1.
Composer
–
A composer is a person who creates or writes music, which can be vocal music, instrumental music or music which combines both instruments and voices. The core meaning of the term refers to individuals who have contributed to the tradition of Western classical music through creation of works expressed in written musical notation, many composers are also skilled performers, either as singers, instrumentalists, and/or conductors. Examples of composers who are well known for their ability as performers include J. S. Bach, Mozart. In many popular genres, such as rock and country. For a singer or instrumental performer, the process of deciding how to perform music that has previously composed and notated is termed interpretation. Different performers interpretations of the work of music can vary widely, in terms of the tempos that are chosen. Composers and songwriters who present their own music are interpreting, just as much as those who perform the music of others, although a musical composition often has a single author, this is not always the case. A piece of music can also be composed with words, images, or, in the 20th and 21st century, a culture eventually developed whereby faithfulness to the composers written intention came to be highly valued. This musical culture is almost certainly related to the esteem in which the leading classical composers are often held by performers. The movement might be considered a way of creating greater faithfulness to the original in works composed at a time that expected performers to improvise. In Classical music, the composer typically orchestrates her own compositions, in some cases, a pop songwriter may not use notation at all, and instead compose the song in her mind and then play or record it from memory. In jazz and popular music, notable recordings by influential performers are given the weight that written scores play in classical music. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of music. In the development of European classical music, the function of composing music initially did not have greater importance than that of performing it. The preservation of individual compositions did not receive attention and musicians generally had no qualms about modifying compositions for performance. In as much as the role of the composer in western art music has seen continued solidification, for instance, in certain contexts the line between composer and performer, sound designer, arranger, producer, and other roles, can be quite blurred. The term composer is often used to refer to composers of music, such as those found in classical, jazz or other forms of art. In popular and folk music, the composer is usually called a songwriter and this is distinct from a 19th-century conception of instrumental composition, where the work was represented solely by a musical score to be interpreted by performers
2.
Les Six
–
Les Six is a name given to a group of six French composers who worked in Montparnasse. The name, inspired by Mily Balakirevs The Five, originates in critic Henri Collets 1920 article Les cinq Russes, les six Français et M. Satie. Their music is seen as a reaction against the musical style of Richard Wagner. The members were Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, for the first of these events, the walls of the studio were decorated with canvases by Picasso, Matisse, Léger, Modigliani and others. Music by Erik Satie, Honegger, Auric and Durey was played and it was this concert that gave Satie the idea of assembling a group of composers around himself to be known as Les nouveaux jeunes, forerunners of Les Six. Auric and Poulenc followed ideas of Cocteau, Honegger followed German Romanticism, after World War I, Jean Cocteau and Les Six began to frequent a bar known as La gaya which became Le Bœuf sur le Toit when the establishment moved to larger quarters. As the famous ballet by Milhaud had been conceived at the old premises, on the renamed bars opening night, pianist Jean Wiéner played tunes by George Gershwin and Vincent Youmans while Cocteau and Milhaud played percussion. Among those in attendance were impresario Serge Diaghilev, artist Pablo Picasso, filmmaker René Clair, singer Jane Bathori, the Group was officially launched in January 1920 by a series of two articles by the French music critic and composer Henri Collet in the French journal Commedia. While it seems apparent that Cocteau was behind these articles, the name of the Group was selected by Collet. On only one of these occasions was the entire Groupe des Six involved, Auric and Poulenc were involved in all six of these collaborations, Milhaud in five, Honegger and Tailleferre in three, but Durey in only one. In 1920 the group published an album of pieces together. This was the work in which all six composers collaborated. Durey, who was not in Paris at the time, chose not to participate, the première was the occasion of a public scandal rivalling that of Le sacre du printemps in 1913. In spite of this, Les mariés de la tour Eiffel was in the repertoire of the Ballets suédois throughout the 1920s, the other composers who contributed to the suite were Jean Françaix, Léo Preger and Henri Sauguet. Les Six, The French Composers and their Mentors Jean Cocteau, ISBN 978-0-7206-1293-6 J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, Claude V. Palisca. 8th edition, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, London ISBN 978-0-393-93125-9 Les Six, Satie, and Cocteau – by Stéphane Villemin
3.
Jazz
–
Jazz is a music genre that originated amongst African Americans in New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in Blues and Ragtime. Since the 1920s jazz age, jazz has become recognized as a form of musical expression. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrhythms, Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music. Although the foundation of jazz is deeply rooted within the Black experience of the United States, different cultures have contributed their own experience, intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as one of Americas original art forms. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on different national, regional, and local musical cultures, New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass-band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. In the 1930s, heavily arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz, bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging musicians music which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed in the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments. In the early 1980s, a form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful. Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s, such as Latin, the question of the origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm, a term dating back to 1860 meaning pep. The use of the word in a context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Its first documented use in a context in New Orleans was in a November 14,1916 Times-Picayune article about jas bands. In an interview with NPR, musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of the slang connotations of the term, saying, When Broadway picked it up. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century. Jazz has proved to be difficult to define, since it encompasses such a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years. Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, in the opinion of Robert Christgau, most of us would say that inventing meaning while letting loose is the essence and promise of jazz. As Duke Ellington, one of jazzs most famous figures, said, although jazz is considered highly difficult to define, at least in part because it contains so many varied subgenres, improvisation is consistently regarded as being one of its key elements
4.
Polytonality
–
Polytonality is the musical use of more than one key simultaneously. Bitonality is the use of two different keys at the same time. Polyvalence is the use of more than one function, from the same key. Some examples of bitonality superimpose fully harmonized sections of music in different keys, Lithuanian traditional singing style sutartines is based on polytonality. This six-bar melody is performed as a canon, and repetition starts from the fourth bar, as a result, parts are constantly singing in different tonality simultaneously. As a traditional style, sutartines disappeared in Lithuanian villages by the first decades of the 20th century, tribes throughout India—including the Kuravan of Kerala, the Jaunsari of Uttar Pradesh, the Gond, the Santal, and the Munda—also use bitonality, in responsorial song. In other words, Bach is trying to make the best of both worlds—the homotonal one of his own day and the one of a couple of centuries later. However, it was not featured prominently in non-programmatic contexts until the twentieth century, particularly in the work of Charles Ives, Béla Bartók, and Stravinsky. Ives claimed that he learned the technique of polytonality from his father, bartóks Playsong demonstrates easily perceivable bitonality through the harmonic motion of each key. Polytonality requires the presentation of simultaneous key-centers, the term polychord describes chords that can be constructed by superimposing multiple familiar tonal sonorities. The Petrushka chord is an example of a polychord and this is the norm in jazz, for example, which makes frequent use of extended and polychordal harmonies without any intended suggestion of multiple keys. The following passage, taken from Beethovens Piano Sonata in E♭, Op. 81a, passages of music, such as Poulencs Mouvements Perpetuels, I. may be misinterpreted as polytonal rather than polymodal. In this case, two scales are recognizable but are assimilated through the common tonic, polyscalarity is defined as the simultaneous use of musical objects which clearly suggest different source-collections. Specifically in reference to Stravinskys music, Tymoczko uses the term polyscalarity out of deference to terminological sensibilities, in other words, the term is meant to avoid any implication that the listener can perceive two keys at once. Though Tymoczko believes that polytonality is perceivable, he believes polyscalarity is better suited to describe Stravinskys music and this term is also used as a response to Van den Toorns analysis against polytonality. Van den Toorn, in an attempt to dismiss polytonal analysis used an approach to analyze the music with the octatonic scale. However, Tymoczko states that this was problematic in that it does not resolve all instances of multiple interactions between scales and chords, moreover, Tymoczko quotes Stravinskys claim that the music of Petrouchkas second tableau was conceived in two keys. Polyscalarity is then a term encompassing multiscalar superimpositions and cases which give a different explanation than the octatonic scale, Some music theorists, including Milton Babbitt and Paul Hindemith have questioned whether polytonality is a useful or meaningful notion or viable auditory possibility
5.
Marseille
–
Marseille, also known as Marseilles in English, is a city in France. Known to the ancient Greeks and Romans as Massalia, Marseille was the most important trading centre in the region, Marseille is now Frances largest city on the Mediterranean coast and the largest port for commerce, freight and cruise ships. The city was European Capital of Culture, together with Košice, Slovakia and it hosted the European Football Championship in 2016, and will be the European Capital of Sport in 2017. The city is home to campuses of Aix-Marseille University and part of one of the largest metropolitan conurbations in France. Marseille is the second largest city in France after Paris and the centre of the third largest metropolitan area in France after Paris, further east still are the Sainte-Baume, the city of Toulon and the French Riviera. To the north of Marseille, beyond the low Garlaban and Etoile mountain ranges, is the 1,011 m Mont Sainte Victoire. To the west of Marseille is the artists colony of lEstaque, further west are the Côte Bleue, the Gulf of Lion. The airport lies to the north west of the city at Marignane on the Étang de Berre, the citys main thoroughfare stretches eastward from the Old Port to the Réformés quarter. Two large forts flank the entrance to the Old Port—Fort Saint-Nicolas on the south side and Fort Saint-Jean on the north. Further out in the Bay of Marseille is the Frioul archipelago which comprises four islands, one of which, If, is the location of Château dIf, the main commercial centre of the city intersects with the Canebière at rue St Ferréol and the Centre Bourse. To the south east of central Marseille in the 6th arrondissement are the Prefecture and the fountain of Place Castellane. To the south west are the hills of the 7th arrondissement, the railway station—Gare de Marseille Saint-Charles—is north of the Centre Bourse in the 1st arrondissement, it is linked by the Boulevard dAthènes to the Canebière. Marseille has a Mediterranean climate with mild, humid winters and warm to hot, december, January, and February are the coldest months, averaging temperatures of around 12 °C during the day and 4 °C at night. Marseille is officially the sunniest major city in France with over 2,900 hours of sunshine while the average sunshine in France is around 1,950 hours, less frequent is the Sirocco, a hot, sand-bearing wind, coming from the Sahara Desert. Snowfalls are infrequent, over 50% of years do not experience a single snowfall, Massalia, whose name was probably adapted from an existing language related to Ligurian, was the first Greek settlement in France. It was established within modern Marseille around 600 BC by colonists coming from Phocaea on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor. The connection between Massalia and the Phoceans is mentioned in Thucydidess Peloponnesian War, he notes that the Phocaean project was opposed by the Carthaginians, the founding of Massalia has also been recorded as a legend. Protis was invited inland to a banquet held by the chief of the local Ligurian tribe for suitors seeking the hand of his daughter Gyptis in marriage, at the end of the banquet, Gyptis presented the ceremonial cup of wine to Protis, indicating her unequivocal choice
6.
Jews
–
The Jews, also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE, the Merneptah Stele appears to confirm the existence of a people of Israel, associated with the god El, somewhere in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE. The Israelites, as an outgrowth of the Canaanite population, consolidated their hold with the emergence of the Kingdom of Israel, some consider that these Canaanite sedentary Israelites melded with incoming nomadic groups known as Hebrews. The worldwide Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million prior to World War II, but approximately 6 million Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust. Since then the population has risen again, and as of 2015 was estimated at 14.3 million by the Berman Jewish DataBank. According to the report, about 43% of all Jews reside in Israel and these numbers include all those who self-identified as Jews in a socio-demographic study or were identified as such by a respondent in the same household. The exact world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure, Israel is the only country where Jews form a majority of the population. The modern State of Israel was established as a Jewish state and defines itself as such in its Declaration of Independence and its Law of Return grants the right of citizenship to any Jew who requests it. The English word Jew continues Middle English Gyw, Iewe, according to the Hebrew Bible, the name of both the tribe and kingdom derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob. The Hebrew word for Jew, יְהוּדִי ISO 259-3 Yhudi, is pronounced, with the stress on the syllable, in Israeli Hebrew. The Ladino name is ג׳ודיו, Djudio, ג׳ודיוס, Djudios, Yiddish, ייִד Yid, ייִדן, Yidn. The etymological equivalent is in use in languages, e. g. but derivations of the word Hebrew are also in use to describe a Jew, e. g. in Italian. The German word Jude is pronounced, the corresponding adjective jüdisch is the origin of the word Yiddish, in such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a factual reconstruction for the origin of the Jews is a difficult and complex endeavor. It requires examining at least 3,000 years of ancient human history using documents in vast quantities, as archaeological discovery relies upon researchers and scholars from diverse disciplines, the goal is to interpret all of the factual data, focusing on the most consistent theory. In this case, it is complicated by long standing politics and religious, Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacobs son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus led by Moses, traditionally dated to the 13th century BCE, Modern archaeology has largely discarded the historicity of the Patriarchs and of the Exodus story, with it being reframed as constituting the Israelites inspiring national myth narrative. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group
7.
Aix-en-Provence
–
Aix-en-Provence, or simply Aix, is a city-commune in the south of France, about 30 km north of Marseille. It is in the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte dAzur, in the department of Bouches-du-Rhône, the population of Aix numbers approximately 143,000. Its inhabitants are called Aixois or, less commonly, Aquisextains, Aix was founded in 123 BC by the Roman consul Sextius Calvinus, who gave his name to its springs, following the destruction of the nearby Gallic oppidum at Entremont. In the 4th century AD it became the metropolis of Narbonensis Secunda and it was occupied by the Visigoths in 477. In the succeeding century, the town was plundered by the Franks and Lombards. Aix passed to the crown of France with the rest of Provence in 1487, and in 1501 Louis XII established there the parliament of Provence, in the 17th and 18th centuries, the town was the seat of the Intendance of Provence. Current archeological excavations in the Ville des Tours, a suburb of Aix, have unearthed the remains of a Roman amphitheatre. The city slopes gently north to south and the Montagne Sainte-Victoire can easily be seen to the east. Aixs position in the south of France gives it a warm climate and it has an average January temperature of 5 °C and a July average of 23 °C. It has an average of 300 days of sunshine and only 91 days of rain, while it is partially protected from the Mistral, Aix still occasionally experiences the cooler and gusty conditions it brings. Unlike most of France which has a climate, Aix-en-Provence has a Mediterranean climate. The Cours Mirabeau is a thoroughfare, planted with double rows of plane-trees, bordered by fine houses. It follows the line of the old city wall and divides the town into two sections. The new town extends to the south and west, the old town, with its narrow, along this avenue, which is lined on one side with banks and on the other with cafés, is the Deux Garçons, the most famous brasserie in Aix. Built in 1792, it has been frequented by the likes of Paul Cézanne, Émile Zola, the Cathedral of the Holy Saviour is situated to the north in the medieval part of Aix. The archbishops palace and a Romanesque cloister adjoin the cathedral on its south side, the Archbishopric of Aix is now shared with Arles. Among its other public institutions, Aix also has the second most important Appeal Court outside of Paris, the Hôtel de Ville, a building in the classical style of the middle of the 17th century, looks onto a picturesque square. It contains some fine woodwork and tapestries, at its side rises a handsome clock-tower erected in 1510
8.
Conservatoire de Paris
–
The Conservatoire de Paris is a college of music and dance founded in 1795, now situated in the avenue Jean Jaurès in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, France. The Conservatoire offers instruction in music, dance, and drama, today the conservatories operate under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture and Communication. On 3 December 1783 Papillon de la Ferté, intendant of the Menus-Plaisirs du Roi, the school was instituted by a decree of 3 January 1784 and opened on 1 April with the composer François-Joseph Gossec as the provisional director. Piccinni refused the directorship, but did join the faculty as a professor of singing, the new school was located in buildings adjacent to the Hôtel des Menus-Plaisirs at the junction of the rue Bergère and the rue du Faubourg Poissonnière. In June, a class in dramatic declamation was added, in 1792, Bernard Sarrette created the École gratuite de la garde nationale, which in the following year became the Institut national de musique. On 3 August 1795, the government combined the École royale with the Institut national de musique, the combined organization remained in the facilities on the rue Bergère. The first 351 pupils commenced their studies in October 1796, a concert hall, designed by the architect François-Jacques Delannoy, was inaugurated on 7 July 1811. The hall, which exists today, was in the shape of a U. It held an audience of 1055, the acoustics were generally regarded as superb. The French composer and conductor Antoine Elwart described it as the Stradivarius of concert halls, in 1828 François Habeneck, a professor of violin and head of the Conservatorys orchestra, founded the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire. The Society held concerts in the hall almost continuously until 1945, the French composer Hector Berlioz premiered his Symphonie fantastique in the conservatorys hall on 5 December 1830 with an orchestra of more than a hundred players. The original library was created by Sarrette in 1801, after the construction of the concert hall, the library moved to a large room above the entrance vestibule. In the 1830s, Berlioz became a curator in the Conservatory library and was the librarian from 1852 until his death in 1869. He was succeeded as librarian by Félicien David, Sarrette was dismissed on 28 December 1814, after the Bourbon Restoration, but was reinstated on 26 May 1815, after Napoleons return to power during the Hundred Days. However, after Napoleons fall, Sarrette was finally compelled to retire on 17 November, in 1819, François Benoist was appointed professor of organ. Probably the best known director in the 19th century was Luigi Cherubini, Cherubini maintained high standards and his staff included teachers such as François-Joseph Fétis, Habeneck, Fromental Halévy, Le Sueur, Ferdinando Paer, and Anton Reicha. Cherubini was succeeded by Daniel-François-Esprit Auber in 1842, in 1852, Camille Urso, who studied with Lambert Massart, became the first female student to win a prize on violin. The Conservatory Instrument Museum, founded in 1861, was formed from the instrument collection of Louis Clapisson, the French music historian Gustave Chouquet became the curator of the museum in 1871 and did much to expand and upgrade the collection
9.
Arthur Honegger
–
Arthur Honegger was a Swiss composer, who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. He was a member of Les Six and his most frequently performed work is probably the orchestral work Pacific 231, which was inspired by the sound of a steam locomotive. Born Oscar-Arthur Honegger to Swiss parents in Le Havre, France, he studied harmony. After studying for two years at the Zurich Conservatory he enrolled in the Paris Conservatoire from 1911 to 1918 and he made his Paris compositional debut in 1916 and in 1918 wrote the ballet Le dit des jeux du monde, generally considered to be his first characteristic work. In 1926 he married Andrée Vaurabourg, a pianist and fellow student at the Paris Conservatoire and they had one daughter, Pascale, born in 1932. Honegger also had a son, Jean-Claude, with the singer Claire Croiza, in the early 1920s, Honegger shot to fame with his dramatic psalm Le roi David, which is still in the choral repertoire. Between World War I and World War II, Honegger was very prolific and he composed the music for Abel Gances epic 1927 film, Napoléon. He composed nine ballets and three vocal stage works, amongst other works, one of those stage works, Jeanne dArc au bûcher, a dramatic oratorio, is thought of as one of his finest works. In addition to his pieces written alone, he collaborated with Jacques Ibert on both an opera, LAiglon, and an operetta, during this time period he also wrote Danse de la chèvre, an essential piece of flute repertoire. Dedicated to René Le Roy and written for flute alone, this piece is lively and charming, but with the same directness of all Honeggers work. Honegger always remained in touch with Switzerland, his parents country of origin, until the outbreak of the war and he joined the French Resistance and was generally unaffected by the Nazis themselves, who allowed him to continue his work without too much interference. He also taught composition at the École Normale de Musique de Paris, however, he was greatly depressed by the war. Between its outbreak and his death, he wrote his last four symphonies which are among the most powerful works of the 20th century. Written in 1946 just after the end of the war, it has parallels with Benjamin Brittens Sinfonia da Requiem of 1940, in contrast with this work is the lyrical, nostalgic Symphony No. 4, subtitled Deliciae Basilienses, written as a tribute to days of relaxation spent in that Swiss city during the war, Honegger was widely known as a train enthusiast, and once notably said, I have always loved locomotives passionately. For me they are living creatures and I love them as others love women or horses and his mouvement symphonique Pacific 231 gained him early notoriety in 1923. Many of Honeggers works were championed by his longtime friend Georges Tzipine, in 1953 he wrote his last composition, A Christmas Cantata. After a protracted illness, he died at home in Paris of an attack on 27 November 1955 and was interred in the Saint-Vincent Cemetery in the Montmartre Quarter
10.
Germaine Tailleferre
–
Germaine Tailleferre was a French composer and the only female member of the group of composers known as Les Six. At the Paris Conservatory her skills were rewarded with prizes in several categories, most notably Tailleferre wrote 18 short works in the Petit livre de harpe de Madame Tardieu for Caroline Luigini, the Conservatory’s Assistant Professor of harp. It was in the Montparnasse atelier of one of her friends where the initial idea for Les Six began. The publication of Jean Cocteaus manifesto Le coq et lArlequin resulted in Henri Collets media articles that led to instant fame for the group, in 1923, Tailleferre began to spend a great deal of time with Maurice Ravel at his home in Montfort-lAmaury. Ravel encouraged her to enter the Prix de Rome Competition, in 1925, she married Ralph Barton, an American caricaturist, and moved to Manhattan, New York. She remained in the United States until 1927 when she and her returned to France. Her work in music included Le petit chose by Maurice Cloche. At the outbreak of World War II, she was forced to leave the majority of her scores at her home in Grasse, with the exception of her recently completed Three Études for Piano and Orchestra. Escaping across Spain to Portugal, she found passage on a boat that brought her to the United States, the majority of this music was not published until after her death. In 1976, she accepted the post of accompanist for a music and movement class at the École alsacienne. During the last period of her life, she concentrated mainly on smaller forms due to increasing problems with arthritis in her hands. Her last major work was the Concerto de la fidelité for coloratura soprano and orchestra, germaine Tailleferre continued to compose right up until a few weeks before her death, on 7 November 1983 in Paris. She is buried in Quincy-Voisins, Seine-et-Marne, France
11.
Musical composition
–
People who create new compositions are called composers in classical music. In popular music and traditional music, the creators of new songs are usually called songwriters, with songs, Composition is the act or practice of creating a song or other piece of music. In popular music and traditional music, songwriting may involve the creation of an outline of the song, called the lead sheet. In classical music, orchestration is typically done by the composer, in some cases, a pop or traditional songwriter may not use written notation at all, and instead compose the song in her mind and then play, sing and/or record it from memory. In jazz and popular music, notable recordings by influential performers are given the weight that written or printed scores play in classical music. Although a musical composition often uses musical notation and has a single author, a piece of music can also be composed with words, images, or, since the 20th century, with computer programs that explain or notate how the singer or musician should create musical sounds. A more commonly known example of chance-based music is the sound of wind chimes jingling in a breeze, although in the 2000s, composition is considered to consist of the manipulation of each aspect of music, according to Jean-Benjamin de Laborde, Composition consists in two things only. The first is the ordering and disposing of several sounds. in such a manner that their succession pleases the ear and this is what the Ancients called melody. The second is the rendering audible of two or more simultaneous sounds in such a manner that their combination is pleasant and this is what we call harmony, and it alone merits the name of composition. In classical music, a piece of music exists in the form of a composition in musical notation or as a live acoustic event. Since the invention of recording, a classical piece or popular song may also exist as a recording. If music is composed before being performed, music can be performed from memory, by reading written musical notation, compositions comprise a huge variety of musical elements, which vary widely from between genres and cultures. Popular music genres after about 1960 make extensive use of electric and electronic instruments, such as electric guitar, electric and electronic instruments are used in contemporary classical music compositions and concerts, albeit to a lesser degree than in popular music. Music from the Baroque music era, for example, used only acoustic and mechanical such as strings, brass, woodwinds, timpani and keyboard instruments such as harpsichord. A 2000s-era pop band may use electric guitar played with electronic effects through a guitar amplifier, different musical styles permit singers or performers to use various amounts of musical improvisation during the performance of a composed song or piece. In free jazz, the performers may play without any sheet music, improvisation is the act of composing musical elements spontaneously during the performance, as opposed to having a composer write down the music beforehand. Improvisation was an important skill during the Baroque music era, instrumentalists and singers were expected to be able to improvise ornaments, during the classical period, solo instrumentalists were expected to be able to improvise virtuostic cadenzas during a concerto. During the Romantic music era, composers began writing out ornaments and cadenzas, in contemporary classical music, some composers began writing pieces which indicate that the performer should improvise during certain sections
12.
Charles-Marie Widor
–
Charles-Marie Jean Albert Widor was a French organist, composer and teacher, most notable for his ten organ symphonies. Widor was born in Lyon, to a family of organ builders, after this term of study Widor moved to Paris, where he would make his home for the rest of his life. At the age of 24 he was appointed assistant to Camille Saint-Saëns at Église de la Madeleine, the organ at St-Sulpice was Cavaillé-Colls masterwork, the instruments spectacular capabilities proved an inspiration to Widor. Despite his jobs ostensibly provisional nature, Widor remained as organist at St-Sulpice for nearly 64 years and he was succeeded in 1934 by his former student and assistant, Marcel Dupré. In 1890, upon the death of César Franck, Widor succeeded him as professor at the Paris Conservatoire. The class he inherited was initially stunned by this new teacher, who demanded a formidable technique. Bachs organ works as prerequisites to effective improvisation, later, he gave up this post to become composition professor at the same institution. Albert Schweitzer also studied with Widor, mainly from 1899, master, Widor, whose own master Lemmens was an important Bach exponent, encouraged Schweitzers theological exploration of Bachs music. Among the leading organ recitalists of his time, Widor visited many different nations in this capacity, including Russia, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Poland and Switzerland. In addition he participated in the concerts of many of Cavaillé-Colls greatest instruments, notably Notre-Dame de Paris, Saint-Germain-des-Près. In 1921, Widor founded the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau with Francis-Louis Casadesus and he was the Director until 1934, when he was succeeded by Maurice Ravel. His close friend, Isidor Philipp gave piano lessons there, at the age of 76, Widor married Mathilde de Montesquiou-Fézensac on 26 April 1920 at Charchigné. The 36-year-old Mathilde was a member of one of the oldest and most prominent families of Europe and she died in 1960, there were no children from this union. On 31 December 1933, at age 89, Widor retired from his position at Saint-Sulpice, three years later he suffered a stroke which paralysed the right side of his body, although he remained mentally alert to the last. He died at his home in Paris on 12 March 1937 at the age of 93, Widor wrote music for a wide variety of instruments and ensembles and composed four operas and a ballet, but only his works for organ are played with any regularity today. These include, ten Organ Symphonies, three Symphonies for orchestra with organ, Suite Latine, Trois Nouvelles Pièces, and six arrangements of works by Bach under the title Bachs Memento, the organ symphonies are his most significant contribution to the organ repertoire. It is unusual for a written for one instrument to be assigned the term symphony. However, Widor was at the forefront of a revival in French organ music, the organ of the Baroque and Classical periods was designed to project a clear and crisp sound capable of handling contrapuntal writing
13.
Harmony
–
In music, harmony considers the process by which the composition of individual sounds, or superpositions of sounds, is analysed by hearing. Usually, this means simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches, or chords, the study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic line. In popular and jazz harmony, chords are named by their root plus various terms, in many types of music, notably baroque, romantic, modern, and jazz, chords are often augmented with tensions. A tension is an additional member that creates a relatively dissonant interval in relation to the bass. Typically, in the common practice period a dissonant chord resolves to a consonant chord. Harmonization usually sounds pleasant to the ear when there is a balance between the consonant and dissonant sounds, in simple words, that occurs when there is a balance between tense and relaxed moments. The term harmony derives from the Greek ἁρμονία, meaning joint, agreement, concord, from the verb ἁρμόζω, to fit together, the term was often used for the whole field of music, while music referred to the arts in general. In Ancient Greece, the term defined the combination of contrasted elements, in the Middle Ages the term was used to describe two pitches sounding in combination, and in the Renaissance the concept was expanded to denote three pitches sounding together. Aristoxenus wrote a work entitled Harmonika Stoicheia, which is thought the first work in European history written on the subject of harmony, the underlying principle behind these texts is that harmony sanctions harmoniousness by conforming to certain pre-established compositional principles. Current dictionary definitions, while attempting to give concise descriptions, often highlight the ambiguity of the term in modern use, ambiguities tend to arise from either aesthetic considerations or from the point of view of musical texture (distinguishing between harmonic and contrapuntal. The view that modern tonal harmony in Western music began in about 1600 is commonplace in music theory and this is usually accounted for by the replacement of horizontal writing, common in the music of the Renaissance, with a new emphasis on the vertical element of composed music. Modern theorists, however, tend to see this as an unsatisfactory generalisation, as Carl Dahlhaus puts it, It was not that counterpoint was supplanted by harmony but that an older type both of counterpoint and of vertical technique was succeeded by a newer type. And harmony comprises not only the structure of chords but also their movement, like music as a whole, harmony is a process. Descriptions and definitions of harmony and harmonic practice may show bias towards European musical traditions, pitch simultaneity in particular is rarely a major consideration. Nevertheless, emphasis on the precomposed in European art music and the written theory surrounding it shows considerable cultural bias, the conception of musics that live in oral traditions as something composed with the use of improvisatory techniques separates them from the higher-standing works that use notation. Yet the evolution of harmonic practice and language itself, in Western art music, is and was facilitated by this process of prior composition, some traditions of Western music performance, composition, and theory have specific rules of harmony. This model provides that the seventh and ninth are not dissonant
14.
Counterpoint
–
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between voices that are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradition, strongly developing during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period, the term originates from the Latin punctus contra punctum meaning point against point. Counterpoint generally involves musical lines with strongly independent identities, Counterpoint has been used to designate a voice or even an entire composition. In each era, contrapuntally organized music writing has been subject to rules—sometimes strict ones, chords are the simultaneous soundings of notes, whereas harmonic, vertical features are considered secondary and almost incidental when counterpoint is the predominant textural element. Counterpoint focuses on melodic interaction—only secondarily on the produced by that interaction. In the words of John Rahn, It is hard to write a beautiful song and it is harder to write several individually beautiful songs that, when sung simultaneously, sound as a more beautiful polyphonic whole. The way that is accomplished in detail is, some examples of related compositional techniques include, the round, the canon, and perhaps the most complex contrapuntal convention, the fugue. All of these are examples of imitative counterpoint, Species counterpoint generally offers less freedom to the composer than other types of counterpoint and therefore is called a strict counterpoint. The student gradually attains the ability to free counterpoint according to the given rules at the time. The idea is at least as old as 1532, when Giovanni Maria Lanfranco described a concept in his Scintille di musica. Zacconi, unlike later theorists, included a few extra contrapuntal techniques, a succession of later theorists quite closely imitated Fuxs seminal work, often with some small and idiosyncratic modifications in the rules. The following rules apply to melodic writing in each species, for each part, if the final is approached from below, then the leading tone must be raised in a minor key, but not in Phrygian or Hypophrygian mode. Thus, in the Dorian mode on D, a C♯ is necessary at the cadence, permitted melodic intervals are the perfect fourth, fifth, and octave, as well as the major and minor second, major and minor third, and ascending minor sixth. The ascending minor sixth must be followed by motion downwards. The three notes should be from the triad, if this is impossible, they should not outline more than one octave. In general, do not write more than two skips in the same direction, if writing a skip in one direction, it is best to proceed after the skip with motion in the other direction. The interval of a tritone in three notes should be avoided as is the interval of a seventh in three notes, there must be a climax or high point in the line countering the cantus firmus. This usually occurs somewhere in the middle of exercise and must occur on a strong beat, an outlining of a seventh is avoided within a single line moving in the same direction
15.
Vincent d'Indy
–
Vincent dIndy was a French composer and teacher. Paul Marie Théodore Vincent dIndy was born in Paris into a family of royalist. He had piano lessons from an age from his paternal grandmother. From the age of 14 he studied harmony with Albert Lavignac, at age 19, during the Franco-Prussian War, he enlisted in the National Guard, but returned to musical life as soon as the hostilities were over. On the advice of Henri Duparc, he became a student of César Franck at the Conservatoire de Paris. As a follower of Franck, dIndy came to admire what he considered the standards of German symphonism, in the summer of 1873 he visited Germany, where he met Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms. On 25 January 1874 his overture Les Piccolomini was performed at a Pasdeloup concert, around this time he married Isabelle de Pampelonne, one of his cousins. In 1875 his symphony dedicated to János Hunyadi was performed and that same year he played a minor role – the prompter – at the premiere of Bizets opera Carmen. In 1876 he was present at the first production of Richard Wagners Ring Cycle at Bayreuth and this made a great impression on him and he became a fervent Wagnerite. In 1878 dIndys symphonic ballad La Forêt enchantée was performed, in 1882 he heard Wagners Parsifal. In 1883 his choral work Le Chant de la cloche appeared, in 1884 his symphonic poem Saugefleurie was premiered. His piano suite called Poème des montagnes came from around this time, in 1887 appeared his Suite in D for trumpet,2 flutes and string quartet. That same year he was involved in Lamoureuxs production of Wagners Lohengrin as choirmaster and his music drama Fervaal occupied him between 1889 and 1895. DIndy taught there and later at the Paris Conservatoire until his death, xian was one of the earliest Chinese composers of western classical music See, List of music students by teacher, A to B#Vincent dIndy. While A. A. Saygun became one of the pioneers of music in Turkey. Few of dIndys works are performed regularly today and his music drama Le Légende de Saint Christophe, based on themes from Gregorian chant, was performed for the first, and possibly last, time, on 6 June 1920. His comédie musicale had its premiere in paris on 10 June 1927 and his Lied for cello and orchestra, Op.19, was recorded by Julian Lloyd Webber and the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Yan Pascal Tortelier in 1991. As well as Franck, dIndys works show the influence of Berlioz, DIndy helped revive a number of then largely forgotten early works, for example, making his own edition of Claudio Monteverdis opera Lincoronazione di Poppea
16.
Paul Claudel
–
Paul Claudel was a French poet, dramatist and diplomat, and the younger brother of the sculptress Camille Claudel. He was most famous for his dramas, which often convey his devout Catholicism. Claudel was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in six different years and he was born in Villeneuve-sur-Fère, into a family of farmers and government officials. His father, Louis-Prosper, dealt in mortgages and bank transactions and his mother, the former Louise Cerveaux, came from a Champagne family of Catholic farmers and priests. Having spent his first years in Champagne, he studied at the lycée of Bar-le-Duc and at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in 1881 and he would remain a strong Catholic for the rest of his life. He studied at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, the young Claudel seriously considered entering a Benedictine monastery, but in the end began a career in the French diplomatic corps, in which he would serve from 1893 to 1936. He was first vice-consul in New York, and later in Boston. C. while he served in Brazil during the First World War he supervised the continued provision of food supplies from South America to France. In 1936 he retired to his château in Brangues, after a long affair with Rosalie Vetch, a married woman with four children and pregnant with Claudels child, ended in February 1905, Claudel married Reine Sainte-Marie-Perrin on 15 March 1906. In his youth Claudel was heavily influenced by the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud, like them, he was horrified by modern materialist views of life. Unlike most of them, his response was to embrace Catholicism, all his writings are passionate rejections of the idea of a mechanical or random universe, instead proclaiming the deep spiritual meaning of human life founded on Gods all-governing grace and love. Claudel wrote in a unique verse style and he rejected traditional metrics in favour of long, luxuriant, unrhymed lines of free verse, the so-called verset claudelien, influenced by the Latin psalms of the Vulgate. He used scenes of passionate, obsessive human love to convey with great power Gods infinite love for humanity and his plays were often extraordinarily long, sometimes stretching to eleven hours, and pressed the realities of material staging to their limits. Yet they were staged, at least in part, to rapturous acclaim. In later years he wrote texts to be set to music, most notably Jeanne dArc au Bûcher, as well as his verse dramas, Claudel also wrote much lyric poetry, for example the Cinq Grandes Odes. Claudel was always a controversial figure during his lifetime, and remains so today and his devout Catholicism and his right-wing political views, both slightly unusual stances among his intellectual peers, made him, and continue to make him, unpopular in many circles. As a Catholic, he could not avoid a sense of bitter satisfaction at the fall of the anti-clerical French Third Republic. Claudels diaries make clear his consistent contempt for Nazism, and his attitude to the Vichy regime quickly hardened into opposition. He also committed his sister Camille Claudel to a hospital in March 1913
17.
Playwright
–
A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes plays. The term is not a variant spelling of playwrite, but something quite distinct, hence the prefix and the suffix combine to indicate someone who has wrought words, themes, and other elements into a dramatic form - someone who crafts plays. The homophone with write is in this case entirely coincidental, the term playwright appears to have been coined by Ben Jonson in his Epigram 49, To Playwright, as an insult, to suggest a mere tradesman fashioning works for the theatre. Jonson described himself as a poet, not a playwright, since plays during that time were written in meter and this view was held as late as the early 19th century. The term playwright later lost this negative connotation, the earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are the Ancient Greeks. These early plays were written for annual Athenian competitions among playwrights held around the 5th century BC, such notables as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes established forms still relied on by their modern counterparts. For the ancient Greeks, playwriting involved poïesis, the act of making and this is the source of the English word poet. In the 4th century BCE, Aristotle wrote his Poetics, the first play-writing manual, in this famous text, Aristotle established the principle of action or praxis as the basis for all drama. He then included a hierarchy of elements for the beginning with plot, character, thought, diction, music. The ends of drama were plot, character, and thought, the means of drama were language and music, since the myths, upon which Greek tragedy were based, were widely known, plot had to do with the arrangement and selection of existing material. Character was equated with choice as rather than psychology, so that character was determined by action, in tragedy, the notion of ethical choice determined the character of the individual. Thought had more to do and the imitation of an action that is serious, thus, he developed his notion of hamartia, or tragic flaw, an error in judgment by the main character or protagonist. It provides the basis for the play, a term still held as the sine qua non of dramaturgy. The Poetics, while very brief and highly condensed, is studied today. Perhaps the most Aristotelian of contemporary playwrights is David Mamet, who embraces the idea of character as agent of the action, and emphasizes causality in the structure of his plays. His recently revived, Speed-the-Plow, is quintessentially Aristotelian, in that it observes the unities and builds its plot through a causal stream of discoveries and reversals. The Italian Renaissance brought about a stricter interpretation of Aristotle, as this long-lost work came to light in the late 15th century. The neoclassical ideal, which was to reach its apogee in France during the 17th century, dwelled upon the unities, of action, place, and time
18.
Ambassador
–
The word is also often used more liberally for persons who are known, without national appointment, to represent certain professions, activities and fields of endeavor such as sales. An ambassador is the government representative stationed in a foreign capital. The host country typically allows the control of specific territory called an embassy, whose territory, staff. Under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, an ambassador has the highest diplomatic rank, countries may choose to maintain diplomatic relations at a lower level by appointing a chargé daffaires in place of an ambassador. The equivalent to an Ambassador exchanged among members of the Commonwealth of Nations are known as High Commissioners, the ambassadors of the Holy See are known as Papal or Apostolic Nuncios. The first known usage of the term is known to be in the 14th century, the foreign government to which an ambassador is assigned must first approve the person. In some cases, the government might reverse its approval by declaring the diplomat a persona non grata. This kind of declaration usually results in recalling the ambassador to his/her home nation, due to the advent of modern travel, todays world is a much smaller place in relative terms. As an officer of the service, an ambassador is expected to protect the citizens of his home country in the host country. Another result of the increase in travel is the growth of trade between nations. For most countries, the economy is now part of the global economy. This means increased opportunities to sell and trade with other nations, one of the cornerstones of foreign diplomatic missions is to work for peace. This task can grow into a fight against international terrorism, the trade, international bribery. Ambassadors help stop these acts, helping people across the globe and these activities are important and sensitive and are usually carried out in coordination with the Defense Ministry of the state and the head of the nation. The rise of the diplomatic system was a product of the Italian Renaissance. The use of ambassadors became a strategy in Italy during the 17th century. The political changes in Italy altered the role of ambassadors in diplomatic affairs, because many of the states in Italy were small in size, they were particularly vulnerable to larger states. The ambassador system was used to disperse information and to protect the vulnerable states
19.
Ernesto Nazareth
–
Ernesto Júlio de Nazareth was a Brazilian composer and pianist, especially noted for his creative Maxixe and Choro compositions. Influenced by African rhythms and many styles like the Lundu. A musician of classical training, he classified his music as Brazilian tangos, since the Argentine tango and his piano repertoire is now part of the teaching programs of both classical and popular styles, as Nazareth once served at the boundary between these two worlds. Ernesto Nazareth was born in Rio de Janeiro, one of five children and his mother, Carolina da Cunha gave him his first piano lessons. At the age of ten, after his mothers death, he continued his studies with Eduardo Moreira. Strongly influenced by Chopin, Nazareth published his first composition Você Bem Sabe, at this time, he began his professional career playing in cafes, balls, society parties and in the waiting rooms of movie theaters. In 1893, Casa Vieira Machado published his famous tango Brejeiro, in 1879, he wrote his first tango Cruz perigo. In 1880, at the age of 17, he made his first public appearance at the Mozart Club, the following year, he composed the tango Não caio noutra, his first great success, with several reprints. In 1885, he performed in concerts in different clubs of the court and his first concert as a pianist took place in 1898. The following year he prepared the first edition of the tango Turuna, in 1905, he had his first work, Brejeiro, recorded by singer Mario Pinheiro with the title O sertanejo enamorado with lyrics by Catulo da Paixão Cearense. Meanwhile, the Casa Édison marching band recorded his tango Brushed, in 1907 Ernesto Nazareth was appointed third book-keeper of the National Treasury, a position that he did not occupy for not mastering the English language. In 1908, he working as a pianist at the Mozart Club. The following year, he participated in a concert held at the National Institute of Music, playing the gavotte Corbeille de fleurs, instead, he began to teach private piano lessons and was hired as a pianist for Casa Gomes in 1921 and the Odeon Cinema from 1920-1924. In São Paulo and Campinas he performed shows in the Municipal Theater. He was given then a piano as a gift from his admirers. He was one of the first artists to play for the Society Radio of Rio de Janeiro, in 1932 he presented for the first time, a recital in which he performed only his compositions. On February 5,1934, Nazareth fled the asylum and was found three days later in the adjacent forest near a waterfall, dead by drowning. Nazareth was noted for creatively combining diverse influences into his music, not only of Brazilian music but also from the music of Europe, Africa, many of his compositions remain part of the repertory today
20.
Carnival
–
Carnival is a Western Christian festive season that occurs before the liturgical season of Lent. The main events occur during February or early March, during the period historically known as Shrovetide. Carnival typically involves a public celebration and/or parade combining some elements of a circus, masks, people wear masks and costumes during many such celebrations, allowing them to lose their everyday individuality and experience a heightened sense of social unity. Excessive consumption of alcohol, meat, and other foods proscribed during Lent is extremely common, the term Carnival is traditionally used in areas with a large Catholic presence. However, the Philippines, a predominantly Roman Catholic country, does not celebrate Carnival anymore since the dissolution of the Manila Carnival after 1939, in Slavic Eastern Orthodox nations, Maslenitsa is celebrated during the last week before Great Lent. In German-speaking Europe and the Netherlands, the Carnival season traditionally opens on 11/11 and this dates back to celebrations before the Advent season or with harvest celebrations of St. Martins Day. Rio de Janeiro in Brazil is the biggest in the world, followed jointly by Barranquilla, Colombia, alternative names are used for regional and local celebrations. The origin may be from the Italian word carne or carrus, the former suggests an origin within Christianity, while the alternative links to earlier religions. Folk etymologies state that the word comes from the Late Latin expression carne vale, the word carne may also be translated as flesh, producing a farewell to the flesh, a phrase embraced by certain carnival celebrants to embolden the festivals carefree spirit. However, this interpretation is not supported by philological evidence, the Italian carne levare is one possible origin, meaning to remove meat, since meat is prohibited during Lent. Other scholars argue for the origin from the Roman name for the festival of the Navigium Isidis, the festival consisted of a parade of masks following an adorned wooden boat, possibly source of the floats. From the anthropological point of view, carnival is a ritual, in which social roles are reversed. Winter was thought of as the reign of the winter spirits, Carnival can thus be regarded as a rite of passage from darkness to light, from winter to summer, a fertility celebration, the first spring festival of the new year. Traditionally, a carnival feast was the last opportunity for people to eat well. Until spring produce was available, people were limited to the necessary meals during this period. On what nowadays is called vastenavond, all the winter stores of lard, butter. The selected livestock had already been slaughtered in November and the meat would be no longer preservable, all the food that had survived the winter had to be eaten to assure that everyone was fed enough to survive until the coming spring would provide new food sources. Several Germanic tribes celebrated the returning of the daylight, the winter would be driven out, to make sure that fertility could return in spring
21.
Saudades do Brasil
–
The Saudades do Brasil, Op.67, are a suite of twelve dances for piano by Darius Milhaud. Composed after Milhauds visit to Latin America in 1917-1918, each dance is based on a duple tango or samba rhythm, the title of the suite uses the Portuguese term saudade. The work is famous for featuring polytonality, though sections may also be considered extended tonality or, there exists a transcription for orchestra with a brief added overture. Video - Darius Milhaud - Saudades do Brasil
22.
Harlem
–
Harlem is a large neighborhood in the northern section of the New York City borough of Manhattan. Since the 1920s, Harlem has been known as a major African-American residential, cultural, originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Harlems history has been defined by a series of economic boom-and-bust cycles, African-American residents began to arrive by a lot in 1905, with numbers fed by the Great Migration. In the 1920s and 1930s, Central and West Harlem were the focus of the Harlem Renaissance, however, with job losses in the time of the Great Depression and the deindustrialization of New York City after World War II, rates of crime and poverty increased significantly. Harlems African-American population peaked in the 1950s, in the second half of the 20th century, Harlem became a major hub of African-American businesses. In 2008, the United States Census found that for the first time since the 1930s, less than half of residents were black, since New York Citys revival in the late 20th century, long-time residents of Harlem have been experiencing the effects of gentrification and new wealth. Harlem is located in Upper Manhattan, often referred to as Uptown by locals. Central Harlem is bounded by Fifth Avenue on the east, Central Park on the south, Morningside Park, St. Nicholas Avenue and Edgecombe Avenue on the west, and the Harlem River on the north. A chain of three large linear parks—Morningside Park, St. Nicholas Park and Jackie Robinson Park—are situated on steeply rising banks, on the east, Fifth Avenue and Marcus Garvey Park, also known as Mount Morris Park, separate this area from East Harlem. The bulk of the falls under Manhattan Community Board No.10. In the late 2000s, South Harlem, emerged from area redevelopment, the West Harlem neighborhoods of Manhattanville and Hamilton Heights comprise part of Manhattan Community Board No.9. The two neighborhoods area is bounded by Cathedral Parkway on the South, 155th Street on the North, nicholas/Bradhurst/Edgecome Avenues on the East, and Riverside Park/the Hudson River on the west. Morningside Heights is located in the southern most section of West Harlem, Manhattanville begins at roughly 123rd Street and extends northward to 135th Street. The northern most section of West Harlem is Hamilton Heights, the New York City Police Department patrols six precincts located within Harlem. The New York City Fire Department operates 9 firehouses in Harlem, as many as several hundred farmed the Harlem flatlands. Between 1637 and 1639, a few settlements were established, during the American Revolution, the British burned Harlem to the ground. It took a time to rebuild, as Harlem grew more slowly than the rest of Manhattan during the late 18th century. After the American Civil War, Harlem experienced an economic boom starting in 1868, the neighborhood continued to serve as a refuge for New Yorkers, but increasingly those coming north were poor and Jewish or Italian
23.
Ballet
–
Ballet /ˈbæleɪ/ is a type of performance dance that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread, highly technical form of dance with its own based on French terminology. It has been influential and has defined the foundational techniques used in many other dance genres. Becoming a ballet dancer requires years of training, Ballet has been taught in various schools around the world, which have historically incorporated their own cultures to evolve the art. Ballet may also refer to a dance work, which consists of the choreography. A well-known example of this is The Nutcracker, a ballet that was originally choreographed by Marius Petipa. Ballets are choreographed and performed by trained artists, the word came into English usage from the French around 1630. Ballet originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th and 16th centuries before being spread from Italy to France by an Italian aristocrat, Catherine de Medici, in France, ballet developed even further under her aristocratic influence. The dancers in these early court ballets were mostly noble amateurs, Ballets in this period were lengthy and elaborate and often served a political purpose. Ornamented costumes were meant to impress viewers and restricted freedom of movement. The ballets were performed in large chambers with viewers on three sides, French court ballet reached its height under the reign of King Louis XIV. Known as the Sun King, Louis symbolized the brilliance of France, in 1661 Louis founded the Académie Royale de Danse to establish standards and certify dance instructors. In 1672, Louis XIV made Jean-Baptiste Lully the director of the Académie Royale de Musique from which the first professional ballet company, Lully is considered the most important composer of music for ballets de cour and instrumental to the development of the form. Ballet went into decline in France after 1830, though it continued to develop in Denmark, Italy, the arrival in Europe on the eve of First World War of the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev, revived interest in the ballet and started the modern era. The Russian choreographer Michel Fokine challenged tradition and called for reforms that reinvigorated ballet as an art form, in the 20th century, ballet had a wide influence on other dance genres, and subgenres of ballet have also evolved. In the United States, choreographer George Balanchine developed what is now known as neoclassical ballet, other developments include contemporary ballet and post-structural ballet. Also in the century, ballet took a turn dividing it from classical ballet to the introduction of modern dance. Stylistic variations have emerged and evolved since the Italian Renaissance, early, classical variations are primarily associated with geographic origin
24.
Western Front (World War II)
–
The Western Front of the European theatre of World War II encompassed Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Germany. World War II military engagements in Southern Europe and elsewhere are generally considered under separate headings, the Western Front was marked by two phases of large-scale combat operations. The second phase consisted of ground combat, which began in June 1944 with the Allied landings in Normandy. The Phoney War was a phase of World War II marked by a few military operations in Continental Europe in the months following the German invasion of Poland. Although the great powers of Europe had declared war on one another, neither side had yet committed to launching a significant attack and this was also the period in which The United Kingdom and France did not supply significant aid to Poland, despite their pledged alliance. While most of the German Army was fighting against Poland, a much smaller German force manned the Siegfried Line, there were only some local, minor skirmishes. The British Royal Air Force dropped propaganda leaflets on Germany and the first Canadian troops stepped ashore in Britain, while Western Europe was in a strange calm for seven months. In their hurry to re-arm, Britain and France had both begun to buy large numbers of weapons manufacturers in the United States at the outbreak of hostilities. The non-belligerent United States, contributed to the Western Allies by discounted sales of military equipment, German efforts to interdict the Allies trans-Atlantic trade at sea ignited the Battle of the Atlantic. However, when the Allies made a counter-landing in Norway following the German invasion, the Kriegsmarine, nonetheless, suffered very heavy losses during the two-months of fighting required to seize all of mainland Norway. In May 1940, the Germans launched the Battle of France, the Western Allies soon collapsed under the onslaught of the so-called blitzkrieg strategy. The majority of the British and elements of the French forces escaped at Dunkirk, with the fighting ended, the Germans began to consider ways of resolving the question of how to deal with Britain. If the British refused to agree to a treaty, one option was to invade. However, Nazi Germanys Kriegsmarine, had suffered losses in Norway. With the Luftwaffe unable to defeat the RAF in the Battle of Britain and these were built in anticipation of an Allied invasion of France. Because of the massive logistical obstacles a cross-channel invasion would face, on 19 August 1942, the Allies began the Dieppe Raid, an attack on Dieppe, France. Most of the troops were Canadian, with some British contingents, the raid was a disaster, almost two-thirds of the attacking force became casualties. However, much was learned as a result of the operation – these lessons would be put to use in the subsequent invasion
25.
Mills College
–
Mills College is a liberal arts and sciences college located in the San Francisco Bay Area. Mills was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California, the school was relocated to Oakland, California, in 1871, and became the first womens college west of the Rockies. Currently, Mills is a womens college with graduate programs for women and men. The college offers more than 60 undergraduate majors and minors and over 25 graduate degrees, certificates, the college is also home to the Mills College School of Education and the Lorry I. Lokey Graduate School of Business & Public Policy, in 1865, Susan Tolman Mills, a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, and her husband, Cyrus Mills, bought the Young Ladies Seminary renaming it Mills Seminary. In 1871, the school was moved to Oakland, California, the school became Mills College in 1885. In 1890, after serving for decades as principal, Susan Mills became the president of the college, beginning in 1906 the seminary classes were progressively eliminated. In 1921, Mills granted its first masters degrees, on May 3,1990, the Trustees announced that they had voted to admit male undergraduate students to Mills. This decision led to a student and staff strike, accompanied by numerous displays of non-violent protests by the students. At one point, nearly 300 students blockaded the administrative offices, on May 18, the Trustees met again to reconsider the decision, leading finally to a reversal of the vote. In 2014, Mills became the first single-sex college in the U. S. to adopt a policy explicitly welcoming transgender students, Mills offers more than 60 undergraduate majors and minors across the arts and sciences, as well as the option to design your own college major. The school runs on a system, with optional winter and summer sessions. As of the 2014-2015 academic years, Mills’ top 5 most popular majors are, English, Nursing, Psychology, Biology, and Political, Legal, the engineering program in conjunction with University of Southern California is a five-year program, with the first three years completed at Mills. After completing the program, students will have received a BA from Mills, available tracks include biomedical, chemical, computer, electrical, environmental, and industrial systems engineering. Undergraduate students can participate in one of eight bachelors-to-masters accelerated degree programs, which students to earn an undergraduate. Mills is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, rated by Washington Monthly in their 2014 Top Master’s Universities study, Mills ranked 8th out of 100 institutions when considering Social Mobility, Research, and Service. The school’s graduate program offers over 25 degrees, credentials, and these include unique programs in Bio-chemistry, Book Art, Interdisciplinary Computer Science, Infant Mental Health, and Pre-Medical studies, as well as groundbreaking joint-degree programs. Currently the school’s top 5 most popular programs are, Education, Business Administration, Pre-Med, English
26.
Oakland, California
–
Oakland /ˈoʊklənd/ is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. The city was incorporated in 1852, Oaklands territory covers what was once a mosaic of California coastal terrace prairie, oak woodland, and north coastal scrub. Its land served as a resource when its hillside oak and redwood timber were logged to build San Francisco. In the late 1860s, Oakland was selected as the terminal of the Transcontinental Railroad. Following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, many San Francisco citizens moved to Oakland, enlarging the citys population, increasing its housing stock and it continued to grow in the 20th century with its busy port, shipyards, and a thriving automobile manufacturing industry. Oakland is known for its sustainability practices, including a top-ranking for usage of electricity from renewable resources, in addition, due to a steady influx of immigrants during the 20th century, along with thousands of African-American war-industry workers who relocated from the Deep South during the 1940s. Oakland is the most ethnically diverse city in the country. The earliest known inhabitants were the Huchiun Indians, who lived there for thousands of years, the Huchiun belonged to a linguistic grouping later called the Ohlone. In Oakland, they were concentrated around Lake Merritt and Temescal Creek, in 1772, the area that later became Oakland was claimed, with the rest of California, by Spanish settlers for the King of Spain. In the early 19th century, the Spanish crown granted the East Bay area to Luis María Peralta for his Rancho San Antonio, the grant was confirmed by the successor Mexican republic upon its independence from Spain. Upon his death in 1842, Peralta divided his land among his four sons, Most of Oakland fell within the shares given to Antonio Maria and Vicente. The portion of the parcel that is now Oakland was called encinal—Spanish for oak grove—due to the oak forest that covered the area. In 1851, three men—Horace Carpentier, Edson Adams, and Andrew Moon—began developing what is now downtown Oakland, on May 4,1852, the Town of Oakland incorporated. Two years later, on March 25,1854, Oakland re-incorporated as the City of Oakland, with Horace Carpentier elected the first mayor, the city and its environs quickly grew with the railroads, becoming a major rail terminal in the late 1860s and 1870s. In 1868, the Central Pacific constructed the Oakland Long Wharf at Oakland Point, a number of horsecar and cable car lines were constructed in Oakland during the latter half of the 19th century. The first electric streetcar set out from Oakland to Berkeley in 1891, at the time of incorporation, Oakland consisted of the territory that lay south of todays major intersection of San Pablo Avenue, Broadway, and Fourteenth Street. The city gradually annexed farmlands and settlements to the east and the north, Oaklands rise to industrial prominence, and its subsequent need for a seaport, led to the digging of a shipping and tidal channel in 1902. This resulted in the town of Alameda being made an island
27.
Henri Temianka
–
Henri Temianka was a virtuoso violinist, conductor, author and music educator. Henri Temianka was born in Greenock, Scotland, to parents who were Jewish Polish emigrants. He studied violin with Carel Blitz in Rotterdam from 1915 to 1923, with Willy Hess at the National Conservatory in Berlin from 1923 to 1924, and with Jules Boucherit in Paris from 1924 to 1926. He then enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied violin with Carl Flesch, who reported of him in 1927, “Was brought over by me. First class technical talent, somewhat sleepy personality, has still to awake. ”In 1928, Flesch said, “His violinistic personality is for the moment still above his human one. Life shall be his best teacher in this regard. ”Later he stated. he has made a study of my method of teaching. In his memoirs he said. there was above all Henry Temianka, Temiankas playing was further influenced by Eugène Ysaÿe, Jacques Thibaud and Bronisław Huberman. He also studied conducting with Artur Rodziński at Curtis, and became its first graduate in 1930, in Leningrad he was engaged for a single performance, but his virtuosity was so impressive that he was retained for five performances with five complete programs within a week. In 1935 he won third prize in the first Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition in Warsaw, Poland, Ginette Neveu took first prize, in 1936 he founded the Temianka Chamber Orchestra in London. He was the concertmaster of the Scottish Orchestra from 1937 to 1938 and he gave his first concert in Los Angeles, a violin recital, at the Wilshire Ebell in 1940. From 1941 to 1942 he was the concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony under Fritz Reiner, performing as soloist in concertos including the Beethoven, because of his fluency in four languages, he translated and edited sensitive documents. However, upon arriving in Spain, they were thrown in jail by Francos police, the Count personally escorted Temianka’s parents from jail to his mansion, and then arranged for their passage by ship to Cuba and the United States, where they became citizens. In 1945 he performed at Carnegie Hall with pianist Artur Balsam, in 1946 he performed all the Beethoven violin sonatas with pianist Leonard Shure at the Library of Congress in Washington D. C. He performed the Bach Double Violin Concerto with David Oistrakh, Yehudi Menuhin, Henryk Szeryng and his chamber groups performed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Los Angeles Music Center and the Mark Taper Forum. In 1960 he was the director at the esteemed Ojai Music Festival. In the 1980s his California Chamber Virtuosi gave concerts at Pepperdine University and at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, California. Temianka was equally adept on the viola as the violin, and sometimes played it during these evenings, as well as in concert in 1962 with Isaac Stern in a performance of Mozarts Sinfonia Concertante. In 1980 the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians said of Temianka that he was. known for his flawless mastery of his instrument, a pure and expressive tone, and forceful yet elegant interpretations
28.
Paganini Quartet
–
The Paganini Quartet was a virtuoso string quartet founded by its first violinist, Henri Temianka, in 1946. The quartet drew its name from the fact all four of its instruments, made by Antonio Stradivari, had once been owned by the great Italian violinist. In 1945 Temianka met the noted cellist Robert Maas, who had been with the Pro Arte Quartet, Maas had already secured the sponsorship of Mrs. William Andrews Clark, who was interested in forming a new string quartet. Maas happened upon the four Paganini Strads at the shop of Emil Herrmann in New York, and mentioned them to Mrs. Clark, who promptly purchased the fabulous instruments for the Quartets use. Gustave Rosseels, violin, and Robert Courte, viola, immediately accepted invitations to complete the ensemble, and soon they were heralded as “a great quartet born on American soil. ”Temianka referred to it as the spiritual heir of the Pro Arte Quartet. In 1946 -47 they played all the Beethoven string quartets at the Library of Congress, people lining up at 5,00 a. m. to purchase tickets for the series. A recording contract with RCA Victor followed, and their rendition of the three Beethoven Opus 59 “Rasumovsky” quartets won the award for best recording of 1947. The Quartet made its home in Los Angeles, California, during rehearsals they usually spoke French. The story of how the Paganini Quartet came into being is told in much detail in Henri Temianka’s book Facing the Music. They made joint appearances with Arthur Rubinstein, Andrés Segovia, Claudio Arrau and their recordings included most of the Beethoven Quartets as well as those of Fauré, Verdi, Debussy, Ravel and others. They also played the world premieres of works by Darius Milhaud, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Alberto Ginastera, Henri Temianka was widely known as a concert violinist and conductor, author and educator. He was the only constant member of the Paganini Quartet throughout its existence, gustave Rosseels was the original second violinist. Later he was replaced by Charles Libove, and then Stefan Krayk, Robert Courte, who had been a professor of viola at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels, was the original violist. He was later replaced by Charles Foidart, and then David Schwartz and Albert Gillis, cellist Robert Maas died suddenly in 1948. He was replaced by Adolphe Frezin, and later by Lucien Laporte, who had been first cellist for the New York Symphony under Walter Damrosch, gabor Rejto, Victor Gottlieb and Edgar Lustgarten also filled in at various times. The four superb Strads were among the most cherished possessions of the famed virtuoso Niccolo Paganini, after their purchase by Mrs. Clark, further adjustments were made to the instruments by the great craftsman Simone Fernando Sacconi. The provenance of the instruments is as follows, the first violin, the Comte Cozio di Salabue, was made by Stradivari in 1727 and was played by Paganini himself, after he acquired it from Count Cozio de Salabue in 1817. The second violin, the Desaint, was made by Stradivari in 1680 and it is an example of Stradivari’s early Amatise style, and is profiled in the book Stradivari’s Genius by Toby Faber
29.
Budapest String Quartet
–
The Budapest String Quartet was a string quartet in existence from 1917 to 1967. It originally consisted of three Hungarians and a Dutchman, at the end, the quartet consisted of four Russians, a number of recordings were made for HMV/Victor through 1938, from 1940 through 1967 it recorded for Columbia Records. Additionally, several of the Quartets live performances were recorded, at the Library of Congress, Hubay and Popper had helped to make Budapest a major centre for musical education, attracting famous students such as Josef Szigeti. Hubay and Popper had supported Sándor Végh and Feri Roth in the formation of quartets, and were part of an earlier Budapest Quartet. The debut recital of the new Budapest String Quartet, took place in December 1917 in Kolozsvár, then in Hungary, now called Cluj-Napoca, the quartet was established with rules, All disputes, musical or business, were to be resolved by a vote. In case of a tie—no change, players were not allowed to take engagements outside the quartet. Players were paid equally—no preference was given for the leader, No wives or girlfriends were permitted at rehearsals or discussions. No previous quartet had attempted to live entirely on the proceeds from its concerts and it was a brave decision for the time. Much later, in July 1930, the current members added another rule to resolve tied votes, One player, chosen by lot, would have a deciding vote. His initials would be written on the music and he would always have the vote for that piece. If he was replaced, his successor would take on his voting rights. The original members were Emil Hauser, aged 24, from Budapest, Alfred Indig, aged 25, from Hungary, István Ipolyi, aged 31, from Újvidék in Hungary, in 1920 Indig resigned in the hope of advancement, he was replaced by Imre Pogany. Pogany came from Budapest and had studied under Hubay and Zoltán Kodály, after resigning, Indig became a soloist with the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam. In 1931 he became Concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, when the Nazis came to power, Indig fled to Paris where he led a quartet for a while. Indig lived in Amsterdam until 1951, and thereafter returned to Paris and his date and place of death remain unknown. In 1921 or 1922, owing to unrest in Budapest, the moved to Berlin. There they developed a large repertoire, the quartet received mixed reviews, however. In 1925 they played in London and signed a contract with His Master’s Voice, making recordings at His Master’s Voice Studio B at Hayes
30.
Aspen Music Festival and School
–
The Aspen Music Festival and School is a classical music festival held annually in Aspen, Colorado. It is noted both for its programming and its musical training of mostly young-adult music students. In the winter, the AMFS presents a series of recitals. As a training ground for young-adult classical musicians, the AMFS draws more than 600 students from 40-plus countries, while in Aspen, students participate in lessons, coaching, and public performances in orchestras, operas, and chamber music, sometimes playing side-by-side with AMFS artist-faculty. The organization is led by President and CEO Alan Fletcher. The event, which included both intellectual forums and musical performances, was such a success that it led to the formation of both the Aspen Institute and the Aspen Music Festival and School. In the summers that followed, the musicians returned, bringing their music students. In 1951, the School enrolled its first official class, with 183 music students and that same year, Igor Stravinsky became the first conductor to present his own works with the Festival. Early founding musicians included baritone Mack Harrell and violinist Roman Totenberg, in 1965, Duke Ellington and his orchestra came to the AMFS to perform a benefit concert. In 1971, Dorothy DeLay joined the AMFS strings artist-faculty and attracted more than 200 students a summer to her program, in 1975, Aaron Copland came to Aspen as a composer-in-residence on the occasion of his 75th birthday. In 1980, John Denver performed with the Aspen Festival Orchestra for his TV special Music and the Mountains, the Benedict Music Tent, which opened in 2000, is the Festival’s primary concert venue and seats 2050. The tent replaced an earlier tent designed by Herbert Bayer, which in 1965 replaced the original smaller tent designed by Eero Saarinen. Concerts are held in the Benedict Music Tent on a daily basis during the summer, and seating on the lawn just outside the Tent. The design has open sides, the roof is made of Teflon-coated fiberglass. The 500-seat Joan and Irving Harris Concert Hall is located next door to the Benedict Music Tent, in 2016, the AMFS completed its $75 million,105, 000-square-foot Matthew and Carolyn Bucksbaum Campus, which serves as the center of its teaching activities. The Campus, located two miles from downtown Aspen, sits on a 38-acre site that is shared between the AMFS in the summer and Aspen Country Day School during the academic year. The Campus was designed with Aspen’s natural setting in mind, the roof lines mirror the shapes of the surrounding mountains and hug the contours of the ponds. Alumni of the AMFS fill important professional music positions around the world, performing in orchestras, opera houses
31.
Dave Brubeck
–
David Warren Dave Brubeck was an American jazz pianist and composer, considered to be one of the foremost exponents of cool jazz. He wrote a number of standards, including In Your Own Sweet Way. Brubecks style ranged from refined to bombastic, reflecting his mothers attempts at classical training and his music is known for employing unusual time signatures, and superimposing contrasting rhythms, meters, and tonalities. Brubeck experimented with time throughout his career, recording Pick Up Sticks in 6/4, Unsquare Dance in 7/4, Worlds Fair in 13/4. He was also a composer of orchestral and sacred music, and wrote soundtracks for television such as Mr. Broadway. Dave Brubeck was born in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Concord, California and his father had Swiss ancestry and possibly Native American Modoc lineage, while his maternal grandparents were English and German. Brubeck originally did not intend to become a musician, but took lessons from his mother and he could not read music during these early lessons, attributing this difficulty to poor eyesight, but faked his way through, well enough that this deficiency went mostly unnoticed. Intending to work with his father on their ranch, Brubeck entered the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California and he changed to music on the urging of the head of zoology, Dr. Arnold, who told him Brubeck, your minds not here. Its across the lawn in the conservatory, stop wasting my time and yours. Later, Brubeck was nearly expelled when one of his professors discovered that he could not read music on sight, several of his professors came forward, arguing that his ability to write counterpoint and harmony more than compensated, and demonstrated his familiarity with music notation. The college was still afraid that it would cause a scandal, after graduating in 1942, Brubeck was drafted into the U. S. Army. He served in Europe in the Third Army and he volunteered to play piano at a Red Cross show and was such a hit that he was spared from combat service and ordered to form a band. He created one of the U. S. armed forces first racially integrated bands, while serving in the military, Brubeck met Paul Desmond in early 1944. He returned to college after serving four years in the army. He studied under Darius Milhaud, who encouraged him to study fugue and orchestration, but not classical piano. While on active duty, he received two lessons from Arnold Schoenberg at UCLA in an attempt to connect with high modernist theory and practice. ”After completing his studies under Milhaud, Brubeck worked with an octet, and a trio including Cal Tjader and Ron Crotty. Highly experimental, the group made few recordings and got even fewer paying jobs, the trio was often joined by Paul Desmond on the bandstand, at Desmonds own insistence. Jack Sheedy owned San Francisco-based Coronet Records, which had recorded area Dixieland bands
32.
JazzWax
–
Marc Myers is an American journalist, author and historian and a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal, where he writes on music and the arts. In 2007, he founded JazzWax, a top-ranked daily jazz blog that won the 2012 and 2015 Jazz Journalists Associations Blog of the Year award, Myers was born in Manhattan and grew up in New York City and Westchester County in N. Y. According to his website, he studied journalism at Northeastern University and he began his writing career at The New York Times in the late 1970s as a college intern, joining the newspaper full-time in 1980 in the sports department. In 1985 he left to become an editor at Adweek. For a time, he was editor at Working Woman magazine, where his responsibilities included editing cover business and celebrity profiles. In February 1999, his essay on President Bill Clinton’s luck was published by the New York Times’ Op-Ed page and he began writing on music and the arts for The Wall Street Journal in 2010. Since June 2010, Myers has written for The Wall Street Journal as a contributor on music and he has interviewed more than 500 leading musicians and celebrities for the paper. He currently writes three regular columns and these include the weekly House Call column for the Mansion section and the weekly Playlist column for the Review section. He also writes the Anatomy of a Song column for the Arena section, Myers has written the following books, Anatomy of a Song, The Oral History of 45 Iconic Hits That Changed Rock, R&B and Pop, Grove Press, ISBN 080212559X. A book based on his Wall Street Journal column and this book will change how you see music history and the artists who created it. Why Jazz Happened, University of California Press, ISBN0520268784, in its Fall 12 catalog, the publisher called the book the first comprehensive social history of jazz. In its review, The Wall Street Journal said, If you want to know why jazz changed so often between 1942 and 1972, Why Jazz Happened is a place to start. Marc Myers has made a contribution to the discussion about how jazz went from a practical art entertaining dancers to one aimed at listeners. How to Make Luck,7 Secrets Lucky People Use to Succeed, Renaissance Books, ISBN 978-1-58063-058-0 His mother, Bernice Myers, is a book artist. His father, Lou Myers, an illustrator, cartoonist and writer. He is married to Alyse Myers, author of Who Do You Think You Are
33.
Burt Bacharach
–
Burt Freeman Bacharach is an American composer, songwriter, record producer, pianist, and singer. As of 2014, Bacharach had written 73 US and 52 UK Top 40 hits, in 1997 he was the subject of a PBS Great Performances biography. And in recent years a number of albums and concerts have helped introduce his music to younger audiences. Among them was a 2009 concert by Dutch singer Trijntje Oosterhuis, in 2012 Bacharach and David received the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, the first time the honor has been given to a songwriting team. The ceremony was hosted by President Obama, and included a concert performed with various stars, Bacharach was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and grew up in the Forest Hills section of New York City, graduating from Forest Hills High School in 1946. His family was Jewish, but he says that they didnt practice or give attention to their religion. But the kids I knew were Catholic, he adds, I was Jewish but I didnt want anybody to know about it. Bacharach showed a keen interest in jazz as a teenager, disliking his classical piano lessons and he got to hear bebop musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie, whose style would later influence his songwriting. Bacharach studied music at Montreals McGill University, under Helmut Blume, at the Mannes School of Music, during this period he studied a range of music, including jazz harmony, which has since been important to songs which are generally considered pop music. His composition teachers included Darius Milhaud, Henry Cowell, and Bohuslav Martinů, Bacharach cites Milhaud as his biggest influence, under whose guidance he wrote a Sonatina for Violin, Oboe and Piano. Following his tour of duty in the United States Army, Bacharach spent the three years as a pianist and conductor for popular singer Vic Damone. Damone recalls, Burt was clearly bound to go out on his own and he was an exceptionally talented, classically trained pianist, with very clear ideas on the musicality of songs, how they should be played, and what they should sound like. He later worked in similar capacity for other singers, including Polly Bergen, Steve Lawrence. When he was unable to better jobs, Bacharach worked at resorts in the Catskill Mountains of New York. In 1956, at age 28, Bacharachs productivity increased when composer Peter Matz recommended him to Marlene Dietrich and he then became part-time music director for Dietrich, a German actress and singer who had been an international screen star in the 1930s. They toured worldwide off and on until the early 1960s, when they werent touring, as a result of his collaboration with Dietrich, he gained his first major recognition as a conductor and arranger. In her autobiography, she remembered that Bacharach loved touring in Russia and Poland because the violinists were extraordinary and he liked Edinburgh and Paris, along with the Scandinavian countries, and he also felt at home in Israel, she says, where music was similarly much revered. By the early 1960s, after five years with Dietrich
34.
Geneva
–
Geneva is the second most populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situated where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the capital of the Republic, the municipality has a population of 198,072, and the canton has 484,736 residents. In 2014, the compact agglomération du Grand Genève had 946,000 inhabitants in 212 communities in both Switzerland and France, within Swiss territory, the commuter area named Métropole lémanique contains a population of 1.25 million. This area is essentially spread east from Geneva towards the Riviera area and north-east towards Yverdon-les-Bains, Geneva is the city that hosts the highest number of international organizations in the world. It is also the place where the Geneva Conventions were signed, Geneva was ranked as the worlds ninth most important financial centre for competitiveness by the Global Financial Centres Index, ahead of Frankfurt, and third in Europe behind London and Zürich. A2009 survey by Mercer found that Geneva has the third-highest quality of life of any city in the world, the city has been referred to as the worlds most compact metropolis and the Peace Capital. In 2009 and 2011, Geneva was ranked as, respectively, the city was mentioned in Latin texts, by Caesar, with the spelling Genava, probably from a Celtic toponym *genawa- from the stem *genu-, in the sense of a bending river or estuary. The medieval county of Geneva in Middle Latin was known as pagus major Genevensis or Comitatus Genevensis, the name takes various forms in modern languages, Geneva /dʒᵻˈniːvə/ in English, French, Genève, German, Genf, Italian, Ginevra, and Romansh, Genevra. The city in origin shares its name, *genawa estuary, with the Italian port city of Genoa, Geneva was an Allobrogian border town, fortified against the Helvetii tribe, when the Romans took it in 121 BC. It became Christian under the Late Roman Empire, and acquired its first bishop in the 5th century, having been connected to the bishopric of Vienne in the 4th. In the Middle Ages, Geneva was ruled by a count under the Holy Roman Empire until the late 14th century, around this time the House of Savoy came to dominate the city. In the 15th century, a republican government emerged with the creation of the Grand Council. In 1541, with Protestantism in the ascendancy, John Calvin, by the 18th century, however, Geneva had come under the influence of Catholic France, which cultivated the city as its own. France also tended to be at odds with the ordinary townsfolk, in 1798, revolutionary France under the Directory annexed Geneva. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, on 1 June 1814, in 1907, the separation of Church and State was adopted. Geneva flourished in the 19th and 20th centuries, becoming the seat of international organizations. Geneva is located at 46°12 North, 6°09 East, at the end of Lake Geneva. It is surrounded by two chains, the Alps and the Jura
35.
Paul Hindemith
–
Paul Hindemith was a prolific German composer, violist, violinist, teacher and conductor. Notable compositions include his song cycle Das Marienleben, Der Schwanendreher for Viola and Orchestra, Hindemiths most popular work, both on record and in the concert hall, is likely the Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber, written in 1943. Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt am Main, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child and he entered Frankfurts Hoch’sche Konservatorium, where he studied violin with Adolf Rebner, as well as conducting and composition with Arnold Mendelssohn and Bernhard Sekles. At first he supported himself by playing in bands and musical-comedy groups. He became deputy leader of the Frankfurt Opera Orchestra in 1914 and he played second violin in the Rebner String Quartet from 1914. Hindemith was conscripted into the German army in September,1917, there he was assigned to play bass drum in the regiment band, and also formed a string quartet. In May 1918 he was deployed to the front in Flanders, after the armistice he returned to Frankfurt and the Rebner Quartet. In 1921 he founded the Amar Quartet, playing viola, in 1922, some of his pieces were played in the International Society for Contemporary Music festival at Salzburg, which first brought him to the attention of an international audience. The following year, he began to work as an organizer of the Donaueschingen Festival, in 1927 he was appointed Professor at the Berliner Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. Hindemith wrote the music for Hans Richters 1928 avant-garde film Ghosts Before Breakfast, although the score was subsequently lost, in 1929 he played the solo part in the premiere of William Waltons Viola Concerto, after Lionel Tertis, for whom it was written, turned it down. Hindemith did not stay in Turkey as long as many other émigrés, nevertheless, he greatly influenced the developments of Turkish musical life, the Ankara State Conservatory owes much to his efforts. In fact, Hindemith was regarded as a master by young Turkish musicians and he was appreciated. Towards the end of the 1930s, he made tours in America as a viola and viola damore soloist. Hindemiths relationship to the Nazis is a complicated one, the controversy around his work continued throughout the thirties, with the composer falling in and out of favor with the Nazi hierarchy, he finally emigrated to Switzerland in 1938. This development seems to have been supported by the Nazi regime, it may have got him out of the way, yet at the same time he propagated a German view of musical history. In 1940, Hindemith emigrated to the United States, at the same time that he was codifying his musical language, his teaching and compositions began to be affected by his theories, according to critics like Ernest Ansermet. During this time he gave the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard. Hindemith had a friendship with Erich Katz, whose own compositions were influenced by him
36.
Henry Cowell
–
Henry Dixon Cowell was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. His experiments begun three decades ago in rhythm, in harmony, and in instrumental sonorities were considered then by many to be wild, today they are the Bible of the young and still, to the conservatives, advanced. No other composer of our time has produced a body of works so radical and so normal, so penetrating, add to this massive production his long and influential career as a pedagogue, and Henry Cowells achievement becomes impressive indeed. There is no other quite like it, to be both fecund and right is given to few. After his parents divorce in 1903, he was raised by his mother, Clarissa Dixon, author of the early feminist novel Janet and his father, with whom he maintained contact, introduced him to the Irish music that would be a touchstone for Cowell throughout his career. While receiving no formal education, he began to compose in his mid-teens. By the summer of 1914, Cowell was writing truly individualistic works and that fall, the largely self-taught Cowell was admitted to the University of California, Berkeley, as a protégé of Charles Seeger. There he studied harmony and other subjects under Seeger and Edward Griffith Stricklen, after two years at Berkeley, Cowell pursued further studies in New York where he encountered Leo Ornstein, the radically futurist composer-pianist. Still a teenager, Cowell wrote the piano piece Dynamic Motion and it requires the performer to use both forearms to play massive secundal chords and calls for keys to be held down without sounding to extend and intensify its dissonant cluster overtones. In later years, Cowell would claim that the piece had been composed around 1912 and it was on one of these tours that in 1923, his friend Richard Buhlig introduced Cowell to young pianist Grete Sultan in Berlin. They worked closely together—an aspect vital to Grete Sultans personal and artistic development, Cowell later made such an impression with his tone cluster technique that Béla Bartók requested his permission to adopt it. Cowells endeavors with string piano techniques were the inspiration for John Cages development of the prepared piano. Even the canon in the first movement of the Romantic has different note-lengths for each voice, in 1919, Cowell had begun writing New Musical Resources, which would finally be published after extensive revision in 1930. Focusing on the variety of rhythmic and harmonic concepts he used in his compositions. Conlon Nancarrow, for instance, would refer to it later as having the most influence of anything Ive ever read in music. Cowell wrote several compositions for the instrument, including an orchestrated concerto. Soon, however, the Rhythmicon would be forgotten, remaining so until the 1960s. A prolific composer of songs, Cowell returned in 1930–31 to Aeolian Harp, adapting it as the accompaniment to a setting of a poem by his father
37.
Alan Hovhaness
–
Alan Hovhaness was an American composer. He was one of the most prolific 20th-century composers, with his official catalog comprising 67 numbered symphonies and 434 opus numbers, the true tally is well over 500 surviving works since many opus numbers comprise two or more distinct works. The Boston Globe music critic Richard Buell wrote, Although he has been stereotyped as a self-consciously Armenian composer, what may be most American about all of it is the way it turns its materials into a kind of exoticism. The atmosphere is hushed, reverential, mystical, nostalgic and he was born as Alan Vaness Chakmakjian in Somerville, Massachusetts, to Haroutioun Hovanes Chakmakjian and Madeleine Scott. When he was five, his family moved from Somerville to Arlington, a Hovhaness family neighbor said his mother had insisted on moving from Somerville because of discrimination against Armenians there. After her death, he began to use the surname Hovaness in honor of his paternal grandfather and he stated the name change from the original Chakmakjian reflected the desire to simplify his name because nobody ever pronounced it right. However, Hovhaness daughter Jean Nandi has written in her book Unconventional Wisdom, My fathers name at the time of my birth was Hovaness, pronounced with accent on the first syllable. His original name was Chakmakjian, but in the 1930s he wanted to get rid of the Armenian connection and so changed his name to an Americanized version of his middle name. Some years later, deciding to re-establish his Armenian ties, he changed the spelling to Hovhaness, accent on the second syllable and his family was concerned for his late-night hours spent composing and possibly for his financial future as an artist. He decided for a time to pursue astronomy, another of his early loves. The fascination of astronomy remained with him through his life and composing career, with many works titled after various planets. Hovhanesss parents soon supported their sons precocious composing, and set up his first piano lessons with a neighborhood teacher, Hovhaness continued his piano studies with Adelaide Proctor and then Heinrich Gebhard. By age 14 he decided to devote himself to composition, among his early musical experiences were Baptist hymns and recordings of Gomidas Vartabed, an eminent Armenian composer. He composed two operas during his teenage years which were performed at Arlington High School, and composer Roger Sessions took an interest in his music during this time. Following his graduation from school in 1929, he studied with Leo Rich Lewis at Tufts. In 1932, he won the Conservatorys Samuel Endicott prize for composition with his Sunset Symphony, in July 1934, Hovhaness traveled with his first wife, Martha Mott Davis, to Finland to meet Jean Sibelius, whose music he had greatly admired since childhood. The two continued to correspond for the twenty years. In 1935, Hovhaness named his daughter and only child from his first marriage Jean Christina Hovhaness after Jean Christian Sibelius, her godfather and Hovhanesss friend for three decades
