1.
UK Music
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Launched on 26 September 2008, Feargal Sharkey, former member of The Undertones, became Chief Executive Officer and Andy Heath, former chairman of British Music Rights became chairman. Sharkey left the organisation in November 2011, with Jo Dipple taking over as Acting CEO, UK Music confirmed on 27 January 2012 the appointment of Dipple as the next CEO. In January 2017, the announced that Dipple is to stand down as its CEO in June 2017. In his letter, Sharkey wrote. the collection of this personal Data by the Met Police in advance of a performance is not light touch. In December 2008, UK Music launched Sound Rights, an online resource for teachers. This was aimed at supporting the study of the role of music and musicians in society, the music industry and of artistic and intellectual property rights
2.
The Proms
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In 2009 the total number of concerts reached 100. The season is a significant event in British culture, in classical music, Jiří Bělohlávek described the Proms as the worlds largest and most democratic musical festival. Prom is short for promenade concert, a term originally referred to outdoor concerts in Londons pleasure gardens. In fact this tradition has been revived in parks and stately homes around the UK at promenade concerts such as the Battle Proms. In the context of the BBC Proms, promming refers to the use of the areas inside the hall for which ticket prices are much lower than for the reserved seating. Single-concert standing tickets for either the arena or gallery can be only on the day of the concert. Proms concert-goers, particularly those who stand, are referred to as prommers or promenaders. Prommers can buy full-season tickets instead for guaranteed entry to every concert in the season, some prommers are particularly keen in their attendance. The annual series of Proms continuing today had their roots in that movement and they were inaugurated on 10 August 1895 in the Queens Hall in Langham Place by the impresario Robert Newman, who was fully experienced in running similar concerts at His Majestys Theatre. Newman wished to generate an audience for concert hall music by offering low ticket prices and an informal atmosphere. He stated his aim to Henry Wood in 1894 as follows, I am going to run nightly concerts, popular at first, gradually raising the standard until I have created a public for classical and modern music. Dr George Cathcart, an otolaryngologist, gave financial backing to Newman for the series on condition that Henry Wood be employed as the sole conductor, Wood, aged 26, seized this opportunity and built the Queens Hall Orchestra as the ensemble specially devoted to performing the promenade concerts. This coincided with the adoption of lower pitch by other leading orchestras. Although the concerts gained a following and reputation, Newman went bankrupt in 1902. Wood received a knighthood in 1911, in 1914 anti-German feeling led Speyer to surrender his role, and music publishers Chappell & Co. took control of the concerts. Although Newman remained involved in planning, it was Woods name which became most closely associated with the Proms. As conductor from the first concert in 1895, Sir Henry was largely responsible for building the repertoire heard as the series continued from year to year. While including many popular and less demanding works, in the first season there were substantial nights devoted to Beethoven or Schubert, distinguished singers including Sims Reeves and Signor Foli appeared
3.
Royal Albert Hall
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The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London, which holds the Proms concerts annually each summer since 1941. It has a capacity of up to 5,272 seats, the Hall is a registered charity held in trust for the nation and receives no public or government funding. A further 400 events are each year in the non-auditorium spaces. In 1851, the Great Exhibition was held in Hyde Park, the Exhibitions Royal Commission bought Gore House and its grounds on the advice of the Prince. Progress on the scheme was slow and in 1861 Prince Albert died, however, a memorial was proposed for Hyde Park, with a Great Hall opposite. The proposal was approved and the site was purchased with some of the profits from the Exhibition, the Hall was designed by civil engineers Captain Francis Fowke and Major-General Henry Y. D. Scott of the Royal Engineers and built by Lucas Brothers. The designers were heavily influenced by ancient amphitheatres, but had also exposed to the ideas of Gottfried Semper while he was working at the South Kensington Museum. The recently opened Cirque dHiver in Paris was seen in the press as the design to outdo. The Hall was constructed mainly of Fareham Red brick, with terra cotta block decoration made by Gibbs, the dome on top was made of wrought iron and glazed. There was an assembly made of the iron framework of the dome in Manchester, then it was taken apart again and transported to London via horse. When the time came for the structure to be removed from the dome after reassembly in situ. It did drop – but only by five-sixteenths of an inch, the Hall was scheduled to be completed by Christmas Day 1870 and the Queen visited a few weeks beforehand to inspect. The official opening ceremony of the Hall was on 29 March 1871, a welcoming speech was given by Edward, the Prince of Wales, Queen Victoria was too overcome to speak. At some point, the Queen remarked that the Hall reminded her of the British constitution, a concert followed, when the Halls acoustic problems became immediately apparent. Engineers first attempted to solve the strong echo by suspending a canvas awning below the dome, in July 1871, French organist Camille Saint-Saëns performed Church Scene from the Faust by Charles Gounod, The Orchestra described his performance as an exceptional and distinguished performer. Initially lit by gas, the Hall contained a system where its thousands of gas jets were lit within ten seconds. Though it was demonstrated as early as 1873 in the Hall, full electric lighting was not installed until 1888, during an early trial when a partial installation was made, one disgruntled patron wrote to The Times declaring it to be a very ghastly and unpleasant innovation. In May 1877, Richard Wagner himself conducted the first half of each of the eight concerts which made up the Grand Wagner Festival
4.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
5.
History of the United Kingdom
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The history of the United Kingdom as a unified sovereign state began in 1707 with the political union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland, into a united kingdom called Great Britain. Of this new state the historian Simon Schama said What began as a merger would end in a full partnership in the most powerful going concern in the world. It was one of the most astonishing transformations in European history, a further Act of Union in 1800 added the Kingdom of Ireland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The first decades were marked by Jacobite risings which ended with defeat for the Stuart cause at Culloden in 1746. In 1763, victory in the Seven Years War led to the dominance of the British Empire, as a result, the culture of the United Kingdom, and its industrial, political, constitutional, educational and linguistic influence, became worldwide. In 1922, following the Anglo-Irish Treaty, most of Ireland seceded to become the Irish Free State, a day later, Northern Ireland seceded from the Free State and returned to the United Kingdom. As a result, in 1927 the United Kingdom changed its title to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, usually shortened to Britain. In the Second World War, in which the Soviet Union, Nationalist China, the cost was high and Britain no longer had the wealth to maintain an empire, so it granted independence to most of the Empire. The new states joined the Commonwealth of Nations. The United Kingdom has sought to be a member of the United Nations. Since the 1990s, however, large-scale devolution movements in Northern Ireland, Scotland, the Kingdom of Great Britain came into being on 1 May 1707, as a result of the political union of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland. The terms of the union had been negotiated the previous year, the parliaments of Scotland and of England then each ratified the treaty via respective Acts of Union. Slightly more than one-hundred years later, the Treaty of Union enabled the two kingdoms to be combined into a kingdom, merging the two parliaments into a single parliament of Great Britain. Queen Anne, who was reigning at the time of the union, had favoured deeper political integration between the two kingdoms and became the first monarch of Great Britain. Although now a single kingdom, certain aspects of the independent kingdoms remained separate. Scottish and English law remained separate, as did the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, England and Scotland also continued to each have its own system of education. The creation of Great Britain happened during the War of the Spanish Succession and his successor, Anne, continued the war. The Duke of Marlborough won a series of brilliant victories over the French, France was nearly brought to its knees by 1709, when King Louis XIV made a desperate appeal to the French people
6.
Church music
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Church music is music written for performance in church, or any musical setting of ecclesiastical liturgy, or music set to words expressing propositions of a sacred nature, such as a hymn. Christianity began as a small, persecuted Jewish sect, the only record of communal song in the Gospels is the last meeting of the disciples before the Crucifixion. Outside the Gospels, there is a reference to St. Paul encouraging the Ephesians and Colossians to use psalms, hymns, antiphonal psalmody is the singing or musical playing of psalms by alternating groups of performers. The peculiar mirror structure of the Hebrew psalms makes it likely that the method originated in the services of the ancient Israelites. According to the historian Socrates of Constantinople, its introduction into Christian worship was due to Ignatius of Antioch, the use of instruments in early Christian music seems to have been frowned upon. In the late 4th or early 5th century St. Jerome wrote that a Christian maiden ought not even to know what a lyre or flute is like, or to what use it is put. The introduction of church music is traditionally believed to date from the time of the papacy of Pope Vitalian in the 7th century. Gregorian chant is the tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical chant of Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass. This musical form originated in Monastic life, in singing the Divine Service nine times a day at the proper hours was upheld according to the Rule of Saint Benedict. Singing psalms made up a part of the life in a monastic community, while a smaller group. In its long history Gregorian Chant has been subjected to many gradual changes and this practice continued into the lifetime of François Couperin, whose Organ Masses were meant to be performed with alternating homophonic Chant. Although it had fallen into disuse after the Baroque period, Chant experienced a revival in the 19th century in the Roman Catholic Church. The mass is a form of music that sets out the parts of the Eucharistic liturgy to music, for example, there are many Masses written in English for the Church of England. Music is an part of mass, it accompanies various rituals acts. Many Masses, especially later ones, were never intended to be performed during the celebration of an actual mass, generally, for a composition to be a full Mass, it must contain the following invariable five sections, which together constitute the Ordinary of the Mass. Kyrie Gloria Credo, the Nicene Creed Sanctus, the part of which, beginning with the word Benedictus, was often sung separately after the consecration. Agnus Dei The Requiem Mass is a version of the ordinary mass. Musical settings of the Requiem mass have a tradition in Western music
7.
Western culture
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The term also applies beyond Europe, to countries and cultures whose histories are strongly connected to Europe by immigration, colonization, or influence. For example, Western Culture includes countries in the Americas and Australasia, whose language, before the Cold War era, the traditional Western viewpoint identified Western Civilization with the Western Christian countries and culture. Ancient Greece is considered the birthplace of Western culture, with the worlds first democratic system of government and major advances in philosophy, science, Greece was followed by Rome, which made key contributions in law, government, engineering and political organization. European culture developed with a range of philosophy, medieval scholasticism, and mysticism. Rational thinking developed through an age of change and formation, with the experiments of the Enlightenment. More often an ideology is what will be used to categorize it as a Western society. There is some disagreement about what nations should or should not be included in the category, many parts of the Eastern Roman Empire are considered Western today but were Eastern in the past. Since the context is highly biased and context-dependent, there is no agreed definition what the West is and it is difficult to determine which individuals fit into which category and the East–West contrast is sometimes criticized as relativistic and arbitrary. Globalism has spread Western ideas so widely that almost all cultures are, to some extent. Stereotyped views of the West have been labeled Occidentalism, paralleling Orientalism—the term for the 19th-century stereotyped views of the East, as Europe discovered the wider world, old concepts adapted. The area that had formerly considered the Orient became the Near East, as the interests of the European powers interfered with Meiji Japan and Qing China for the first time. Thus, the Sino-Japanese War in 1894–1895 occurred in the Far East, the Greeks contrasted themselves to their Eastern neighbors, such as the Trojans in Iliad, setting an example for later contrasts between east and west. In the Middle Ages, the Near East provided a contrast to the West, concepts of what is the West arose out of legacies of the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. Later, ideas of the west were formed by the concepts of Latin Christendom, Western culture is neither homogeneous nor unchanging. As with all cultures, it has evolved and gradually changed over time. Nevertheless, it is possible to follow the evolution and history of the West, and appreciate its similarities and differences, its borrowings from, and contributions to, other cultures of humanity. Nevertheless, the Greeks felt they were the most civilized and saw themselves as something between the wild barbarians of most of Europe and the soft, slavish Middle-Easterners. In the meantime, however, Greece, under Alexander, had become a capital of the East, the Celts also created some significant literature in the ancient world whenever they were given the opportunity
8.
Folk music
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Folk music includes both traditional music and the genre that evolved from it during the 20th century folk revival. The term originated in the 19th century, but is applied to music older than that. Some types of music are also called world music. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways, as music transmitted orally, music with unknown composers and it has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles. Starting in the century, a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the revival and reached a zenith in the 1960s. This form of music is called contemporary folk music or folk revival music to distinguish it from earlier folk forms. Smaller, similar revivals have occurred elsewhere in the world at other times and this type of folk music also includes fusion genres such as folk rock, folk metal, electric folk, and others. Even individual songs may be a blend of the two, a consistent definition of traditional folk music is elusive. The terms folk music, folk song, and folk dance are comparatively recent expressions and they are extensions of the term folklore, which was coined in 1846 by the English antiquarian William Thoms to describe the traditions, customs, and superstitions of the uncultured classes. Traditional folk music also includes most indigenous music, however, despite the assembly of an enormous body of work over some two centuries, there is still no certain definition of what folk music is. Some do not even agree that the term Folk Music should be used, Folk music may tend to have certain characteristics but it cannot clearly be differentiated in purely musical terms. One meaning often given is that of old songs, with no known composers, the fashioning and re-fashioning of the music by the community that give it its folk character. Such definitions depend upon processes rather than abstract musical types, one widely used definition is simply Folk music is what the people sing. For Scholes, as well as for Cecil Sharp and Béla Bartók, Folk music was already. seen as the authentic expression of a way of life now past or about to disappear, particularly in a community uninfluenced by art music and by commercial and printed song. In these terms folk music may be seen as part of a schema comprising four types, primitive or tribal, elite or art, folk. Music in this genre is often called traditional music. Although the term is only descriptive, in some cases people use it as the name of a genre
9.
England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain in its centre and south, and includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight. England became a state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the worlds first industrialised nation, Englands terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north and in the southwest, the capital is London, which is the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the name England is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means land of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, the Angles came from the Angeln peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as Engla londe, is in the ninth century translation into Old English of Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars, it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. An alternative name for England is Albion, the name Albion originally referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo, in it are two very large islands called Britannia, these are Albion and Ierne. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, the word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins. Albion is now applied to England in a poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago, Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years
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Scotland
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Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It shares a border with England to the south, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east. In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles, the Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707. By inheritance in 1603, James VI, King of Scots, became King of England and King of Ireland, Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England on 1 May 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain. The union also created a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeded both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles, titles, the legal system within Scotland has also remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland, Scotland constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in both public and private law. Glasgow, Scotlands largest city, was one of the worlds leading industrial cities. Other major urban areas are Aberdeen and Dundee, Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union. This has given Aberdeen, the third-largest city in Scotland, the title of Europes oil capital, following a referendum in 1997, a Scottish Parliament was re-established, in the form of a devolved unicameral legislature comprising 129 members, having authority over many areas of domestic policy. Scotland is represented in the UK Parliament by 59 MPs and in the European Parliament by 6 MEPs, Scotland is also a member nation of the British–Irish Council, and the British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Scotland comes from Scoti, the Latin name for the Gaels, the Late Latin word Scotia was initially used to refer to Ireland. By the 11th century at the latest, Scotia was being used to refer to Scotland north of the River Forth, alongside Albania or Albany, the use of the words Scots and Scotland to encompass all of what is now Scotland became common in the Late Middle Ages. Repeated glaciations, which covered the land mass of modern Scotland. It is believed the first post-glacial groups of hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 12,800 years ago, the groups of settlers began building the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, and the first villages around 6,000 years ago. The well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the mainland of Orkney dates from this period and it contains the remains of an early Bronze Age ruler laid out on white quartz pebbles and birch bark. It was also discovered for the first time that early Bronze Age people placed flowers in their graves, in the winter of 1850, a severe storm hit Scotland, causing widespread damage and over 200 deaths. In the Bay of Skaill, the storm stripped the earth from a large irregular knoll, when the storm cleared, local villagers found the outline of a village, consisting of a number of small houses without roofs. William Watt of Skaill, the laird, began an amateur excavation of the site, but after uncovering four houses
11.
Ireland
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Ireland is an island in the North Atlantic. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, Ireland is the second-largest island of the British Isles, the third-largest in Europe, and the twentieth-largest on Earth. Politically, Ireland is divided between the Republic of Ireland, which covers five-sixths of the island, and Northern Ireland, in 2011, the population of Ireland was about 6.4 million, ranking it the second-most populous island in Europe after Great Britain. Just under 4.6 million live in the Republic of Ireland, the islands geography comprises relatively low-lying mountains surrounding a central plain, with several navigable rivers extending inland. The island has lush vegetation, a product of its mild, thick woodlands covered the island until the Middle Ages. As of 2013, the amount of land that is wooded in Ireland is about 11% of the total, there are twenty-six extant mammal species native to Ireland. The Irish climate is moderate and classified as oceanic. As a result, winters are milder than expected for such a northerly area, however, summers are cooler than those in Continental Europe. Rainfall and cloud cover are abundant, the earliest evidence of human presence in Ireland is dated at 10,500 BC. Gaelic Ireland had emerged by the 1st century CE, the island was Christianised from the 5th century onward. Following the Norman invasion in the 12th century, England claimed sovereignty over Ireland, however, English rule did not extend over the whole island until the 16th–17th century Tudor conquest, which led to colonisation by settlers from Britain. In the 1690s, a system of Protestant English rule was designed to materially disadvantage the Catholic majority and Protestant dissenters, with the Acts of Union in 1801, Ireland became a part of the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland saw much civil unrest from the late 1960s until the 1990s and this subsided following a political agreement in 1998. In 1973 the Republic of Ireland joined the European Economic Community while the United Kingdom, Irish culture has had a significant influence on other cultures, especially in the fields of literature. Alongside mainstream Western culture, an indigenous culture exists, as expressed through Gaelic games, Irish music. The culture of the island shares many features with that of Great Britain, including the English language, and sports such as association football, rugby, horse racing. The name Ireland derives from Old Irish Eriu and this in turn derives from Proto-Celtic *Iveriu, which is also the source of Latin Hibernia. Iveriu derives from a root meaning fat, prosperous, during the last glacial period, and up until about 9000 years ago, most of Ireland was covered with ice, most of the time
12.
Wales
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Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, and it had a population in 2011 of 3,063,456 and has a total area of 20,779 km2. Wales has over 1,680 miles of coastline and is mountainous, with its higher peaks in the north and central areas, including Snowdon. The country lies within the temperate zone and has a changeable. Welsh national identity emerged among the Celtic Britons after the Roman withdrawal from Britain in the 5th century, Llywelyn ap Gruffudds death in 1282 marked the completion of Edward I of Englands conquest of Wales, though Owain Glyndŵr briefly restored independence to Wales in the early 15th century. The whole of Wales was annexed by England and incorporated within the English legal system under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542, distinctive Welsh politics developed in the 19th century. Welsh Liberalism, exemplified in the early 20th century by Lloyd George, was displaced by the growth of socialism, Welsh national feeling grew over the century, Plaid Cymru was formed in 1925 and the Welsh Language Society in 1962. Established under the Government of Wales Act 1998, the National Assembly for Wales holds responsibility for a range of devolved policy matters, two-thirds of the population live in south Wales, mainly in and around Cardiff, Swansea and Newport, and in the nearby valleys. Now that the countrys traditional extractive and heavy industries have gone or are in decline, Wales economy depends on the sector, light and service industries. Wales 2010 gross value added was £45.5 billion, over 560,000 Welsh language speakers live in Wales, and the language is spoken by a majority of the population in parts of the north and west. From the late 19th century onwards, Wales acquired its popular image as the land of song, Rugby union is seen as a symbol of Welsh identity and an expression of national consciousness. The Old English-speaking Anglo-Saxons came to use the term Wælisc when referring to the Celtic Britons in particular, the modern names for some Continental European lands and peoples have a similar etymology. The modern Welsh name for themselves is Cymry, and Cymru is the Welsh name for Wales and these words are descended from the Brythonic word combrogi, meaning fellow-countrymen. The use of the word Cymry as a self-designation derives from the location in the post-Roman Era of the Welsh people in modern Wales as well as in northern England and southern Scotland. It emphasised that the Welsh in modern Wales and in the Hen Ogledd were one people, in particular, the term was not applied to the Cornish or the Breton peoples, who are of similar heritage, culture, and language to the Welsh. The word came into use as a self-description probably before the 7th century and it is attested in a praise poem to Cadwallon ap Cadfan c. 633. Thereafter Cymry prevailed as a reference to the Welsh, until c.1560 the word was spelt Kymry or Cymry, regardless of whether it referred to the people or their homeland. The Latinised forms of names, Cambrian, Cambric and Cambria, survive as lesser-used alternative names for Wales, Welsh
13.
Music of the United States
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The music of the United States reflects the countrys multi-ethnic population through a diverse array of styles. It is a mixture of music influenced by West African, Irish, Scottish, the United States has the worlds largest music market with a total retail value of 4,898.3 million dollars in 2014, and its music is heard around the world. Since the beginning of the 20th century, some forms of American popular music have gained a global audience. Native Americans were the earliest inhabitants of the land that is known as the United States. Beginning in the 17th century, immigrants from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Germany, African slaves brought musical traditions, and each subsequent wave of immigrants contributed to a melting pot. Much of modern music can trace its roots to the emergence in the late 19th century of African American blues. The African American basis for popular music used elements derived from European, there are also strong African roots in the music tradition of the original white settlers, such as country and bluegrass. Many American cities and towns have vibrant music scenes which, in turn, Modern day music is heavily influenced by previous and present African-American music genres. Some distinct aspects of American music, like the format, are derived from African techniques. Throughout the later part of American history, and into modern times, the Civil War, and the period following it, saw a general flowering of American art, literature and music. Amateur musical ensembles of this era can be seen as the birth of American popular music, Music author David Ewen describes these early amateur bands as combining the depth and drama of the classics with undemanding technique, eschewing complexity in favor of direct expression. If it was music, the words would be in English. In a way, it was part of the awakening of America that happened after the Civil War, a time in which American painters, writers. Music intertwines with aspects of American social and cultural identity, including through social class, race and ethnicity, geography, religion, language, gender, the relationship between music and race is perhaps the most potent determiner of musical meaning in the United States. The development of an African American musical identity, out of disparate sources from Africa, little documentation exists of colonial-era African American music, when styles, songs, and instruments from across West Africa commingled in the melting pot of slavery. In contrast, country music derives from both African and European, as well as Native American and Hawaiian, traditions and yet has long been perceived as a form of white music. Country music is also intertwined with identity, and is specifically rural in origin and function, other genres, like R&B. For much of American history, music-making has been a feminized activity, in the 19th century, amateur piano and singing were considered proper for middle- and upper-class women
14.
British Invasion
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Pop and rock groups such as the Beatles, the Dave Clark Five, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones, Hermans Hermits, and the Animals were at the forefront of the invasion. The rebellious tone and image of US rock and roll and blues musicians became popular with British youth in the late 1950s, some observers have noted that US teenagers were growing tired of singles-oriented pop acts like Fabian. The Mods and Rockers, two gangs in mid-1960s Britain, also had an impact in British Invasion music. Bands with a Mod aesthetic became the most popular, but bands able to both were also successful. In October 1963, the first newspaper articles about the frenzy in England surrounding the group the Beatles appeared nationally in the US. The Beatles November 4 Royal Variety Performance in front of the Queen Mother sparked music industry, during November a number of major American print outlets and two network television evening programs published and broadcast stories on the phenomenon that became known as Beatlemania. On December 17 James had Miss Albert introduce I Want to Hold Your Hand live on the air, wWDCs phones lit up, and Washington, D. C. area record stores were flooded with requests for a record they did not have in stock. James sent the record to disc jockeys around the country sparking similar reaction. On December 26 Capitol Records released the three weeks ahead of schedule. The release of the record during a time when teenagers were on vacation helped spread Beatlemania in the US, on December 29 The Baltimore Sun, reflecting the dismissive view of most adults, editorialized, America had better take thought as to how it will deal with the invasion. Indeed a restrained Beatles go home might be just the thing, in the next year alone, the Beatles would have 30 different listings on the Hot 100. On January 3,1964, The Jack Paar Program ran Beatles concert footage licensed from the BBC as a joke, while this piece was largely forgotten, Beatles producer George Martin has said it aroused the kids curiosity. I Want to Hold Your Hand ascended to one on the January 25,1964, edition of Cash Box magazine. Two days later appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. Nielsen Ratings estimated that 45 percent of US television viewers that night saw their appearance, according to Michael Ross, It is somewhat ironic that the biggest moment in the history of popular music was first experienced in the US as a television event. The Ed Sullivan Show had for some time been a comfortable hearth-and-slippers experience, not many of the 73 million viewers watching in February 1964 would fully understand what impact the band they were watching would have. The Beatles soon incited contrasting reactions and, in the process, generated more novelty records than anyone - at least 200 during their 1964-1965 takeover and many more later. Among the many reactions, favoring the hysteria, British girl group The Carefrees We Love You Beatles and, on Tuff Records, disapproving the pandemonium, American group the Four Preps A Letter to the Beatles and American comedian Allan Shermans Pop Hates the Beatles
15.
New wave of British heavy metal
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The new wave of British heavy metal was a nationwide musical movement that started in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s and achieved international attention by the early 1980s. The DIY attitude of the new metal bands led to the spread of raw-sounding, self-produced recordings, song lyrics were usually about escapist themes such as mythology, fantasy, horror and the rock lifestyle. The NWOBHM began as an underground phenomenon growing in parallel to punk and it was only through the promotion of rock DJ Neal Kay and Sounds campaigning that it reached the public consciousness and gained radio airplay, recognition and success in the UK. The movement involved mostly young, white, male and working-class musicians and fans, as a reaction to their bleak reality, they created a community separate from mainstream society to enjoy each others company and their favourite loud music. The NWOBHM was heavily criticised for the hype generated by local media in favour of mostly talentless musicians. The movement spawned perhaps a metal bands, but only a few survived the advent of MTV. Among them, Iron Maiden and Def Leppard became international stars, other groups, such as Diamond Head, Venom and Raven, remained underground, but were a major influence on the successful extreme metal subgenres of the late 1980s and 1990s. Many bands from the NWOBHM reunited in the 2000s and remained active through live performances, as a consequence of deindustrialization, the unemployment rate was exceptionally high, especially among working class youth. It continued to rise in the early 1980s, peaking in February 1983, the discontent of so many people caused social unrest with frequent strikes, and culminated in a series of riots. These self-proclaimed punks were politically militant, relishing their anarchic attitude and they wore short and spiked hairstyles or shaved heads, often with safety pins and ripped clothes, and considered musical prowess unimportant as long as the music was simple and loud. The UK was a cradle of the first wave of heavy metal, of the many British bands that came to prominence during that period, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple achieved worldwide success and critical acclaim. The success of the genre, usually called heavy rock at the time, generated a community of UK fans with strong ties to psychedelia, hippie doctrines. Some writers even declared the premature demise of heavy metal altogether, foreign hard rock acts, such as Blue Öyster Cult and Kiss from the US, Rush from Canada, Scorpions from Germany, and especially AC/DC from Australia, climbed the British charts in the same period. The band Motörhead was founded in 1975 by already experienced musicians and their leader Ian Lemmy Kilmister was a former member of the space rock band Hawkwind, Larry Wallis had played with Pink Fairies, and Eddie Clarke had been a member of Curtis Knights Zeus. Their previous experience is one element which divides critics and fans over whether the band belongs to the new wave of British heavy metal, didnt do us much good, because Motörhead came along a bit too early for it. Other critics view Motörhead as the first significant exponent of the movement and their fast music, the renunciation of technical virtuosity in favour of sheer loudness, and their uncompromising attitude were welcomed equally by punks and heavy metal fans. Motörhead were supported by many NWOBHM bands on tour, and they shared the stage with Lemmys friends punk band The Damned. Motörheads musical style became popular during the NWOBHM, making them a fundamental reference for the nascent movement
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Britpop
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The most successful bands associated with the movement are Oasis, Blur, Suede and Pulp, those groups would come to be known as its big four. The timespan of Britpop is generally considered to be 1993-1997, with 1994-1995, an influence they shared in particular was the Smiths. These bands were joined by others including Oasis, Pulp, The Verve, Supergrass, Cast, Placebo, Space, Sleeper. Britpop groups brought British alternative rock into the mainstream and formed the backbone of a larger British cultural movement called Cool Britannia, the Battle of Britpop brought Britpop to the forefront of the British press in 1995. By 1997, however, the movement began to slow down, many began to falter. The popularity of the pop group the Spice Girls snatched the spirit of the age from those responsible for Britpop. Although its more popular bands were able to spread their commercial success overseas, especially to the United States, the movement largely fell apart by the end of the decade. Britpop bands show elements from the British pop music of the Sixties, glam rock and punk rock of the Seventies, and indie pop of the Eighties in their music, attitude, and clothing. Specific influences vary, Blur and Oasis drew from the Kinks, regardless, Britpop artists project a sense of reverence for British pop sounds of the past. Alternative rock acts from the scene of the Eighties and early Nineties were the direct ancestors of the Britpop movement. The influence of the Smiths is common to the majority of Britpop artists, local identity and regional British accents are common to Britpop groups, as well as references to British places and culture in lyrics and image. Stylistically, Britpop bands use catchy hooks and lyrics that were relevant to young British people of their own generation, Britpop bands conversely denounced grunge as irrelevant and having nothing to say about their lives. Damon Albarn of Blur summed up the attitude in 1993 when after being asked if Blur were a band he said, Well. If punk was about getting rid of hippies, then Im getting rid of grunge, in spite of the professed disdain for the genres, some elements of both crept into the more enduring facets of Britpop. The imagery associated with Britpop was equally British and working class, a rise in unabashed maleness, exemplified by Loaded magazine and lad culture in general, would be very much part of the Britpop era. The emphasis on British reference points made it difficult for the genre to achieve success in the US, journalist John Harris has suggested that Britpop began when Blurs single Popscene and Suedes The Drowners were released around the same time in the spring of 1992. He stated, f Britpop started anywhere, it was the deluge of acclaim that greeted Suedes first records, all of them audacious, successful and very, very British. Suede were the first of the new crop of guitar-orientated bands to be embraced by the UK music media as Britains answer to Seattles grunge sound and their debut album Suede became the fastest-selling debut album in the history of the UK
17.
Music industry
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The modern Western music industry emerged between the 1930s and 1950s, when records replaced sheet music as the most important product in the music business. In the commercial world, the recording industry–a reference to recording performances of songs and pieces, labels outside of these three major labels are referred to as independent labels. The largest portion of the music market for concerts and tours is controlled by Live Nation. Live Nation is a subsidiary of iHeartMedia Inc, which is the largest owner of radio stations in the United States. In the first decades of the 2000s, the industry underwent drastic changes with the advent of widespread digital distribution of music via the Internet. A conspicuous indicator of changes is total music sales, since 2000. In 2011, the largest recorded music retailer in the world was now a digital, Internet-based platform operated by a computer company, printed music in Europe, Music publishing using machine-printed sheet music developed during the Renaissance music era in the mid-15th century. The development of music followed the evolution of printing technologies that were first developed for printing regular books. After the mid-15th century, mechanical techniques for printing music were first developed. The earliest example, a set of chants, dates from about 1465. Prior to this time, music had to be copied out by hand, to copy music notation by hand was a very costly, labor-intensive and time-consuming process, so it was usually undertaken only by monks and priests seeking to preserve sacred music for the church. The few collections of music that are extant were commissioned and owned by wealthy aristocrats. Examples include the Squarcialupi Codex of Italian Trecento music and the Chantilly Codex of French Ars subtilior music, the use of printing enabled sheet music to reproduced much more quickly and at a much lower cost than hand-copying music notation. This helped musical styles to spread to cities and countries more quickly. With music printing, though, a composers music could be printed, as sheet music of major composers pieces and songs began to be printed and distributed in a wider area, this enabled composers and listeners to hear new styles and forms of music. A German composer could buy songs written by an Italian or English composer, and this led to more blending of musical styles from different countries and regions. The pioneer of music printing was Ottaviano Petrucci, a printer and publisher who was able to secure a twenty-year monopoly on printed music in Venice during the 16th century. Venice was one of the business and music centers during this period
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Early music of the British Isles
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Surviving sources indicate that there was a rich and varied musical soundscape in medieval Britain. Our understanding of music is limited by a lack of written sources for much of what was an oral culture. In the early Middle Ages, ecclesiastical music was dominated by monophonic plainchant, although no notations of this music survive, later sources suggest distinctive melodic patterns. This was superseded, as elsewhere in Europe, from the 11th century by Gregorian chant, the version of this chant linked to the liturgy as used in the Diocese of Salisbury, the Sarum Use, first recorded from the 13th century, became dominant in England. This Sarum Chant became the model for English composers until it was supplanted at the Reformation in the century, influencing settings for masses, hymns. Scottish collections of music like the thirteenth-century Wolfenbüttel 677, which is associated with St Andrews, contain mostly French compositions, the first notations of Welsh music that survive are from the 14th century, including matins, lauds and vespers for St Davids Day. Included in the list is J, from the mid-15th century we begin to have relatively large numbers of works that have survived from English composers in documents like the early 15th century Old Hall Manuscript. The existence of copies is testament to his widespread fame within Europe. He may have been the first composer to provide liturgical music with an instrumental accompaniment, Royal interest in music is suggested by the works attributed to Roy Henry in the Old Hall Manuscript, suspected to be Henry IV or Henry V. This tradition was continued by figures such as Walter Frye, whose masses were recorded and highly influential in France, often accompanying themselves on the harp, they can also be seen in records of the Scottish courts throughout the medieval period. We also know from the work of Gerald of Wales that at least from the 12th century, many appear to have composed their own works, and can be seen as the first secular composers and some crossed international boundaries, transferring songs and styles of music. Because literacy, and musical notation in particular were preserves of the clergy in this period the survival of music is much more limited than for church music. Nevertheless, some were noted, occasionally by clergymen who had an interest in secular music, England in particular produced three distinctive secular musical forms in this period, the rota, the polyphonic votive antiphon and the carol. A rota is the a form of round, known to have been used from the 13th century in England, de Wycombe, precentor of the priory of Leominster in Herefordshire, and set for six parts. Although few are recorded, the use of rotas seems to have been widespread in England, polyphonic votive antiphons emerged in England in the 14th century as a setting of a text honouring the Virgin Mary, but separate from the mass and office, often after compline. Towards the end of the 15th century they began to be written by English composers as expanded settings for as many as nine parts with increasing complexity, the largest collection of such antiphons is in the late 15th century Eton choirbook. Carols developed in the 14th century as simple songs with a verse, carols were usually connected with a religious festival, particularly Christmas. They were derived from a form of dance accompanied by singers
19.
Roman de la Rose
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The Roman de la Rose, is a medieval French poem styled as an allegorical dream vision. It is an instance of courtly literature. The works stated purpose is to entertain and to teach others about the Art of Love. At various times in the poem, the Rose of the title is seen as the name of the lady, likewise, the other characters names function both as regular names and as abstractions illustrating the various factors that are involved in a love affair. The poem was written in two stages, the first 4058 lines, written by Guillaume de Lorris circa 1230, describe the attempts of a courtier to woo his beloved. This part of the story is set in a garden or locus amoenus. Around 1275, Jean de Meun composed an additional 17,724 lines, in this enormous coda, allegorical personages hold forth on love. The work was popular and controversial—one of the most widely read works in France for three centuries, and possibly the most read book in Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries. Its emphasis on language and imagery provoked attacks by Jean Gerson, Christine de Pizan and many other writers. About 300 manuscripts are extant, one of the highest figures for a secular work, there are also seven incunabula printed editions before 1500, the first from Geneva in about 1481, followed by two from Lyons in the 1480s and four from Paris in the 1490s. An edition from Lyons in 1503 is illustrated with 140 woodcuts, Digital images of more than 140 of these manuscripts are available for study in the Roman de la Rose Digital Library. Part of the story was translated from its original Old French into Middle English as The Romaunt of the Rose, chaucer was familiar with the original French text, and a portion of the Middle English translation is thought to be his work. Critics suggest that the character of La Vieille acted as material for Chaucers Wife of Bath. There were several early translations into languages including Middle Dutch. Il Fiore is a reduction of the poem into 232 Italian sonnets by a ser Durante, sometimes thought to have been Dante, Dante never mentions the Roman, but is often said to have been highly conscious of it in his own work. In 1900, the pre-Raphaelite F. S. Ellis translated the whole of the poem into English verse, C. S. Lewiss 1936 study The Allegory of Love renewed interest in the poem. Ars Amatoria - the art of love Guillaume de Lorris et Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, lettres gothiques, Livre de Poche, Librairie Générale Française,1992. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, The Romance of the Rose, Oxford Worlds Classics, Oxford University Press,1999
20.
Baroque
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The style began around 1600 in Rome and Italy, and spread to most of Europe. The aristocracy viewed the dramatic style of Baroque art and architecture as a means of impressing visitors by projecting triumph, power, Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases, and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence. However, baroque has a resonance and application that extend beyond a reduction to either a style or period. It is also yields the Italian barocco and modern Spanish barroco, German Barock, Dutch Barok, others derive it from the mnemonic term Baroco, a supposedly laboured form of syllogism in logical Scholastica. The Latin root can be found in bis-roca, in informal usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is elaborate, with many details, without reference to the Baroque styles of the 17th and 18th centuries. The word Baroque, like most periodic or stylistic designations, was invented by later critics rather than practitioners of the arts in the 17th, the term Baroque was initially used in a derogatory sense, to underline the excesses of its emphasis. In particular, the term was used to describe its eccentric redundancy and noisy abundance of details, although it was long thought that the word as a critical term was first applied to architecture, in fact it appears earlier in reference to music. Another hypothesis says that the word comes from precursors of the style, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and he did not make the distinctions between Mannerism and Baroque that modern writers do, and he ignored the later phase, the academic Baroque that lasted into the 18th century. Long despised, Baroque art and architecture became fashionable between the two World Wars, and has remained in critical favour. In painting the gradual rise in popular esteem of Caravaggio has been the best barometer of modern taste, William Watson describes a late phase of Shang-dynasty Chinese ritual bronzes of the 11th century BC as baroque. The term Baroque may still be used, usually pejoratively, describing works of art, craft, the appeal of Baroque style turned consciously from the witty, intellectual qualities of 16th-century Mannerist art to a visceral appeal aimed at the senses. It employed an iconography that was direct, simple, obvious, germinal ideas of the Baroque can also be found in the work of Michelangelo. Even more generalised parallels perceived by some experts in philosophy, prose style, see the Neapolitan palace of Caserta, a Baroque palace whose construction began in 1752. In paintings Baroque gestures are broader than Mannerist gestures, less ambiguous, less arcane and mysterious, more like the stage gestures of opera, Baroque poses depend on contrapposto, the tension within the figures that move the planes of shoulders and hips in counterdirections. Baroque is a style of unity imposed upon rich, heavy detail, Baroque style featured exaggerated lighting, intense emotions, release from restraint, and even a kind of artistic sensationalism. There were highly diverse strands of Italian baroque painting, from Caravaggio to Cortona, the most prominent Spanish painter of the Baroque was Diego Velázquez. The later Baroque style gradually gave way to a more decorative Rococo, while the Baroque nature of Rembrandts art is clear, the label is less often used for Vermeer and many other Dutch artists. Flemish Baroque painting shared a part in this trend, while continuing to produce the traditional categories
21.
Classical music
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Classical music is art music produced or rooted in the traditions of Western music, including both liturgical and secular music. The central norms of this tradition became codified between 1550 and 1900, which is known as the common-practice period, Western staff notation is used by composers to indicate to the performer the pitches, tempo, meter and rhythms for a piece of music. This can leave less room for such as improvisation and ad libitum ornamentation. The term classical music did not appear until the early 19th century, the earliest reference to classical music recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is from about 1836. This score typically determines details of rhythm, pitch, and, the written quality of the music has enabled a high level of complexity within them, J. S. The use of written notation also preserves a record of the works, Musical notation enables 2000s-era performers to sing a choral work from the 1300s Renaissance era or a 1700s Baroque concerto with many of the features of the music being reproduced. That said, the score does not provide complete and exact instructions on how to perform a historical work, even if the tempo is written with an Italian instruction, we do not know exactly how fast the piece should be played. Bach was particularly noted for his complex improvisations, during the Classical era, the composer-performer Mozart was noted for his ability to improvise melodies in different styles. During the Classical era, some virtuoso soloists would improvise the cadenza sections of a concerto, during the Romantic era, Beethoven would improvise at the piano. The instruments currently used in most classical music were largely invented before the mid-19th century and they consist of the instruments found in an orchestra or in a concert band, together with several other solo instruments. The symphony orchestra is the most widely known medium for music and includes members of the string, woodwind, brass. The concert band consists of members of the woodwind, brass and it generally has a larger variety and number of woodwind and brass instruments than the orchestra but does not have a string section. However, many bands use a double bass. Many of the used to perform medieval music still exist. Medieval instruments included the flute, the recorder and plucked string instruments like the lute. As well, early versions of the organ, fiddle, Medieval instruments in Europe had most commonly been used singly, often self accompanied with a drone note, or occasionally in parts. From at least as early as the 13th century through the 15th century there was a division of instruments into haut, during the earlier medieval period, the vocal music from the liturgical genre, predominantly Gregorian chant, was monophonic, using a single, unaccompanied vocal melody line. Polyphonic vocal genres, which used multiple independent vocal melodies, began to develop during the medieval era, becoming prevalent by the later 13th
22.
Polyphony
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Within the context of the Western musical tradition, the term polyphony is usually used to refer to music of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Baroque forms such as fugue, which might be called polyphonic, are usually described instead as contrapuntal. In all cases the conception was probably what Margaret Bent calls dyadic counterpoint, with part being written generally against one other part. The term polyphony is also used more broadly, to describe any musical texture that is not monophonic. Such a perspective considers homophony as a sub-type of polyphony, traditional polyphony has a wide, if uneven, distribution among the peoples of the world. Most polyphonic regions of the world are in sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and it is believed that the origins of polyphony in traditional music vastly predate the emergence of polyphony in European professional music. Currently there are two approaches to the problem of the origins of vocal polyphony, the Cultural Model. Although the exact origins of polyphony in the Western church traditions are unknown,900, are usually considered the oldest extant written examples of polyphony. These treatises provided examples of two-voice note-against-note embellishments of chants using parallel octaves, fifths, rather than being fixed works, they indicated ways of improvising polyphony during performance. 1000, is the oldest extant example of notated polyphony for chant performance, European polyphony rose out of melismatic organum, the earliest harmonization of the chant. Twelfth-century composers, such as Léonin and Pérotin developed the organum that was introduced centuries earlier, the lyrics of love poems might be sung above sacred texts in the form of a trope, or the sacred text might be placed within a familiar secular melody. The oldest surviving piece of music is the English rota Sumer is icumen in. These musical innovations appeared in a context of societal change. After the first millennium, European monks decided to start translating the works of Greek philosophers into the vernacular, Western Europeans were aware of Plato, Socrates, and Hippocrates during the Middle Ages. However they had largely lost touch with the content of their surviving works because the use of Greek as a language was restricted to the lands of the Eastern Roman Empire. Once these ancient works started being translated thus becoming accessible, the philosophies had a impact on the mind of Western Europe. This sparked a number of innovations in medicine, science, art, European polyphony rose prior to, and during the period of the Western Schism. Avignon, the seat of the antipopes, was a center of secular music-making
23.
Ars nova
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The term is sometimes used more generally to refer to all European polyphonic music of the 14th century. For instance, Italian ars nova is sometimes used to denote the music of Francesco Landini, the ars in ars nova can be read as technique, or style. The term was first used in two treatises, titled Ars novae musicae by Johannes de Muris, and a collection of writings attributed to Philippe de Vitry often simply called Ars nova today. However, the term was only first used to describe an era by Johannes Wolf in 1904. Roughly, then, the ars antiqua is the music of the century. Other musical periods and styles have at times been called the new art, however, in modern historiographical usage. Stylistically, the music of the ars nova differed from the era in several ways. The overall aesthetic effect of changes was to create music of greater expressiveness. The most famous practitioner of the new style was Guillaume de Machaut. The ars-nova style is evident in his body of motets, lais, virelais, rondeaux. Denkmäler alter Musik aus dem Codex Reina, esther Lamandier, voice, harp, and portative organ. La fontaine amoureuse, Poetry and Music of Guillaume de Machaut, Music for a While, with Tom Klunis, narrator. La Messe de Nostre Dame und Motetten, James Bowman, Tom Sutcliffe, countertenors, Capella Antiqua München. La messe de Nostre Dame, Le voir dit, Messe de Notre Dame, Le lai de la fonteinne, Ma fin est mon commencement. Philippe De Vitry and the Ars Nova—Motets, sequentia Freiburg, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi,1991. Jean Bollery, Studio der Frühen Musik, anne Azéma, Dominique Visse, Boston Camerata and Ensemble Project Ars Nova. The Service of Venus and Mars, Music for the Knights of the Garter, the Spirit of England and France I, Music of the Late Middle Ages for Court and Church. The Study of Love, French Songs and Motets of the 14th Century, in Medieval France, An Encyclopedia, edited by William W. Kibler, Grover A. Zinn, Lawrence Earp, and John Bell Henneman, Jr. 72–73
24.
Round (music)
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It is one of the easiest forms of part singing, as only one line of melody need be learned by all parts, and is part of a popular musical tradition. They were particularly favoured in glee clubs, which combined amateur singing with regular drinking, the earliest known rounds date from the 12th century. Though not all rounds are nursery rhymes, Row, Row, Row Your Boat is a well-known childrens round for four voices, other well-known examples are Frère Jacques and Three Blind Mice. A catch is a round in which a phrase that is not apparent in a line of lyrics emerges when the lyrics are split between the different voices. Perpetual canon refers to the end of the melody leading back to the beginning, allowing easy, often, the final cadence is the same as the first measure. The term round first appears in English in the early 16th century, in medieval England, they were called rota or rondellus. Later, a term was roundel. Special types of rounds are the catch, and a use of the word canon, in 17th-. The oldest surviving round in English is Sumer Is Icumen In Play, however, the earliest known rounds are two works with Latin texts found in the eleventh fascicle of the Notre Dame manuscript Pluteo 29.1. They are Leto leta concio and O quanto consilio, the former dates from before 1180 and may be of German origin. The first published rounds in English were printed by Thomas Ravenscroft in 1609, the canon, or rule, of a simple round is that each voice enters after a set interval of time, at the same pitch, using the same notes. This is easiest with one chord, as in Row, Row, Row Your Boat Play, if one ignores the sixteenth notes that pass between the main chords, every single note is in the tonic triad—in this case, a C, E, or G. Examples by J. S. Bach include the canons, Var.3 and Var.24 of the Goldberg Variations. Several rounds are included amongst Arnold Schoenbergs thirty-plus canons, which within their natural limitations, are brilliant pieces, containing too much of the composers characteristically unexpected blend of seriousness, humour, vigour and tenderness to remain unperformed. Voice crossing Voice exchange Aldrich, Henry, the Aldrich Book of Catches, edited by B. W. Robinson and R. F. Hall. Rondellus, Canon, and Related Types before 1300, journal of the American Musicological Society 25, no. The NPR Classical Music Companion, Terms and Concepts from A to Z. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, reprinted as The NPR Classical Music Companion, An Essential Guide for Enlightened Listening, Paw Prints binding,2005. The Operas of Benjamin Britten, An Introduction, New York and Washington, Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers
25.
Antiphon
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An antiphon in Christian music and ritual is a responsory by a choir or congregation, usually in the form of a Gregorian chant, to a psalm or other text in a religious service or musical work. Antiphony is now used for any call and response style of singing, such as the kirtan. Antiphonal music is music that is performed by two semi-independent choirs in interaction, often singing alternate musical phrases, antiphonal psalmody is the singing or musical playing of psalms by alternating groups of performers. An antiphony is also a choir-book containing antiphons, the mirror structure of Hebrew psalms renders it probable that the antiphonal method was present in the services of the ancient Israelites. According to the historian Socrates of Constantinople, antiphony was introduced into Christian worship by Ignatius of Antioch, Antiphons have remained an integral part of the worship in the Byzantine and Armenian Rite. The practice was not found in the Latin Church until more than two centuries later, Polyphonic Marian antiphons emerged in England in the 14th century as settings of texts honouring the Virgin Mary separately from the mass and office, often after Compline. Towards the end of the 15th century, English composers produced expanded settings up to nine parts, with increasing complexity, the largest collection of such antiphons is the late 15th century Eton Choirbook. As a result, antiphony remains particularly common in the Anglican musical tradition, the Greater Advent or O Antiphons are antiphons used at daily prayer in the evenings of the last days of Advent in various liturgical Christian traditions. Each antiphon is a name of Christ, one of his attributes mentioned in Scripture, in the Roman Catholic tradition, they are sung or recited at Vespers from December 17 to December 23. In the Church of England they have traditionally used as antiphons to the Magnificat at Evening Prayer. More recently they have found a place in liturgical documents throughout the Anglican Communion. Use of the O Antiphons was preserved in Lutheranism at the German Reformation, when two or more groups of singers sing in alternation, the style of music can also be called polychoral. Specifically, this term is applied to music of the late Renaissance. Polychoral techniques are a characteristic of the music of the Venetian school, exemplified by the works of Giovanni Gabrieli. Polychoral music was not limited to Italy in the Renaissance and it was popular in Spain and Germany and there are examples from the 19th and 20th centuries, from composers as diverse as Hector Berlioz, Igor Stravinsky and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Marian antiphon Polyphony Polyphonic form Polyphonic singing Polychoral compositions Latin church music by George Frideric Handel — includes three antiphons, Antiphon O Sapientia quae ex ore Altissimi. Antiphon O Adonai II Great Advent Antiphon File, Schola Gregoriana-Antiphona et Magnificat. ogg
26.
Carol (music)
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A carol is in modern parlance a festive song, generally religious but not necessarily connected with church worship, and often with a dance-like or popular character. The word carol is derived from the Old French word carole, carols were traditionally sung in Latin by clergy of the Catholic church. Following the Protestant Reformation, reformers believed that carols were for everyone to sing, to enable the common person to sing church music, great efforts were made to translate musical texts from Latin into the native languages that people spoke. Composers such as William Byrd composed motet-like works for Christmas that they termed carols, nonetheless, some famous carols were written in this period, and they were more strongly revived from the nineteenth century and began to be written and adapted by eminent composers. Some composers have written extended works based on carols, examples include Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Victor Hely-Hutchinson
27.
Medieval music
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Medieval music consists of songs and instrumental pieces from about 400 A. D. to 1400. Medieval music was an era of Western music, including music used for the church. Medieval music includes vocal music, such as Gregorian chant and choral music, solely instrumental music. Gregorian chant was sung by monks during Catholic Mass, the Mass is a reenactment of Christs Last Supper, intended to provide a spiritual connection between man and God. Part of this connection was established through music and this era begins with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century and ends sometime in the early fifteenth century. Establishing the end of the era and the beginning of the Renaissance music era is difficult. The date range in this article is the one adopted by musicologists. S. Bach and Classical music period composers from the 1700s such as W. A. Mozart, the most obvious of these is the development of a comprehensive music notational system which enabled composers to write out their song melodies and instrumental pieces on parchment or paper. Prior to the development of musical notation, songs and pieces had to be learned by ear and this greatly limited how many people could be taught new music and how wide music could spread to other regions or countries. The development of music made it easier to disseminate songs and musical pieces to a larger number of people. Many instruments used to perform medieval music still exist in the 21st century, the flute was made of wood in the medieval era] rather than silver or other metal, and could be made as a side-blown or end-blown instrument. While modern orchestral flutes are made of metal and have complex key mechanisms and airtight pads. The recorder was made of wood during the Medieval era, and despite the fact that in the 2000s, it may be made of synthetic materials, it has more or less retained its past form. The gemshorn is similar to the recorder as it has holes on its front. One of the predecessors, the pan flute, was popular in medieval times. This instruments pipes were made of wood, and were graduated in length to produce different pitches, Medieval music used many plucked string instruments like the lute, a fretted instrument with a pear-shaped hollow body which is the predecessor to the modern guitar. Other plucked stringed instruments included the mandore, gittern, citole, the bowed lyra of the Byzantine Empire was the first recorded European bowed string instrument. Like the modern violin, a performer produced sound by moving a bow with tensioned hair over tensioned strings, the hurdy-gurdy was a mechanical violin using a rosined wooden wheel attached to a crank to bow its strings
28.
Reformation
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The period is usually considered to have begun with the publication of the Ninety-five Theses by Luther in 1517 to the Thirty Years War and ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The Protestant position, however, would come to incorporate doctrinal changes such as sola scriptura, the initial movement within Germany diversified, and other reform impulses arose independently of Luther. The spread of Gutenbergs printing press provided the means for the dissemination of religious materials in the vernacular. The largest groups were the Lutherans and Calvinists, Lutheran churches were founded mostly in Germany, the Baltics and Scandinavia, while the Reformed ones were founded in Switzerland, Hungary, France, the Netherlands and Scotland. The new movement influenced the Church of England decisively after 1547 under Edward VI and Elizabeth I, there were also reformation movements throughout continental Europe known as the Radical Reformation, which gave rise to the Anabaptist, Moravian and other Pietistic movements. The Roman Catholic Church responded with a Counter-Reformation initiated by the Council of Trent, much work in battling Protestantism was done by the well-organised new order of the Jesuits. In general, Northern Europe, with the exception of most of Ireland, southern Europe remained Roman Catholic, while Central Europe was a site of a fierce conflict, culminating in the Thirty Years War, which left it devastated. The oldest Protestant churches, such as the Unitas Fratrum and Moravian Church, the later Protestant Churches generally date their doctrinal separation from the Roman Catholic Church to the 16th century. The Reformation began as an attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church, by priests who opposed what they perceived as false doctrines and ecclesiastic malpractice. They especially objected to the teaching and the sale of indulgences, and the abuses thereof, and to simony, the reformers saw these practices as evidence of the systemic corruption of the Churchs hierarchy, which included the pope. Unrest due to the Great Schism of Western Christianity excited wars between princes, uprisings among the peasants, and widespread concern over corruption in the Church, New perspectives came from John Wycliffe at Oxford University and from Jan Hus at the Charles University in Prague. Hus rejected indulgences and adopted a doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone, the Roman Catholic Church officially concluded this debate at the Council of Constance by condemning Hus, who was executed by burning despite a promise of safe-conduct. Wycliffe was posthumously condemned as a heretic and his corpse exhumed and burned in 1428, the Council of Constance confirmed and strengthened the traditional medieval conception of church and empire. The council did not address the national tensions or the theological tensions stirred up during the century and could not prevent schism. Pope Sixtus IV established the practice of selling indulgences to be applied to the dead, Pope Alexander VI was one of the most controversial of the Renaissance popes. He was the father of seven children, including Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia, in response to papal corruption, particularly the sale of indulgences, Luther wrote The Ninety-Five Theses. The Reformation was born of Luthers dual declaration – first, the discovering of Jesus and salvation by faith alone, the Protestant reformers were unanimous in agreement and this understanding of prophecy furnished importance to their deeds. It was the point and the battle cry that made the Reformation nearly unassailable
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Madrigal
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A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied, the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six and it is quite distinct from the Italian Trecento madrigal of the late 13th and 14th centuries, with which it shares only the name. Madrigals originated in Italy during the 1520s, unlike many strophic forms of the time, most madrigals were through-composed. In the madrigal, the composer attempted to express the emotion contained in each line, a frottola generally would consist of music set to stanzas of text, while madrigals were through-composed. However, some of the poems were used for both frottola and madrigals. The poetry of Petrarch in particular shows up in a variety of genres. In Italy, the madrigal was the most important secular form of music of its time, the madrigal reached its formal and historical zenith by the second half of the 16th century. English and German composers, too, took up the madrigal in its heyday, after the 1630s, the madrigal began to merge with the cantata and the dialogue. With the rise of opera in the early 17th century, the aria gradually displaced the madrigal, in the early 16th century, several humanistic trends converged which allowed the madrigal to form. First, there was a reawakened interest in use of Italian as a vernacular language, third, printed secular music had become widely available in Italy due to the recent invention of moveable type and the printing press. The music being written and sung, principally the frottola but also the ballata, canzonetta, and mascherata, was light and these popular music styles used repetition and soprano-dominated chordal textures, styles considerably more simple than those used by most of the resident composers of the Franco-Flemish school. Literary tastes were changing, and the more serious verse of Bembo and his school needed a means of expression more flexible and open than was available in the frottola. The first madrigals were written in Florence, either by native Florentines or by Franco-Flemish musicians in the employment of the Medici family, the madrigal did not replace the frottola right away, during the transitional decade of the 1520s, both frottole and madrigals were written and published. The first book of madrigals labeled as such was the Madrigali de diversi musici, libro de la Serena of Philippe Verdelot. Verdelot, a French composer, had written the pieces in the late 1520s and he included music by both Sebastiano and Costanzo Festa, as well as Maistre Jhan of Ferrara, in addition to his own music. They sold so well that Adrian Willaert made arrangements of some of works for single voice. Verdelot published madrigals for five and six voices as well, with the collection for six voices appearing in 1541, particularly popular was the first collection of madrigals by Jacques Arcadelt. Originally published in Venice, in 1539, it was reprinted throughout Europe for many years after, becoming the most often reprinted madrigal book of the entire era
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Lute
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The European lute and the modern Near-Eastern oud descend from a common ancestor via diverging evolutionary paths. The lute is used in a variety of instrumental music from the Medieval to the late Baroque eras and was the most important instrument for secular music in the Renaissance. It is also an instrument, especially in vocal works. The player of a lute is called a lutenist, lutanist or lutist, the words lute and oud possibly derive from Arabic al-ʿud. Recent research by Eckhard Neubauer suggests ʿud may in turn be an Arabized version of the Persian name rud and it has equally been suggested the wood in the name may have distinguished the instrument by its wooden soundboard from skin-faced predecessors. Gianfranco Lotti suggests the wood appellation originally carried derogatory connotations because of proscriptions of all music in early Islam. Lutes are made almost entirely of wood, the soundboard is a teardrop-shaped thin flat plate of resonant wood. In all lutes the soundboard has a single decorated sound hole under the strings called the rose. The sound hole is not open, but rather covered with a grille in the form of a vine or a decorative knot. Robert Lundberg, in his book Historical Lute Construction, suggests ancient builders placed bars according to ratios of the scale length. He further suggests the inward bend of the soundboard is an adaptation by ancient builders to afford the lutenists right hand more space between the strings and soundboard. Soundboard thickness varies, but generally hovers between 1.5 and 2 mm, some luthiers tune the belly as they build, removing mass and adapting bracing to produce desirable sonic results. The lute belly is almost never finished, but in cases the luthier may size the top with a very thin coat of shellac or glair to help keep it clean. After joining the top to the sides, a half-binding is usually installed around the edge of the soundboard, the half-binding is approximately half the thickness of the soundboard and is usually made of a contrasting color wood. The rebate for the half-binding must be precise to avoid compromising structural integrity. The back or the shell is assembled from strips of hardwood called ribs. There are braces inside on the soundboard to give it strength, the neck is made of light wood, with a veneer of hardwood to provide durability for the fretboard beneath the strings. Unlike most modern stringed instruments, the fretboard is mounted flush with the top
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Masque
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The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment that flourished in 16th- and early 17th-century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio. Professional actors and musicians were hired for the speaking and singing parts, in the tradition of masque, Louis XIV of France danced in ballets at Versailles with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully. The masque tradition developed from the elaborate pageants and courtly shows of ducal Burgundy in the late Middle Ages, masques were typically a complimentary offering to the prince among his guests and might combine pastoral settings, mythological fable, and the dramatic elements of ethical debate. There would invariably be some political and social application of the allegory, such pageants often celebrated a birth, marriage, change of ruler or a Royal Entry and invariably ended with a tableau of bliss and concord. Masque imagery tended to be drawn from Classical rather than Christian sources, Masque thus lent itself to Mannerist treatment in the hands of master designers like Giulio Romano or Inigo Jones. The New Historians, in works like the essays of Bevington, in English masques, purely musical interludes might be accompanied by a dumbshow. The rustic presentation of Pyramus and Thisbe as an entertainment in Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream offers a familiar example. Spectators were invited to join in the dancing, at the end, the players would take off their masks to reveal their identities. A descriptive narrative of a processional masque is the masque of the Seven Deadly Sins in Edmund Spensers The Faerie Queene, a particularly elaborate masque, performed over the course of two weeks for Queen Elizabeth, is described in the 1821 novel Kenilworth, by Sir Walter Scott. Later, in the court of James I, narrative elements of the masque became more significant, plots were often on classical or allegorical themes, glorifying the royal or noble sponsor. At the end, the audience would join with the actors in a final dance, Ben Jonson wrote a number of masques with stage design by Inigo Jones. Their works are thought of as the most significant in the form. Sir Philip Sidney also wrote masques, william Shakespeare wrote a masque-like interlude in The Tempest, understood by modern scholars to have been heavily influenced by the masque texts of Ben Jonson and the stagecraft of Inigo Jones. There is also a sequence in his Romeo and Juliet. John Miltons Comus is described as a masque, though it is reckoned a pastoral play. Reconstructions of Stuart masques have been few and far between, part of the problem is that only texts survive complete, there is no complete music, only fragments, so no authoritative performance can be made without interpretive invention. In the 18th-century, masques were even less frequently staged, but because of its ephemeral nature, not a lot of documentation related to masques remains, and much of what is said about the production and enjoyment of masques is still part speculation. While the masque was no longer as popular as it was at its height in the 17th Century, during the late 17th century, English semi-operas by composers such as Henry Purcell had masque scenes inset between the acts of the play proper
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Renaissance music
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Renaissance music is vocal and instrumental music written and performed in Europe during the Renaissance era. From this changing society emerged a common, unifying musical language, in particular the style of the Franco-Flemish school. The invention of the press in 1440 made it cheaper and easier to distribute music and musical theory texts on a wider geographic scale. Prior to the invention of printing, songs and music that were written down and music theory texts had to be hand-copied, demand for music as entertainment and as a leisure activity for educated amateurs increased with the emergence of a bourgeois class. These musicians were sought throughout Europe, particularly in Italy, where churches and aristocratic courts hired them as composers, performers. This reversed the situation from a hundred years earlier, opera, a dramatic staged genre in which singers are accompanied by instruments, arose at this time in Florence. Opera was developed as an attempt to resurrect the music of ancient Greece. Music was increasingly freed from constraints, and more variety was permitted in range, rhythm, harmony, form. In the Renaissance, music became a vehicle for personal expression, composers found ways to make vocal music more expressive of the texts they were setting. Secular music absorbed techniques from sacred music, and vice versa, popular secular forms such as the chanson and madrigal spread throughout Europe. Courts employed virtuoso performers, both singers and instrumentalists, Music also became more self-sufficient with its availability in printed form, existing for its own sake. Precursor versions of familiar modern instruments developed into new forms during the Renaissance. These instruments were modified to responding to the evolution of musical ideas, Early forms of modern woodwind and brass instruments like the bassoon and trombone also appeared, extending the range of sonic color and increasing the sound of instrumental ensembles. From the Renaissance era, notated secular and sacred music survives in quantity, including vocal and instrumental works, an enormous diversity of musical styles and genres flourished during the Renaissance. These can be heard on recordings made in the 20th and 21st century, including masses, motets, madrigals, chansons, accompanied songs, instrumental dances, beginning in the late 20th century, numerous early music ensembles were formed. One of the most pronounced features of early Renaissance European art music was the reliance on the interval of the third. Polyphony – the use of multiple, independent melodic lines, performed simultaneously – became increasingly elaborate throughout the 14th century, the beginning of the 15th century showed simplification, with the composers often striving for smoothness in the melodic parts. The modal characteristics of Renaissance music began to break down towards the end of the period with the use of root motions of fifths or fourths
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Opera in English
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The history of opera in the English language commences in the 17th century. In this respect such afterpieces anticipate the ballad operas of the 18th century, at the same time, the French masque was gaining a firm hold at the English Court, with lavish splendour and highly realistic scenery. Inigo Jones became the designer of these productions, and this style was to dominate the English stage for three centuries. These masques contained songs and dances, in Ben Jonsons Lovers Made Men, the whole masque was sung after the Italian manner, stilo recitativo. The approach of the English Commonwealth closed theatres and halted any developments that may have led to the establishment of English opera, however, in 1656, the dramatist Sir William Davenant produced The Siege of Rhodes. Since his theatre was not licensed to produce drama, he asked several of the composers to set sections of it to music. This success was followed by The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru and these pieces were encouraged by Oliver Cromwell because they were critical of Spain. With the English Restoration, foreign musicians were welcomed back, in 1673, Thomas Shadwells Psyche, patterned on the 1671 comédie-ballet of the same name produced by Molière and Jean-Baptiste Lully. William Davenant produced The Tempest in the year, which was the first Shakespeare play to be set to music. About 1683, John Blow composed Venus and Adonis, often thought of as the first true English-language opera, blows immediate successor was the better known Henry Purcell. The main characters of the play not to be involved in the musical scenes. Despite these hindrances, his aim was to establish serious opera in England, following Purcell, the popularity of opera in England dwindled. His opera Artaxerxes was the first attempt to set a full-blown opera seria in English and was a huge success and his modernized ballad opera, Love in a Village, was equally novel and began a vogue for pastiche opera that lasted well into the 19th century. Arne was one of the few English composers of the era who, charles Burney wrote that Arne introduced a light, airy, original, and pleasing melody, wholly different from that of Purcell or Handel, whom all English composers had either pillaged or imitated. Another short period of creativity from English composers came in the years going roughly from the 1830s to the 1850s. The Romantic operas of Michael Balfe, Julius Benedict, John Barnett, Edward Loder, G. A. Macfarren, among the main lanes in London for the production of English language opera in those times were Drury Lane, the Princesss Theatre and the Lyceum. The Kings Theatre and the Covent Garden, which were the two opera houses of the city, featured mostly Italian and French opera. This was a source of continuous vexation for English composers who, after the 1870s, the reputation of English Romantic Opera slowly started to decline until, by the end of the century, most critics opinion was against them
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Baroque music
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Baroque music is a style of Western art music composed from approximately 1600 to 1750. This era followed the Renaissance music era, and was followed in turn by the Classical era, Baroque music forms a major portion of the classical music canon, being widely studied, performed, and listened to. The Baroque period saw the creation of tonality, an approach to writing music in which a song or piece is written in a particular key, during the Baroque era, professional musicians were expected to be accomplished improvisers of both solo melodic lines and accompaniment parts. A characteristic Baroque form was the dance suite, while the pieces in a dance suite were inspired by actual dance music, dance suites were designed for listening, not for accompanying dancers. During the period, composers and performers used more elaborate ornamentation, made changes in musical notation. Many musical terms and concepts from this era, such as toccata, fugue, dense, complex polyphonic music, in which multiple independent melody lines were performed simultaneously, was an important part of many Baroque choral and instrumental works. The word baroque comes from the Portuguese word barroco, meaning misshapen pearl, the term Baroque is generally used by music historians to describe a broad range of styles from a wide geographic region, mostly in Europe, composed over a period of approximately 150 years. The systematic application by historians of the baroque to music of this period is a relatively recent development. In 1919, Curt Sachs became the first to apply the five characteristics of Heinrich Wölfflins theory of the Baroque systematically to music, all of these efforts resulted in appreciable disagreement about time boundaries of the period, especially concerning when it began. In English the term acquired currency only in the 1940s, in the writings of Bukofzer, nevertheless, the term has become widely used and accepted for this broad range of music. It may be helpful to distinguish the Baroque from both the preceding and following periods of musical history, the Baroque period is divided into three major phases, early, middle, and late. Although they overlap in time, they are dated from 1580 to 1630, from 1630 to 1680. In reference to music, they based their ideals on a perception of Classical musical drama that valued discourse, the early realizations of these ideas, including Jacopo Peris Dafne and LEuridice, marked the beginning of opera, which were a catalyst for Baroque music. Concerning music theory, the widespread use of figured bass represents the developing importance of harmony as the linear underpinnings of polyphony. Harmony is the end result of counterpoint, and figured bass is a representation of those harmonies commonly employed in musical performance. With figured bass, numbers, accidentals or symbols were placed above the bassline that was read by keyboard instrument players such as players or pipe organists. The numbers, accidentals or symbols indicated to the player what intervals she should play above each bass note. The keyboard player would improvise a chord voicing for each bass note and this led to the idea that certain sequences of chords, rather than just notes, could provide a sense of closure at the end of a piece—one of the fundamental ideas that became known as tonality
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Baroque music of the British Isles
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It was characterised by more elaborate musical ornamentation, changes in musical notation, new instrumental playing techniques and the rise of new genres such as opera. The kings time on the continent, his preference for Catholicism and explicit desire for entertainment led to the embracing of the Baroque, the court became something of a crossroads of European musicians and styles on a much grander scale than previously achieved. As well as encouraging many French musicians to join his court, when he returned he became the Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal and composer to the Court. Although he died aged only 27 he was influential on other English composers like William Turner, John Blow. Early in his career Purcell wrote secular music, including for the theatre, later, as organist of Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal, he devoted himself to sacred music. In both fields he emerged as the most influential British composer of the era and it was directly due to Charles IIs patronage that English language opera, which had briefly surfaced in the 1650s, was re-established in the 1670s. In 1673, Thomas Shadwells Psyche, patterned on the 1671 comédie-ballet of the same name produced by Molière and Jean-Baptiste Lully, William Davenant produced The Tempest in the same year, which was the first Shakespeare play to be set to music. About 1683, Blow composed Venus and Adonis, often thought of as the first true English-language opera, the main characters of the play tended not to be involved in the musical scenes, which meant that Purcell was rarely able to develop his characters through song. After the death of Charles II in 1685, royal patronage of music became less significant, under William III and Mary II there was an emphasis on combating rebellion and foreign policy, rather than on culture. The last of the Stuarts, Queen Anne, had a reputation for being uninterested in culture, the leading figure in British music of the early 18th century was a naturalized Briton, George Frideric Handel. Although he was born in Germany, he first visited England in 1710, later moving there and becoming a naturalised citizen, Handel drew heavily on the continental, particularly Italian, Baroque style, but was also highly influenced by English composers such as Purcell. He was a composer, producing major orchestral works such as the Water Music. His opera, including Rinaldo, Orlando, Ariodante, Alcina and Serse and he was a major influence on future classical composers including Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Ballad operas developed as a form of English stage entertainment, partly in opposition to the Italian domination of the London operatic scene. It consisted of racy and often satirical spoken dialogue, interspersed with songs that were kept very short to minimize disruptions to the flow of the story. Subject matter involved the lower, often criminal, orders, gay produced further works in this style, including a sequel under the title Polly and he was followed by many other composers. His opera Artaxerxes was the first attempt to set a full-blown opera seria in English and was a huge success and it was followed by other works like William Shields Rosina. From the 1730s elegant concert halls began to be built across the country and attendance rivalled that of the theatre, facilitating visits by such as Haydn, J. C. Bach
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Musical notation
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Types and methods of notation have varied between cultures and throughout history, and much information about ancient music notation is fragmentary. Although many ancient cultures used symbols to represent melodies and rhythms, none of them were particularly comprehensive, the seeds of what would eventually become modern western notation were sown in medieval Europe, starting with the Catholic churchs goal for ecclesiastical uniformity. The church began notating plainchant melodies so that the same chants could be used throughout the church, Music notation developed in the Renaissance and Baroque music eras. The introduction of figured bass notation in the Baroque era marked the beginning of the first compositions based around chord progressions, in the classical period and the Romantic music era, notation continued to develop as new musical instrument technologies were developed. Music notation has been adapted to many kinds of music, including music, popular music. The earliest form of notation can be found in a cuneiform tablet that was created at Nippur, in Sumer. The tablet represents fragmentary instructions for performing music, that the music was composed in harmonies of thirds, a tablet from about 1250 BC shows a more developed form of notation. Although the interpretation of the system is still controversial, it is clear that the notation indicates the names of strings on a lyre. Although they are fragmentary, these represent the earliest notated melodies found anywhere in the world. The notation consists of symbols placed above text syllables, an example of a complete composition is the Seikilos epitaph, which has been variously dated between the 2nd century BC to the 1st century AD. Three hymns by Mesomedes of Crete exist in manuscript, the Delphic Hymns, dated to the 2nd century BC, also use this notation, but they are not completely preserved. Ancient Greek notation appears to have out of use around the time of the Decline of the Roman Empire. Byzantine music has survived as music for court ceremonies, including vocal religious music. It is not known if it is based on the monodic modal singing, unlike Western notation Byzantine neumes always indicate modal steps in relation to a clef or modal key. These step symbols themselves, or better phonic neumes, resemble brush strokes and are colloquially called gántzoi in Modern Greek, Notes as pitch classes or modal keys are represented in written form only between these neumes. In modern notation they simply serve as a reminder and modal and tempo directions have been added. In Papadic notation medial signatures usually meant a change into another echos. With exception of vú and zō they do correspond to Western solmization syllables as re, mi, fa, sol, la, si
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Opera
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Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. In traditional opera, singers do two types of singing, recitative, a style and arias, a more melodic style. Opera incorporates many of the elements of theatre, such as acting, scenery. The performance is given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble. Opera is a key part of the Western classical music tradition, in the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe, attracting foreign composers such as George Frideric Handel. Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera, until Christoph Willibald Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his operas in the 1760s. The first third of the 19th century saw the point of the bel canto style, with Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti. It also saw the advent of Grand Opera typified by the works of Auber and Meyerbeer, the mid-to-late 19th century was a golden age of opera, led and dominated by Richard Wagner in Germany and Giuseppe Verdi in Italy. The popularity of opera continued through the era in Italy and contemporary French opera through to Giacomo Puccini. During the 19th century, parallel operatic traditions emerged in central and eastern Europe, the 20th century saw many experiments with modern styles, such as atonality and serialism, Neoclassicism, and Minimalism. With the rise of recording technology, singers such as Enrico Caruso, since the invention of radio and television, operas were also performed on these mediums. Beginning in 2006, a number of opera houses began to present live high-definition video transmissions of their performances in cinemas all over the world. In 2009, an opera company offered a download of a complete performance. The words of an opera are known as the libretto, some composers, notably Wagner, have written their own libretti, others have worked in close collaboration with their librettists, e. g. Mozart with Lorenzo Da Ponte. Vocal duets, trios and other ensembles often occur, and choruses are used to comment on the action, in some forms of opera, such as singspiel, opéra comique, operetta, and semi-opera, the recitative is mostly replaced by spoken dialogue. Melodic or semi-melodic passages occurring in the midst of, or instead of, the terminology of the various kinds of operatic voices is described in detail below. Over the 18th century, arias were accompanied by the orchestra. Subsequent composers have tended to follow Wagners example, though some, the changing role of the orchestra in opera is described in more detail below
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Court (royal)
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The court of a monarch, or at some periods an important nobleman, is a term for the extended household and all those who regularly attended on the ruler or central figure. It can also refer to the residence of the monarch where the court resides or a series of complexes. In the largest courts, the households, many thousands of individuals comprised the court. Foreign princes and foreign nobility in exile may also seek refuge at a court and this is shown above Near Eastern and Eastern courts often included the harem and concubines as well as eunuchs who fulfilled a variety of functions. At times the harem was walled off and separate from the rest of the residence of the monarch, in Asia concubines were often a more visible part of the court. Lower ranking servants and bodyguards were not properly called courtiers though may be included as part of the court or royal household in the broadest definition, entertainers and others may have been counted as part of the court. A royal household is the highest ranking example of this, a group of individuals dependent on the patronage of a great man, classically in ancient Rome, forms part of the system of clientage that is discussed under vassal. Individual rulers differed greatly in tastes and interests, as well as in political skills, accordingly, some founded elaborate courts based on new palaces, only to have their successors retreat to remote castles or to practical administrative centers. Personal retreats might arise far away from official court centres, etiquette and hierarchy flourish in highly structured court settings, and may leave conservative traces over generations. Most courts featured a strict order of precedence often involving royal and noble ranks, orders of chivalry, some courts even featured court uniforms. One of the markers of a court is ceremony. Most monarchal courts included ceremonies concerning the investiture or coronation of the monarch, some courts had ceremonies around the waking and the sleeping of the monarch called a levée. Orders of chivalry as honorific orders became an important part of court culture starting in the 15th century and they were the right of the monarch to create and grant as the fount of honour. Two of the earliest titles referring to the concept of a courtier were likely the ša rēsi, the imperial court of the Byzantine Empire at Constantinople would eventually contain at least a thousand courtiers. The courts systems became prevalent in other such as those in the Balkan states, the Ottoman Empire. Byzantinism is a term that was coined for this spread of the Byzantine system in the 19th century, however, by the Sui Dynasty the functions of the royal household and the imperial government were clearly divided. During the Heian period, Japanese Emperors and their families developed an exquisitely refined court that played an important role in their culture. After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, a court culture can be recognized in the entourage of the Ostrogoth Theodoric the Great
39.
Wars of the Three Kingdoms
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The Wars of the Three Kingdoms, sometimes known as the British Civil Wars, formed an intertwined series of conflicts that took place in England, Ireland and Scotland between 1639 and 1651. The English Civil War proper has become the best-known of these conflicts and included the execution of the monarch, Charles I. The wars were the outcome of tensions over religious and civil issues, religious disputes centered on whether religion was to be dictated by the monarch or the choice of the individual, with many people feeling that they ought to have freedom of religion. The related civil questions were to what extent the kings rule was constrained by parliaments—in particular his right to raise taxes, furthermore, the wars also had an element of national conflict, as Ireland and Scotland rebelled against Englands primacy within the Three Kingdoms. Since 1541, monarchs of England had also styled their Irish territory as a Kingdom, Scotland, the third separate kingdom, was governed by the House of Stuart. With the English Reformation, King Henry VIII made himself head of the Protestant Church of England and outlawed Catholicism in England and Wales. However, Catholicism remained the religion of most people in Ireland and was for many a symbol of resistance to the Tudor conquest of Ireland in the 16th century. In the Kingdom of Scotland the Protestant Reformation was a movement led by John Knox. In 1584, he introduced bishops, but met opposition and had to concede that the General Assembly running the church should continue to do so. The personal union of the three kingdoms under one monarch came about when King James VI of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth to the English throne in 1603 and he showed little interest in his other two kingdoms, Scotland and Ireland. James VI remained Protestant, taking care to maintain his hopes of succession to the English throne and he duly also became James I of England in 1603 and moved to London. In 1625, he was succeeded by his son Charles I who was less skillful or restrained and was crowned in St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, opposition to his attempts to enforce Anglican practices reached a flashpoint when he introduced a Book of Common Prayer. Charles confrontation with the Scots came to a head in 1639, see also the English Civil War. Charles shared his fathers belief in the Divine Right of Kings, while the Church of England remained dominant, a powerful Puritan minority, represented by around one third of the members of Parliament, had much in common with the Presbyterian Scots. The English Parliament also had repeated disputes with the king over such subjects as taxation, military expenditure, while James I had held the same opinions as his son with regard to royal prerogatives, he had enough charisma to persuade the Parliament to accept his policies. Charles did not have this skill in human management and so, meanwhile, in the Kingdom of Ireland, tensions had also begun to mount. Charles Is Lord Deputy there, Thomas Wentworth, had antagonised the native Irish Catholics by repeated initiatives to confiscate their lands and he had also angered Roman Catholics by enforcing new taxes but denying them full rights as subjects. Modern historians have emphasised the lack of the inevitability of the wars, pointing out that all sides resorted to violence in a situation marked by mutual distrust
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House of Stuart
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The House of Stuart, originally Stewart and, in Gaelic, Stiùbhart was a European royal house that originated in Scotland. The dynastys patrilineal Breton ancestors had held the office of High Steward of Scotland since the 12th century, the royal Stewart line was founded by Robert II, and they were Kings and Queens of Scots from the late 14th century until the union with England in 1707. Mary I, Queen of Scots was brought up in France and her son, James VI of Scotland, inherited the thrones of England and Ireland upon the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. Except for the period of the Commonwealth, 1649–1660, the Stuarts were monarchs of England, Scotland and Ireland until 1707, then of Great Britain and Ireland, in total, nine Stewart/Stuart monarchs ruled Scotland alone from 1371 until 1603. James VI of Scotland then inherited the realms of Elizabeth I of England, following the Glorious Revolution in 1688, two Stuart queens ruled the isles, Mary II and Anne. Both were the Protestant daughters of James VII and II by his first wife, during the reign of the Stuarts, Scotland developed from a relatively poor and feudal country into a prosperous, modern and centralised state. They ruled during a time in European history of transition from the Middle Ages, through the Renaissance, monarchs such as James IV were known for sponsoring exponents of the Northern Renaissance such as the poet Robert Henryson, and others. The name Stewart derives from the position of office similar to a governor. It was originally adopted as the surname by Walter Stewart, 3rd High Steward of Scotland. Prior to this, family names were not used, but instead they had patronyms defined through the father, the gallicised spelling was first borne by John Stewart of Darnley after his time in the French wars. During the 16th century, the French spelling Stuart was adopted by Mary, Queen of Scots, the FitzAlan family quickly established themselves as a prominent Anglo-Norman noble house, with some of its members serving as High Sheriff of Shropshire. It was the great-grandson of Alan named Walter FitzAlan who became the first hereditary High Steward of Scotland, another supporter of Matilda was her uncle David I of Scotland from the House of Dunkeld. After Matilda was pushed out of England into the County of Anjou, essentially failing in her legitimist attempt for the throne, many of her supporters in England fled also. It was then that Walter followed David up to the Kingdom of Scotland, where he was granted lands in Renfrewshire, the next monarch of Scotland, Malcolm IV, made the High Steward title a hereditary arrangement. While High Stewards, the family were based at Dundonald, South Ayrshire between the 12th and 13th centuries. The sixth High Steward of Scotland, Walter Stewart, married Marjorie, daughter of Robert the Bruce, in 1503, James IV attempted to secure peace with England by marrying King Henry VIIs daughter, Margaret Tudor. The birth of their son, later James V, brought the House of Stewart into the line of descent of the House of Tudor, and the English throne. Margaret Tudor later married Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, and their daughter, Margaret Douglas, was the mother of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley
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House of Hanover
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Upon Victorias death, the British throne passed to her eldest son Edward VII, a member of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha through his father. The House of Hanover was formally named the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Hanover line, the senior branch became extinct in 1884, and the House of Hanover is now the only surviving branch of the House of Welf, which is the senior branch of the House of Este. The current head of the House of Hanover is Ernst August, George, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, is considered the first member of the House of Hanover. When the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg was divided in 1635, George inherited the Principality of Calenberg and his son, Christian Louis inherited the Principality of Lüneburg from Georges brother. Calenberg and Lüneburg were then shared between Georges sons until united in 1705 under his grandson, also called George, who subsequently became George I of Great Britain, all held the title Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. George died in 1641 and was succeeded by, Christian Louis, 1st son of Duke George, Prince of Calenberg and he relinquished Calenburg when he became Prince of Lüneburg. George William, 2nd son of Duke George, Prince of Calenberg and he relinquished Calenburg when he became Prince of Lüneburg on the death of his brother, Christian Louis. John Frederick, 3rd son of Duke George, Prince of Calenberg, Ernest Augustus, 4th son of Duke George, Prince of Calenberg. He became Prince of Calenberg on the death of his brother John Frederick and he was elevated to prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire in 1692. Ernest Augustuss wife, Sophia of the Palatinate, was declared heiress of the throne of England by the Act of Settlement of 1701, Sophia was at that time the senior eligible Protestant descendant of James I of England. George Louis, son of Duke Ernest Augustus and Sophia, became Elector and Prince of Calenberg in 1698 and he inherited his mothers claim to the throne of Great Britain when she died in 1714. George Louis became the first British monarch of the House of Hanover as George I in 1714, George I, George II, and George III also served as electors and dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg, informally, Electors of Hanover. From 1814, when Hanover became a kingdom, the British monarch was also King of Hanover, in 1837, however, the personal union of the thrones of the United Kingdom and Hanover ended. After the death of William IV in 1837, the kings of Hanover continued the dynasty. The 1866 rift between the House of Hanover and the House of Hohenzollern was settled only by the 1913 marriage of Princess Viktoria Luise of Prussia to Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick. At the end of the Thirty Years War, the Peace of Westphalia awarded the Prince-Bishopric of Osnabrück alternately to a Catholic bishop, since the treaty gave cadets priority over heirs and reigning princes, Osnabrück became a form of appanage of the House of Hanover. In 1884, the branch of the House of Welf became extinct. By a law of 1879, the Duchy of Brunswick established a council of regency to take over at the Dukes death
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Chamber music
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Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a number of performers. However, by convention, it usually does not include solo instrument performances, because of its intimate nature, chamber music has been described as the music of friends. Playing chamber music requires special skills, both musical and social, that differ from the skills required for playing solo or symphonic works, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe described chamber music as four rational people conversing. The analogy to conversation recurs in descriptions and analyses of chamber music compositions, from its earliest beginnings in the Medieval period to the present, chamber music has been a reflection of the changes in the technology and the society that produced it. During the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, instruments were used primarily as accompaniment for singers, String players would play along with the melody line sung by the singer. There were also purely instrumental ensembles, often of stringed precursors of the violin family, some analysts consider the origin of classical instrumental ensembles to be the sonata da camera and the sonata da chiesa. These were compositions for one to five or more instruments, the sonata da camera was a suite of slow and fast movements, interspersed with dance tunes, the sonata da chiesa was the same, but the dances were omitted. These forms gradually developed into the trio sonata of the Baroque – two treble instruments and an instrument, often with a keyboard or other chording instrument filling in the harmony. Both the bass instrument and the instrument would play the basso continuo part. During the Baroque period, chamber music as a genre was not clearly defined, often, works could be played on any variety of instruments, in orchestral or chamber ensembles. The Art of Fugue by Johann Sebastian Bach, for example, sometimes composers mixed movements for chamber ensembles with orchestral movements. Telemanns Tafelmusik, for example, has five sets of movements for various combinations of instruments, Baroque chamber music was often contrapuntal, that is, each instrument played the same melodic materials at different times, creating a complex, interwoven fabric of sound. Because each instrument was playing essentially the same melodies, all the instruments were equal, in the trio sonata, there is often no ascendent or solo instrument, but all three instruments share equal importance. In the second half of the 18th century, tastes began to change, many preferred a new, lighter Galant style. And clearly defined melody and bass to the complexities of counterpoint, now a new custom arose that gave birth to a new form of chamber music, the serenade. Patrons invited street musicians to play evening concerts below the balconies of their homes, their friends, patrons and musicians commissioned composers to write suitable suites of dances and tunes, for groups of two to five or six players. These works were called serenades, nocturnes, divertimenti, or cassations, the young Joseph Haydn was commissioned to write several of these
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Ballad opera
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The ballad opera is a genre of English stage entertainment that originated in the early 18th century, and continued to develop over the following century and later. Like the earlier comédie en vaudeville and the later Singspiel, its characteristic is the use of tunes in a popular style with spoken dialogue. These English plays were operas mainly insofar as they satirized the conventions of the opera seria. Music critic Peter Gammond describes the opera as an important step in the emancipation of both the musical stage and the popular song. Ballad opera has been called an eighteenth-century protest against the Italian conquest of the London operatic scene and it is generally accepted that the first ballad opera, and the one that was to prove the most successful, was The Beggars Opera of 1728. A number of the tunes from this anthology were recycled in The Beggars Opera, after the success of The Beggars Opera, many similar pieces were staged. The actor Thomas Walker, who played Macheath in the production, wrote several ballad operas. Henry Fielding, Colley Cibber, Charles Coffey, Thomas Arne, Charles Dibdin, Arnold, Shield, Jackson of Exeter, Hook, by the middle of the century, however, the genre was already in decline. Although they featured the lower reaches of society, the audiences for these works were typically the London bourgeois, as a reaction to serious opera, the music, for these audiences, was as satirical in its way as the words of the play. The plays themselves contained references to contemporary politics—in The Beggars Opera the character Peachum was a lampoon of Sir Robert Walpole and this satirical element meant that many of them risked censorship and banning—as was the case with Gays successor to The Beggars Opera, Polly. A significant source from which the music was drawn was the fund of popular airs to which 18th century London broadside ballads are set and it is from this connection that the term ballad opera is drawn. This ragbag of pre-loved music is a good test for distinguishing between the type of ballad opera and its later forms. Many ballad operas used the tunes, such as Lillibulero. In 1762, Thomas Arnes Love in a Village presented a new form of opera, with mainly new music. It was followed in similar style by Charles Dibdins Lionel and Clarissa in 1768, the Disappointment represents an early American attempt at such a ballad opera. In 1736 the Prussian ambassador in England commissioned an arrangement in German of a ballad opera, The Devil to Pay. This was successfully performed in Hamburg, Leipzig and elsewhere in Germany in the 1740s, a new version was produced by C. F. Weisse and Johann Adam Hiller in 1766. The success of this version was the first of many by these collaborators, a later development, also often referred to as ballad opera, was a more pastoral form
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George Frideric Handel
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George Frideric Handel was a German, later British baroque composer who spent the bulk of his career in London, becoming well known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, and organ concertos. Handel received important training in Halle and worked as a composer in Hamburg and Italy before settling in London in 1712 and he was strongly influenced both by the great composers of the Italian Baroque and by the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition. Within fifteen years, Handel had started three commercial opera companies to supply the English nobility with Italian opera, musicologist Winton Dean writes that his operas show that Handel was not only a great composer, he was a dramatic genius of the first order. As Alexanders Feast was well received, Handel made a transition to English choral works, after his success with Messiah he never composed an Italian opera again. Almost blind, and having lived in England for nearly fifty years, he died in 1759 and his funeral was given full state honours, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey in London. Handel was born in 1685 in Halle-on-Saal, Duchy of Magdeburg, to Georg Händel and his father,63 when George Frideric was born, was an eminent barber-surgeon who served the court of Saxe-Weissenfels and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. Georg Händel was the son of a coppersmith, Valentin Händel who had emigrated from Eisleben in 1608 with his first wife Anna Belching and they were Protestants and chose reliably Protestant Saxony over Silesia, a Hapsburg possession as religious tensions mounted in the years before the Thirty Years War. Halle was a prosperous city, home of a salt-mining industry. Even the smaller churches all had able organists and fair choirs, and humanities, the Thirty Years War brought extensive destruction to Halle, and by the 1680s it was impoverished. But since the middle of the war the city was under the administration of the Duke of Saxony, the arts and music, however, flourished only among the higher strata, which did not describe Handels family. Handel was the child of this marriage, the first son died still born. Two younger sisters were born after the birth of George Frideric, Dorthea Sophia, born 6 October 1687 and Johanna Christiana, born 10 January 1690. Early in his life Handel is reported to have attended the gymnasium in Halle, Mainwaring is the source for almost all information of Handels childhood, and much of that information came from J. C. Smith, Jr. Handels confidant and copyist. Whether they came from Smith or elsewhere, Mainwaring frequently relates misinformation and it is from Mainwaring that the portrait of Handels father as implacably opposed to any musical education comes. This did nothing to dampen young Handels inclination, in fact, Mainwaring tells the story of Handels secret attic spinnet, Handel found means to get a little clavichord privately conveyd to a room at the top of the house. To this room he constantly stole when the family was asleep, but Handel had to have had some experience with the keyboard to have made the impression in Weissenfels that resulted in his receiving formal musical training. Somehow Handel made his way to the organ, where he surprised everyone with his playing. Overhearing this performance and noting the youth of the performer caused the Duke to recommend to Georg Händel that Handel be given musical instruction, Handels father engaged the organist at the Halle parish church, the young Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, to instruct Handel
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Classical music of the United Kingdom
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The term in this sense emerged in the early 19th century, not long after the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland came into existence in 1801. Composed music in these islands can be traced in musical notation back to the 13th century and it has never existed in isolation from European music, but has often developed in distinctively insular ways within an international framework. Similar developments occurred in the other expanding states of Europe and their empires, the dominant figure in classical music in the later baroque era, and beyond, was the German-born George Frideric Handel. Music in this period has seen as dominated by continental trends. In 1813 the London Philharmonic Society was established, which played an important role in the development of life in the kingdom. Founders included Sir George Smart, Johann Baptist Cramer, Muzio Clementi, William Ayrton, William Shield, Henry Bishop, Thomas Attwood, Johann Peter Salomon, under their aegis an annual programme of concerts of international calibre was established. The Society was a patron of Beethovens Choral Symphony. Its first principal was the oratorio composer Dr William Crotch, Potter was the first London performer of Mozart and Beethoven concerti. He wrote nine symphonies and four piano concerti and as principal from 1832-59 was highly influential in the development of British music and the profession of musician. Braham, whose career spanned the opera stage and concert platform. Arias or ballads from the English opera became concert standards in recital, the Irish composer and virtuoso pianist John Field was highly influential in his style of playing, inventing the nocturne and he is thought to have been an inspiration to Schumann, Chopin and Liszt. Perhaps the most influential composer of the first half of the 19th century was the German Felix Mendelssohn and he won a strong following through the Philharmonic Society, sufficient for him to make a deep impression on British musical life. Not only did he compose and perform, but he edited for British publishers the first critical editions of oratorios of Handel. Scotland inspired two of his most famous works, the overture Fingals Cave and the Scottish Symphony and his oratorio Elijah was premièred in Birmingham at the Triennial Music Festival on August 26,1846. A number of British piano students of promise were sent to the Leipzig Conservatory established by Mendelssohn, native singers shared the dramatic stage with international stars in Italian and German opera, notably Clara Novello, Helen Lemmens-Sherrington, Sims Reeves and Charles Santley. After 1856 the Swedish born Jenny Lind, perhaps the most internationally renowned singer of the era, settled permanently in England, continuing to perform, among the most important figures in British classical music in this period was Sir William Sterndale Bennett. A RAM pupil of Potters, he was a pianist, composer, lucy Anderson and her pupil Arabella Goddard, with Franklin Taylor, were leading native mid-Victorian pianists. This century saw the trend towards larger orchestras and correspondingly larger musical venues, covent Gardens Royal Opera House was opened in 1858, on the site of an earlier theatre and the Royal Albert Hall was built in 1878
