Wen-chung Chou
Chou Wen-chung (; July 28, 1923 – October 25, 2019) was a Chinese American composer of contemporary classical music. He emigrated in 1946 to the United States and received his music training at the New England Conservatory and Columbia University. Chou is credited by Nicolas Slonimsky as one of the first Chinese composers who attempted to translate authentic oriental melo-rhythms into the terms of modern Western music. Life Early years in China Chou was born in Yantai (Chefoo), Shandong. He grew up in China and developed an early love for music. ("Sights and Sounds" is an essay by Chou on early influences on his music.) Qin music, in particular, has proved fertile ground for his future exploration. Chou described his early explorations of musical instruments: While in Qingdao, I first discovered the meaning of music in life when I heard our household help enjoying their free time by playing instruments, singing, and drinking. I also became fascinated with harmonium pedals, whi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Zhou (surname)
Zhōu () is a Chinese-language surname. In places which use the Wade–Giles romanization such as Taiwan, Zhou is usually spelled as "Chou" (ㄓㄡ), and it may also be spelled as "Chiau", "Chau", " Chao", "Chew", " Chow", "Chiu", "Cho", "Chu", "Jhou", "Jou", "Djou", "Jue", "Jow", or "Joe". Zhou ranks as the 10th most common surname in Mainland China . In 2013 it was found to be the 10th most common name, shared by 25,200,000 people or 1.900% of the population, with the province with the most being Hunan. Derived from the Zhou dynasty, it has been one of the ten most common surnames in China since the Yuan dynasty. It is the 5th name on the ''Hundred Family Surnames'' poem. The Korean surname, " Joo" or "Ju", and The Vietnamese surname, " Châu" or "Chu", are both derived from and written with the same Chinese character (周). The character also means "around". ''Zhōu'' can also stand for another, rare Chinese family name, 洲. History According to historical records, Zhou surn ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Faye-Ellen Silverman
Faye-Ellen Silverman (born October 2, 1947) is an American composer of contemporary classical music. She is also an author and an educator. Life and education Born in New York, New York, Silverman began studying music at the Dalcroze School of Music shortly before her fourth birthday."Home: Bio", at fayeellensilverman.com Accessed 20 November 2017 At thirteen she won the Parents’ League Competition, judged by , leading to her performing her winning composition in Carnegie Hall, and to an appearance on the Sonny Fox TV show [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Edgard Varèse
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse (; also spelled Edgar; December 22, 1883 – November 6, 1965) was a French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States. Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm; he coined the term " organized sound" in reference to his own musical aesthetic. Varèse's conception of music reflected his vision of "sound as living matter" and of "musical space as open rather than bounded". He conceived the elements of his music in terms of " sound-masses", likening their organization to the natural phenomenon of crystallization. Varèse thought that "to stubbornly conditioned ears, anything new in music has always been called noise", and he posed the question, "what is music but organized noises?" Although his complete surviving works only last about three hours, he has been recognised as an influence by several major composers of the late 20th century. Varèse saw potential in using electronic media for sound production, and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the world. It is a member of the Ivy League. Chartered by the Connecticut Colony, the Collegiate School was established in 1701 by clergy to educate Congregational ministers before moving to New Haven in 1716. Originally restricted to theology and sacred languages, the curriculum began to incorporate humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century, the college expanded into graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first PhD in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. Yale's faculty and student populations grew after 1890 with rapid expansion of the physical campus and scientific research. Yale is organized into fourteen constituent schools: the original undergraduate col ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chongqing University
Chongqing University (CQU; , colloquially abbreviated as ChóngDà) is a public research university located in Chongqing, China. It is a National Key University directly funded by the central government of China as part of the Double First Class University Plan, Project 211 and Project 985 and a member of the " Excellence League". It is also designated by the Chinese Ministry of Education as a Class A Double First Class University. Chongqing University is especially highly recognized in Architecture, Electrical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Metallurgical Engineering, and Management Science. According to Academic Ranking of World Universities 2021, CQU is ranked between 201st-300th among world universities. History Chongqing University was founded in 1929, when some professors born in Chongqing, working at Chengdu University, decided to found a new University in Chongqing. The university was founded with the help of General Liu Xiang, whose involve ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Guangxi University
Guangxi University (), known as Xida (), is a provincial research university located in Nanning, Guangxi and the oldest and largest university in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The university helped pioneer higher education in central and southwestern China, where its faculty, students, and resources contributed to the creation of over 20 universities and academic departments during the mid 20th century. The university grants bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees across 27 colleges and departments and 98 undergraduate majors. Established in 1928, the university was broken up during national education reforms in the 1950s. Its departments were relocated across China to create or bolster numerous other institutions including Wuhan University, Sun Yat-sen University, and Guangxi Normal University. Xida was re-established in 1958, and by 1995 the university was being recognized at the national level as a member of Double First Class University Plan and former Project 21 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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John Ruskin
John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy. Ruskin's writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. He wrote essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, architectural structures and ornamentation. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art gave way in time to plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society. Ruskin was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s wi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Saint John's University, Shanghai
St. John's University (SJU) was a Christian university in Shanghai. Founded in 1879 by American missionaries, it was one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in China, often regarded as the Harvard of China. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Communist government closed the university in 1952. Most of its faculty members, students and library collections were transferred to East China Normal University. Its board of governors moved the university to Hong Kong, founding Chung Chi College, a part of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Its former campus at Shanghai is now utilized by the East China University of Political Science and Law. History Foundation as St. John's College The university was founded in 1879 as "St. John's College" by William Jones Boone and Joseph Schereschewsky, Bishop of Shanghai, by combining two preexisting Anglican colleges in Shanghai. The architect for the college's original quadrangle of buildings was Newark, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Guqin
The ''guqin'' (; ) is a plucked seven-string Chinese musical instrument. It has been played since ancient times, and has traditionally been favoured by scholars and literati as an instrument of great subtlety and refinement, as highlighted by the quote "a gentleman does not part with his ''qin'' or '' se'' without good reason," as well as being associated with the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius. It is sometimes referred to by the Chinese as "the father of Chinese music" or "the instrument of the sages". The ''guqin'' is not to be confused with the '' guzheng'', another Chinese long stringed instrument also without frets, but with moveable bridges under each string. Traditionally, the instrument was simply referred to as the "''qin''" (琴) but by the twentieth century the term had come to be applied to many other musical instruments as well: the ''yangqin'' hammered dulcimer, the ''huqin'' family of bowed string instruments, and the Western piano (''gangqin'' (钢琴) ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nicolas Slonimsky
Nicolas Slonimsky ( – December 25, 1995), born Nikolai Leonidovich Slonimskiy (russian: Никола́й Леони́дович Сло́нимский), was a Russian-born American conductor, author, pianist, composer and lexicographer. Best known for his writing and musical reference work, he wrote the ''Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns'' and the ''Lexicon of Musical Invective'', and edited ''Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians''. His life Early life in Russia and Europe Slonimsky was born Nikolai Leonidovich Slonimskiy in Saint Petersburg. He was of Jewish origin; his grandfather was Rabbi Chaim Zelig Slonimsky. His parents adopted the Orthodox faith after the birth of his older brother, and Nicolas was baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church. His maternal aunt, Isabelle Vengerova, later a founder of Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music, was his first piano teacher. He grew up in the intelligentsia. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, he moved ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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New England Conservatory
The New England Conservatory of Music (NEC) is a private music school in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the oldest independent music conservatory in the United States and among the most prestigious in the world. The conservatory is located on Huntington Avenue along the Avenue of the Arts near Boston Symphony Hall. NEC is home to 750 students pursuing undergraduate and graduate studies, with 1400 more in its Preparatory School and School of Continuing Education. It offers bachelor's degrees in classical performance, contemporary improvisation, composition, jazz, musicology, and music theory, as well as graduate degrees in accompaniment, conducting, and vocal pedagogy. The conservatory has also partnered with Harvard University and Tufts University to create joint double-degree, five-year programs and provide multi-passionate students access to Boston's premier academic resources. The New England Conservatory's faculty and alumni comprise nearly fifty percent of the Boston Sy ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Contemporary Classical Music
Contemporary classical music is classical music composed close to the present day. At the beginning of the 21st century, it commonly referred to the post-1945 modern forms of post-tonal music after the death of Anton Webern, and included serial music, electronic music, experimental music, and minimalist music. Newer forms of music include spectral music, and post-minimalism. History Background At the beginning of the twentieth century, composers of classical music were experimenting with an increasingly dissonant pitch language, which sometimes yielded atonal pieces. Following World War I, as a backlash against what they saw as the increasingly exaggerated gestures and formlessness of late Romanticism, certain composers adopted a neoclassic style, which sought to recapture the balanced forms and clearly perceptible thematic processes of earlier styles (see also New Objectivity and Social Realism). After World War II, modernist composers sought to achieve greater levels ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |