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Le Martyre De Saint Sébastien
''Le Martyre de saint Sébastien'' is a five-act musical mystery play on the subject of Saint Sebastian, with a text written in 1911 by the Italian author Gabriele D'Annunzio and incidental music by the French composer Claude Debussy (L.124). Background The work was produced in collaboration between Gabriele D'Annunzio (at that time living in France to escape his creditors) and Claude Debussy, and designed as a vehicle for Ida Rubinstein. Debussy's contribution was a large-scale score of incidental music for orchestra and chorus, with solo vocal parts (for a soprano and two altos). Debussy accepted the commission in February 1911. Some of the material was orchestrated by André Caplet. During auditions for the female semi-chorus, the chorus director Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht suggested, on hearing Ninon Vallin, that she take over the role of the celestial voice. As Rose Féart (who had been engaged) was absent from the general rehearsal, Vallin sang the role and Debussy insiste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mystery Play
Mystery plays and miracle plays (they are distinguished as two different forms although the terms are often used interchangeably) are among the earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe. Medieval mystery plays focused on the representation of Bible stories in churches as tableaux with accompanying antiphonal song. They told of subjects such as the Creation, Adam and Eve, the murder of Abel, and the Last Judgment. Often they were performed together in cycles which could last for days. The name derives from ''mystery'' used in its sense of ''miracle,'' but an occasionally quoted derivation is from ''ministerium'', meaning ''craft'', and so the 'mysteries' or plays performed by the craft guilds. Origins As early as the fifth century living tableaux were introduced into sacred services. The plays originated as simple ''tropes'', verbal embellishments of liturgical texts, and slowly became more elaborate. At an early period chants from the service of the day were added t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gabriel Astruc
Gabriel Astruc (14 March 1864 – 7 July 1938) was a French journalist, agent, promoter, theatre manager, theatrical impresario, and playwright whose career connects many of the best-known incidents and personalities of Belle Epoque Paris. Biography Born in Bordeaux, to the Astruc family, he was the son of Élie Aristide Astruc (1831–1905), the Grand Rabbi of Belgium from 1866–1879, and began his career working for publisher Paul Ollendorff, and as a columnist from 1885 through 1895. As a regular at Montmartre's prototypically bohemian Le Chat Noir cabaret, he befriended a young Erik Satie and wrote articles and theater pieces under the pen name ''Surtac''. In 1897 he founded a music publishing company with his father-in-law Wilhelm Enoch, by 1900 he had introduced the luxury magazine ''Musica'', and by 1904 had become a concert promoter. In this period he was the booking agent for Mata Hari. Astruc booked Hari into the Paris Olympia in August 1905, and would manage h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frances Yeend
Frances Yeend (; 28 January 1913 – 27 April 2008) was an American classical soprano who had an active international career as a concert and opera singer during the 1940s through the 1960s. She had a long and fruitful association with the New York City Opera (NYCO) between 1948 and 1958, after which she joined the roster of principal sopranos at the Metropolitan Opera where she sang between 1961 and 1963. She also had an extensive concert career, particularly in the United States. By 1963 she had sung in more than 200 orchestral concerts in North American with major symphonies like the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra among others. Biography Born Frances Leone Lynch in Vancouver, Washington, Yeend grew up in Portland, Oregon. She had very little musical training before entering Washington State University (then Washington State College) in Pullman, Washington where she ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oklahoma City Symphony Orchestra
The Oklahoma City Philharmonic is an American symphony orchestra in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. History As is the case with many American symphony orchestras, the Oklahoma City Philharmonic owes a degree of its heritage to two predecessor professional symphonic orchestras in the city, the first having been launched in 1924 as the Oklahoma City Symphony Orchestra. As a marker in history, the orchestra finished the 1928–1929 season, its fifth consecutive season, having performed 7 concerts during the winter to audiences of 2,000 in the Shrine Auditorium that had been erected in 1923. The Second Oklahoma Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1938 with Ralph Asher Rose, Jr. (1911–1984) conducting the inaugural season. Rose was an Oklahoma City-born virtuoso violinist. He grew up in Bayside, New York, studied with Michael Press, and at Curtis beginning at age 12, then at Juilliard. He then worked as a violinist in Dallas. During the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, under conductors Victor A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Esa-Pekka Salonen (; born 30 June 1958) is a Finnish orchestral conductor and composer. He is principal conductor and artistic advisor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, conductor laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and music director of the San Francisco Symphony. Life and career Early work Born in Helsinki, Finland, Salonen graduated from Helsingin Suomalainen Yhteiskoulu (SYK), one of the top high schools in Finland, in 1977 and then went to study horn and composition at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, as well as conducting with Jorma Panula. His conducting classmates included Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Osmo Vänskä. Another classmate on the composition side was the composer Magnus Lindberg and together they formed the new-music appreciation group Korvat auki ("Ears open" in the Finnish language) and the experimental ensemble Toimii (lit. "It works"). Later, Salonen studied with the composers Franco Donatoni, Niccolò Castiglioni, and Einojuhani Rautavaar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daniel Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim (; in he, דניאל בארנבוים, born 15 November 1942) is an Argentine-born classical pianist and conductor based in Berlin. He has been since 1992 General Music Director of the Berlin State Opera and "Staatskapellmeister" of its orchestra, the Staatskapelle Berlin. The current general music director of the Berlin State Opera and the Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim previously served as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris and La Scala in Milan. Barenboim is known for his work with the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Seville-based orchestra of young Arab and Israeli musicians, and as a resolute critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Barenboim has received many awards and prizes, including seven Grammy awards, an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, France's Légion d'honneur both as a Commander and Grand Officier, and the German Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz mit Stern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Martinon
Jean Francisque-Étienne Martinon (usually known simply as Jean Martinon (); 10 January 19101 March 1976) was a French conductor and composer. Biography Martinon was born in Lyon, where he began his education, going on to the Conservatoire de Paris to study under Albert Roussel for composition, under Charles Munch and Roger Désormière for conducting, under Vincent d'Indy for harmony, and under Jules Boucherit for violin. He served in the French army during World War II, and was taken prisoner in 1940, composing works such as ''Chant des captifs'' while incarcerated. Among his other compositions are four symphonies, four concertos, additional choral works and chamber music. After the war, Martinon was appointed conductor of the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire of Paris, and, in 1946, of the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine. On Martinon's first visit to Dublin in March 1946, his interpretation of Debussy's ''La Mer'' (the Irish premiere of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre Monteux
Pierre Benjamin Monteux (; 4 April 18751 July 1964) was a French (later American) conductor. After violin and viola studies, and a decade as an orchestral player and occasional conductor, he began to receive regular conducting engagements in 1907. He came to prominence when, for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company between 1911 and 1914, he conducted the world premieres of Stravinsky's ''The Rite of Spring'' and other prominent works including ''Petrushka'', '' The Nightingale'', Ravel's ''Daphnis et Chloé'', and Debussy's '' Jeux''. Thereafter he directed orchestras around the world for more than half a century. From 1917 to 1919 Monteux was the principal conductor of the French repertoire at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra (1919–24), Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra (1924–34), Orchestre Symphonique de Paris (1929–38) and San Francisco Symphony (1936–52). In 1961, aged eighty-six, he accepted the chief cond ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guido Cantelli
Guido Cantelli (; 27 April 192024 November 1956) was an Italian orchestral conducting, conductor. Toscanini elected him his "spiritual heir" since the beginnings of his career. He was named Musical Director of La Scala, La Scala, Milan in November 1956, but his promising career was cut short only one week later by his death at the age of 36 in an airplane crash in Paris, France. Biography Early years Cantelli was born on 27 April 1920 in Novara, Italy, to Antonio and Angela (née Riccardone). He started studying music while still very young. From 1939 until 1941 he studied with Arrigo Pedrollo, and then, from 1941 until 1942, with Giorgio Federico Ghedini and Antonino Votto. In 1940 he started his conducting career, graduating from the Milan Conservatory in 1943. Career Cantelli studied at the Milan Conservatory and began a promising conducting career. In 1943, he garnered acclaim for a representation of the ''Traviata'' at the Teatro Coccia. Beside being the conductor, Cantelli w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fanfare
A fanfare (or fanfarade or flourish) is a short musical flourish which is typically played by trumpets, French horns or other brass instruments, often accompanied by percussion. It is a "brief improvised introduction to an instrumental performance". A fanfare has also been defined in ''The Golden Encyclopedia of Music'' as "a musical announcement played on brass instruments before the arrival of an important person", such as heralding the entrance of a monarch; (The term honors music for such announcements does not have the specific connotations of instrument or style that ''fanfare'' does.) Historically, fanfares were usually played by trumpet players, as the trumpet was associated with royalty. Bugles are also mentioned. The melody notes of a fanfare are often based around the major triad, often using " roic dotted rhythms". By extension, the term may also designate a short, prominent passage for brass instruments in an orchestral composition. Fanfares are widely used in op ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brass Instruments
A brass instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips. Brass instruments are also called labrosones or labrophones, from Latin and Greek elements meaning 'lip' and 'sound'. There are several factors involved in producing different pitches on a brass instrument. Slides, valves, crooks (though they are rarely used today), or keys are used to change vibratory length of tubing, thus changing the available harmonic series, while the player's embouchure, lip tension and air flow serve to select the specific harmonic produced from the available series. The view of most scholars (see organology) is that the term "brass instrument" should be defined by the way the sound is made, as above, and not by whether the instrument is actually made of brass. Thus one finds brass instruments made of wood, like the alphorn, the cornett, the serpent and the didgeridoo, while som ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Tilson Thomas
Michael Tilson Thomas (born December 21, 1944) is an American conductor, pianist and composer. He is Artistic Director Laureate of the New World Symphony, an American orchestral academy based in Miami Beach, Florida, Music Director Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, and Conductor Laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra. Biography Tilson Thomas was born in Los Angeles, California, to Ted and Roberta Thomas, a Broadway stage manager and a middle school history teacher, respectively. He is the grandson of noted Yiddish theater stars Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, who performed in the Yiddish Theater District in Manhattan. The family talent goes back to Tilson Thomas's great-grandfather, Pincus, an actor and playwright, and before that to a long line of cantors; his father, Theodor Herzl Tomashefsky (Ted Thomas), was also a poet and painter. He was an only child and musical prodigy. Tilson Thomas studied piano with John Crown and composition and conducting under Ingolf Da ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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