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Double Concerto (Brahms)
The Double Concerto in A minor, Op. 102, by Johannes Brahms is a concerto for violin, cello and orchestra, composed in 1887 as his last work for orchestra. Origin of the work The Double Concerto was Brahms' final work for orchestra. It was composed in the summer of 1887, and first performed on 18 October of that year in the in Cologne, Germany. Brahms approached the project with anxiety over writing for instruments that were not his own. He wrote it for the cellist Robert Hausmann, a frequent chamber music collaborator, and his old but estranged friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim. The concerto was, in part, a gesture of reconciliation towards Joachim, after their long friendship had ruptured following Joachim's divorce from his wife Amalie. (Brahms had sided with Amalie in the dispute.) The concerto makes use of the musical motif A–E–F, a permutation of F–A–E, which stood for a personal motto of Joachim, ''Frei aber einsam'' ("free but lonely"). Thirty-four years ...
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Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms (; ; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period (music), Romantic period. His music is noted for its rhythmic vitality and freer treatment of dissonance, often set within studied yet expressive contrapuntal textures. He adapted the traditional structures and techniques of a wide historical range of earlier composers. His includes four symphony, symphonies, four concertos, a Requiem, much chamber music, and hundreds of folk-song arrangements and , among other works for symphony orchestra, piano, organ, and choir. Born to a musical family in Hamburg, Brahms began composing and concertizing locally in his youth. He toured Central Europe as a pianist in his adulthood, premiering many of his own works and meeting Franz Liszt in Weimar. Brahms worked with Ede Reményi and Joseph Joachim, seeking Robert Schumann's approval through the latter. He gained both Robert and Clara Schumann's strong support ...
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Yakov Kreizberg
Yakov Kreizberg (; born Yakov Mayevich Bychkov, 24 October 1959 – 15 March 2011) was a Russian-born American conductor. Early years In the Soviet Union Yakov Bychkov was born in Leningrad into a family of Jewish ancestry. His father, May Bychkov, was a doctor and military scientist. His maternal great-grandfather, Yakov Kreizberg, was a conductor at the Odessa Opera.Roland De Beer, "Yakov Kreizberg" in ''Dirigenten''. Meulenhoff (Amsterdam), , pp. 137–143 (2003). His brother is Semyon Bychkov (born in 1952). Yakov began studying piano at age 5. He attended the Glinka Choir School, where he began composing at age 13. He subsequently studied conducting with Ilya Musin, as did his brother. In later years, Kreizberg summarised his conducting education as follows: What Musin taught was a foundation; everything else I learned from master classes of very good and bad conductors. From the bad, I learned what not to do. Semyon had emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1975. ...
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Hugo Riemann
Karl Wilhelm Julius Hugo Riemann (18 July 1849 – 10 July 1919) was a German musicologist and composer who was among the founders of modern musicology. The leading European music scholar of his time, he was active and influential as both a music theorist and music historian. Many of his contributions are now termed as Riemannian theory, a variety of related ideas on many aspects of music theory. Biography Riemann was born at Grossmehlra, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen. His first musical training came from his father Robert Riemann, a land owner, bailiff and, to judge from locally surviving listings of his songs and choral works, an active music enthusiast. Hugo Riemann was educated by Heinrich Frankenberger, the Sondershausen Choir Master, in Music theory. He was taught the piano by August Barthel and Theodor Ratzenberger (who had once studied under Liszt). He graduated from the gymnasiums at Sondershausen and Arnstadt. Riemann studied law and finally philosophy and histor ...
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Richard Cohn
Richard Cohn (born 1955) is a music theorist and Battell Professor of Music Theory at Yale. He was previously chair of the department of music at the University of Chicago. Early in his career, he specialized in the music of Béla Bartók, but more recently has written about Neo-Riemannian theory, metric dissonance, equal divisions of the octave, and chromatic harmony. In 1994, he won the Society for Music Theory's Outstanding Publication Award for his article, "Transpositional Combination of Beat-Class Sets in Steve Reich’s Phase-Shifting Music," and he won it again in 1997 for "Maximally Smooth Cycles, Hexatonic Systems, and the Analysis of Late-Romantic Triadic Progressions." Cohn was the founding editor (2004–14) of ''Oxford Studies in Music Theory'', and is the current editor of ''Journal of Music Theory The ''Journal of Music Theory'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal specializing in music theory and analysis. It was established by David Kraehenbuehl (Yale Univers ...
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Donald Tovey
Sir Donald Francis Tovey (17 July 187510 July 1940) was a British musical analyst, musicologist, writer on music, composer, conductor and pianist. He had been best known for his '' Essays in Musical Analysis'' and his editions of works by Bach and Beethoven, but since the 1990s his compositions (relatively small in number but substantial in musical content) have been recorded and performed with increasing frequency. The recordings have mostly been well received by reviewers. Life He was born at Eton, Berkshire, the son of Duncan Crookes Tovey, an assistant master at Eton College, and his wife, Mary Fison. As a child Tovey was privately educated exclusively by Sophie Weisse. She was impressed by his musical gifts evident at an early age and took it upon herself to nurture him. Through her network of associates he was introduced to composers, performers and music critics. These included Walter Parratt, James Higgs and (from the age of 14) Hubert Parry for composition. In 1898 ...
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Richard Specht
Richard Specht (7 December 1870, Vienna – 18 March 1932) was an Austrian lyricist, dramatist, musicologist and writer. Specht, who had studied music with Ignaz Brüll, Alexander von Zemlinsky, and Franz Schreker, is most well known for his writings on classical music, and in his time was seen as a leading music journalist. He was a great authority on the music of Gustav Mahler, and in later life became a regular acquaintance of his widow, Alma Mahler-Werfel. He was, amongst other things, a contributor to the ''Wiener Illustrierten Extrablatts'' and other Viennese newspapers, as well as a correspondent for the Berlin-based music magazine ''Die Musik''. In 1909, Specht founded the periodical ''Der Merker,'' for which he served as editor until July 1914 and again from May 1918 to October 1919 and collaborating with Richard Batka. In 1925, he was appointed to a professorship at the institution that is now the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna. Works Fiction ...
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String Section
The string section of an orchestra is composed of bowed instruments belonging to the violin family. It normally consists of first and second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses. It is the most numerous group in the standard orchestra. In discussions of the Orchestration, instrumentation of a musical work, the phrase "the strings" or "and strings" is used to indicate a string section as just defined. An orchestra consisting solely of a string section is called a string orchestra. Smaller string sections are sometimes used in jazz, pop, and rock music and in the pit orchestras of musical theatre. Seating arrangement The most common seating arrangement in the 2000s is with first violins, second violins, violas, and cello sections arrayed clockwise around the Conductor (music), conductor, with basses behind the cellos on the right. The first violins are led by the concertmaster (leader in the UK); each of the other string sections also has a principal player (principal secon ...
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Timpani
Timpani (; ) or kettledrums (also informally called timps) are musical instruments in the percussion instrument, percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a Membranophone, membrane called a drumhead, head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. Thus timpani are an example of kettledrums, also known as vessel drums and semispherical drums, whose body is similar to a section of a sphere whose cut conforms the head. Most modern timpani are ''pedal timpani'' and can be tuned quickly and accurately to specific pitches by skilled players through the use of a movable foot-pedal. They are played by striking the head with a specialized Beater (percussion), beater called a ''timpani stick'' or ''timpani mallet''. Timpani evolved from military drums to become a staple of the European classical music, classical orchestra by the last third of the 18th century. Today, they are used in many types of Musical ensemble, ensembles, incl ...
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Trumpet
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz musical ensemble, ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest Register (music), register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard B or C trumpet. Trumpet-like instruments have historically been used as signaling devices in battle or hunting, with examples dating back to the 2nd Millenium BC. They began to be used as musical instruments only in the late 14th or early 15th century. Trumpets are used in art music styles, appearing in orchestras, concert bands, chamber music groups, and jazz ensembles. They are also common in popular music and are generally included in school bands. Sound is produced by vibrating the lips in a mouthpiece, which starts a standing wave in the air column of the instrument. Since the late 15th century, trumpets have primarily been constructed of brass tubing, usually bent twice into a rounded rectangular ...
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French Horn
The French horn (since the 1930s known simply as the horn in professional music circles) is a brass instrument made of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. The double horn in F/B (technically a variety of German horn) is the horn most often used by players in professional orchestras and bands, although the descant and triple horn have become increasingly popular. A musician who plays a horn is known as a list of horn players, horn player or hornist. Pitch is controlled through the combination of the following factors: speed of air through the instrument (controlled by the player's lungs and thoracic diaphragm); diameter and tension of lip aperture (by the player's lip muscles—the embouchure) in the mouthpiece; plus, in a modern horn, the operation of Brass instrument valve, valves by the left hand, which route the air into extra sections of tubing. Most horns have lever-operated rotary valves, but some, especially older horns, use piston valves (similar to a trumpet's) ...
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Bassoon
The bassoon is a musical instrument in the woodwind family, which plays in the tenor and bass ranges. It is composed of six pieces, and is usually made of wood. It is known for its distinctive tone color, wide range, versatility, and virtuosity. It is a non-transposing instrument and typically its music is written in the bass and tenor clefs, and sometimes in the treble. There are two forms of modern bassoon: the Buffet (or French) and Heckel (or German) systems. It is typically played while sitting using a seat strap, but can be played while standing if the player has a harness to hold the instrument. Sound is produced by rolling both lips over the reed and blowing direct air pressure to cause the reed to vibrate. Its fingering system can be quite complex when compared to those of other instruments. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band, and chamber music literature, and is occasionally heard in pop, rock, a ...
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Clarinet
The clarinet is a Single-reed instrument, single-reed musical instrument in the woodwind family, with a nearly cylindrical bore (wind instruments), bore and a flared bell. Clarinets comprise a Family (musical instruments), family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches. The clarinet family is the largest woodwind family, ranging from the contrabass clarinet, BB♭ contrabass to the A-flat clarinet, A♭ piccolo. The B soprano clarinet is the most common type, and is the instrument usually indicated by the word "clarinet". German instrument maker Johann Christoph Denner is generally credited with inventing the clarinet sometime around 1700 by adding a register key to the chalumeau, an earlier single-reed instrument. Over time, additional keywork and airtight pads were added to improve the tone and playability. Today the clarinet is a standard fixture of the orchestra and concert band and is used in classical music, military bands, klezmer, jazz, and other styles. Etymol ...
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