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Virgil Thompson
Virgil Thomson (November 25, 1896 – September 30, 1989) was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music. He has been described as a modernist, a neoromantic, a neoclassicist, and a composer of "an Olympian blend of humanity and detachment" whose "expressive voice was always carefully muted" until his late opera ''Lord Byron'' which, in contrast to all his previous work, exhibited an emotional content that rises to "moments of real passion". Biography Early years Thomson was born in Kansas City, Missouri. As a child he befriended Alice Smith, great-granddaughter of Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter-day Saint movement. During his youth he often played the organ in Grace Church, (now Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral), as his piano teacher was the church's organist. After World War I, he entered Harvard University thanks to a loan from Dr. Fred M. Smith, the president of the Reorganized Church of Jesus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Van Vechten
Carl Van Vechten (June 17, 1880December 21, 1964) was an American writer and artistic photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary executor of Gertrude Stein. He gained fame as a writer, and notoriety as well, for his 1926 novel ''Nigger Heaven''. In his later years, he took up photography and took many portraits of notable people. Although he was married to women for most of his adult years, Van Vechten engaged in numerous homosexual affairs over his lifetime. Life and career Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he was the youngest child of Charles Duane Van Vechten and Ada Amanda Van Vechten (née Fitch). Both of his parents were well educated. His father was a wealthy, prominent banker. His mother established the Cedar Rapids Public Library and had great musical talent. As a child, Van Vechten developed a passion for music and theatre. He graduated from Washington High School in 1898. After high school, Van Vechten was eager to take the next steps in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lord Byron (opera)
''Lord Byron'' is an opera in three acts by Virgil Thomson to an original English libretto by Jack Larson, inspired by the historical character Lord Byron. This was Thomson's third and final opera. He wrote it on commission from the Ford Foundation for the Metropolitan Opera (Met), but the Met never produced the opera. The first performance was at Lincoln Center, New York City on April 20, 1972, by the music department of the Juilliard School with John Houseman as stage director, Gerhard Samuel as the conductor and Alvin Ailey as the choreographer. A performance of a revised version, by the composer, took place in 1985 with the New York Opera Repertory Theater. The composer himself had great affection for this opera. The premiere production received mixed reviews, with one particularly negative one from Harold C. Schonberg, including this description: "....a very bland score, distressingly banal (all those waltzes!) and frequently gagglingly cutesy." The opera has not yet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud (; 4 September 1892 – 22 June 1974) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as ''The Group of Six''—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and Brazilian music and make extensive use of polytonality. Milhaud is considered one of the key modernist composers.Reinhold Brinkmann & Christoph Wolff, ''Driven into Paradise: The Musical Migr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Les Six
"Les Six" () is a name given to a group of six composers, five of them French and one Swiss, who lived and worked in Montparnasse. The name, inspired by Mily Balakirev's '' The Five'', originates in two 1920 articles by critic Henri Collet in '' Comœdia'', (see Bibliography). Their music is often seen as a neoclassic reaction against both the musical style of Richard Wagner and the impressionist music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. The members were Georges Auric (1899–1983), Louis Durey (1888–1979), Arthur Honegger (1892–1955), Darius Milhaud (1892–1974), Francis Poulenc (1899–1963), and Germaine Tailleferre (1892–1983). ' In 1917, when many theatres and concert halls were closed because of World War I, Blaise Cendrars and the painter Moïse Kisling decided to put on concerts at 6 , the studio of the painter Émile Lejeune (1885–1964). For the first of these events, the walls of the studio were decorated with canvases by Picasso, Matisse, Léger, M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erik Satie
Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (, ; ; 17 May 18661 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, but was an undistinguished student and obtained no diploma. In the 1880s he worked as a pianist in café-cabaret in Montmartre, Paris, and began composing works, mostly for solo piano, such as his ''Gymnopédies'' and '' Gnossiennes''. He also wrote music for a Rosicrucian sect to which he was briefly attached. After a spell in which he composed little, Satie entered Paris's second music academy, the Schola Cantorum, as a mature student. His studies there were more successful than those at the Conservatoire. From about 1910 he became the focus of successive groups of young composers attracted by his unconventionality and originality. Among them were the group known as Les Six. A meeting with Jean Cocteau in 1915 led to the creation of the ballet '' Par ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harvard Glee Club
The Harvard Glee Club is a 60-voice, Tenor-Bass choral ensemble at Harvard University. Founded in 1858 in the tradition of English and American glee clubs, it is the oldest collegiate chorus in the United States. The Glee Club is part of the Harvard Choruses of Harvard University, which also include the treble voice Radcliffe Choral Society and the mixed-voice Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum. All three groups are led by Harvard's current Director of Choral Activities Andrew Gregory Clark. The Glee Club has long been a fixture of the Boston music scene, performing frequently with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and other ensembles, but this local prominence has lessened in recent years. However, thanks to over 80 annual spring tours to different regions of the United States and appearances at the Kennedy Center Honors and in Leonard Bernstein's popular series ''The Unanswered Question'', the Glee Club has garnered national recognition; tours around the world have brought ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reorganized Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints
The Community of Christ, known from 1872 to 2001 as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS), is an American-based international church, and is the second-largest denomination in the Latter Day Saint movement. The church reports Community of Christ membership statistics, 250,000 members in 1,100 congregations in 59 countries. The church traces its origins to Joseph Smith's establishment of Church of Christ (Latter Day Saints), the Church of Christ on April 6, 1830. His eldest son Joseph Smith III formally accepted leadership of the church on April 6, 1860 in the aftermath of the 1844 death of Joseph Smith. Although Community of Christ is a Restorationism (Christian primitivism), Restorationist faith expression, various practices and beliefs are congruent with Mainline (Protestant), mainline Protestant Christianity. While it generally rejects the term ''Mormon'' to describe its members, the church abides by a number of theological distinctions relatively ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederick M
Frederick may refer to: People * Frederick (given name), the name Nobility Anhalt-Harzgerode *Frederick, Prince of Anhalt-Harzgerode (1613–1670) Austria * Frederick I, Duke of Austria (Babenberg), Duke of Austria from 1195 to 1198 * Frederick II, Duke of Austria (1219–1246), last Duke of Austria from the Babenberg dynasty * Frederick the Fair (Frederick I of Austria (Habsburg), 1286–1330), Duke of Austria and King of the Romans Baden * Frederick I, Grand Duke of Baden (1826–1907), Grand Duke of Baden * Frederick II, Grand Duke of Baden (1857–1928), Grand Duke of Baden Bohemia * Frederick, Duke of Bohemia (died 1189), Duke of Olomouc and Bohemia Britain * Frederick, Prince of Wales (1707–1751), eldest son of King George II of Great Britain Brandenburg/Prussia * Frederick I, Elector of Brandenburg (1371–1440), also known as Frederick VI, Burgrave of Nuremberg * Frederick II, Elector of Brandenburg (1413–1470), Margrave of Brandenburg * Frederick William, Elector ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and one of the most prestigious and highly ranked universities in the world. The university is composed of ten academic faculties plus Harvard Radcliffe Institute. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences offers study in a wide range of undergraduate and graduate academic disciplines, and other faculties offer only graduate degrees, including professional degrees. Harvard has three main campuses: the Cambridge campus centered on Harvard Yard; an adjoining campus immediately across Charles River in the Allston neighborhood of Boston; and the medical campus in Boston's Longwood Medical Area. Harvard's endowment is valued at $50.9 billion, making it the wealthiest academic institution in the world. Endowment inco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grace And Holy Trinity Cathedral (Kansas City, Missouri)
Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral is an Episcopal cathedral in the Quality Hill neighborhood of downtown Kansas City, Missouri, United States. It is the seat of the Episcopal Diocese of West Missouri. History Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral was established on the west side of Downtown Kansas City, Missouri, in the Quality Hill area, on July 20, 1870 as "Saint Paul's Church." It was renamed "Grace Church" on April 14, 1873 after a two-year campaign by the Senior Warden, John R. Balis (1834–1914), who had suggested that name at the organizational meeting in 1870. Grace Church built a wood frame structure on the southeast corner of Tenth and Central Streets in 1874. The present church structure, located at 415 West 13th Street, was the second worship space constructed for Grace Church, but the first to be built of stone. It was designed by Frederick Elmer Hill (1857–1929) of the prominent New York City firm, McKim, Mead & White. Construction on the present Nave began in June ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latter-day Saint Movement
The Latter Day Saint movement (also called the LDS movement, LDS restorationist movement, or Smith–Rigdon movement) is the collection of independent church groups that trace their origins to a Christian Restorationist movement founded by Joseph Smith in the late 1820s. Collectively, these churches have over 16 million members, although about 98% belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). The predominant theology of the churches in the movement is Mormonism, which sees itself as restoring the early Christian church with additional Revelation (Latter Day Saints), revelations. A minority of Latter Day Saint adherents, such as members of Community of Christ, have been influenced by Protestant theology while maintaining certain distinctive beliefs and practices including Continuous revelation, continuing revelation, an Doctrine and Covenants, open canon of scripture and building Temple (Latter Day Saints), temples. Other groups include the Remna ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Smith
Joseph Smith Jr. (December 23, 1805June 27, 1844) was an American religious leader and founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement. When he was 24, Smith published the Book of Mormon. By the time of his death, 14 years later, he had attracted tens of thousands of followers and founded a religion that continues to the present with millions of global adherents. Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont. By 1817, he had moved with his family to Western New York, the site of intense religious revivalism during the Second Great Awakening. Smith said he experienced a series of visions, including one in 1820 during which he saw "two personages" (whom he eventually described as God the Father and Jesus Christ), and another in 1823 in which an angel directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Judeo-Christian history of an ancient American civilization. In 1830, Smith published what he said was an English translation of these plates called the ''Book of Mormo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
