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Chamber Opera
Chamber opera is a designation for operas written to be performed with a Chamber music, chamber ensemble rather than a full orchestra. Early 20th-century operas of this type include Paul Hindemith's ''Cardillac'' (1926). Earlier small-scale operas such as Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Pergolesi's ''La serva padrona'' (1733) are sometimes known as chamber operas. Other 20th-century examples include Gustav Holst's ''Savitri (opera), Savitri'' (1916). Benjamin Britten wrote works in this category in the 1940s when the English Opera Group needed works that could easily be taken on tour and performed in a variety of small performance spaces. ''The Rape of Lucretia'' (1946) was his first example in the genre, and Britten followed it with ''Albert Herring'' (1947), ''The Turn of the Screw (opera), The Turn of the Screw'' (1954) and ''Curlew River'' (1964). Other composers, including Hans Werner Henze, Harrison Birtwistle, Thomas Adès, George Benjamin (composer), George Benjamin, William Wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Opera
Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libretto, librettist and incorporates a number of the performing arts, such as acting, Theatrical scenery, scenery, costume, and sometimes dance or ballet. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble, which since the early 19th century has been led by a conducting, conductor. Although musical theatre is closely related to opera, the two are considered to be distinct from one another. Opera is a key part of Western culture#Music, Western classical music, and Italian tradition in particular. Originally understood as an sung-through, entirely sung piece, in contrast to a play with songs, opera has come to include :Opera genres, numerous ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harrison Birtwistle
Sir Harrison Birtwistle (15 July 1934 – 18 April 2022) was an English composer of contemporary classical music best known for his operas, often based on mythological subjects. Among his many compositions, his better known works include '' The Triumph of Time'' (1972) and the operas '' The Mask of Orpheus'' (1986), '' Gawain'' (1991), and '' The Minotaur'' (2008). The last of these was ranked by music critics at ''The Guardian'' in 2019 as the third-best piece of the 21st century. Even his compositions that were not written for the stage often showed a theatrical approach. A performance of his saxophone concerto '' Panic'' during the BBC's Last Night of the Proms caused "national notoriety". He received many international awards and honorary degrees. Life and career Early life Harrison Birtwistle was born in Accrington, a mill town in Lancashire around 20 miles north of Manchester. His parents, Fred and Madge Birtwistle, ran a bakery, and his interest in music was encourag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Judith Weir
Dame Judith Weir (born 11 May 1954) is a British composer. She served as Master of the King's Music from 2014 to 2024. Appointed by Queen Elizabeth II, Weir was the first woman to hold this office. Early life Weir was born in Cambridge, England, to Scottish parents from Aberdeen.Dreyer, Martin. Judith Weir, composer A talent to amuse. The Musical Times. Vol. 122, No. 1663 (Sep., 1981), pp. 593-596. It was a musical household, with her father playing the trumpet and her mother the viola; the family moved house to Harrow and she began to play the oboe in her early teens. She studied with John Tavener while at the North London Collegiate School and subsequently with Robin Holloway at King's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1976. Career The first of her works to be heard professionally was ''Where the Shining Trumpets Blow'', given by the New Philharmonia in 1974. Before going to Cambridge Weir had a six-month period at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology learning about ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sound Effect
A sound effect (or audio effect) is an artificially created or enhanced sound, or sound process used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. In motion picture and television production, a sound effect is a sound recorded and presented to make a specific storytelling or creative point ''without'' the use of dialogue or music. Traditionally, in the twentieth century, they were created with Foley (filmmaking), Foley. The term often refers to a process applied to a recording, without necessarily referring to the recording itself. In professional motion picture and television production, dialogue, music, and sound effects recordings are treated as separate elements. Dialogue and music recordings are never referred to as sound effects, even though the processes applied to such as reverberation or flanging effects, often are called ''sound effects''. This area and sound design have been s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magnetic Tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magnetic tape can with relative ease record and play back audio, visual, and binary computer data. Magnetic tape revolutionized sound recording and reproduction and broadcasting. It allowed radio, which had always been broadcast live, to be recorded for later or repeated airing. Since the early 1950s, magnetic tape has been used with computers to store large quantities of data and is still used for backup purposes. Magnetic tape begins to degrade after 10–20 years and therefore is not an ideal medium for long-term archival storage. The exception is data tape formats like Linear Tape-Open, LTO which are specifically designed for long-term archiving. Information in magnetic tapes is often recorded in tracks which are narrow and long areas of in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Percussion Instrument
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Excluding Zoomusicology, zoomusicological instruments and the human voice, the percussion family is believed to include the oldest musical instruments.''The Oxford Companion to Music'', 10th edition, p.775, In spite of being a very common term to designate instruments, and to relate them to their players, the percussionists, percussion is not a systematic classificatory category of instruments, as described by the scientific field of organology. It is shown below that percussion instruments may belong to the organological classes of idiophone, membranophone, aerophone and String instrument, chordophone. The percussion section of an orchestra most commonly contains instruments such as the timpani, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brass Instrument
A brass instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by Sympathetic resonance, sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips. The term ''labrosone'', from Latin elements meaning "lip" and "sound", is also used for the group, since instruments employing this "lip reed" method of sound production can be made from other materials like wood or animal horn, particularly early or traditional instruments such as the cornett, alphorn or shofar. There are several factors involved in producing different Pitch of brass instruments, pitches on a brass instrument. Slide (wind instrument), Slides, Brass instrument valve, valves, Crook (music), crooks (though they are rarely used today), or Key (instrument), keys are used to change vibratory length of tubing, thus changing the available harmonic series (music), harmonic series, while the player's embouchure, lip tension and air flow serve to select the specific harmonic produ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Woodwind Instrument
Woodwind instruments are a family of musical instruments within the greater category of wind instruments. Common examples include flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, and saxophone. There are two main types of woodwind instruments: flutes and reed instruments (otherwise called reed pipes). The main distinction between these instruments and other wind instruments is the way in which they produce sound. All woodwinds produce sound by splitting the air blown into them on a sharp edge, such as a reed or a fipple. Despite the name, a woodwind may be made of any material, not just wood. Common examples of other materials include brass, silver, cane, and other metals such as gold and platinum. The saxophone, for example, though made of brass, is considered a woodwind because it requires a reed to produce sound. Occasionally, woodwinds are made of earthen materials, especially ocarinas. Flutes Flutes produce sound by directing a focused stream of air across the edge of a hole i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stringed Instrument
In musical instrument classification, string instruments, or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer strums, plucks, strikes or sounds the strings in varying manners. Musicians play some string instruments, like guitars, by plucking the strings with their fingers or a plectrum (pick), and others by hitting the strings with a light wooden hammer or by rubbing the strings with a bow, like violins. In some keyboard instruments, such as the harpsichord, the musician presses a key that plucks the string. Other musical instruments generate sound by striking the string. With bowed instruments, the player pulls a rosined horsehair bow across the strings, causing them to vibrate. With a hurdy-gurdy, the musician cranks a wheel whose rosined edge touches the strings. Bowed instruments include the string section instruments of the orchestra in Western classical music (violin, viola, cello and double bass) and a number of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Diary Of A Madman (opera)
''The Diary of a Madman'' is a one-act chamber opera by the composer Humphrey Searle, who also wrote the libretto based on the eponymous short story by Nikolai Gogol. The opera was premiered in 1958 in Berlin. Background The work, which is the first of Searle's operas, was commissioned by Hermann Scherchen, then the director of the Berlin Festival. Scherchen gave Searle complete choice of subject, stipulating only that the orchestra be of no more than 15 players, and that there should be no more than four singing roles. Searle had recently written incidental music for a radio production of Gogol's story, starring Paul Scofield, and decided to choose the story for his opera, providing completely new music.Searle (1982)Chapter 13 Accessed 18 December 2016. The libretto was written by the composer, based on the translation of Gogol's story by D. S. Mirsky. The opera is scored for an orchestra of single strings, woodwind, and brass, with two percussionists. An electronic tape is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Humphrey Searle
Humphrey Searle (26 August 1915 – 12 May 1982) was an English composer and writer on music. His music combines aspects of late Romanticism and modernist serialism, particularly reminiscent of his primary influences, Franz Liszt, Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, who was briefly his teacher. As a writer on music, Searle published texts on numerous topics; he was an authority on the music of Franz Liszt, and created the initial cataloguing system for his works. Biography Searle was the son of Humphrey and Charlotte Searle and, through his mother, a grandson of Sir William Schlich. He was born in Oxford where he was a classics scholar before studying—somewhat hesitantly—with John Ireland at the Royal College of Music in London, after which he went to Vienna on a six-month scholarship to become a private pupil of Anton Webern, which became decisive in his composition career. Searle was one of the foremost pioneers of serial music in the United Kingdom, and used hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philip Glass
Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimal music, minimalism, being built up from repetitive Phrase (music), phrases and shifting layers. He described himself as a composer of "music with repetitive structures", which he has helped to evolve stylistically. Glass founded the Philip Glass Ensemble in 1968. He has written 15 operas, numerous chamber operas and musical theatre works, 14 symphony, symphonies, 12 concertos, nine string quartets, various other chamber music pieces, and many film scores. He has received nominations for four Grammy Awards, including two for Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition, Best Contemporary Classical Composition for ''Satyagraha (opera), Satyagraha'' (1987) and ''String Quartet No. 2 (Glass), String Quartet No. 2'' (1988). He has received three Academy Award for Best ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
