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Parlour Music
Parlour music is a type of popular music which, as the name suggests, is intended to be performed in the parlours of houses, usually by amateur singers and pianists. Disseminated as sheet music, its heyday came in the 19th century, as a result of a steady increase in the number of households with enough resources to purchase musical instruments and instruction in music, and with the leisure time and cultural motivation to engage in recreational music-making. Its popularity faded in the 20th century as the phonograph record and radio replaced sheet music as the most common means for the spread of popular music. History Many of the earliest parlour songs were transcriptions for voice and keyboard of other music. Thomas Moore's ''Irish Melodies'', for instance, were traditional (or "folk") tunes supplied with new lyrics by Moore, and many arias from Italian operas, particularly those of Bellini and Donizetti, became parlour songs, with texts either translated or replaced by new lyri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librettist and incorporates a number of the performing arts, such as acting, scenery, costume, and sometimes dance or ballet. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble, which since the early 19th century has been led by a conductor. Although musical theatre is closely related to opera, the two are considered to be distinct from one another. Opera is a key part of the Western classical music tradition. Originally understood as an entirely sung piece, in contrast to a play with songs, opera has come to include numerous genres, including some that include spoken dialogue such as '' Singspiel'' and '' Opéra comique''. In traditional number opera, singers employ two styles of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minstrel Shows
The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of racist theatrical entertainment developed in the early 19th century. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people specifically of African descent. The shows were performed by mostly white people wearing blackface make-up for the purpose of playing the role of black people. There were also some African-American performers and black-only minstrel groups that formed and toured. Minstrel shows caricatured black people as dim-witted, lazy, buffoonish, superstitious, and happy-go-lucky.The Coon Character , Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, Ferris State University. Retrieved 29 January 2016.John Kenrick [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oh Promise Me
Oh Promise Me is a song with music by Reginald De Koven and lyrics by Clement Scott. The song was written in 1887 and first published in 1889 by G. Schirmer, Inc. as an art song. De Koven may have based the melody partly on a song composed by Stanislao Gastaldon, "Musica Proibita". In 1890, De Koven wrote his most successful comic opera, ''Robin Hood (comic opera), Robin Hood''. After opening night, the contralto playing Alan-a-Dale, Jessie Bartlett Davis, demanded a song to better show off her voice, threatening to walk out of the production. De Koven inserted "Oh Promise Me" into the score for her.Raph, Theodore"The American song treasury: 100 favorites" Courier Dover Publications, 1986, p. 222 The sheet music sold over a million copies in 1890 and continued to gain popularity for several decades, being performed by many artists. The song remains popular as a wedding song both in America and in the UK. Lyrics Oh, promise me that someday you and I Will take our love toget ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charlotte Alington Barnard
Charlotte Alington Pye Barnard (23 December 1830 in Louth, Lincolnshire – 30 January 1869 in Dover) was an English poet and composer of ballads and hymns, who often wrote under the pseudonym Claribel. She wrote over 100 songs as well as two volumes of verse, and became the most commercially successful balled composer managed by her publishers Boosey's, with whom she established one of the first royalty arrangements. Life Charlotte Alington Pye was the daughter of Henry Alington Pye, a solicitor, and Charlotte Yerburgh. In 1854, she married Charles Cary Barnard. Though he was parson of St Olaves in Ruckland, Lincolnshire, the couple lived at The Firs in Westgate, Louth, Lincolnshire. After Charlotte's presentation at court in 1856, the couple moved to Pimlico. Among their neighbors was the conductor Michael Costa. In London she studied music with the pianist W.H. Holmes and the singer Charlotte Sainton-Dolby. On 8 July 1847, Charlotte laid the foundation stone of Louth railway ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adelaide A
Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The demonym ''Adelaidean'' is used to denote the city and the residents of Adelaide. The Traditional Owners of the Adelaide region are the Kaurna people. The area of the city centre and surrounding parklands is called ' in the Kaurna language. Adelaide is situated on the Adelaide Plains north of the Fleurieu Peninsula, between the Gulf St Vincent in the west and the Mount Lofty Ranges in the east. Its metropolitan area extends from the coast to the foothills of the Mount Lofty Ranges, and stretches from Gawler in the north to Sellicks Beach in the south. Named in honour of Queen Adelaide, the city was founded in 1836 as the planned capital for the only freely-settled British province in Australia. Colonel William Light, one of Adelaide's found ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan (13 May 1842 – 22 November 1900) was an English composer. He is best known for 14 comic opera, operatic Gilbert and Sullivan, collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including ''H.M.S. Pinafore'', ''The Pirates of Penzance'' and ''The Mikado''. His works include 24 operas, 11 major orchestral works, ten choral works and oratorios, two ballets, incidental music to several plays, and numerous church pieces, songs, and piano and chamber pieces. His hymns and songs include "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and "The Lost Chord". The son of a military bandmaster, Sullivan composed his first anthem at the age of eight and was later a soloist in the boys' choir of the Chapel Royal. In 1856, at 14, he was awarded the first Mendelssohn Scholarship by the Royal Academy of Music, which allowed him to study at the academy and then at the Felix Mendelssohn College of Music and Theatre, Leipzig Conservatoire in Germany. His graduation piece, inc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Lost Chord
"The Lost Chord" is a song composed by Arthur Sullivan in 1877 at the bedside of his brother Fred during Fred's last illness. The manuscript is dated 13 January 1877; Fred Sullivan died five days later. The lyric was written as a poem by Adelaide Anne Procter called "A Lost Chord", published in 1860 in ''The English Woman's Journal''. The song was immediately successful and became particularly associated with American contralto Antoinette Sterling, with Sullivan's close friend and mistress, Fanny Ronalds, and with British contralto Clara Butt. Sullivan was proud of the song and later noted: "I have composed much music since then, but have never written a second Lost Chord.""The Lost Chord" ''The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive'', accessed 13 August 2014 Many singers have recorded the song, including |
Frederick Nicholls Crouch
Frederick William Nicholls Crouch (30 July 1808 – 18 August 1896) was an English composer and cellist. Biography Crouch was born in Marylebone in London. He emigrated to the United States in 1849 and settled in Richmond, Virginia. During the Civil War, Crouch took up arms for the Richmond Grays and the 1st Richmond Howitzers, Confederacy. Crouch was noted as a fine cellist, having played in the King's Theatre as well as St Paul's Cathedral in London, before relocating to the United States, but the majority of his compositions were not successful. His most famous song is "Kathleen Mavourneen". During his years in the United States, Crouch composed two operas and unsuccessfully tried various musical undertakings (i.e., conducting, singing and teaching). Well traveled after the Civil War, Crouch eventually settled in Baltimore, Maryland. He was married four times, and was the father of 27 children, including the famous French courtesan Cora Pearl. He died on 18 August 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franz Abt
Franz Wilhelm Abt (22 December 1819 – 31 March 1885) was a German composer and choral conductor. He composed roughly 3,000 individual works mostly in the area of vocal music. Several of his songs were at one time universally sung, and have obtained a more or less permanent place in the popular repertory. Abt was a renowned choral conductor, and he spent much of the last three decades of his life working as a guest conductor with choirs throughout Europe and in the United States. Biography Abt was born at Eilenburg in Prussian Saxony, and showed musical talent at an early age. His father was a clergyman and a talented pianist, and it is he who gave Franz his earliest instruction in music. Like his father, Abt was interested in both music and theology, and he followed both pursuits at the Thomasschule Leipzig and Leipzig University with the ultimate intention of becoming a member of the clergy. While in school, Abt became friends with Albert Lortzing, Felix Mendelssohn, and Ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Russell (musician)
Henry Russell (24 December 1812 or 1813 – 8 December 1900) was an English pianist, baritone singer and composer, born into a distinguished Jewish family. Biography Russell's career began in 1836, when at the age of 22 he traveled to the US and, in three seasons, earned no less a sum than £10,000. He subsequently lost this by investing in the United States Bank, which collapsed. Russell wrote the song "A Life on the Ocean Wave" and the tune to George Pope Morris's poe''Woodman, Spare that Tree''while living in the US from 1836 to 1841, before settling in London to produce musical extravaganzas until he retired in 1857. Many of his songs championed social causes like abolition, temperance, and reform of mental asylums. Russell was born in Sheerness, Kent, a great-nephew of the British Chief Rabbi Solomon Hirschel. He began his career as a child singer in Elliston's Children's Opera company. While playing the organ at the Presbyterian church in Rochester, New York he disco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Victorian Era
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardian period, and its later half overlaps with the first part of the '' Belle Époque'' era of Continental Europe. There was a strong religious drive for higher moral standards led by the nonconformist churches, such as the Methodists and the evangelical wing of the established Church of England. Ideologically, the Victorian era witnessed resistance to the rationalism that defined the Georgian period, and an increasing turn towards romanticism and even mysticism in religion, social values, and arts. This era saw a staggering amount of technological innovations that proved key to Britain's power and prosperity. Doctors started moving away from tradition and mysticism towards a science-based approach; medicine advanced thanks to the adoption ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ah! May The Red Rose Live Alway (song)
Ah! May the Red Rose Live Alway is a song written and composed by Stephen Foster in 1850. This song is written in the style of a parlor ballad – a genre of popular song at the time intended to be performed at a slow tempo and to communicate a sentimental quality. Description Stephen Foster's "Ah! May the Red Rose Live Alway!" is different from Foster's minstrel songs of the same period. This song is an example of a parlor ballad. This ballad may have roots in the Anglo-Scots-Irish song tradition. Foster's "Ah! May the Red Rose Live Alway!" is similar to Irish musician Thomas Moore's " The Last Rose of Summer". The song begins with a piano introduction. The first vocal line of "Ah! May the Red Rose Live Alway!" begins on a high note that is held with a fermata. Music historians have postulated that this may give the setting an image of stalling the passage of time. Foster has placed additional fermatas throughout the song, possibly with similar effects in mind. Also of inte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
