String Piano
String piano is a term coined by American composer-theorist Henry Cowell (1897–1965) to collectively describe those pianistic extended techniques in which sound is produced by direct manipulation of the strings, instead of or in addition to striking the piano's keys. Pioneered by Cowell in the 1920s, such techniques are now often called upon in the works of avant-garde classical music composers. Techniques String piano compositions can involve a wide range of techniques. Among those employed by Cowell, the first major proponent of the approach, are: *plucking (pizzicato) *flicking back and forth across a string with a fingernail (similar to a mandolin tremolo) *sweeping chromatically across the strings with the fingers *sweeping across the strings with the flat of the hand (producing a tone cluster) *sweeping along one or more strings with the flesh of the finger(s) *scraping along one or more strings with the fingernail(s) Strings may also be pressed at specific points along ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Henry Cowell Playing String Piano
Henry may refer to: People *Henry (given name) *Henry (surname) * Henry Lau, Canadian singer and musician who performs under the mononym Henry Royalty * Portuguese royalty ** King-Cardinal Henry, King of Portugal ** Henry, Count of Portugal, Henry of Burgundy, Count of Portugal (father of Portugal's first king) ** Prince Henry the Navigator, Infante of Portugal ** Infante Henrique, Duke of Coimbra (born 1949), the sixth in line to Portuguese throne * King of Germany **Henry the Fowler (876–936), first king of Germany * King of Scots (in name, at least) ** Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley (1545/6–1567), consort of Mary, queen of Scots ** Henry Benedict Stuart, the 'Cardinal Duke of York', brother of Bonnie Prince Charlie, who was hailed by Jacobites as Henry IX * Four kings of Castile: **Henry I of Castile **Henry II of Castile **Henry III of Castile **Henry IV of Castile * Five kings of France, spelt ''Henri'' in Modern French since the Renaissance to italianize the name and to ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Banshee (composition)
The Banshee (1925) is a piano composition by American composer Henry Cowell (1897–1965). It was the first piano piece ever written to be performed entirely free of the keyboard, using only manual manipulation of the strings within the instrument to produce sound via the flesh and nails of the finger.MARIA CIZMIC. "Embodied Experimentalism and Henry Cowell's The Banshee." ''American Music'' 28, no. 4 (2010): 436-58. doi:10.5406/americanmusic.28.4.0436. Cowell stated that his inspiration in creating the "string piano" method of playing came from a desire to reinvent the landscape of piano technique, finding new usages and sounds for old instruments without necessarily inventing new ones. In addition to the string piano method changing the technical execution of producing sound, performance of ''The Banshee'' also required the performer to play the instrument in a new orientation, standing in the crook of the piano perpendicular to the strings, rather than seated at a bench. This ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Toru Takemitsu
TORU or Toru may refer to: * TORU, spacecraft system * Toru (given name), Japanese male given name * Toru, Pakistan, village in Mardan District of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan * Tõru, village in Kaarma Parish, Saare County, Estonia {{disambiguation, geo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Klavierstücke (Stockhausen)
The ''Klavierstücke'' (German for " Piano Pieces") constitute a series of nineteen compositions by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Stockhausen has said the ''Klavierstücke'' "are my ''drawings''". Originating as a set of four small pieces composed between February and June 1952, Stockhausen later formulated a plan for a large cycle of 21 ''Klavierstücke'', in sets of 4 + 6 + 1 + 5 + 3 + 2 pieces. He composed the second set in 1954–55 (''VI'' was subsequently revised several times and ''IX'' and ''X'' were finished only in 1961), and the single ''Klavierstück XI'' in 1956. Beginning in 1979, he resumed composing ''Klavierstücke'' and finished eight more, but appears to have abandoned the plan for a set of 21 pieces. The pieces from ''XV'' onward are for the synthesizer or similar electronic instruments, which Stockhausen had come to regard as the natural successor to the piano. The dimensions vary considerably, from a duration of less than half a minute for ''Klaviers ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groundbreaking work in electronic music, for introducing controlled chance ( aleatory techniques) into serial composition, and for musical spatialization. He was educated at the Hochschule für Musik Köln and the University of Cologne, later studying with Olivier Messiaen in Paris and with Werner Meyer-Eppler at the University of Bonn. One of the leading figures of the Darmstadt School, his compositions and theories were and remain widely influential, not only on composers of art music, but also on jazz and popular music. His works, composed over a period of nearly sixty years, eschew traditional forms. In addition to electronic music—both with and without live performers—they range from miniatures for musical boxes through works for sol ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Carl Orff
Carl Orff (; 10 July 1895 – 29 March 1982) was a German composer and music educator, best known for his cantata '' Carmina Burana'' (1937). The concepts of his Schulwerk were influential for children's music education. Life Early life Carl Orff (full name Karl Heinrich Maria Orff) was born in Munich on 10 July 1895, the son of Paula Orff (née Köstler, 1872–1960) and Heinrich Orff (1869–1949). His family was Bavarian and was active in the Imperial German Army; his father was an army officer with strong musical interests, and his mother was a trained pianist. The composer's grandfathers, Carl von Orff (1828–1905) and Karl Köstler (1837–1924), were both major generals and also scholars. His paternal grandmother, Fanny Orff (née Kraft, 1833–1919), was Catholic of Jewish descent. His maternal grandmother was Maria Köstler (née Aschenbrenner, 1845–1906). Orff had one sibling, a younger sister named Maria ("Mia", 1898–1975), who married the architect Alwin S ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mauricio Kagel
Mauricio Raúl Kagel (; 24 December 1931 – 18 September 2008) was an Argentine-German composer. Biography Kagel was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, into an Ashkenazi Jewish family that had fled from Russia in the 1920s . He studied music, history of literature, and philosophy in Buenos Aires . In 1957 he moved as a scholar to Cologne, Germany, where he lived until his death. As teacher From 1960–66 and 1972–76 he taught at the International Summer School at Darmstadt . He also taught from 1964–65 at the State University of New York at Buffalo as Slee Professor of music theory. At the Berlin Film and Television Academy he was a visiting lecturer. He served as director of courses for new music in Gothenburg and Cologne . He was professor for new music theatre at the Cologne Conservatory from 1974–97. Among his students were Maria de Alvear, Carola Bauckholt, Branimir Krstić, David Sawer, , Juan Maria Solare, Norma Tyer, Gerald Barry, and Chao-Ming Tung. As ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sofia Gubaidulina
Sofia Asgatovna Gubaidulina (russian: Софи́я Асгáтовна Губaйду́лина, link=no , tt-Cyrl, София Әсгать кызы Гобәйдуллина; born 24 October 1931) is a Soviet-Russian composer and an established international figure. Major orchestras around the world have commissioned and performed her works. She is considered one of the foremost Russian composers of the second half of the 20th century. Family Gubaidulina was born in Chistopol, Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (now the Republic of Tatarstan), Russian SFSR, to an ethnically mixed family of a Volga Tatar father and an ethnic Russian mother. Her father, Asgat Masgudovich Gubaidulin, was an engineer and her mother, Fedosiya Fyodorovna (née Yelkhova), was a teacher. After discovering music at the age of 5, Gubaidulina immersed herself in ideas of composition. While studying at the Children’s Music School with Ruvim Poliakov, Gubaidulina discovered spiritual ideas a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Halim El-Dabh
Halim Abdul Messieh El-Dabh ( ar, حليم عبد المسيح الضبع, ''Ḥalīm ʻAbd al-Masīḥ al-Ḍab''ʻ; March 4, 1921 – September 2, 2017) was an Egyptian-American composer, musician, ethnomusicologist, and educator, who had a career spanning six decades. He is particularly known as an early pioneer of electronic music. In 1944 he composed one of the earliest known works of tape music, or musique concrète. From the late 1950s to early 1960s he produced influential work at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Early life El-Dabh was born and grew up in Sakakini, Cairo, Egypt, a member of a large and affluent Coptic Christian family that had earlier emigrated from Abutig in the Upper Egyptian province of Asyut. The family name means "the hyena" and is not uncommon in Egypt. In 1932 the family relocated to the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis. Following his father's profession of agriculture, he graduated from Fuad I University (now Cairo University) i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Makrokosmos
''Makrokosmos'' is a series of four volumes of pieces for piano by American composer George Crumb. The name alludes to '' Mikrokosmos'', a set of piano pieces by Béla Bartók, one of Crumb's favorite 20th-century composers. The first volume of the set was composed in 1972, while the last was completed in early 1979; the first performance of all four volumes in sequence was given by Yvar Mikhashoff, Aki Takahashi, Stephen Manes, Freida Manes, Jan Williams and Lynn Harbold, in Buffalo, New York, on 12 June 1980. Volume I ''Makrokosmos, Volume I'' was composed in 1972 for pianist and friend David Burge (who previously commissioned and premiered Crumb's ''Five Pieces for Piano'' (1962)). The collection is subtitled ''Twelve Fantasy-Pieces after the Zodiac'' and is scored for amplified piano. Its contents are as follows: * Part 1: # ''Primeval Sounds (Genesis I)'' (Cancer) # ''Proteus'' (Pisces) # ''Pastorale (from the Kingdom of Atlantis, ca. 10,000 B.C.)'' (Taurus) # ''Crucifi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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George Crumb
George Henry Crumb Jr. (24 October 1929 – 6 February 2022) was an American composer of avant-garde contemporary classical music. Early in his life he rejected the widespread modernist usage of serialism, developing a highly personal musical language which "range in mood from peaceful to nightmarish". Crumb's compositions are known for pushing the limits of technical prowess by way of frequent use of extended techniques. The unusual timbres he employs evoke a surrealist atmosphere which portray emotions of considerable intensity with vast and sometimes haunting soundscapes. His few large-scale works include '' Echoes of Time and the River'' (1967), which won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for Music, and '' Star-Child'' (1977), which won the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition; however, his output consists of mostly music for chamber ensembles or solo instrumentalists. Among his best known compositions are '' Black Angels'' (1970), a striking commentary ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rued Langgaard
Rued Langgaard (; born Rud Immanuel Langgaard; 28 July 1893 – 10 July 1952) was a late-Romantic Danish composer and organist. His then-unconventional music was at odds with that of his Danish contemporaries but was recognized 16 years after his death. Life Born in Copenhagen, Rued Langgaard was the only son of composer and Royal Chamber musician Siegfried Langgaard (1852–1914) and Emma Langgaard (née Foss, 1861–1926), both of whom were pianists. At the age of five Rued began taking piano lessons with his mother, and later with his father and a private teacher. His talent emerged quickly, and at seven he was able to play Schumann's ''Davidsbündlertänze'' and Chopin's mazurkas. By then he had begun to compose short pieces for the piano and play the organ. At 10 he began to study the organ under Gustav Helsted, organist at the Jesuskirken in Valby, and the violin under Chr. Petersen, formerly of the Royal Orchestra. At the age of 11 he made his first public appea ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |