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Psappha New Music Ensemble
Psappha is an ensemble of contemporary classical musicians based in Manchester in the North West of England, specialised in the performance of works by living composers. Founded in 1991 by artistic director Tim Williams, the ensemble moved into a new home in 2015, St Michael's, Ancoats, Manchester. The ensemble has a core instrumentation of flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, viola and cello. Association with Peter Maxwell Davies Their patron until his death in March 2016 was Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Davies was earlier associated with the Fires of London, a group which disbanded in 1987. The Fires formed in the 1960s to play Arnold Schoenberg's ''Pierrot lunaire'' (1912) and new works with a similar scoring. Psappha has performed Davies' works for Pierrot ensemble, such as ''Missa super l'homme armé'' (1968, rev. 1971) and ''Eight Songs for a Mad King'' (1969), which were premiered by the Fires. Psappha also premiered later compositions by Davies, including '' Mr Emmet T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancoats
Ancoats is an area of Manchester in Greater Manchester, England. It is located next to the Northern Quarter, the northern part of Manchester city centre. Historically in Lancashire, Ancoats became a cradle of the Industrial Revolution and has been called "the world's first industrial suburb". For many years, from the late 18th century onwards, Ancoats was a thriving industrial district. The area suffered accelerating economic decline from the 1930s and depopulation in the years after the Second World War, particularly during the slum clearances of the 1960s. Since the 1990s, Ancoats' industrial heritage has been recognised and its proximity to the city centre has led to investment and substantial regeneration. The southern part of the area is branded as New Islington, by UK property developers Urban Splash, while the north retains the Ancoats name, with redevelopment centred on the Daily Express Building. In 2021 a plaque was put in place acknowledging Ancoats' status as a L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Maxwell Davies
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (8 September 1934 – 14 March 2016) was an English composer and conductor, who in 2004 was made Master of the Queen's Music. As a student at both the University of Manchester and the Royal Manchester College of Music, Davies formed a group dedicated to contemporary music called the New Music Manchester with fellow students Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr, Elgar Howarth and John Ogdon. Davies’s compositions include eight works for the stage—from the monodrama ''Eight Songs for a Mad King'', which shocked the audience in 1969, to ''Kommilitonen!'', first performed in 2011—and ten symphonies, written between 1973 and 2013. As a conductor, Davies was artistic director of the Dartington International Summer School from 1979 to 1984 and associate conductor/composer with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from 1992 to 2002, holding the latter position with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra as well. Early life and education Davies was born in Holly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fires Of London
The Fires of London, founded as the Pierrot Players, was a British chamber music ensemble which was active from 1965 to 1987. The Pierrot Players was founded by Harrison Birtwistle, Alan Hacker, and Stephen Pruslin.''Who’s Who 1975'', page 1302, (A&C Black: London) From 1967 it was under the joint direction of Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies. The ensemble was formed to play Schoenberg's ''Pierrot Lunaire'' and new works, often with a theatrical element, for a similar scoring (usually with the addition of percussion). The instrumentation proved to be too limited for Birtwistle and he left in 1970. Maxwell Davies took over as sole director, renaming the group the Fires of London. It was disbanded after its 20th anniversary concert in 1987. Maxwell Davies subsequently endorsed a new group Psappha, based in Manchester. During its existence, the Fires of London was particularly associated with Maxwell Davies' music, and gave first performances of many of his works, includin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Desert Island Discs
''Desert Island Discs'' is a radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It was first broadcast on the BBC Forces Programme on 29 January 1942. Each week a guest, called a " castaway" during the programme, is asked to choose eight recordings (usually, but not always, music), a book and a luxury item that they would take if they were to be cast away on a desert island, whilst discussing their life and the reasons for their choices. It was devised and originally presented by Roy Plomley. Since 2018 the programme has been presented by Lauren Laverne. More than 3,000 episodes have been recorded, with some guests having appeared more than once and some episodes featuring more than one guest. An example of a guest who falls into both categories is Bob Monkhouse, who appeared with his co-writer Denis Goodwin on 12 December 1955 and in his own right on 20 December 1998. When ''Desert Island Discs'' marked its 75th year in 2017, ''The Guardian'' called the show a radio classic. In Februar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. As a Jewish composer, Schoenberg was targeted by the Nazi Party, which labeled his works as degenerate music and forbade them from being published. He immigrated to the United States in 1933, becoming an American citizen in 1941. Schoenberg's approach, bοth in terms of harmony and development, has shaped much of 20th-century musical thought. Many composers from at least three generations have consciously extended his thinking, whereas others have passionately reacted against it. Schoenberg was known early in his career for simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic styles of Brahms and Wagner. Later, hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierrot Lunaire
''Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds "Pierrot lunaire"'' ("Three times Seven Poems from Albert Giraud's 'Pierrot lunaire), commonly known simply as ''Pierrot lunaire'', Op. 21 ("Moonstruck Pierrot" or "Pierrot in the Moonlight"), is a melodrama by Arnold Schoenberg. It is a setting of 21 selected poems from Albert Giraud's cycle of the same name as translated into German by Otto Erich Hartleben. The work is written for reciter (voice-type unspecified in the score, but traditionally performed by a soprano) who delivers the poems in the ''Sprechstimme'' style accompanied by a small instrumental ensemble. Schoenberg had previously used a combination of spoken text with instrumental accompaniment, called "melodrama", in the summer-wind narrative of the ''Gurre-Lieder'', which was a fashionable musical style popular at the end of the nineteenth century. Though the music is atonal, it does not employ Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, which he did not use until 1921. ''Pier ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierrot Ensemble
A Pierrot ensemble is a musical ensemble comprising flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. This ensemble is named after 20th-century composer Arnold Schoenberg’s seminal work ''Pierrot Lunaire'', which includes the quintet of instruments above with a narrator (usually performed by a soprano). History The quintet of instruments used in ''Pierrot Lunaire'' has been used in the twentieth century by different groups, such as The Fires of London, who formed in 1965 as "The Pierrot Players" to perform Pierrot Lunaire, and continued to concertize with a varied classical and contemporary repertory. This group began to perform works arranged for these instruments and commission new works. While standard chamber ensembles (such as string quartets or piano trios) continued to be extremely popular among 20th-century composers, the Pierrot ensemble represents an example of the many kinds of non-standard chamber ensembles that have been used in classical music since the beginning of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eight Songs For A Mad King
''Eight Songs for a Mad King'' is a monodrama by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies with a libretto by Randolph Stow, based on words of George III. The work was written for the South-African actor Roy Hart and the composer's ensemble, the Pierrot Players. It was premiered on 22 April 1969. Lasting half an hour, it is scored for a baritone with an extraordinary command of extended techniques covering more than five octaves, and six players (Pierrot ensemble + percussion): *flute (doubling piccolo) *clarinet *percussion (1 player): railway whistle, snare drum, 2 suspended cymbals, foot cymbal, 2 wood blocks, 2 bass drums, chains, ratchet, tom-toms, tamtam, tambourine, rototoms, toy bird-calls, 2 temple blocks, wind chimes, crotales, sleigh bells, dulcimer, glockenspiel, steel bars, crow, didgeridoo, washboard *piano (doubling harpsichord) *violin *cello Extended techniques are also required by the instrumentalists: for example there is frequent use of flutter-tonguing and multiphonics fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mr Emmet Takes A Walk
''Mr Emmet Takes a Walk'' is a chamber opera by the English composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies with a libretto by David Pountney Sir David Willoughby Pountney (born 10 September 1947) is a British-Polish theatre and opera director and librettist internationally known for his productions of rarely performed operas and new productions of classic works. He has directed over .... The work is self-described as a "dramatic sonata". It tells the story of the last seconds of the life of Mr Emmet before his suicide on a railway line. Thoughts, ideas, musical fragments and experiences flash through Mr Emmet's mind before his death which expand across the fifty-minute duration of the work. Davies has cited the works of four composers as Motif (music), motifs in the opera: *Johann Sebastian Bach, Bach's Prelude and Fugue in F minor, BWV 881, Prelude and Fugue No. 12 in F minor (BWV, 881) from Book 2 of the ''Well-Tempered Clavier'' *Andrea Gabrieli's ''Edipo Tiranno'' *"Come furia disp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
