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Under The Spreading Chestnut Tree
''Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree'' is a set of variations, with fugue, for orchestra composed in 1939 by Jaromír Weinberger. It premiered under the direction of Sir John Barbirolli in New York City on October 12, 1939. The work is based on an English popular song of the period,Anne Gilchrist concludes that it is "a version of an old English tune called 'Go no more a-rushing,' which was arranged for virginals by William Byrd and Giles Farnaby—by the latter under the title of 'Tell mee, Daphne.' ... So 'Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree' is really an Old English—perhaps originally a dance—tune, preserved traditionally and lately modernized." which Weinberger is said to have mistaken for a folk song, and opens with the theme presented without preliminaries. Seven variations follow: *Her Majesty's Virginal *The Madrigalists *The Dark Lady *The Highlanders *Pastorale * Mr. Weller, Senior, Discusses Widows With His Son, Samuel Weller, Esquire *Sarabande The fugue, which ends ...
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Variation Form
In music, variation is a formal technique where material is repeated in an altered form. The changes may involve melody, rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, timbre, orchestration or any combination of these. Variation techniques Mozart's Twelve Variations on "Ah vous dirai-je, Maman" (1785), known in the English-speaking world as " Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" exemplifies a number of common variation techniques. Here are the first eight bars of the theme: Melodic variation Mozart's first variation decorates and elaborates the plain melodic line: Rhythmic variation The fifth variation breaks up the steady pulse and creates syncopated off-beats: Harmonic variation The seventh variation introduces powerful new chords, which replace the simple harmonies originally implied by the theme with a prolongational series of descending fifths: Minor mode In the elaborate eighth variation, Mozart changes from the major to the parallel minor mode, while combining three techniques: counte ...
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Pastoral
A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music (pastorale) that depicts such life in an idealized manner, typically for urban audiences. A ''pastoral'' is a work of this genre, also known as bucolic, from the Greek , from , meaning a cowherd. Literature Pastoral literature in general Pastoral is a mode of literature in which the author employs various techniques to place the complex life into a simple one. Paul Alpers distinguishes pastoral as a mode rather than a genre, and he bases this distinction on the recurring attitude of power; that is to say that pastoral literature holds a humble perspective toward nature. Thus, pastoral as a mode occurs in many types of literature (poetry, drama, etc.) as well as genres (most notably the pastoral elegy). Terry Gifford, a prominent literary theorist, defin ...
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Variations
Variation or Variations may refer to: Science and mathematics * Variation (astronomy), any perturbation of the mean motion or orbit of a planet or satellite, particularly of the moon * Genetic variation, the difference in DNA among individuals or the differences between populations ** Human genetic variation, genetic differences in and among populations of humans * Magnetic variation, difference between magnetic north and true north, measured as an angle * ''p''-variation in mathematical analysis, a family of seminorms of functions * Coefficient of variation in probability theory and statistics, a standardized measure of dispersion of a probability distribution or frequency distribution * Total variation in mathematical analysis, a way of quantifying the change in a function over a subset of \mathbb^n or a measure space * Calculus of variations in mathematical analysis, a method of finding maxima and minima of functionals Arts * Variation (ballet) or pas seul, solo danc ...
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1939 Compositions
This year also marks the start of the Second World War, the largest and deadliest conflict in human history. Events Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix. January * January 1 ** Third Reich *** Jews are forbidden to work with Germans. *** The Youth Protection Act was passed on April 30, 1938 and the Working Hours Regulations came into effect. *** The Jews name change decree has gone into effect. ** The rest of the world *** In Spain, it becomes a duty of all young women under 25 to complete compulsory work service for one year. *** First edition of the Vienna New Year's Concert. *** The company of technology and manufacturing scientific instruments Hewlett-Packard, was founded in a garage in Palo Alto, California, by William (Bill) Hewlett and David Packard. This garage is now considered the birthplace of Silicon Valley. *** Sydney, in Australia, records temperature of 45 ˚C, the highest record for the city. *** Philipp Etter took over as Swiss Fe ...
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Constant Lambert
Leonard Constant Lambert (23 August 190521 August 1951) was a British composer, conductor, and author. He was the founder and music director of the Royal Ballet, and (alongside Ninette de Valois and Frederick Ashton) he was a major figure in the establishment of the English ballet as a significant artistic movement. His ballet commitments, including extensive conducting work throughout his life, restricted his compositional activities. However one work, '' The Rio Grande'', for chorus, orchestra and piano soloist, achieved widespread popularity in the 1920s, and is still regularly performed today. His other work includes a jazz influenced Piano Concerto (1931), major ballet scores such as ''Horoscope'' (1937) and a full-scale choral masque '' Summer's Last Will and Testament'' (1936) that some consider his masterpiece. Lambert had wide-ranging interests beyond music, as can be seen from his critical study ''Music Ho!'' (1934), which places music in the context of the other arts ...
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Artur Rodzinski
Artur is a cognate to the common male given name Arthur, meaning "bear-like," which is believed to possibly be descended from the Roman surname Artorius or the Celtic bear-goddess Artio or more probably from the Celtic word ''artos'' ("bear"). Other Celtic languages have similar first names, such as Old Irish ''Art, Artúur'', Welsh ''Arth'' - which may also be the source for the modern name. ''Art'' is also a diminutive form of the common name Arthur. In Estonian, and many Romance, Slavic and Germanic languages the name is spelled as Artur. The Finnish versions are Arttu and Artturi. Avestan '/arta and its Vedic equivalent '' '' both derive from Proto-Indo-Iranian ''*ṛtá-'' "truth", which in turn continues Proto-Indo-European ''*'' "properly joined, right, true", from the root ''*''. The word is attested in Old Persian as '. People * Artur Adson (1889–1977), Estonian author *Artur Alliksaar (1923–1966), Estonian poet *Artur Axmann (1913–1996), German Nazi leader * Art ...
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Sarabande
The sarabande (from es, zarabanda) is a dance in triple metre, or the music written for such a dance. History The Sarabande evolved from a Spanish dance with Arab influences, danced by a lively double line of couples with castanets. A dance called ''zarabanda'' is first mentioned in 1539 in Central America in the poem ''Vida y tiempo de Maricastaña'', written in Panama by Fernando de Guzmán Mejía. In 1596, Alonso López, "el Pinciano", traces its origins even to the Dionysian cult. The dance seems to have been especially popular in the 16th and 17th centuries, initially in Spain and in the Spanish colonies. The Jesuit priest Juan de Mariana thought it indecent, describing it in his ''Tratato contra los juegos públicos'' (Treatise Against Public Amusements, 1609) as "a dance and song so loose in its words and so ugly in its motions that it is enough to excite bad emotions in even very decent people".Jane Bellingham, "Sarabande", ''The Oxford Companion to Music'', edited b ...
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The Pickwick Papers
''The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club'' (also known as ''The Pickwick Papers'') was Charles Dickens's first novel. Because of his success with '' Sketches by Boz'' published in 1836, Dickens was asked by the publisher Chapman & Hall to supply descriptions to explain a series of comic "cockney sporting plates" by illustrator Robert Seymour, and to connect them into a novel. The book became a publishing phenomenon, with bootleg copies, theatrical performances, Sam Weller joke books, and other merchandise. On its cultural impact, Nicholas Dames in ''The Atlantic'' writes, “'Literature' is not a big enough category for ''Pickwick''. It defined its own, a new one that we have learned to call “entertainment.” Published in 19 issues over 20 months, the success of ''The Pickwick Papers'' popularised serialised fiction and cliffhanger endings. Seymour's widow claimed that the idea for the novel was originally her husband's, but Dickens strenuously denied any specific in ...
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Madrigal (music)
A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance (15th–16th c.) and early Baroque (1600–1750) periods, although revisited by some later European composers. The polyphonic madrigal is unaccompanied, and the number of voices varies from two to eight, but usually features three to six voices, whilst the metre of the madrigal varies between two or three tercets, followed by one or two couplets. Unlike the verse-repeating strophic forms sung to the same music, most madrigals are through-composed, featuring different music for each stanza of lyrics, whereby the composer expresses the emotions contained in each line and in single words of the poem being sung. As written by Italianized Franco–Flemish composers in the 1520s, the madrigal partly originated from the three-to-four voice frottola (1470–1530); partly from composers' renewed interest in poetry written in vernacular Italian; partly from the stylistic influence of the French chanson; and fr ...
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Fugue
In music, a fugue () is a contrapuntal compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject (a musical theme) that is introduced at the beginning in imitation (repetition at different pitches) and which recurs frequently in the course of the composition. It is not to be confused with a '' fuguing tune'', which is a style of song popularized by and mostly limited to early American (i.e. shape note or " Sacred Harp") music and West Gallery music. A fugue usually has three main sections: an exposition, a development and a final entry that contains the return of the subject in the fugue's tonic key. Some fugues have a recapitulation. In the Middle Ages, the term was widely used to denote any works in canonic style; by the Renaissance, it had come to denote specifically imitative works. Since the 17th century, the term ''fugue'' has described what is commonly regarded as the most fully developed procedure of imitative counterpoint. Most fugues open with a short ...
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Virginal
The virginals (or virginal) is a keyboard instrument of the harpsichord family. It was popular in Europe during the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. Description A virginal is a smaller and simpler rectangular or polygonal form of harpsichord with only one string per note running more or less parallel to the keyboard on the long side of the case. Many, if not most, of the instruments were constructed without legs, and would be placed on a table for playing. Later models were built with their own stands. Mechanism The mechanism of the virginals is identical to the harpsichord's, in that its wire strings are plucked by plectra mounted in jacks. Its case, however, is rectangular or polygonal, and the single choir of strings—one per note—runs roughly parallel to the keyboard. The strings are plucked either near one end, as with the harpsichord, or, in the case of the muselar, nearer the middle, producing a more flute-like tone reduced in upper harmonics. Etymology ...
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Giles Farnaby
Giles Farnaby (c. 1563 – November 1640) was an English composer and virginalist whose music spans the Transition from Renaissance to Baroque in instrumental music, transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque period. Life Giles Farnaby was born about 1563, perhaps in Truro, Cornwall or near London. His father, Thomas, was a ''Cittizen and Joyner of London'', and Giles may have been related to Thomas Farnaby (c. 1575–1647), the famous schoolmaster of Kent, whose father was a carpenter. But it was his cousin Nicholas Farnaby (c. 1560–1630), who may have turned him to music. Nicholas was a virginal maker, at this time a generic word that included the entire family of plucked keyboard instruments: the harpsichord, virginal, Virginals#Muselars, muselar and doubtless the clavichord, and it is for these instruments that Farnaby's compositions are best known. Like his father however, Giles trained as a joiner or cabinet-maker, starting his apprenticeship in about 1583, and gave ...
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