Sarcasms (Prokofiev)
''Sarcasms'', Op. 17 (russian: Сарказмы, pronounced sarkazmy), initially alternatively entitled ''Sarcastic Pieces'', is a 1914 solo piano composition by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. Background The five-movement ''Sarcasms'' was written during the course of three years, between 1912 and 1914. It was initially entitled ''Sarcastic Pieces'', but Prokofiev eventually decided to rename the title on the advice of two of his contemporaries: V. Nuvel and A. Nurok. All five movements were eventually laid out chronologically: movement I was written in 1912, movements II and III were written in 1913, and movements IV and V were written in 1914. The set of sarcasms were in his personal collection and he performed selections and fragments from the ''Sarcasms'' and other pieces on occasion. Prokofiev wrote a short program for the fifth piece in 1941, leaving all the other sarcasms without a program. The whole set was premiered by Prokofiev himself on November 27, 1916, in Sa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev; alternative transliterations of his name include ''Sergey'' or ''Serge'', and ''Prokofief'', ''Prokofieff'', or ''Prokofyev''., group=n (27 April .S. 15 April1891 – 5 March 1953) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who later worked in the Soviet Union. As the creator of acknowledged masterpieces across numerous music genres, he is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. His works include such widely heard pieces as the March from ''The Love for Three Oranges,'' the suite ''Lieutenant Kijé'', the ballet ''Romeo and Juliet''—from which "Dance of the Knights" is taken—and ''Peter and the Wolf.'' Of the established forms and genres in which he worked, he created—excluding juvenilia—seven completed operas, seven symphonies, eight ballets, five piano concertos, two violin concertos, a cello concerto, a symphony-concerto for cello and orchestra, and nine completed piano sonatas. A graduate of the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff; in Russian pre-revolutionary script. (28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music. Early influences of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and other Russian composers gave way to a thoroughly personal idiom notable for its song-like melodicism, expressiveness and rich orchestral colours. The piano is featured prominently in Rachmaninoff's compositional output and he made a point of using his skills as a performer to fully explore the expressive and technical possibilities of the instrument. Born into a musical family, Rachmaninoff took up the piano at the age of four. He studied with Anton Arensky and Sergei Taneyev at the Moscow Conservatory and graduated in 1892, having already composed several piano and orchestral pieces. In 1897, following the d ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1914 Compositions
This year saw the beginning of what became known as World War I, after Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austrian throne was Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, assassinated by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip. It also saw the first airline to provide scheduled regular commercial passenger services with heavier-than-air aircraft, with the St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line. Events January * January 1 – The St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line in the United States starts services between St. Petersburg, Florida, St. Petersburg and Tampa, Florida, becoming the first airline to provide scheduled regular commercial passenger services with heavier-than-air aircraft, with Tony Jannus (the first federally-licensed pilot) conveying passengers in a Benoist XIV flying boat. Abram C. Pheil, mayor of St. Petersburg, is the first airline passenger, and over 3,000 people witness the first departure. * January 11 – The Sakurajima volcano in Japan b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Petrushka
Petrushka ( rus, Петру́шка, p=pʲɪtˈruʂkə, a=Ru-петрушка.ogg) is a stock character of Russian folk puppetry. Italian puppeteers introduced it in the first third of the 19th century. While most core characters came from Italy, they were soon transformed by the addition of material from the Russian 'lubki' and 'intermedii.' Petrushkas are traditionally marionettes, as well as hand puppets. The character is a kind of a jester distinguished by his red dress, a red '' kolpak'', and often a long nose. Word origin Although the Russian word "petrushka" has a homonym meaning "parsley", in this context the word is actually a hypocoristic (diminutive) for "Pyotr" (Пётр), which is Peter in Russian. Despite this, the character has little or nothing in common with the ''commedia dell'arte'' stock characters of Petruccio or Pierrot, but is instead a Russian version of Punch or Pulcinella. History Pietro-Mira Pedrillo of Italy, the court jester of the Empress Anna Io ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Rite Of Spring
''The Rite of Spring''. Full name: ''The Rite of Spring: Pictures from Pagan Russia in Two Parts'' (french: Le Sacre du printemps: tableaux de la Russie païenne en deux parties) (french: Le Sacre du printemps, link=no) is a ballet and orchestral concert work by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company; the original choreography was by Vaslav Nijinsky with stage designs and costumes by Nicholas Roerich. When first performed at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 29 May 1913, the avant-garde nature of the music and choreography List of classical music concerts with an unruly audience response, caused a sensation. Many have called the first-night reaction a "riot" or "near-riot", though this wording did not come about until reviews of later performances in 1924, over a decade later. Although designed as a work for the stage, with specific passages accompanying characters and action, the music achieved ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (russian: link=no, Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (russian: Макси́м Го́рький, link=no), was a Russian writer and socialist political thinker and proponent. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Before his success as an author, he travelled widely across the Russian Empire changing jobs frequently, experiences which would later influence his writing. Gorky's most famous works are his early short stories, written in the 1890s (" Chelkash", " Old Izergil", and " Twenty-Six Men and a Girl"); plays '' The Philistines'' (1901), '' The Lower Depths'' (1902) and '' Children of the Sun'' (1905); a poem, " The Song of the Stormy Petrel" (1901); his autobiographical trilogy, '' My Childhood, In the World, My Universities'' (1913–1923); and a novel, ''Mother'' (1906). Gorky himself judged some of these works as failures, and ''Mother'' has ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (, ; rus, Влади́мир Влади́мирович Маяко́вский, , vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪtɕ məjɪˈkofskʲɪj, Ru-Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky.ogg, links=y; – 14 April 1930) was a Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, artist, and actor. During his early, pre-Revolution period leading into 1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Russian Futurist movement. He co-signed the Futurist manifesto, ''A Slap in the Face of Public Taste'' (1913), and wrote such poems as "A Cloud in Trousers" (1915) and "Backbone Flute" (1916). Mayakovsky produced a large and diverse body of work during the course of his career: he wrote poems, wrote and directed plays, appeared in films, edited the art journal ''LEF'', and produced agitprop posters in support of the Communist Party during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922. Though Mayakovsky's work regularly demonstrated ideological and patriotic support ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Boris Asafyev
Boris Vladimirovich Asafyev (russian: link=no, Бори́с Влади́мирович Аса́фьев; 27 January 1949) was a Russian and Soviet composer, writer, musicologist, musical critic and one of founders of Soviet musicology. He is the dedicatee of Prokofiev's First Symphony. He was born in Saint Petersburg. Asafyev had a strong influence on Soviet music. His compositions include ballets, operas, symphonies, concertos and chamber music. His ballets include ''Flames of Paris'', based on the French Revolution, and ''The Fountain of Bakhchisarai'', which was first performed in 1934, and was performed at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in 2006. His writings, under the name Igor Glebov, include ''The Book about Stravinsky'' and ''Glinka'' (for which he was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1948). Selected works ;Opera * ''The Cashier's Wife'' * ''Minin and Pozharsky'' * ''The Girl without a Dowry'' ;Ballets * ''The Fairy Gift'' (1910) * ''White Lily'' (1911) * ''F ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Suggestion Diabolique
Suggestion is the psychological process by which a person guides their own or another person's desired thoughts, feelings, and behaviors by presenting stimuli that may elicit them as reflexes instead of relying on conscious effort. Nineteenth-century writers on psychology such as William James used the words "suggest" and "suggestion" in the context of a particular idea which was said to ''suggest'' another when it brought that other idea to mind. Early scientific studies of hypnosis by Clark Leonard Hull and others extended the meaning of these words in a special and technical sense (Hull, 1933). The original neuropsychological theory of hypnotic suggestion was based upon the ideomotor reflex response that William B. Carpenter declared, in 1852, was the principle through which James Braid's hypnotic phenomena were produced. Émile Coué Émile Coué (1857–1926) was a significant pioneer in the development of an understanding of the application of therapeutic suggestio ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nikolai Medtner
Nikolai Karlovich Medtner (russian: Никола́й Ка́рлович Ме́тнер, ''Nikoláj Kárlovič Métner''; 13 November 1951) was a Russian composer and virtuoso pianist. After a period of comparative obscurity in the 25 years immediately after his death, he is now becoming recognized as one of the most significant Russian composers for the piano. A younger contemporary of Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Scriabin, he wrote a substantial number of compositions, all of which include the piano. His works include 14 piano sonatas, three violin sonatas, three piano concerti, a piano quintet, two works for two pianos, many shorter piano pieces, a few shorter works for violin and piano, and 108 songs including two substantial works for vocalise. His 38 ''Skazki'' (generally known as "Fairy Tales" in English but more correctly translated as "Tales") for piano solo contain some of his most original music. Biography Nikolai Medtner was born in Moscow on 24 December 1879, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Petrograd
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), is the second-largest city in Russia. It is situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, with a population of roughly 5.4 million residents. Saint Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe after Istanbul, Moscow and London, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world's northernmost city of more than 1 million residents. As Russia's Imperial capital, and a historically strategic port, it is governed as a federal city. The city was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on 27 May 1703 on the site of a captured Swedish fortress, and was named after apostle Saint Peter. In Russia, Saint Petersburg is historically and culturally associated with th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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B♭ Minor
B-flat minor is a minor scale based on B, consisting of the pitches B, C, D, E, F, G, and A. Its key signature has five flats. Its relative major is D-flat major and its parallel major is B-flat major. Its enharmonic equivalent, A-sharp minor, which would contain seven sharps, is not normally used. The B-flat natural minor scale is: : Changes needed for the melodic and harmonic versions of the scale are written in with accidentals as necessary. The B-flat harmonic minor and melodic minor scales are: : : Characteristics B-flat minor is traditionally a 'dark' key. The old valveless horn was barely capable of playing in B-flat minor: the only example found in 18th-century music is a modulation that occurs in the first minuet of Franz Krommer's Concertino in D major, Op. 80. Notable classical compositions * Charles-Valentin Alkan ** '' Prelude Op. 31'', No. 12 (Le temps qui n'est plus) ** Symphony for Solo Piano, 3rd movement: Menuet *Samuel Barber **''Adag ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |