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Symphony No. 6 (Piston)
The Symphony No. 6 by Walter Piston was completed in 1955. History Piston composed the symphony to mark the 75th Anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He dedicated the score to the memory of Serge Koussevitzky and his wife Natalie. The symphony was first performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Charles Munch, on November 25, 1955. Analysis The work, like the earlier Symphony No. 3 and Symphony No. 4, is in four movements: *Fluendo espressivo *Scherzo: Leggerissimo vivace *Adagio sereno *Allegro energico A typical performance will last around 25 minutes. The symphony opens with a smooth sonata-allegro movement in A minor that gives the effect of a single flowing gesture. Both main themes are in 3/4 time, with the first unfolding in the violins and the second passed around the woodwinds. In the recapitulation, the return of the first theme is delayed until the very end of the movement. The second movement is a scherzo, and is unusual in Piston's output both for h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walter Piston
Walter Hamor Piston, Jr. (January 20, 1894 – November 12, 1976), was an American composer of classical music, music theorist, and professor of music at Harvard University. Life Piston was born in Rockland, Maine at 15 Ocean Street to Walter Hamor Piston, a bookkeeper, and Leona Stover. He was the second of four children. Although his family was mainly of English origin, his paternal grandfather was a sailor named Antonio Pistone, who changed his name to Anthony Piston when he came to Maine from Genoa, Italy. In 1905 the composer's father, Walter Piston Sr, moved with his family to Boston, Massachusetts. Walter Jr first trained as an engineer at the Mechanical Arts High School in Boston, but was artistically inclined. After graduating in 1912, he enrolled in the Massachusetts Normal Art School, where he completed a four-year program in fine art in 1916. During the 1910s, Piston made a living playing piano and violin in dance bands and later playing violin in orchestras led by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1955 In Music
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1955. Specific locations * 1955 in British music * 1955 in Norwegian music Specific genres * 1955 in country music *1955 in jazz Events *January 1 – RCA Victor announces a marketing plan called "Operation TNT." The label drops the list price on LPs from $5.95 to $3.98, EPs from $4.95 to $2.98, 45 EPs from $1.58 to $1.49 and 45's from $1.16 to $.89. Other record labels follow RCA's lead and begin to drop prices as well. *January 7 ** Marian Anderson is the first African American singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. ** "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets first appears on the British charts. *January 14 – In New York City, Alan Freed produces the first rock and roll concert. *January 27 – Michael Tippett's opera ''The Midsummer Marriage'' is premiered at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London, conducted by John Pritchard, with designs by Barbara Hepworth and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) is an American orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the second-oldest of the five major American symphony orchestras commonly referred to as the " Big Five". Founded by Henry Lee Higginson in 1881, the BSO performs most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at Tanglewood. Since its founding, the orchestra has had 17 music directors, including George Henschel, Serge Koussevitzky, Henri Rabaud, Pierre Monteux, Charles Munch, Erich Leinsdorf, William Steinberg and James Levine. Andris Nelsons is the current music director of the BSO. Seiji Ozawa has the title of BSO music director laureate. Bernard Haitink had held the title of principal guest conductor of the BSO from 1995 to 2004, then conductor emeritus until his death in 2021. The orchestra has made gramophone recordings since 1917 and has occasionally played on soundtrack recordings for films, including ''Schindler's List''. History Early year ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Serge Koussevitzky
Sergei Alexandrovich KoussevitzkyKoussevitzky's original Russian forename is usually transliterated into English as either "Sergei" or "Sergey"; however, he himself adopted the French spelling "Serge", using it in his signature. (SeThe Koussevitzky Music Foundations official web site Retrieved 5 November 2009.) His surname can be transliterated variously as "Koussevitzky", "Koussevitsky", "Kussevitzky", "Kusevitsky", or, into Polish, as "Kusewicki"; however, he himself chose to use "Koussevitzky". (russian: Серге́й Алекса́ндрович Кусеви́цкий, links=no; ''Sergey Aleksandrovich Kusevitsky''; 4 June 1951) was a Russian-born conductor, composer and double-bassist, known for his long tenure as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1924 to 1949. Biography Early career Koussevitzky was born into a Jewish family of professional musicians in Vyshny Volochyok, Tver Governorate (present-day Tver Oblast), about 250 km northwest of Moscow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Munch (conductor)
Charles Munch (; born Charles Münch, 26 September 1891 – 6 November 1968) was an Alsatian French symphonic conductor and violinist. Noted for his mastery of the French orchestral repertoire, he was best known as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Life and career Munch was born in 1891 in Strasbourg, Alsace. The son of organist and choir director Ernst Münch, he was the fifth of six children. He was the brother of conductor Fritz Münch and the cousin of conductor and composer Hans Münch. Although his first ambition was to be a locomotive engineer, he studied violin at the Strasbourg Conservatoire. His father, Ernst, was a professor of organ at the Conservatoire and performed at the cathedral; he also directed an orchestra with his son Charles in the second violins. After receiving his diploma in 1912, Charles studied with Carl Flesch in Berlin and Lucien Capet at the Conservatoire de Paris. He was conscripted into the German army in World War I, serving as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Symphony No
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning common today: a work usually consisting of multiple distinct sections or movements, often four, with the first movement in sonata form. Symphonies are almost always scored for an orchestra consisting of a string section (violin, viola, cello, and double bass), brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments which altogether number about 30 to 100 musicians. Symphonies are notated in a musical score, which contains all the instrument parts. Orchestral musicians play from parts which contain just the notated music for their own instrument. Some symphonies also contain vocal parts (e.g., Beethoven's Ninth Symphony). Etymology and origins The word ''symphony'' is derived from the Greek word (), meaning "agreement or concord of sound", "concert of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Movement (music)
A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately as stand-alone pieces, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession. A movement is a section Section, Sectioning or Sectioned may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * Section (music), a complete, but not independent, musical idea * Section (typography), a subdivision, especially of a chapter, in books and documents ** Section sig ..., "a major structural unit perceived as the result of the coincidence of relatively large numbers of structural phenomena". Sources Formal sections in music analysis {{music-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sonata Form
Sonata form (also ''sonata-allegro form'' or ''first movement form'') is a musical form, musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle of the 18th century (the early Classical music era, Classical period). While it is typically used in the first Movement (music), movement of multi-movement pieces, it is sometimes used in subsequent movements as well—particularly the final movement. The teaching of sonata form in music theory rests on a standard definition and a series of hypotheses about the underlying reasons for the durability and variety of the form—a definition that arose in the second quarter of the 19th century. There is little disagreement that on the largest level, the form consists of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation; however, beneath this general structure, sonata form is difficult to pin down to a single model. The st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Interval Number
In music theory, an interval is a difference in pitch between two sounds. An interval may be described as horizontal, linear, or melodic if it refers to successively sounding tones, such as two adjacent pitches in a melody, and vertical or harmonic if it pertains to simultaneously sounding tones, such as in a chord. In Western music, intervals are most commonly differences between notes of a diatonic scale. Intervals between successive notes of a scale are also known as scale steps. The smallest of these intervals is a semitone. Intervals smaller than a semitone are called microtones. They can be formed using the notes of various kinds of non-diatonic scales. Some of the very smallest ones are called commas, and describe small discrepancies, observed in some tuning systems, between enharmonically equivalent notes such as C and D. Intervals can be arbitrarily small, and even imperceptible to the human ear. In physical terms, an interval is the ratio between two sonic freque ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rondo
The rondo is an instrumental musical form introduced in the Classical period. Etymology The English word ''rondo'' comes from the Italian form of the French ''rondeau'', which means "a little round". Despite the common etymological root, rondo and rondeau as musical forms are essentially different. Rondeau is a ''vocal'' musical form that was originally developed as monophonic music (in the 13th century) and then as polyphonic music (in the 14th century). Notably, both vocal forms of rondeau nearly disappeared from the repertoire by the beginning of the 16th century. In French, ''rondeau'' is used for both forms, while in English ''rondeau'' is generally used for the ''vocal'' musical form, while ''rondo'' is used for the ''instrumental'' musical form.Don Neville, "Rondò", ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera'', 4 vols., edited by Stanley Sadie Stanley John Sadie (; 30 October 1930 – 21 March 2005) was an influential and prolific British musicologist, music critic, and edit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BACH Motif
In music, the BACH motif is the motif, a succession of notes important or characteristic to a piece, ''B flat, A, C, B natural''. In German musical nomenclature, in which the note ''B natural'' is named ''H'' and the ''B flat'' named ''B'', it forms Johann Sebastian Bach's family name. One of the most frequently occurring examples of a musical cryptogram, the motif has been used by countless composers, especially after the Bach Revival in the first half of the 19th century. Origin Johann Gottfried Walther's ''Musicalisches Lexikon'' (1732) contains the only biographical sketch of Johann Sebastian Bach published during the composer's lifetime. There the motif is mentioned thus:This reference work thus indicates Bach as the inventor of the motif. Usage in compositions In a comprehensive study published in the catalogue for the 1985 exhibition "300 Jahre Johann Sebastian Bach" ("300 years of Johann Sebastian Bach") in Stuttgart, Germany, Ulrich Prinz lists 409 works by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Symphonies By Walter Piston
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning common today: a work usually consisting of multiple distinct sections or movements, often four, with the first movement in sonata form. Symphonies are almost always scored for an orchestra consisting of a string section (violin, viola, cello, and double bass), brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments which altogether number about 30 to 100 musicians. Symphonies are notated in a musical score, which contains all the instrument parts. Orchestral musicians play from parts which contain just the notated music for their own instrument. Some symphonies also contain vocal parts (e.g., Beethoven's Ninth Symphony). Etymology and origins The word ''symphony'' is derived from the Greek word (), meaning "agreement or concord of sound", "concert of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
