|
Wolfgang Fortner
Wolfgang Fortner (12 October 1907 – 5 September 1987) was a German composer, composition teacher and conductor. Life Fortner was born in Leipzig. From his parents, who were both singers, Fortner very early on had intense contact with music. In 1927 he began his studies at the Leipzig Conservatory ( organ with Karl Straube, composition with Hermann Graubner) and at University of Leipzig, (philosophy with Hans Driesch, musicology with Theodor Kroyer, and German studies with Hermann August Korff) . While still a student, two of his early compositions were publicly performed: ''Die vier marianischen Antiphonen'' at the Lower Rhineland Festival in Düsseldorf in 1928, and his First String Quartet in Königsberg in 1930 . In 1931 he completed his studies with the State Exam for a high teaching office, after he accepted a lectureship in music theory at the Hochschule für Kirchenmusik Heidelberg. There his music was attacked as Cultural Bolshevism. In 1935 and 1936 Fortner create ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Definition The term is descended from Latin, ''compōnō''; literally "one who puts together". The earliest use of the term in a musical context given by the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' is from Thomas Morley's 1597 ''A Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music'', where he says "Some wil be good descanters ..and yet wil be but bad composers". 'Composer' is a loose term that generally refers to any person who writes music. More specifically, it is often used to denote people who are composers by occupation, or those who in the tradition of Western classical music. Writers of exclusively or primarily songs may be called composers, but since the 20th century the terms 'songwriter' or ' singer-songwriter' are more often used, particularl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Darmstadt
Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it the fourth largest city in the state of Hesse after Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden, and Kassel. Darmstadt holds the official title "City of Science" (german: link=no, Wissenschaftsstadt) as it is a major centre of scientific institutions, universities, and high-technology companies. The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) and the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) are located in Darmstadt, as well as Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung, GSI Centre for Heavy Ion Research, where several chemical elements such as bohrium (1981), meitnerium (1982), hassium (1984), darmstadtium (1994), roentgenium (1994), and copernicium (1996) were discovered. The existence of the following elements were also ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heinz Holliger
Heinz Robert Holliger (born 21 May 1939) is a Swiss virtuoso oboist, composer and conductor. Celebrated for his versatility and technique, Holliger is among the most prominent oboists of his generation. His repertoire includes Baroque and Classical pieces, but he has regularly engaged in lesser known pieces of Romantic music, as well as his own compositions. He often performed contemporary works with his wife, the harpist Ursula Holliger; composers such as Berio, Carter, Henze, Krenek, Lutosławski, Martin, Penderecki, Stockhausen and Yun have written works for him. Holliger is a noted composer himself, writing works such as the opera ''Schneewittchen'' (1998). Biography Holliger was born in Langenthal, Switzerland. He began playing the oboe at age eleven, and studied at the conservatory of Bern before taking first prize for oboe in the Geneva International Music Competition in 1959. He studied composition with Sándor Veress and Pierre Boulez. He has become one of the wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze (1 July 1926 – 27 October 2012) was a German composer. His large oeuvre of works is extremely varied in style, having been influenced by serialism, atonality, Stravinsky, Italian music, Arabic music and jazz, as well as traditional schools of German composition. In particular, his stage works reflect "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life". Henze was also known for his political convictions. He left Germany for Italy in 1953 because of a perceived intolerance towards his leftist politics and homosexuality. Late in life he lived in the village of Marino in the central Italian region of Lazio, and in his final years still travelled extensively, in particular to Britain and Germany, as part of his work. An avowed Marxist and member of the Italian Communist Party, Henze produced compositions honoring Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara. At the 1968 Hamburg premiere of his requiem for Che Guevara, titled ''Das Floß der Medusa'' (' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cristóbal Halffter
Cristóbal Halffter Jiménez-Encina (24 March 1930 – 23 May 2021) was a Spanish classical composer. He was the nephew of two other composers, Rodolfo and Ernesto Halffter and is regarded as the most important Spanish composer of the generation of composers designated the Generación del 51. Early years Halffter was born in Madrid, but in 1936 the family moved to Velbert, Germany, to escape the Spanish Civil War. They returned to Madrid in 1939, and Halftter studied with Conrado del Campo at the Madrid Royal Conservatory, graduating in 1951. He continued his studies, outside of his university education, with Alexandre Tansman and André Jolivet in Paris. Career In 1955, Halffter was appointed conductor of the Falla orchestra. He forged a successful career as composer and conductor, writing music which combined a traditional Spanish element with avant-garde techniques. His neoclassical ''Piano Concerto'' (1953) won the National Music Prize in 1954. In 1961 he became Prof ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alberto Ginastera
Alberto Evaristo Ginastera (; April 11, 1916June 25, 1983) was an Argentinian composer of classical music. He is considered to be one of the most important 20th-century classical composers of the Americas. Biography Ginastera was born in Buenos Aires to a Spanish father and an Italian mother. During his later years, he preferred to use the Catalan and Italian pronunciation of his surname – , with an initial soft 'G' like that of English 'George' – rather than with a Spanish 'J' sound (). Ginastera studied at the Williams Conservatory in Buenos Aires, graduating in 1938. As a young professor, he taught at the Liceo Militar General San Martín. After a visit to the United States in 1945–47, where he studied with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood, he returned to Buenos Aires. He held a number of teaching posts. Among his notable students were Ástor Piazzolla (who studied with him in 1941), Alcides Lanza, Jorge Antunes, Waldo de los Ríos, Jacqueline Nova and Rafael Aponte-Ledé ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henri Dutilleux
Henri Paul Julien Dutilleux (; 22 January 1916 – 22 May 2013) was a French composer active mainly in the second half of the 20th century. His small body of published work, which garnered international acclaim, followed in the tradition of Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Albert Roussel and Olivier Messiaen, but in an idiosyncratic, individual style. Some of his notable compositions include a piano sonata, two symphonies, the cello concerto '' Tout un monde lointain…'' (''A whole distant world''), the violin concerto ''L'arbre des songes'' (''The tree of dreams''), the string quartet '' Ainsi la nuit'' (''Thus the night'') and a sonatine for flute and piano. Some of these are regarded as masterpieces of 20th-century classical music. Works were commissioned from him by such major artists as Charles Munch, George Szell, Mstislav Rostropovich, the Juilliard String Quartet, Isaac Stern, Paul Sacher, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Simon Rattle, Renée Fleming, and Seiji Ozawa. French orga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. His best-known works include the opera '' Peter Grimes'' (1945), the '' War Requiem'' (1962) and the orchestral showpiece ''The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra'' (1945). Born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, the son of a dentist, Britten showed talent from an early age. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London and privately with the composer Frank Bridge. Britten first came to public attention with the '' a cappella'' choral work '' A Boy was Born'' in 1934. With the premiere of ''Peter Grimes'' in 1945, he leapt to international fame. Over the next 28 years, he wrote 14 more operas, establishing himself as one of the leading 20th-century composers in the genre. In addition to large-sca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music. Born in Montbrison, Loire, Montbrison in the Loire department of France, the son of an engineer, Boulez studied at the Conservatoire de Paris with Olivier Messiaen, and privately with Andrée Vaurabourg and René Leibowitz. He began his professional career in the late 1940s as music director of the Renaud-Barrault theatre company in Paris. He was a leading figure in avant-garde music, playing an important role in the development of integral serialism (in the 1950s), Aleatoric music, controlled chance music (in the 1960s) and the electronic transformation of instrumental music in real time (from the 1970s onwards). His tendency to revise earlier compositions meant that his body of work was relatively small, but it included pieces regarded by many as lan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio (24 October 1925 – 27 May 2003) was an Italian composer noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition ''Sinfonia'' and his series of virtuosic solo pieces titled ''Sequenza''), and for his pioneering work in electronic music. His early work was influenced by Igor Stravinsky and experiments with serial and electronic techniques, while his later works explore indeterminacy and the use of spoken texts as the basic material for composition. Biography Berio was born in Oneglia (now part of Imperia), on the Ligurian coast of Italy. He was taught piano by his father and grandfather, who were both organists. During World War II, he was conscripted into the army, but on his first day, he injured his hand while learning how a gun worked and spent time in a military hospital. Following the war, Berio studied at the Milan Conservatory under Giulio Cesare Paribeni and Giorgio Federico Ghedini. He was unable to continue studying the piano because of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conrad Beck
Conrad Arthur Beck (16 June 1901, Lohn, Schaffhausen – 31 October 1989, Basel) was a Swiss composer. Life and works Beck was the son of a pastor. His stay in Paris between 1924 and 1933 proved crucial to his artistic development, where he studied with Jacques Ibert and also made contact with Arthur Honegger, Nadia Boulanger, and Albert Roussel. Returning to Basel in 1933, he headed the music department of Radio Basel for the next thirty years. He helped mediate cultural exchange through his many contacts with Swiss and international musicians. At the suggestion of Swiss conductor Paul Sacher (1906–1999), who promoted his career more than any other composer, Beck settled in Basel in 1934. During a period of over 50 years, Sacher commissioned his works and conducted their premieres with the chamber orchestra ''Basler Kammerorchester'' and the Collegium Musicum Zürich. From 1939 to 1966 Beck worked as music director of Swiss Radio in Basel, a position that enabled him to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musica Viva
Musica Viva was founded in 1945 by Romanian-born violinist Richard Goldner, with the aim of bringing chamber music to Australia. The co-founder was a German-born musicologist, Walter Dullo. At its inception, Musica Viva was a string ensemble performing chamber music to small groups of European immigrants. By 2013, Musica Viva had become one of the largest chamber music presenters in the world. Musica Viva runs a large music education programs across Australia, called Musica Viva In Schools. The CEO is Hywel Sims. The Artistic Director is conductor and author Paul Kildea. History Musica Viva's heritage arose from the vision of Richard Goldner, a Romanian-born violist who had trained in Vienna. Goldner arrived in Australia as a refugee in 1939 but maintained his strong connections with many of the most respected musicians in Europe. Once asked what he expected when he arrived in Australia, his answer was simple. First he expected to save his life. Second, he soon realised th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> Henri Dutilleux")
.jpg "Click for more on -> Pierre Boulez")
