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Ralph Leopold
Ralph Leopold (14 February 188410 July 1955) was an American pianist and piano teacher. Biography Ralph Herman Leopold was born in 1884 in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, the son of Howard Leopold. His sister Elizabeth Leopold married Newton D. Baker, who in 1912 was considered a possible vice-presidential running mate to Woodrow Wilson, and from 1916 to 1921 was United States Secretary of War. By 1911, he was teaching in Berlin, and played with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. In World War I he was attached to the Army Bandmaster's School at Governors Island, Here he met and became a close friend of the Australian-born pianist and composer Percy Grainger, who had become an American citizen in June 1918. Leopold and Grainger gave the first performance of the piano duet version of Grainger's " Children's March: Over the Hills and Far Away". Leopold was also the solo pianist in the first performance of the version for band and piano, with Grainger conducting the Goldman Band (6 J ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pottstown, Pennsylvania
Pottstown is a borough in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Pottstown was laid out in 1752–53 and named Pottsgrove in honor of its founder, John Potts. The old name was abandoned at the time of the incorporation as a borough in 1815. In 1888, the limits of the borough were considerably extended. Pottstown is the center of a productive farming and dairying region. Pottstown is located on the Schuylkill River. It is south of Allentown and northwest of Philadelphia. History Modern-day Pottstown is on land originally deeded to William Penn. Germans, Swedes and English were among the area's first European settlers. After establishment of the first iron forge in 1714, Pottstown's fortunes became tied to the iron industry, and blast furnaces for production of iron and later steel eventually opened in the area. Iron and steel production attracted the Potts family, iron masters by trade. They established a forge and built a large home just west of the Manatawny Creek. John Po ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernst Von Dohnányi
Ernst von Dohnányi (Hungarian: ''Dohnányi Ernő'', ; 27 July 1877 – 9 February 1960) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and conductor. He used a German form of his name on most published compositions. Biography Dohnányi was born in Pozsony, Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary (today Bratislava, capital of Slovakia). He was the son of Frigyes Dohnányi and his wife Ottilia Szlabey. He first studied music with his father, a professor of mathematics and an amateur cellist, and then when he was eight years old, with Carl Forstner, organist at the local cathedral. In 1894, in his 17th year, he moved to Budapest and enrolled in the '' Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music'', studying piano with István Thomán and composition with Hans von Koessler, a cousin of Max Reger. István Thomán had been a favorite student of Franz Liszt, while Hans von Koessler was a devotee of Johannes Brahms's music. These two influences played an important part in Dohnányi's life: Liszt on his p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piano Sonata No
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys (small levers) that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings. It was invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700. Description The word "piano" is a shortened form of ''pianoforte'', the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument, which in turn derives from ''clavicembalo col piano e forte'' (key cimbalom with quiet and loud)Pollens (1995, 238) and ''fortepiano''. The Italian musical terms ''piano'' and ''forte'' indicate "soft" and "loud" respectively, in this context referring to the variations in volume (i.e., loudness) produced in response to a pianist's touch or pressure on the keys: the grea ... [...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] |
Der Ring Des Nibelungen
(''The Ring of the Nibelung''), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from Germanic heroic legend, namely Norse legendary sagas and the '' Nibelungenlied''. The composer termed the cycle a "Bühnenfestspiel" (stage festival play), structured in three days preceded by a ("preliminary evening"). It is often referred to as the ''Ring'' cycle, Wagner's ''Ring'', or simply ''The Ring''. Wagner wrote the libretto and music over the course of about twenty-six years, from 1848 to 1874. The four parts that constitute the ''Ring'' cycle are, in sequence: * ''Das Rheingold'' (''The Rhinegold'') * '' Die Walküre'' (''The Valkyrie'') * '' Siegfried'' * '' Götterdämmerung'' (''Twilight of the Gods'') Individual works of the sequence are often performed separately, and indeed the operas contain dialogues that mention events in the previous operas, so that a viewer could watch any of them wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tristan Und Isolde
''Tristan und Isolde'' (''Tristan and Isolde''), WWV 90, is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the 12th-century romance Tristan and Iseult by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered at the Königliches Hoftheater und Nationaltheater in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting. Wagner referred to the work not as an opera, but called it "" (literally ''a drama'', ''a plot'', or ''an action''). Wagner's composition of ''Tristan und Isolde'' was inspired by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (particularly ''The World as Will and Representation''), as well as by Wagner's affair with Mathilde Wesendonck. Widely acknowledged as a pinnacle of the operatic repertoire, ''Tristan'' was notable for Wagner's unprecedented use of chromaticism, tonal ambiguity, orchestral colour, and harmonic suspension. The opera was enormously influential among Western classical com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lohengrin (opera)
''Lohengrin'', WWV 75, is a Romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the ''Parzival'' of Wolfram von Eschenbach, and its sequel ''Lohengrin'', itself inspired by the epic of ''Garin le Loherain''. It is part of the Knight of the Swan legend. The opera has inspired other works of art. King Ludwig II of Bavaria named his castle Neuschwanstein Castle after the Swan Knight. It was King Ludwig's patronage that later gave Wagner the means and opportunity to complete, build a theatre for, and stage his epic cycle ''Der Ring des Nibelungen''. He had discontinued composing it at the end of Act II of ''Siegfried'', the third of the ''Ring'' tetralogy, to create his radical chromatic masterpiece of the late 1850s, ''Tristan und Isolde'', and his lyrical comic opera of the mid-1860s, '' Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg''. The most popular and recognizabl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tannhäuser (opera)
''Tannhäuser'' (; full title , "Tannhäuser and the Minnesängers' Contest at Wartburg") is an 1845 opera in three acts, with music and text by Richard Wagner ( WWV 70 in the catalogue of the composer's works). It is based on two German legends: Tannhäuser, the mythologized medieval German Minnesänger and poet, and the tale of the Wartburg Song Contest. The story centres on the struggle between sacred and profane love, as well as redemption through love, a theme running through most of Wagner's work. The opera remains a staple of major opera house repertoire in the 21st century. Composition history Sources The libretto of ''Tannhäuser'' combines mythological elements characteristic of German ''Romantische Oper'' (Romantic opera) and the medieval setting typical of many French Grand Operas. Wagner brings these two together by constructing a plot involving the 14th-century Minnesingers and the myth of Venus and her subterranean realm of Venusberg. Both the historical and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (''The Ring of the Nibelung''). His compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex textures, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks
''Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks'' (german: Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, ), Opus number, Op. 28, is a tone poem written in 1894–95 by Richard Strauss. It chronicles the misadventures and pranks of the German peasant folk hero Till Eulenspiegel, who is represented by two themes. The first, played by the French horn, horn, is a lilting melody that reaches a peak, falls downward, and ends in three long, loud notes, each progressively lower. The second, for D clarinet, is crafty and wheedling, suggesting a trickster doing what he does best. (Till Eulenspiegel is a well-known Schnickelfritz.) Analysis The work opens with a "Once upon a time" theme, : \relative c as a solo horn bursts in with two repetitions of the first Till theme. : \relative c' The theme is taken by the rest of the orchestra in a rondo form (which Strauss spelled in its French form, rondeau), and this beginning section concludes with the tutti orchestra repeating two notes. The clarinet theme is h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss (; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. Along with Gustav Mahler, he represents the late flowering of German Romanticism, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style. Strauss's compositional output began in 1870 when he was just six years old and lasted until his death nearly eighty years later. While his output of works encompasses nearly every type of classical compositional form, Strauss achieved his greatest success with tone poems and operas. His first tone poem to achieve wide acclaim was ''Don Juan'', and this was followed by other lauded works of this kind, including ''Death and Transfiguration'', ''Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks'', ''Also sprach Zarathustra'', ''Don Quixote'', ''Ein Heldenleben' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Romeo And Juliet (Tchaikovsky)
''Romeo and Juliet'', TH 42, ČW 39, is an orchestral work composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It is styled an ''Overture-Fantasy'', and is based on Shakespeare's play of the same name. Like other composers such as Berlioz and Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky was deeply inspired by Shakespeare and wrote works based on '' The Tempest'' and ''Hamlet'' as well. Unlike Tchaikovsky's other major compositions, ''Romeo and Juliet'' does not have an opus number. It has been given the alternative catalogue designations TH 42 and ČW 39. Musical structure Although styled an 'Overture-Fantasy' by the composer, the overall design is a symphonic poem in sonata form with an introduction and an epilogue. The work is based on three main strands of the Shakespeare story. The first strand, written in F-sharp minor, following Mily Balakirev's suggestion, is the introduction representing the saintly Friar Laurence. Here there is a foreboding of doom from the lower strings. The Friar Laurence theme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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