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Three New England Sketches
''Three New England Sketches'' by Walter Piston is a symphonic suite dating from 1959. History The ''Sketches'' were commissioned by the Worcester County Musical Association for its 100th Annual Music Festival, and the cycle is dedicated to the conductor Paul Paray. They were composed in the summer of 1959 when Piston, as had become his habit, retreated to the Green Mountains in Vermont to work from a hilltop with a magnificent view spread out before him. While the composer did not consider it a symphony he stated that each of the three movements did conform to symphonic development and indicated that each movement represented his impressions of that aspect of the New England region. It was first performed on October 23, 1959, by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under Paul Paray. Analysis The work is in three movements: *Seaside (Adagio) *Summer Evening (Delicato) *Mountains (Maestoso; Risoluto) A typical performance will last around 17 minutes. While Piston disowned any specifi ... [...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] |
1959 In Music
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1959. Specific locations * 1959 in British music * 1959 in Norwegian music Specific genres * 1959 in country music *1959 in jazz Events *January 5 – The first sessions for Ella Fitzgerald's '' George and Ira Gershwin Songbook'' are held. *January 12 – Tamla Records is founded by Berry Gordy Jr. in Detroit, Michigan. *January 22 – Buddy Holly records some acoustic demos in his New York City apartment, the last songs he will record. Songs included "Peggy Sue Got Married", "Crying, Waiting, Hoping", "Learning the Game", "What to Do", "That's What They Say", and "That Makes It Tough." *January 29 – The first Melodifestivalen, an annual Swedish music competition that determines the country's representative for the Eurovision Song Contest, is held in Stockholm. *February 3 – "The Day the Music Died": Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper are killed in a plane crash in Iowa. Future country star W ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Worcester Music Festival, Massachusetts
Worcester Music Festival is a classical music festival held in Worcester, Massachusetts since 1858, and it is claimed to be the oldest music festival in the United States. History The inaugural edition in 1858 was a four-day music convention organized by Edward Hamilton and Benjamin F. Baker. In the same year, the Worcester Chorus was founded to sing at the festival, and it continues to perform every year. Although the convention lasted four days, only one concert was held. The Worcester County Musical Convention was formed in 1863, and Carl Zerrahn became its director in 1866. It changed its name to Worcester County Musical Association in 1877, and decided to call the events festivals instead of conventions. Victor Herbert was affiliated with the festival as assistant conductor and soloist for three years starting in 1889. Antonín Dvořák performed at the festival in 1893. Wallace Goodrich was the conductor from 1902 to 1907. Van Cliburn performed in 1958. Arthur Fiedler, Pet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Paray
Paul Marie-Adolphe Charles Paray () (24 May 1886 – 10 October 1979) was a French conductor, organist and composer. He was the resident conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra from 1952 until 1963. Early life and education Paul Paray was born in Le Tréport, Normandy, on 10 October 1886. His father, Auguste, a sculptor, organist at St. Jacques church, and leader of an amateur musical society, put young Paray in the society's orchestra as a drummer. Later, Paray went to Rouen to study music with the abbots Bourgeois and Bourdon, and organ with Haelling, which prepared him to enter the Paris Conservatoire. Career In 1911, Paray won the Premier Grand Prix de Rome for his cantata ''Yanitza''. Deprived of paper while a prisoner of war during World War I, Paray composed his string quartet in E minor, and the piano suite ''D'une âme...'', both in his head, only writing them down from memory after the war. Once the war was over, Paray was invited to conduct the orchestra of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Green Mountains
The Green Mountains are a mountain range in the U.S. state of Vermont. The range runs primarily south to north and extends approximately from the border with Massachusetts to the border with Quebec, Canada. The part of the same range that is in Massachusetts and Connecticut is known as The Berkshires or the Berkshire Hills (with the Connecticut portion, mostly in Litchfield County, locally called the Northwest Hills or Litchfield Hills) and the Quebec portion is called the Sutton Mountains, or ' in French. All mountains in Vermont are often referred to as the "Green Mountains". However, other ranges within Vermont, including the Taconic Mountains in southwestern Vermont and the Northeastern Highlands, are not geologically part of the Green Mountains. Peaks The best-known mountains—for reasons such as high elevation, ease of public access by road or trail (especially the Long Trail and Appalachian Trail), or with ski resorts or towns nearby—in the range include: # Mount ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Detroit Symphony Orchestra
The Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) is an American orchestra based in Detroit, Michigan. Its primary performance venue is Orchestra Hall at the Max M. Fisher Music Center in Detroit's Midtown neighborhood. Jader Bignamini is the current music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Leonard Slatkin, the previous music director, is the orchestra's current music director laureate. Neeme Järvi, music director from 1990 to 2005, is the orchestra's current music director emeritus. History Founding and growth The DSO performed the first concert of its first subscription season at 8:00 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 19, 1887 at the Detroit Opera House. The conductor was Rudolph Speil. He was succeeded in subsequent seasons by a variety of conductors until 1900 when Hugo Kalsow was appointed and served until the orchestra ceased operations in 1910. The Detroit Symphony resumed operations in 1914 when ten Detroit society women each contributed $100 to the organization and pledged to find ... [...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] |
Binary Form
Binary form is a musical form in 2 related sections, both of which are usually repeated. Binary is also a structure used to choreograph dance. In music this is usually performed as A-A-B-B. Binary form was popular during the Baroque period, often used to structure movements of keyboard sonatas. It was also used for short, one-movement works. Around the middle of the 18th century, the form largely fell from use as the principal design of entire movements as sonata form and organic development gained prominence. When it is found in later works, it usually takes the form of the theme in a set of variations, or the Minuet, Scherzo, or Trio sections of a "minuet and trio" or "scherzo and trio" movement in a sonata, symphony, etc. Many larger forms incorporate binary structures, and many more complicated forms (such as the 18th-century sonata form) share certain characteristics with binary form. Structure A typical example of a piece in binary form has two large sections of roughly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Compositions By Walter Piston
Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature * Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include visuals and digital space *Composition (music), an original piece of music and its creation * Composition (visual arts), the plan, placement or arrangement of the elements of art in a work * ''Composition'' (Peeters), a 1921 painting by Jozef Peeters * Composition studies, the professional field of writing instruction * ''Compositions'' (album), an album by Anita Baker * Digital compositing, the practice of digitally piecing together a video Computer science * Function composition (computer science), an act or mechanism to combine simple functions to build more complicated ones *Object composition, combining simpler data types into more complex data types, or function calls into calling functions History * Composition of 1867, Austro-Hung ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1959 Compositions
Events January * January 1 - Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when the forces of Fidel Castro advance. * January 2 - Lunar probe Luna 1 was the first man-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reached the vicinity of Earth's Moon, and was also the first spacecraft to be placed in heliocentric orbit. * January 3 ** The three southernmost atolls of the Maldive Islands, Maldive archipelago (Addu Atoll, Huvadhu Atoll and Fuvahmulah island) United Suvadive Republic, declare independence. ** Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. state. * January 4 ** In Cuba, rebel troops led by Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos enter the city of Havana. ** Léopoldville riots: At least 49 people are killed during clashes between the police and participants of a meeting of the ABAKO Party in Kinshasa, Léopoldville in the Belgian Congo. * January 6 ** Fidel Castro arrives in Havana. ** The International Maritime Organization is inaugurated. * January 7 – The United States reco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
