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Viola Sonata (Sowerby)
The viola sonata is a sonata for viola, sometimes with other instruments, usually piano. The earliest viola sonatas are difficult to date for a number of reasons: *in the Baroque era, there were many works written for the viola da gamba, including sonatas (the most famous being Johann Sebastian Bach's Three Sonatas for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord, now most often played on the cello) *in the Classical era and early Romantic, there were few works written with viola specifically in mind as solo instrument, and many of these, like those of the Stamitz family, may have been written for the viola d'amore, like most of their viola works—though it is now customary to play them on the viola; it was more typical to publish a work or set, like George Onslow's opus 16 cello sonatas, or Johannes Brahms's Clarinet Sonatas in the late 19th century, that specified the viola as an alternate. Two early exceptions were the viola sonata of Felix Mendelssohn (1824, posthumously published in 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sonata
Sonata (; Italian: , pl. ''sonate''; from Latin and Italian: ''sonare'' rchaic Italian; replaced in the modern language by ''suonare'' "to sound"), in music, literally means a piece ''played'' as opposed to a cantata (Latin and Italian ''cantare'', "to sing"), a piece ''sung''. The term evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms until the Classical era, when it took on increasing importance. Sonata is a vague term, with varying meanings depending on the context and time period. By the early 19th century, it came to represent a principle of composing large-scale works. It was applied to most instrumental genres and regarded—alongside the fugue—as one of two fundamental methods of organizing, interpreting and analyzing concert music. Though the musical style of sonatas has changed since the Classical era, most 20th- and 21st-century sonatas still maintain the same structure. The term sonatina, pl. ''sonatine'', the diminutive form of sonata, is of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Max Reger
Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger (19 March 187311 May 1916) was a German composer, pianist, organist, conductor, and academic teacher. He worked as a concert pianist, as a musical director at the Paulinerkirche, Leipzig, Leipzig University Church, as a professor at the Leipzig Conservatory, Royal Conservatory in Leipzig, and as a music director at the court of Duke Georg II of Saxe-Meiningen. Reger first composed mainly ''Lieder'', chamber music, choral music and works for piano and organ. He later turned to orchestral compositions, such as the popular ''Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart'' (1914), and to works for choir and orchestra such as ''Gesang der Verklärten'' (1903), ' (1909), ''Der Einsiedler'' and the ''Requiem (Reger), Hebbel Requiem'' (both 1915). Biography Born in Brand, Bavaria, Brand, Kingdom of Bavaria, Bavaria, Reger was the first child of Josef Reger, a school teacher and amateur musician, and his wife Katharina Philomena. The devout Catholic fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Graham Waterhouse
Graham Waterhouse (born 2 November 1962) is an English composer and cellist who specializes in chamber music. He has composed a cello concerto, ''Three Pieces for Solo Cello'' and ''Variations for Cello Solo'' for his own instrument, and string quartets and compositions that juxtapose a quartet with a solo instrument, including Piccolo Quintet, Bassoon Quintet and the piano quintet '' Rhapsodie Macabre''. He has set poetry for speaking voice and cello, such as ''Der Handschuh'', and has written song cycles. His compositions reflect the individual capacity and character of players and instruments, from the piccolo to the contrabassoon. Since 1998, Waterhouse has organised a concert series at the Gasteig in Munich, often playing with members of the Munich Philharmonic. His works have been performed internationally and several have been recorded. He has been awarded prizes for several of his compositions, and has been composer in residence at institutions in European countries. H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viola Sonata (Ligeti)
György Ligeti composed his Viola Sonata between 1991 and 1994. It is a sonata for viola solo in six movements, and Ligeti composed it in various phases, parallel with his Violin Concerto, and his piano études. The composer was inspired to write a viola sonata after hearing Tabea Zimmermann playing on the radio, then began writing various movements. The second movement ''Loop'', was premiered by Garth Knox (then violist of the Arditti Quartet), while ''Facsar'' was premiered in 1993 by Jürg Dahler. The two movements were conceived as part of a complete work and they became the second and third movements of Ligeti's Viola Sonata. The sonata is a departure from Ligeti's Cello Sonata, composed 40 years earlier and represents an important turning point. In contrast with the earlier work, his Viola Sonata follows a pattern reminiscent of the Baroque sonata, with its many movements of contrasting tempi and rhythms. The fifth movement, a slow ''Lamento'', comes between a ''prestissimo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
György Ligeti
György Sándor Ligeti (; ; 28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century" and "one of the most innovative and influential among progressive figures of his time". Born in Transylvania, Romania, he lived in the Hungarian People's Republic before emigrating to Austria in 1956. He became an Austrian citizen in 1968. In 1973 he became professor of composition at the Hamburg Hochschule für Musik und Theater, where he worked until retiring in 1989. He died in Vienna in 2006. Restricted in his musical style by the authorities of Communist Hungary, only when he reached the West in 1956 could Ligeti fully realise his passion for avant-garde music and develop new compositional techniques. After experimenting with electronic music in Cologne, Germany, his breakthrough came with orchestral works such as ''Atmosphères'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fyodor Druzhinin
Fyodor Serafimovich Druzhinin, also Fedor, (russian: Фёдор Серафимович Дружинин; 6 April 1932 in Moscow – 1 July 2007) was a Soviet violist, composer and music teacher. Druzhinin studied viola at the Moscow Central Music School with Nikolai Sokolov (1944–1950) and at the Moscow Conservatory with Vadim Borisovsky (1950–1957). In 1957, he won first place at the All-Union Competition of Musicians in Moscow. He replaced Borisovsky as violist of the Beethoven Quartet in 1964. From 1980, Druzhinin was the head of the viola department at the Moscow Conservatory. Among his students are many noted violists such as Yuri Bashmet, Yuri Tkanov, Alexander Bobrovsky and Svetlana Stepchenko. Druzhinin composed several works for viola. His ''Fantasia for Viola and Orchestra'' is best known. He worked closely with Dmitri Shostakovich and other composers such as Mieczysław Weinberg (Moisei Samuilovich Vainberg), Alfred Schnittke, Andrei Volkonsky, Roman Lede ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, , group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 (Shostakovich), First Symphony in 1926 and was regarded throughout his life as a major composer. Shostakovich achieved early fame in the Soviet Union, but had a complex relationship with its government. His 1934 opera ''Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (opera), Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk'' was initially a success, but eventually was Muddle Instead of Music, condemned by the Soviet government, putting his career at risk. In 1948 his work was #Second denunciation, denounced under the Zhdanov Doctrine, with professional consequences lasting several years. Even after his censure was On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, rescinded in 1956, performances of his music were occasionally subject to state interventions, as with his Symphony No. 13 (Shostakovich), Thirteenth Symphony (1962). Shostakovich was a m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viola Sonata (Shostakovich)
The Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 147, is the last composition by Dmitri Shostakovich. It was completed on July 5, 1975, weeks before his death. It is dedicated to Fyodor Druzhinin, violist of the Beethoven Quartet. Background Surviving rough drafts of the sonata's first movement, which use a bass clef instead of an alto, suggest that Shostakovich may have originally conceived the work for cello. According to Sofia Khentova, the viola sonatas of Mieczysław Weinberg and Grigory Frid had been the impetus for Shostakovich to compose his own. His Viola Sonata also marked a return to an idea that the composer had expressed in the mid-1930s of writing a cycle of works for instruments not usually considered ideal for solo roles. Shostakovich first announced his intention to compose the Viola Sonata in May 1975 to the management of Leningrad's Glinka Maly Hall. In response to their proposal for a concert that would simultaneously open its 1975–76 season and commemorate his 69th birt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mieczysław Weinberg
Mieczysław Weinberg (8 December 1919 – 26 February 1996) was a Polish-born Soviet composer and pianist. Names Much confusion has been caused by different renditions of the composer's names. In official Polish documents made before he moved to the Soviet Union, his name was spelled as Mojsze Wajnberg, and in the world of Yiddish theater of antebellum Warsaw he was likewise known as Moishe Weinberg ( yi, משה װײַנבערג). After he moved to the Soviet Union, he was and still is known in Russian as Moisey Vaynberg (russian: Моисей Самуилович Вайнберг, Moisey Samuilovich Vaynberg). Among close friends in Russia, he would also go by his Polish diminutive "Mietek". Re-transliteration of his surname from Cyrillic back into the Latin alphabet produced a variety of spellings, including "Weinberg", "Vainberg", and "Vaynberg". The form "Weinberg" is now the most frequently used English-language spelling, including in the latest edition of the Grove D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lionel Tertis
Lionel Tertis, CBE (29 December 187622 February 1975) was an English violist. He was one of the first viola players to achieve international fame and a noted teacher. Career Tertis was born in West Hartlepool, the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants. He first studied violin in Leipzig, Germany and at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London. There he was encouraged by the principal, Alexander Mackenzie, to take up the viola instead. Under the additional influence of Oskar Nedbal, he did so and rapidly became one of the best known violists of his time, touring Europe and the US as a soloist. As Professor of Viola at the RAM (from 1900), he encouraged his colleagues and students to compose for the instrument, thereby greatly expanding its repertoire. In 1906, Tertis was temporarily in the famous Bohemian Quartet to replace the violist/composer Oskar Nedbal and later he took the viola position in the Gerald Walenn Quartet. Composers such as Arnold Bax, Frank Bridge, Gustav Holst ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arnold Bax
Sir Arnold Edward Trevor Bax, (8 November 1883 – 3 October 1953) was an English composer, poet, and author. His prolific output includes songs, choral music, chamber pieces, and solo piano works, but he is best known for his orchestral music. In addition to a series of symphonic poems, he wrote seven symphonies and was for a time widely regarded as the leading British symphonist. Bax was born in the London suburb of Streatham to a prosperous family. He was encouraged by his parents to pursue a career in music, and his private income enabled him to follow his own path as a composer without regard for fashion or orthodoxy. Consequently, he came to be regarded in musical circles as an important but isolated figure. While still a student at the Royal Academy of Music Bax became fascinated with Ireland and Celtic culture, which became a strong influence on his early development. In the years before the First World War he lived in Ireland and became a member of Dublin literary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viola Sonata (Rebecca Clarke)
Rebecca Clarke composed the Sonata for Viola and Piano, attributed to the year 1919, when the composer was 33 years old. Clarke had moved to the United States in 1916, after being disowned by her father. She had been supporting herself with some success as a soloist. Career The first reference to the Viola Sonata was upon its submission to a composition competition sponsored by Clarke's neighbour, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. Out of 72 entries, Clarke's Sonata tied for first with a piece by the Swiss composer, Ernest Bloch. In the end Bloch was declared the winner, despite all the judges favouring Clarke—it was decided that declaring Clarke the winner would smack of favouritism on Coolidge's part. It was also suspected by some that the name "Rebecca Clarke" was a pen-name of a male composer, as few imagined the possibility of a competent woman writing such music. Premiere The piece had its première at the Berkshire Music Festival in 1919, and was well received. It, along with t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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