Peter Child
   HOME
*





Peter Child
Peter Burlingham Child (born 6 May 1953) is an American composer, teacher, and musical analyst. He is Professor of Music at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and was a composer in residence with the New England Philharmonic. Education and career Child took his first composition lessons at the age of 12 with Bernard Barrell. He began attending Keele University in Staffordshire, England, but transferred to Reed College in Portland, Oregon in 1973 in a junior-year exchange program. He earned his BA in music at Reed in 1975. Child then studied Kamatic music in Madras, India for one year on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. In 1978 he won a fellowship to the Berkshire Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, where he studied under Jacob Druckman. In 1981 he received his PhD in musical composition from Brandeis University, where his teachers included Arthur Berger, Martin Boykan, and Seymour Shifrin. Child taught at Brandeis and chaired MIT's department of Music and Thea ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Musical Analysis
Musical analysis is the study of musical structure in either compositions or performances. According to music theorist Ian Bent, music analysis "is the means of answering directly the question 'How does it work?'". The method employed to answer this question, and indeed exactly what is meant by the question, differs from analyst to analyst, and according to the purpose of the analysis. According to Bent, "its emergence as an approach and method can be traced back to the 1750s. However it existed as a scholarly tool, albeit an auxiliary one, from the Middle Ages onwards." The principle of analysis has been variously criticized, especially by composers, such as Edgard Varèse's claim that, "to explain by means of nalysisis to decompose, to mutilate the spirit of a work". Analyses Some analysts, such as Donald Tovey (whose '' Essays in Musical Analysis'' are among the most accessible musical analyses) have presented their analyses in prose. Others, such as Hans Keller (who devised ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Seymour Shifrin
Seymour Shifrin (28 February 1926 – 26 September 1979) was an American composer. He was described by ''Time Magazine'' as "one of the most significant composers of his generation." Shifrin's ''Satires of Circumstance'' (1964, text by Thomas Hardy) received the Koussevitzky International Recording Award for 1970. He received the Naumburg Award, Columbia University's Bearns Prize (1949), the Copley Award, the Horblit Prize (1963), and two Guggenheim Fellowships, in 1956 and 1959. A graduate of Columbia University (M.A., 1947), he was a member of the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley (1952–66) and at Brandeis University from 1966 until his death in 1979. Shifrin studied with William Schuman, Otto Luening, and Darius Milhaud. Orchestral Music:''Who Was Who in America'' *''Music for Orchestra'' (1948) *''Chamber Symphony'' (1953) *''Three Pieces for Orchestra'' (1958) *''Chronicles'' for chorus, orchestra and soloists (1970) Vocal and Choral Music *''Two Poe ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

John Clare
John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864) was an English poet. The son of a farm labourer, he became known for his celebrations of the English countryside and sorrows at its disruption. His work underwent major re-evaluation in the late 20th century; he is now often seen as a major 19th-century poet. His biographer Jonathan Bate called Clare "the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self." Life Early life Clare was born in Helpston, to the north of the city of Peterborough. In his lifetime, the village was in the Soke of Peterborough in Northamptonshire and his memorial calls him "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet". Helpston is now part of the City of Peterborough unitary authority. Clare became an agricultural labourer while still a child, but attended school in Glinton church until he was 12. In his early adult years, Clare became a potboy in ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic experiences of life, often coupled with black comedy and nonsense. It became increasingly minimalist as his career progressed, involving more aesthetic and linguistic experimentation, with techniques of repetition and self-reference. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the Theatre of the Absurd. A resident of Paris for most of his adult life, Beckett wrote in both French and English. During the Second World War, Beckett was a member of the French Resistance group Gloria SMH (Réseau Gloria). Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". He ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Embers
''Embers'' is a radio play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English in 1957. First broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 24 June 1959, the play won the RAI prize at the Prix Italia awards later that year. Donald McWhinnie directed Jack MacGowran – for whom the play was specially written – as "Henry", Kathleen Michael as "Ada" and Patrick Magee as "Riding Master" and "Music Master". The play was translated into French by Beckett himself and Robert Pinget as ''Cendres'' and was published in 1959 by . The first stage production was by the French Graduate Circle of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Festival, 1977." The most recent version of ''Embers'' was broadcast in 2006 on BBC Radio 3 and directed by Stephen Rea. The cast included Michael Gambon as Henry, Sinéad Cusack as Ada, Rupert Graves, Alvaro Lucchesi and Carly Baker. This production was rebroadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 16 May 2010 as part of a double bill with a 2006 production of ''Krapp's Last Tape''. Opinions vary ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Boston Modern Orchestra Project
The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) is a professional orchestra in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1996 by artistic director Gil Rose, its mission is to explore the connections between contemporary music and contemporary society by reuniting composers and audiences in a shared concert experience. In its first twelve seasons, BMOP performed over 80 concerts of contemporary orchestral music, commissioned more than 20 works and presented over 70 world premieres, released 20 CDs, produced the inaugural Ditson Festival of Contemporary Music with the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and collaborated to produce performances of contemporary operas (including the Opera Unlimited festival of contemporary chamber opera). Now entering its 20th season, it has released nearly 50 CDs in total. BMOP performs regularly at Boston's Jordan Hall, and has performed in major venues on both the East and West Coasts of the United States. BMOP has appeared at Tanglewood, the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

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]  


picture info

Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. His best-known works include the opera '' Peter Grimes'' (1945), the '' War Requiem'' (1962) and the orchestral showpiece ''The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra'' (1945). Born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, the son of a dentist, Britten showed talent from an early age. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London and privately with the composer Frank Bridge. Britten first came to public attention with the '' a cappella'' choral work '' A Boy was Born'' in 1934. With the premiere of ''Peter Grimes'' in 1945, he leapt to international fame. Over the next 28 years, he wrote 14 more operas, establishing himself as one of the leading 20th-century composers in the genre. In addition to large-sca ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. His music was largely ignored during his early career, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Later in life, the quality of his music was publicly recognized through the efforts of contemporaries like Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison, and he came to be regarded as an "American original". He was also among the first composers to engage in a systematic program of experimental music, with musical techniques including polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatory elements, and quarter tones. His experimentation foreshadowed many musical innovations that were later more widely adopted during the 20th century. Hence, he is often regarded as the leading American composer of art music of the 20th century. Sources of Ives's tonal imagery included hymn tunes and traditional songs; he also incorporated melodies of the tow ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Chamber Music
Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers, with one performer to a part (in contrast to orchestral music, in which each string part is played by a number of performers). However, by convention, it usually does not include solo instrument performances. Because of its intimate nature, chamber music has been described as "the music of friends". For more than 100 years, chamber music was played primarily by amateur musicians in their homes, and even today, when chamber music performance has migrated from the home to the concert hall, many musicians, amateur and professional, still play chamber music for their own pleasure. Playing chamber music requires special skills, both musical and social, that differ from the skills required for playing solo or symphonic works. ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Computer Music
Computer music is the application of computing technology in music composition, to help human composers create new music or to have computers independently create music, such as with algorithmic composition programs. It includes the theory and application of new and existing computer software technologies and basic aspects of music, such as sound synthesis, digital signal processing, sound design, sonic diffusion, acoustics, electrical engineering and psychoacoustics. The field of computer music can trace its roots back to the origins of electronic music, and the first experiments and innovations with electronic instruments at the turn of the 20th century. History Much of the work on computer music has drawn on the relationship between music and mathematics, a relationship which has been noted since the Ancient Greeks described the "harmony of the spheres". Musical melodies were first generated by the computer originally named the CSIR Mark 1 (later renamed CSIRAC) in Australia ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Choir
A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which spans from the medieval era to the present, or popular music repertoire. Most choirs are led by a conductor, who leads the performances with arm, hand, and facial gestures. The term ''choir'' is very often applied to groups affiliated with a church (whether or not they actually occupy the quire), whereas a ''chorus'' performs in theatres or concert halls, but this distinction is not rigid. Choirs may sing without instruments, or accompanied by a piano, pipe organ, a small ensemble, or an orchestra. A choir can be a subset of an ensemble; thus one speaks of the "woodwind choir" of an orchestra, or different "choirs" of voices or instruments in a polychoral composition. In typical 18th century to 21st century oratorios and masses, 'choru ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]