The Quest (ballet)
''The Quest'' is a ballet score by William Walton, written for a ballet of the same title, now lost, choreographed by Frederick Ashton in 1943. Two versions of the score exist: one for the small orchestra for which Walton wrote (because of wartime constraints), and a posthumously constructed version rescored for an orchestra of the larger size usually favoured by the composer. The ballet, with a scenario by Doris Langley Moore, was based on '' The Faerie Queene'' by Edmund Spenser. It was first given by the Sadler's Wells Ballet company. Background and first performances By the 1940s Walton was an established composer, known for works including a symphony, three concertos, the cantata '' Belshazzar's Feast'' and the "entertainment" ''Façade''. From the last, he had fashioned two orchestral suites, which the choreographer Frederick Ashton used for his 1931 ballet ''Façade''. During the Second World War Walton worked with the Army Film Unit and Ashton was in the Royal Air Force. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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William Walton
Sir William Turner Walton (29 March 19028 March 1983) was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera. His best-known works include ''Façade'', the cantata ''Belshazzar's Feast'', the Viola Concerto, the First Symphony, and the British coronation marches ''Crown Imperial'' and '' Orb and Sceptre''. Born in Oldham, Lancashire, the son of a musician, Walton was a chorister and then an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford. On leaving the university, he was taken up by the literary Sitwell siblings, who provided him with a home and a cultural education. His earliest work of note was a collaboration with Edith Sitwell, ''Façade'', which at first brought him notoriety as a modernist, but later became a popular ballet score. In middle age, Walton left Britain and set up home with his young wife Susana on the Italian island of Ischia. By this time, he had ceased to be regarded as a moderni ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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John Piper (artist)
John Egerton Christmas Piper CH (13 December 1903 – 28 June 1992) was an English painter, printmaker and designer of stained-glass windows and both opera and theatre sets. His work often focused on the British landscape, especially churches and monuments, and included tapestry designs, book jackets, screen-prints, photography, fabrics and ceramics. He was educated at Epsom College and trained at the Richmond School of Art followed by the Royal College of Art in London.Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr, Martin Butlin (1964–65). ''The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture'', volume II. London: Oldbourne Press; cited aArtist biography: John PIPER b. 1903 Tate. Accessed February 2014. He turned from abstraction early in his career, concentrating on a more naturalistic but distinctive approach, but often worked in several different styles throughout his career. Piper was an official war artist in World War II and his wartime depictions of bomb-damaged churches and landmarks, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vilém Tauský
Vilém Tauský CBE (20 July 1910, Přerov, Moravia – 16 March 2004, London) was a Czech conductor and composer who, from the advent of the Second World War, lived and worked in the UK, one of a significant group of émigré composers and musicians who settled there. Life Vilém Tauský was from a musical family: his Viennese mother had sung Mozart at the Vienna State Opera under Gustav Mahler, and her cousin was the operetta composer Leo Fall.'Tauský, Vilém' by , ''Grove Music Online'' (2001) Tauský studied with and later became a repetiteur at t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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John Warrack
John Hamilton Warrack (born 1928, in London) is an English music critic, writer on music, and oboist. Warrack is the son of Scottish conductor and composer Guy Warrack. He was educated at Winchester College (1941-6) and then at the Royal College of Music (1949–52). In the early 1950s he was a freelance oboist, playing mostly with the Boyd Neel Orchestra and Sadler's Wells Orchestra. From 1954 until 1961 he was music critic for ''The Daily Telegraph'', and from 1961 until 1972 he was music critic for ''The Sunday Telegraph''. From 1978 until 1983 he served as the Artistic Director of the Leeds Festival. From 1984 until 1993 he taught on the music faculty at the University of Oxford. He is the author of ''Six Great Composers'' (1955); ''Carl Maria von Weber'' ( Hamish Hamilton, 1968, 2nd ed. Cambridge UP, 1976), the standard study of Weber in English; ''German Opera: From the Beginnings to Wagner'' (2001) and the co-author of ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera'' (1964, wi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Michael Kennedy (music Critic)
George Michael Sinclair Kennedy CBE (19 February 1926 – 31 December 2014) was an English music critic and author who specialized in classical music. For nearly two decades he was the chief classical music critic for both ''The Daily Telegraph'' (1986–2005) and ''The Sunday Telegraph'' (1989–2005). A prolific writer, he was the biographer of many composers and musicians, including Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Barbirolli, Mahler, Strauss, Britten, Boult and Walton. Other notable publications include writings on various musical institutions, the editing of music dictionaries as well as numerous articles for ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' and the subsequent ''Grove Music Online''. Life and career On 19 February 1926 Kennedy was born in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, and attended Berkhamsted School. On 17 November 1941, he joined the Manchester office of ''Daily Telegraph'' at age 15, as a tea boy. In his youth, Kennedy auditioned for a role in the mus ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Christopher Palmer
Christopher Francis Palmer (9 September 194622 January 1995) was an English composer, arranger and orchestrator; biographer of composers, champion of lesser-known composers and writer on film music and other musical subjects; record producer; and lecturer. He was involved in a very wide range of projects and his output was prodigious. He came to be regarded as one of the finest symphonic orchestrators of his generation. He was dedicated to the conservation, recording and promotion of classic film scores by composers such as Bernard Herrmann, Dimitri Tiomkin, Franz Waxman, Miklós Rózsa, Elmer Bernstein and others. He wrote full biographies as well as sleeve notes, radio scripts, reviews and articles, on composers such as Benjamin Britten, Frederick Delius, Karol Szymanowski, Arthur Bliss, George Dyson (composer), George Dyson, Herbert Howells, Maurice Ravel, Nikolai Tcherepnin and others. He arranged music from the film scores and other music of William Walton, Malcolm Arnol ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books by decree in 1586, it is the second oldest university press after Cambridge University Press. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics known as the Delegates of the Press, who are appointed by the vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford. The Delegates of the Press are led by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as OUP's chief executive and as its major representative on other university bodies. Oxford University Press has had a similar governance structure since the 17th century. The press is located on Walton Street, Oxford, opposite Somerville College, in the inner suburb of Jericho. For the last 500 years, OUP has primarily focused on the publication of pedagogical texts and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Noël Coward Theatre
The Noël Coward Theatre, formerly known as the Albery Theatre, is a West End theatre in St. Martin's Lane in the City of Westminster, London. It opened on 12 March 1903 as the New Theatre and was built by Sir Charles Wyndham behind Wyndham's Theatre which was completed in 1899. The building was designed by the architect W. G. R. Sprague with an exterior in the classical style and an interior in the Rococo style. In 1973, it was renamed the Albery Theatre in tribute to Sir Bronson Albery who had presided as its manager for many years. Since September 2005, the theatre has been owned by Delfont-Mackintosh Ltd. It underwent major refurbishment in 2006, and was renamed the Noël Coward Theatre when it re-opened on 1 June 2006. The building is a Grade II Listed structure. History Early years, 1903–1919 The New was the second of the three theatres in St Martin's Lane. The Trafalgar Square (now the Duke of York's) opened in 1892 and the London Coliseum in 1904. The actor-manag ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ernest Irving
Kelville Ernest Irving (6 November 1878 – 24 October 1953) was an English music director, conductor and composer, primarily remembered as a theatre musician in London between the wars, and for his key contributions to British film music as music director at Ealing Studios from the 1930s to the 1950s. Early life Irving was born in Godalming, Surrey, and from the age of seven sang in the choir at Godalming Parish Church. He attended Charterhouse School.Lamb, Andrew'Irving, (Kelville) Ernest'in ''The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (2004) Other than that he was self-taught, and began his career applying for music director jobs advertised in ''The Stage''. His first professional job conducting an orchestra was for the musical burlesque ''Villiano the Vicious'' at the Theatre Royal, Maidenhead in 1895. He then spent the next two decades learning his trade by touring with productions (of variable quality) all around the UK - in his own words conducting "third rate opera ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Roy Douglas
Richard Roy Douglas (12 December 1907 – 23 March 2015) was an English composer, pianist and arranger. He worked as musical assistant to Ralph Vaughan Williams, William Walton, and Richard Addinsell, made well-known orchestrations of works such as ''Les Sylphides'' (based on piano pieces by Chopin) and Addinsell's ''Warsaw Concerto'', and wrote a quantity of original music. Life Roy Douglas was born at Royal Tunbridge Wells. He was self-taught in music. He gained experience writing film scores with ''Karma'' (1933) and ''Dick Turpin'' (1933). He assisted people such as Mischa Spoliansky on ''The Ghost Goes West'' (1935), Arthur Benjamin on '' Wings of the Morning'' (1937), Anthony Collins on ''Sixty Glorious Years'' (1938), Nicholas Brodzsky on ''Freedom Radio'' (aka ''A Voice in the Night'', 1941) and '' Tomorrow We Live'' (aka ''At Dawn We Die'', 1943), Noël Coward in ''In Which We Serve'' (1942), John Ireland in '' The Overlanders'' (1946), and Walter Goehr in ''Great Ex ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Seven Deadly Sins
The seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, is a grouping and classification of vices within Christian teachings. Although they are not directly mentioned in the Bible, there are parallels with the seven things God is said to hate in the Book of Proverbs. Behaviours or habits are classified under this category if they directly give rise to other immoralities. According to the standard list, they are Hubris, pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, Gluttony#Christianity, gluttony and sloth (deadly sin), sloth, which are contrary to the seven heavenly virtues, seven capital virtues. This classification originated with the Desert Fathers, especially Evagrius Ponticus. Evagrius' pupil John Cassian with his book ''The Institutes'' brought the classification to Europe, where it became fundamental to Catholic confessional practices as documented in penitential manuals, sermons such as "The Parson's Tale" from Chaucer's ''The Canterbury Tales, Canterbury Tales'' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Beryl Grey
Dame Beryl Elizabeth Grey (née Groom; 11 June 1927 – 10 December 2022) was a British ballet dancer. Early life Born in Highgate, London, she began dance classes at the age of four while attending Sherbourne Preparatory School, and by age eight was being taught by Phyllis Bedells. By the age of nine she had become the star pupil of her school, had been presented a silver medal by Tamara Karsavina and had passed all the examinations of the Royal Academy of Dancing it was possible for her to take. Her talent was recognised by Ursula Moreton and Ninette de Valois, who offered her a scholarship for four years at the age of ten, with the option of joining their dance company for a further four years. She began to attend the Sadler's Wells School in 1937Fisher, Hugh. ''Beryl Grey''. Adam and Charles Black: London (1955), pp. 5-21 where her teachers were Ninette de Valois and Vera Volkova. Career In August 1941, she was taken into the company at the age of fourteen and joined them ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |