 1924, with Bernardino Molinari conducting the Augusteo Orchestra. The piece was published by Casa Ricordi in 1925. Overview The piece consists of four movements, for which Respighi wrote programmatic notes describing each scene: Respighi completed ''I Pini di Roma'' in the summer of 1924, after he had "conceived, started and restarted" work on the piece in the course of several years. Having relocated from his hometown of Bologna to Rome in 1913, Re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ottorino Respighi
Ottorino Respighi ( , , ; 9 July 187918 April 1936) was an Italian composer, violinist, teacher, and musicologist and one of the leading Italian composers of the early 20th century. List of compositions by Ottorino Respighi, His compositions range over List of operas by Ottorino Respighi, operas, ballets, orchestral suites, choral songs, chamber music, and transcriptions of Italian compositions of the 16th–18th centuries, but his best known and most performed works are his three orchestral tone poems which brought him international fame: ''Fountains of Rome (poem), Fountains of Rome'' (1916), ''Pines of Rome'' (1924), and ''Feste romane, Roman Festivals'' (1928). Respighi was born in Bologna to a musical and artistic family. He was encouraged by his father to pursue music at a young age, and took formal tuition in the violin and piano. In 1891, he enrolled at the Conservatorio Giovanni Battista Martini, Liceo Musicale di Bologna, where he studied the violin, viola, and compos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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