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The Company Of Heaven
''The Company of Heaven'' is a composition for soloists, speakers, choir, timpani, organ, and string orchestra by Benjamin Britten. The title refers to angels, the topic of the work, reflected in texts from the Bible and by poets. The music serves as incidental music for a mostly spoken radio feature which was first heard as a broadcast of the BBC in 1937. History Britten composed the music between 8 August and 22 September 1937 as incidental music for a radio broadcast for Michaelmas on 29 September 1937. The associated text on angels, related to Michael as one of the archangels, was compiled by R Ellis Roberts. The broadcast was produced by Robin Whitworth, with an acting company headed by Felix Aylmer and singers led by Sophie Wyss and Peter Pears, with the BBC Chorus and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The conductor was Trevor Harvey."Broadcasting", ''The Times'', 29 September 1937. p. 10 The complete work lasted just under 45 minutes. Britten confided to his diary, "the poet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix ( ; ; 26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French people, French Romanticism, Romantic artist who was regarded as the leader of the French Romantic school.Noon, Patrick, et al., ''Crossing the Channel: British and French Painting in the Age of Romanticism'', p. 58, Tate Publishing, 2003. In contrast to the Neoclassicism, Neoclassical perfectionism of his chief rival Ingres, Delacroix took for his inspiration the art of Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance, with an attendant emphasis on colour and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modelled form. Dramatic and romantic content characterized the central themes of his maturity, and led him not to the classical models of Greek and Roman art, but to travel in North Africa, in search of the exotic. Friend and spiritual heir to Théodore Géricault, Delacroix was also inspired by Lord Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with the "forces of the Sublim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trevor Harvey (conductor)
Trevor Harvey (1911–1989) was an English conductor. Biography Trevor Harvey was born in 1911 in Freshwater, Isle of Wight. He was a conductor, critic, and broadcaster. Harvey was Heberden Organ Scholar at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he studied from 1930 until 1933. While there he became friendly with other musicians such as Joseph Cooper, Basil Douglas and Humphrey Searle. From 1935 to 1942 he worked as assistant chorus master at the BBC. In 1941 he conducted the BBC Singers in John Ireland's ''Spring, the Sweet Spring'', ''A Cradle Song'', ''Variations on Cadet Rousselle'', ''When May is in His Prime'', ''Fain Would I Change That Note'', and ''A New Year Carol''. Ireland dedicated the 1941 choral version of '' The Holy Boy'' to Harvey. In 1945 and 1946 Harvey was Director of Music for the British Forces Network in Germany. From 1946 he became a freelance conductor. Between 1949 and 1952 he was Associate Conductor of the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts.''Who's Who in Mus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tenor
A tenor is a type of male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. Composers typically write music for this voice in the range from the second B below middle C to the G above middle C (i.e. B2 to G4) in choral music, and from the second B flat below middle C to the C above middle C (B2 to C5) in operatic music, but the range can extend at either end. Subtypes of tenor include the ''leggero'' tenor, lyric tenor, spinto tenor, dramatic tenor, heldentenor, and tenor buffo or . History The name "tenor" derives from the Latin word '' tenere'', which means "to hold". As noted in the "Tenor" article at ''Grove Music Online'': In polyphony between about 1250 and 1500, the enor was thestructurally fundamental (or 'holding') voice, vocal or instrumental; by the 15th century it came to signify the male voice that sang such parts. All other voices were normally calculated in relation to the ten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soprano
A soprano () is a type of classical singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261 Hertz, Hz to A5 in Choir, choral music, or to soprano C (C6) or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which often encompasses the melody. The soprano voice type is generally divided into the coloratura soprano, coloratura, soubrette, lyric soprano, lyric, spinto soprano, spinto, and dramatic soprano, dramatic soprano. Etymology The word "soprano" comes from the Italian word ''wikt:sopra, sopra'' (above, over, on top of),"Soprano" ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' as the soprano is the highest pitch human voice, often given to the leading female roles in operas. "Soprano" refers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Les Illuminations (Britten)
' (''The Illuminations''), Opus number, Op. 18, is a song cycle by Benjamin Britten, first performed in 1940. It is composed for soprano or tenor soloist and string orchestra, and sets verse and prose poems written in 1872–1873 by Arthur Rimbaud, part of his collection ''Illuminations (poems), Les Illuminations''. History Britten began writing the cycle in Suffolk in March 1939 and completed it a few months later in the United States. It was the first of his song cycles to gain widespread popularity. The cycle was originally written for a soprano; Britten's biographer David Matthews comments that the work is "so much more sensuous when sung by the soprano voice for which the songs were conceived".Matthews, p. 56 Nevertheless the work can be, and more often is, sung by a tenor: Britten conducted the piece with Peter Pears as soloist within two years of the premiere. The first performance of the cycle was given on 30 January 1940 at the Aeolian Hall, London, Aeolian Hall, London ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Greenfield
Edward Harry Greenfield OBE (3 July 1928 – 1 July 2015) was an English music critic and broadcaster. Early life Edward Greenfield was born in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. His father, Percy Greenfield, was a manager in a labour exchange, while his mother, Mabel, was a clerk. He was briefly evacuated to Belper in Derbyshire when the Second World War began. He attended Westcliff High School for Boys, and then did two years of National Service. During his service, which began in 1947, he was with the Royal Army Educational Corps, where he was promoted to sergeant. He was deployed with the British Army of the Rhine in Germany. He went to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, to study modern languages, but ended up graduating in law. Career Greenfield joined ''The Manchester Guardian'' in 1953, where he began as a filing clerk. He then became a lobby correspondent in the House of Commons. He was a record critic for the newspaper from 1955, a music critic from 1964, and was chief music critic fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Symphony No
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning common today: a work usually consisting of multiple distinct sections or movements, often four, with the first movement in sonata form. Symphonies are almost always scored for an orchestra consisting of a string section (violin, viola, cello, and double bass), brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments which altogether number about 30 to 100 musicians. Symphonies are notated in a musical score, which contains all the instrument parts. Orchestral musicians play from parts which contain just the notated music for their own instrument. Some symphonies also contain vocal parts (e.g., Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, or Mahler's Second Symphony). Etymology and origins The word ''symphony'' is derived from the Greek word (), meaning ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bruno Walter
Bruno Walter (born Bruno Schlesinger, September 15, 1876February 17, 1962) was a Germany, German-born Conducting, conductor, pianist, and composer. Born in Berlin, he escaped Nazi Germany in 1933, was naturalised as a French people, French citizen in 1938, and settled in the United States in 1939. He worked closely with Gustav Mahler, whose music he helped to establish in the repertory, held major positions with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Salzburg Festival, Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Staatsoper Unter den Linden and Deutsche Oper Berlin, among others, made recordings of historical and artistic significance, and is widely considered to be one of the great conductors of the 20th century. Biography Early life Born near Alexanderplatz in Berlin to a middle-class Jewish family, he began his musical education at the Stern Conservatory at the age of eight, making his first public ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler (; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic music, Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the Modernism (music), modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect, which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi Germany, Nazi era. After 1945 his compositions were rediscovered by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century. Born in Kingdom of Bohemia, Bohemia (then part of the Austrian Empire) to Jewish parents of humble origins, the German-speaking Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating from the University of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Variations On A Theme Of Frank Bridge
''Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge'', Opus number, Op. 10, is a work for string orchestra by Benjamin Britten. It was written in 1937 at the request of Boyd Neel, who conducted his orchestra at the premiere of the work at that year's Salzburg Festival. It was the work that brought Britten to international attention. Background Benjamin Britten studied with Frank Bridge from 1927. In 1932 he began writing a set of variations on a theme from one of Bridge's works, as a tribute to his teacher, but he was distracted by other matters and the work went nowhere. In May 1937, the organisers of the Salzburg Festival invited Boyd Neel and his orchestra to perform three works at that year's Festival, in August, only three months away. One of those works had to be a previously unperformed work by a British composer. Neel knew Britten from having conducted his film score for ''Love from a Stranger (1937 film), Love from a Stranger'' in 1936, so he asked him to write a new work for a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aldeburgh Festival
The Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts is an English arts festival devoted mainly to classical music. It takes place each June in the town of Aldeburgh, Suffolk and is centred on Snape Maltings Concert Hall. History of the Aldeburgh Festival The Festival was founded in 1948 by the composer Benjamin Britten, the singer Peter Pears and the librettist/producer Eric Crozier.Aldeburgh Town Council . Retrieved 7 March 2019.Archives Hub . Retrieved 7 March 2019. Their work with the English Opera Group (which they had founded with designer John Piper (artist), John Piper in 1947) frequently took them away from home, and it was while they w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cantata
A cantata (; ; literally "sung", past participle feminine singular of the Italian language, Italian verb ''cantare'', "to sing") is a vocal music, vocal Musical composition, composition with an musical instrument, instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movement (music), movements, often involving a choir. The meaning of the term changed over time, from the simple single-voice Madrigal (music), madrigal of the early 17th century, to the multi-voice "cantata da camera" and the "cantata da chiesa" of the later part of that century, from the more substantial dramatic forms of the 18th century to the usually sacred-texted 19th-century cantata, which was effectively a type of short oratorio. Cantatas for use in the liturgy of church services are called church cantata or sacred cantatas; other cantatas can be indicated as secular cantatas. Several cantatas were, and still are, written for special occasions, such as Christmas cantatas. Christoph Graupner, Georg Philipp Teleman ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
