1.
Johnny Hodges
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John Cornelius Johnny Hodges was an American alto saxophonist, best known for solo work with Duke Ellingtons big band. He played lead alto in the section for many years. Hodges was also featured on saxophone, but refused to play soprano after 1946. He is considered one of the alto saxophone players of the big band era. Hodges started playing with Lloyd Scott, Sidney Bechet, Lucky Roberts, when Ellington wanted to expand his band in 1928, Ellingtons clarinet player Barney Bigard recommended Hodges. His playing became one of the voices of the Ellington orchestra. From 1951 to 1955, Hodges left the Duke to lead his own band, Hodges was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to John H. Hodges and Katie Swan Hodges, both originally from Virginia. Soon afterwards, the moved to Hammond Street in Boston, where he grew up with baritone saxophonist Harry Carney. His first instruments were drums and piano, while his mother was a skilled piano player, Hodges was mostly self-taught. Once he became good enough, he played the piano at dances in private homes for eight dollars an evening and he had taken up the soprano saxophone by his teens. It was around this time that Hodges developed the nickname Rabbit, in fact, Carney called him Rabbit because of his rabbit-like nibbling on lettuce and tomato sandwiches. When Hodges was 14, he saw Sidney Bechet play in Jimmy Coopers Black, Hodges sister got to know Bechet, which gave him the inspiration to introduce himself and play My Honeys Lovin Arms for Bechet. Bechet was impressed with his skill and encouraged him to keep on playing, Hodges built a name for himself in the Boston area before moving to New York in 1924. Hodges joined Duke Ellingtons orchestra in November 1928 and he was one of the prominent Ellington Band members who featured in Benny Goodmans 1938 Carnegie Hall concert. Goodman described Hodges as by far the greatest man on alto sax that I ever heard, Charlie Parker called him the Lily Pons of his instrument. Ellingtons practice of writing tunes specifically for members of his orchestra resulted in the Hodges specialties, Confab with Rab, Jeeps Blues, Sultry Sunset and his highly individualistic playing style, which featured the use of a wide vibrato and much sliding between slurred notes, was frequently imitated. In the 1940s, Hodges played a Conn 6M and later on a Buescher 400 alto saxophone, fewer than 2,000 were ever made. Hodges Vito saxophone was silver-plated and extensively engraved on the bell, bow, body and key-cups of the instrument
2.
Musical composition
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People who create new compositions are called composers in classical music. In popular music and traditional music, the creators of new songs are usually called songwriters, with songs, Composition is the act or practice of creating a song or other piece of music. In popular music and traditional music, songwriting may involve the creation of an outline of the song, called the lead sheet. In classical music, orchestration is typically done by the composer, in some cases, a pop or traditional songwriter may not use written notation at all, and instead compose the song in her mind and then play, sing and/or record it from memory. In jazz and popular music, notable recordings by influential performers are given the weight that written or printed scores play in classical music. Although a musical composition often uses musical notation and has a single author, a piece of music can also be composed with words, images, or, since the 20th century, with computer programs that explain or notate how the singer or musician should create musical sounds. A more commonly known example of chance-based music is the sound of wind chimes jingling in a breeze, although in the 2000s, composition is considered to consist of the manipulation of each aspect of music, according to Jean-Benjamin de Laborde, Composition consists in two things only. The first is the ordering and disposing of several sounds. in such a manner that their succession pleases the ear and this is what the Ancients called melody. The second is the rendering audible of two or more simultaneous sounds in such a manner that their combination is pleasant and this is what we call harmony, and it alone merits the name of composition. In classical music, a piece of music exists in the form of a composition in musical notation or as a live acoustic event. Since the invention of recording, a classical piece or popular song may also exist as a recording. If music is composed before being performed, music can be performed from memory, by reading written musical notation, compositions comprise a huge variety of musical elements, which vary widely from between genres and cultures. Popular music genres after about 1960 make extensive use of electric and electronic instruments, such as electric guitar, electric and electronic instruments are used in contemporary classical music compositions and concerts, albeit to a lesser degree than in popular music. Music from the Baroque music era, for example, used only acoustic and mechanical such as strings, brass, woodwinds, timpani and keyboard instruments such as harpsichord. A 2000s-era pop band may use electric guitar played with electronic effects through a guitar amplifier, different musical styles permit singers or performers to use various amounts of musical improvisation during the performance of a composed song or piece. In free jazz, the performers may play without any sheet music, improvisation is the act of composing musical elements spontaneously during the performance, as opposed to having a composer write down the music beforehand. Improvisation was an important skill during the Baroque music era, instrumentalists and singers were expected to be able to improvise ornaments, during the classical period, solo instrumentalists were expected to be able to improvise virtuostic cadenzas during a concerto. During the Romantic music era, composers began writing out ornaments and cadenzas, in contemporary classical music, some composers began writing pieces which indicate that the performer should improvise during certain sections
3.
Musician
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A musician is a person who plays a musical instrument or is musically talented. Anyone who composes, conducts, or performs music may also be referred to as a musician, Musicians can specialize in any musical style, and some musicians play in a variety of different styles. Examples of a musicians possible skills include performing, conducting, singing, composing, arranging, in the Middle Ages, instrumental musicians performed with soft ensembles inside and loud instruments outdoors. Many European musicians of this time catered to the Roman Catholic Church, providing arrangements structured around Gregorian chant structure, vocal pieces were in Latin—the language of church texts of the time—and typically were Church-polyphonic or made up of several simultaneous melodies. Giovanni Palestrina Giovanni Gabrieli Thomas Tallis Claudio Monteverdi Leonardo da Vinci The Baroque period introduced heavy use of counterpoint, vocal and instrumental “color” became more important compared to the Renaissance style of music, and emphasized much of the volume, texture and pace of each piece. George Frideric Handel Johann Sebastian Bach Antonio Vivaldi Classical music was created by musicians who lived during a time of a middle class. Many middle-class inhabitants of France at the time lived under long-time absolute monarchies, because of this, much of the music was performed in environments that were more constrained compared to the flourishing times of the Renaissance and Baroque eras. This age included the initial transformations of the Industrial Revolution, a revolutionary energy was also at the core of Romanticism, which quite consciously set out to transform not only the theory and practice of poetry and art, but the common perception of the world. Some major Romantic Period precepts survive, and still affect modern culture, in 20th-century music, composers and musicians rejected the emotion-dominated Romantic period, and strove to represent the world the way they perceived it. Musicians wrote to be. objective, while objects existed on their own terms, while past eras concentrated on spirituality, this new period placed emphasis on physicality and things that were concrete. The advent of recording and mass media in the 20th century caused a boom of all kinds of music—popular music, rock music, electronic music, folk music. Singer Composer Music artist Tour Manager Media related to Musicians at Wikimedia Commons
4.
Music
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Music is an art form and cultural activity whose medium is sound organized in time. The common elements of music are pitch, rhythm, dynamics, different styles or types of music may emphasize, de-emphasize or omit some of these elements. The word derives from Greek μουσική, Ancient Greek and Indian philosophers defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies and vertically as harmonies. Common sayings such as the harmony of the spheres and it is music to my ears point to the notion that music is often ordered and pleasant to listen to. However, 20th-century composer John Cage thought that any sound can be music, saying, for example, There is no noise, the creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of music vary according to culture and social context. There are many types of music, including music, traditional music, art music, music written for religious ceremonies. For example, it can be hard to draw the line between some early 1980s hard rock and heavy metal, within the arts, music may be classified as a performing art, a fine art or as an auditory art. People may make music as a hobby, like a teen playing cello in a youth orchestra, the word derives from Greek μουσική. According to the Online Etymological Dictionary, the music is derived from mid-13c. Musike, from Old French musique and directly from Latin musica the art of music and this is derived from the. Greek mousike of the Muses, from fem. of mousikos pertaining to the Muses, from Mousa Muse. In classical Greece, any art in which the Muses presided, Music is composed and performed for many purposes, ranging from aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, or as an entertainment product for the marketplace. With the advent of recording, records of popular songs. Some music lovers create mix tapes of their songs, which serve as a self-portrait. An environment consisting solely of what is most ardently loved, amateur musicians can compose or perform music for their own pleasure, and derive their income elsewhere. Professional musicians sometimes work as freelancers or session musicians, seeking contracts and engagements in a variety of settings, There are often many links between amateur and professional musicians. Beginning amateur musicians take lessons with professional musicians, in community settings, advanced amateur musicians perform with professional musicians in a variety of ensembles such as community concert bands and community orchestras. However, there are many cases where a live performance in front of an audience is also recorded and distributed. Live concert recordings are popular in classical music and in popular music forms such as rock, where illegally taped live concerts are prized by music lovers
5.
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
6.
Chord progression
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A chord progression or harmonic progression is a succession of musical chords. Chord progressions are the foundation of harmony in Western musical tradition, in tonal music, chord progressions have the function of establishing or contradicting a tonality. Chord progressions are usually expressed by Roman numerals, a chord may be built upon any note of a musical scale, therefore a seven-note scale allows seven basic chords, each degree of the scale becoming the root of its own chord. A chord built upon the note A is an A chord of some type The harmonic function of any particular chord depends on the context of the chord progression in which it is found. The diatonic harmonization of any major results in three major triads. They are based on the first, fourth, and fifth scale degrees and these three triads include, and therefore can harmonize, every note of that scale. The same scale also provides three relative minor chords, one related to each of the three major chords, separate from these six common chords there is one degree of the scale, the seventh, that results in a diminished chord. In addition, extra notes may be added to any chord, if these notes are also selected from the original scale the harmony remains diatonic. If new chromatic intervals are introduced then a change of scale or modulation occurs and this in turn may lead to a resolution back to the original key, so that the entire sequence of chords helps create an extended musical form. In western classical notation, chords built on the scale are numbered with Roman numerals, other forms of chord notation have been devised, from figured bass to the chord chart. These usually allow or even require an amount of improvisation. Diatonic scales such as the major and minor scales lend themselves well to the construction of common chords because they contain a large number of perfect fifths. Such scales predominate in those regions where harmony is an part of music, as, for example. Alternation between two chords may be thought of as the most basic chord progression, many well-known pieces are built harmonically upon the mere repetition of two chords of the same scale. The Isley Brothers Shout uses I - vi throughout, three-chord tunes, though, are more common, since a melody may then dwell on any note of the scale. They are often presented as successions of four chords, in order to produce a binary harmonic rhythm, often the chords may be selected to fit a pre-conceived melody, but just as often it is the progression itself that gives rise to the melody. (Common in Elizabethan music, this also underpins the American college song Goodnight Ladies, is the exclusive progression used in Kwela, similar progressions abound in African popular music. They may be varied by the addition of sevenths to any chord or by substitution of the minor of the IV chord to give, for example
7.
Blues
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Blues is a genre and musical form originated by African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in African musical traditions, African-American work songs, spirituals, Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. Blue notes, usually thirds or fifths flattened in pitch, are also a part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove, Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times, Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the troubles experienced in African-American society. Many elements, such as the format and the use of blue notes. The origins of the blues are closely related to the religious music of the Afro-American community. The first appearance of the blues is often dated to after the ending of slavery and, later and it is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the former slaves. Chroniclers began to report about blues music at the dawn of the 20th century, the first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908. Blues has since evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves into a variety of styles and subgenres. Blues subgenres include country blues, such as Delta blues and Piedmont blues, as well as urban blues styles such as Chicago blues, World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a form called blues rock evolved. The term blues may have come from blue devils, meaning melancholy and sadness, the phrase blue devils may also have been derived from Britain in the 1600s, when the term referred to the intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal. As time went on, the phrase lost the reference to devils, by the 1800s in the United States, the term blues was associated with drinking alcohol, a meaning which survives in the phrase blue law, which prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sunday. Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to in print since 1912, in lyrics the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood. The lyrics of traditional blues verses probably often consisted of a single line repeated four times. Two of the first published songs, Dallas Blues and Saint Louis Blues, were 12-bar blues with the AAB lyric structure. Handy wrote that he adopted this convention to avoid the monotony of lines repeated three times, the lines are often sung following a pattern closer to rhythmic talk than to a melody
8.
Jazz
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Jazz is a music genre that originated amongst African Americans in New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in Blues and Ragtime. Since the 1920s jazz age, jazz has become recognized as a form of musical expression. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrhythms, Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music. Although the foundation of jazz is deeply rooted within the Black experience of the United States, different cultures have contributed their own experience, intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as one of Americas original art forms. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on different national, regional, and local musical cultures, New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass-band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. In the 1930s, heavily arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz, bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging musicians music which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed in the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments. In the early 1980s, a form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful. Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s, such as Latin, the question of the origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm, a term dating back to 1860 meaning pep. The use of the word in a context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Its first documented use in a context in New Orleans was in a November 14,1916 Times-Picayune article about jas bands. In an interview with NPR, musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of the slang connotations of the term, saying, When Broadway picked it up. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century. Jazz has proved to be difficult to define, since it encompasses such a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years. Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, in the opinion of Robert Christgau, most of us would say that inventing meaning while letting loose is the essence and promise of jazz. As Duke Ellington, one of jazzs most famous figures, said, although jazz is considered highly difficult to define, at least in part because it contains so many varied subgenres, improvisation is consistently regarded as being one of its key elements
9.
Jazz fusion
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Jazz fusion is a musical genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined aspects of jazz harmony and improvisation with styles such as funk, rock, rhythm and blues, and Latin jazz. During this time many jazz musicians began experimenting with electric instruments and amplified sound for the first time, as well as electronic effects, many of the developments during the late 1960s and early 1970s have since become established elements of jazz fusion musical practice. Fusion arrangements vary in complexity—some employ groove-based vamps fixed to a key, or even a single chord. Others can feature odd or shifting time signatures with elaborate chord progressions, melodies, typically, these arrangements, whether simple or complex, will feature extended improvised sections that can vary in length. As with jazz, fusion often employs brass and woodwind instruments such as trumpet and saxophone as melody and soloing instruments, the rhythm section typically consists of electric bass, electric guitar, electric piano/synthesizer and drums. As with traditional jazz improvisation, fusion instrumentalists generally require a level of technical proficiency. The term jazz-rock is often used as a synonym for jazz fusion as well as for music performed by late 1960s, experimentation continued in the 1990s and 2000s. Fusion albums, even those that are made by the group or artist. Rather than being a musical style, fusion can be viewed as a musical tradition or approach. Afro-Cuban jazz, one the earliest form of Latin jazz, is a fusion of Afro-Cuban clave-based rhythms with jazz harmonies and techniques of improvisation. Afro-Cuban jazz first emerged in the early 1940s with the Cuban musicians Mario Bauza and Frank Grillo Machito in the band Machito and his Afro-Cubans, based in New York City. Early combinations of jazz with Cuban music, such as Dizzys and Pozos Manteca and Charlie Parkers and Machitos Mangó Mangüé, were referred to as Cubop. During its first decades, the Afro-Cuban jazz movement was stronger in the United States than in Cuba itself, allmusic Guide states that until around 1967, the worlds of jazz and rock were nearly completely separate. One of the earliest releases from Pink Floyd, London 66–67 incorporated jazz-influenced improvisation to their psychedelic compositions, nevertheless, these developments made little impact in the United States. Jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton was an innovator in the 1960s, in 1967, Burton worked with electric guitarist Larry Coryell and recorded Duster, which is considered one of the first fusion records. Texas-born guitarist Coryell was also a pioneer of jazz in the same era. Trumpeter and composer Miles Davis had a influence on the development of jazz fusion with his 1968 album Miles in the Sky. It is the first of Davis albums to incorporate electric instruments, with Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter playing electric piano and bass guitar, respectively
10.
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
11.
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
12.
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
13.
Classical period (music)
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The dates of the Classical period in Western music are generally accepted as being between about the year 1730 and the year 1820. This article is about the period in most of the 18th century to the early 19th century, though overlapping with the Baroque. The Classical period falls between the Baroque and the Romantic periods, Classical music has a lighter, clearer texture than Baroque music and is less complex. It is mainly homophonic, using a melody line over a subordinate chordal accompaniment. It also makes use of style galant which emphasized light elegance in place of the Baroques dignified seriousness, variety and contrast within a piece became more pronounced than before and the orchestra increased in size, range, and power. The harpsichord was replaced as the keyboard instrument by the piano. Instrumental music was considered important by Classical period composers, vocal music, such as songs for a singer and piano, choral works, and opera were also important during this period. Ludwig van Beethoven is regarded either as a Romantic composer or a Classical period composer who was part of the transition to the Romantic era, Franz Schubert is also a transitional figure, as were Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Luigi Cherubini, and Carl Maria von Weber. The period is referred to as the era of Viennese Classic or Classicism, since Gluck, Mozart, Haydn, Salieri. In the middle of the 18th century, Europe began to move toward a new style in architecture, literature, and this style sought to emulate the ideals of Classical antiquity, especially those of Classical Greece. Classical music was still linked to aristocratic Court culture and supported by absolute monarchies. Classical music used formality and emphasis on order and hierarchy, in contrast with the richly layered music of the Baroque era, Classical music moved towards simplicity rather than complexity. In addition, the size of orchestras began to increase. The remarkable development of ideas in natural philosophy had already established itself in the public consciousness, in particular, Newtons physics was taken as a paradigm, structures should be well-founded in axioms and be both well-articulated and orderly. This move meant that chords became a more prevalent feature of music. As a result, the structure of a piece of music became more audible. The new style was encouraged by changes in the economic order. As the 18th century progressed, the nobility became the patrons of instrumental music, while public taste increasingly preferred lighter
14.
Romantic music
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Romantic music is an era of Western classical music that began in the late 18th or early 19th century. In the Romantic period, music became more expressive and emotional, expanding to encompass literary, artistic, famous early Romantic composers include Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Bellini, and Berlioz. The late 19th century saw an expansion in the size of the orchestra and in the dynamic range. Also, public concerts became a key part of middle class society, in contrast to earlier periods. Famous composers from the half of the century include Johann Strauss II, Brahms, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Verdi. A prominent mark of late 19th century music is its nationalistic fervor, as exemplified by such figures as Dvořák, Sibelius, other prominent late-century figures include Saint-Saëns, Fauré, Rachmaninoff and Franck. The Romantic movement was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the half of the 18th century in Europe. In part, it was a revolt against social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature. It was embodied most strongly in the arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography and education. One of the first significant applications of the term to music was in 1789, in the Mémoires by the Frenchman André Grétry, in the first of these essays Hoffmann traced the beginnings of musical Romanticism to the later works of Haydn and Mozart. It was also through the writings of Hoffmann and other German authors that German music was brought to the centre of musical Romanticism, the attributes have also been criticized for being too vague. For example, features of the ghostly and supernatural could apply equally to Mozarts Don Giovanni from 1787, events and changes that happen in society such as ideas, attitudes, discoveries, inventions, and historical events always affect music. For example, the Industrial Revolution was in effect by the late 18th century. This event had a profound effect on music, there were major improvements in the mechanical valves. The new and innovative instruments could be played with greater ease, another development that had an effect on music was the rise of the middle class. Composers before this period lived on the patronage of the aristocracy, many times their audience was small, composed mostly of the upper class and individuals who were knowledgeable about music. The Romantic composers, on the hand, often wrote for public concerts and festivals, with large audiences of paying customers. Composers of the Romantic Era, like Elgar, showed the world that there should be no segregation of musical tastes, during the Romantic period, music often took on a much more nationalistic purpose
15.
J.S. Bach
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Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. Bachs compositions include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Mass in B minor and his music is revered for its technical command, artistic beauty, and intellectual depth. He is now regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time. Bach was born in Eisenach, in the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach and his father Johann Ambrosius Bach was the director of the town musicians, and all of his uncles were professional musicians. His father probably taught him to play the violin and harpsichord, apparently at his own initiative, Bach attended St. Michaels School in Lüneburg for two years. He received the title of Royal Court Composer from Augustus III in 1736, Bachs health and vision declined in 1749, and he died on 28 July 1750. Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, the capital of the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach, in present-day Germany and he was the son of Johann Ambrosius Bach, the director of the town musicians, and Maria Elisabeth Lämmerhirt. He was the eighth and youngest child of Johann Ambrosius, who taught him violin. His uncles were all musicians, whose posts included church organists, court chamber musicians. One uncle, Johann Christoph Bach, introduced him to the organ, Bachs mother died in 1694, and his father died eight months later. The 10-year-old Bach moved in with his eldest brother, Johann Christoph Bach, there he studied, performed, and copied music, including his own brothers, despite being forbidden to do so because scores were so valuable and private and blank ledger paper of that type was costly. He received valuable teaching from his brother, who instructed him on the clavichord, also during this time he was taught theology, Latin, Greek, French and Italian at the local gymnasium. By 3 April 1700 Bach and his schoolfriend Georg Erdmann–who was two years Bachs elder–were enrolled in the prestigious St. Michaels School in Lüneburg, some two weeks travel north of Ohrdruf and their journey was probably undertaken mostly on foot. His two years there were critical in exposing Bach to a range of European culture. In addition to singing in the choir, he played the Schools three-manual organ and he came into contact with sons of aristocrats from northern Germany, sent to the highly selective school to prepare for careers in other disciplines. While in Lüneburg, Bach had access to St. Johns Church and possibly used the famous organ from 1553. His role there is unclear, but it probably included menial, non-musical duties, despite strong family connections and a musically enthusiastic employer, tension built up between Bach and the authorities after several years in the post. Bach was dissatisfied with the standard of singers in the choir and he called one of them a Zippel Fagottist
16.
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
17.
Mozart
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, baptised as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. Born in Salzburg, he showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood, already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. At 17, Mozart was engaged as a musician at the Salzburg court, while visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame, during his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of his death. The circumstances of his death have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons and he composed more than 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, Ludwig van Beethoven composed his own early works in the shadow of Mozart, and Joseph Haydn wrote, posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on 27 January 1756 to Leopold Mozart and Anna Maria, née Pertl and this was the capital of the Archbishopric of Salzburg, an ecclesiastic principality in what is now Austria, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. He was the youngest of seven children, five of whom died in infancy and his elder sister was Maria Anna Mozart, nicknamed Nannerl. Mozart was baptized the day after his birth, at St. Ruperts Cathedral in Salzburg, the baptismal record gives his name in Latinized form, as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. He generally called himself Wolfgang Amadè Mozart as an adult, Leopold Mozart, a native of Augsburg, Germany, was a minor composer and an experienced teacher. In 1743, he was appointed as fourth violinist in the establishment of Count Leopold Anton von Firmian. Four years later, he married Anna Maria in Salzburg, Leopold became the orchestras deputy Kapellmeister in 1763. During the year of his sons birth, Leopold published a textbook, Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule. When Nannerl was 7, she began lessons with her father. Years later, after her brothers death, she reminisced, He often spent much time at the clavier, picking out thirds, which he was ever striking, and his pleasure showed that it sounded good. In the fourth year of his age his father, for a game as it were, began to teach him a few minuets and he could play it faultlessly and with the greatest delicacy, and keeping exactly in time. At the age of five, he was composing little pieces
18.
Beethoven
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Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he one of the most famous. His best-known compositions include 9 symphonies,5 piano concertos,1 violin concerto,32 piano sonatas,16 string quartets, his great Mass the Missa solemnis, and one opera, Fidelio. At the age of 21 he moved to Vienna, where he began studying composition with Joseph Haydn and he lived in Vienna until his death. By his late 20s his hearing began to deteriorate, and by the last decade of his life he was almost completely deaf. In 1811 he gave up conducting and performing in public but continued to compose, many of his most admired works come from these last 15 years of his life. Beethoven was the grandson of Ludwig van Beethoven, a musician from the town of Mechelen in the Duchy of Brabant in the Flemish region of what is now Belgium, who at the age of twenty moved to Bonn. Ludwig was employed as a singer at the court of the Elector of Cologne, eventually rising to become, in 1761. The portrait he commissioned of himself towards the end of his life remained proudly displayed in his grandsons rooms as a talisman of his musical heritage. Ludwig had one son, Johann, who worked as a tenor in the musical establishment and gave keyboard. Johann married Maria Magdalena Keverich in 1767, she was the daughter of Johann Heinrich Keverich, Beethoven was born of this marriage in Bonn. There is no record of the date of his birth, however. Of the seven children born to Johann van Beethoven, only Ludwig, the second-born, caspar Anton Carl was born on 8 April 1774, and Nikolaus Johann, the youngest, was born on 2 October 1776. Beethovens first music teacher was his father and he later had other local teachers, the court organist Gilles van den Eeden, Tobias Friedrich Pfeiffer, and Franz Rovantini. Beethovens musical talent was obvious at a young age, some time after 1779, Beethoven began his studies with his most important teacher in Bonn, Christian Gottlob Neefe, who was appointed the Courts Organist in that year. Neefe taught Beethoven composition, and by March 1783 had helped him write his first published composition, Beethoven soon began working with Neefe as assistant organist, at first unpaid, and then as a paid employee of the court chapel conducted by the Kapellmeister Andrea Luchesi. His first three piano sonatas, named Kurfürst for their dedication to the Elector Maximilian Friedrich, were published in 1783, Maximilian Frederick noticed Beethovens talent early, and subsidised and encouraged the young mans musical studies. Maximilian Fredericks successor as the Elector of Bonn was Maximilian Francis, the youngest son of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, echoing changes made in Vienna by his brother Joseph, he introduced reforms based on Enlightenment philosophy, with increased support for education and the arts
19.
Chopin
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Frédéric François Chopin, born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin, was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic era who wrote primarily for the solo piano. He gained and has maintained renown worldwide as a musician of his era. Chopin was born in what was then the Duchy of Warsaw and grew up in Warsaw, at 21 he settled in Paris. Thereafter, during the last 18 years of his life, he gave only some 30 public performances and he supported himself by selling his compositions and by teaching piano, for which he was in high demand. Chopin formed a friendship with Franz Liszt and was admired by many of his musical contemporaries, in 1835 he obtained French citizenship. After a failed engagement to Maria Wodzińska from 1836 to 1837, a brief and unhappy visit to Majorca with Sand in 1838–39 was one of his most productive periods of composition. In his last years, he was supported by his admirer Jane Stirling. Through most of his life, Chopin suffered from poor health and he died in Paris in 1849, at the age of 39, probably of tuberculosis. All of Chopins compositions include the piano, most are for solo piano, though he also wrote two piano concertos, a few chamber pieces, and some songs to Polish lyrics. His keyboard style is highly individual and often demanding, his own performances were noted for their nuance. Chopin invented the concept of the instrumental ballade and his major piano works also include mazurkas, waltzes, nocturnes, polonaises, études, impromptus, scherzos, preludes and sonatas, some published only after his death. His innovations in style, musical form, and harmony, and his association of music with nationalism, were influential throughout and his works remain popular, and he has been the subject of numerous films and biographies of varying degrees of historical accuracy. Fryderyk Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola,46 kilometres west of Warsaw, in what was then the Duchy of Warsaw, the parish baptismal record gives his birthday as 22 February 1810, and cites his given names in the Latin form Fridericus Franciscus. However, the composer and his family used the birthdate 1 March, Fryderyks father, Nicolas Chopin, was a Frenchman from Lorraine who had emigrated to Poland in 1787 at the age of sixteen. Nicolas tutored children of the Polish aristocracy, and in 1806 married Justyna Krzyżanowska, Fryderyk was baptized on Easter Sunday,23 April 1810, in the same church where his parents had married, in Brochów. His eighteen-year-old godfather, for whom he was named, was Fryderyk Skarbek, Fryderyk was the couples second child and only son, he had an elder sister, Ludwika, and two younger sisters, Izabela and Emilia. Nicolas was devoted to his homeland, and insisted on the use of the Polish language in the household. In October 1810, six months after Fryderyks birth, the moved to Warsaw
20.
Liszt
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Franz Liszt was a prolific 19th-century Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, music teacher, arranger, organist, philanthropist, author, nationalist and a Franciscan tertiary. Liszt gained renown in Europe during the nineteenth century for his prodigious virtuosic skill as a pianist. As a composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the New German School and he left behind an extensive and diverse body of work in which he influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated many 20th-century ideas and trends. Franz Liszt was born to Anna Liszt and Adam Liszt on October 22,1811, in the village of Doborján in Sopron County, in the Kingdom of Hungary, Liszts father played the piano, violin, cello and guitar. He had been in the service of Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy and knew Haydn, Hummel, at age six, Franz began listening attentively to his fathers piano playing and showed an interest in both sacred and Romani music. Adam began teaching him the piano at age seven, and Franz began composing in an elementary manner when he was eight and he appeared in concerts at Sopron and Pressburg in October and November 1820 at age 9. After the concerts, a group of wealthy sponsors offered to finance Franzs musical education in Vienna, There Liszt received piano lessons from Carl Czerny, who in his own youth had been a student of Beethoven and Hummel. He also received lessons in composition from Antonio Salieri, then director of the Viennese court. Liszts public debut in Vienna on December 1,1822, at a concert at the Landständischer Saal, was a great success and he was greeted in Austrian and Hungarian aristocratic circles and also met Beethoven and Schubert. In spring 1823, when his one-year leave of absence came to an end, Adam Liszt therefore took his leave of the Princes services. At the end of April 1823, the returned to Hungary for the last time. At the end of May 1823, the family went to Vienna again, towards the end of 1823 or early 1824, Liszts first composition to be published, his Variation on a Waltz by Diabelli, appeared as Variation 24 in Part II of Vaterländischer Künstlerverein. Liszts inclusion in the Diabelli project—he was described in it as an 11 year old boy, born in Hungary—was almost certainly at the instigation of Czerny, his teacher, Liszt was the only child composer in the anthology. After his fathers death in 1827, Liszt moved to Paris, to earn money, Liszt gave lessons in piano playing and composition, often from early morning until late at night. His students were scattered across the city and he often had to long distances. Because of this, he kept uncertain hours and also took up smoking, the following year he fell in love with one of his pupils, Caroline de Saint-Cricq, the daughter of Charles Xs minister of commerce, Pierre de Saint-Cricq. Her father, however, insisted that the affair be broken off, Liszt fell very ill, to the extent that an obituary notice was printed in a Paris newspaper, and he underwent a long period of religious doubts and pessimism. He again stated a wish to join the Church but was dissuaded this time by his mother and he had many discussions with the Abbé de Lamennais, who acted as his spiritual father, and also with Chrétien Urhan, a German-born violinist who introduced him to the Saint-Simonists
21.
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
22.
Musica enchiriadis
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Musica enchiriadis is an anonymous musical treatise of the 9th century. It is the first surviving attempt to set up a system of rules for polyphony in western art music, the treatise was once attributed to Hucbald, but this is no longer accepted. Some historians once attributed it to Odo of Cluny and it has also been attributed to Abbot Hoger. This music theory treatise, along with its text, Scolica enchiriadis, was widely circulated in medieval manuscripts. It consists of nineteen chapters, the first nine are devoted to notation, modes, chapters 10-18 deal with polyphonic music. The last, nineteenth, chapter of Musica enchiriadis relates the legend of Orpheus, the scale used in the work, which is based on a system of tetrachords, appears to have been created solely for use in the work itself, rather than taken from actual musical practice. The treatise also uses a very rare system of notation, known as Daseian notation and this notation has a number of figures which are rotated ninety degrees to represent different pitches. A critical edition of the treatises was published in 1981, hans Schmid, ed. Musica et scolica enchiriadis una cum aliquibus tractatulis adiunctis. Munich, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, C. H. Beck, link to colour images of the MS of the text available via the University of Heidelbergs site. Link to colour images of the MS of the text available via the Bavarian State Library
23.
Cadenza
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During this time the accompaniment will rest, or sustain a note or chord. Thus an improvised cadenza is indicated in written notation by a fermata in all parts, a cadenza usually will occur over the final or penultimate note in a piece, or over the final or penultimate note in an important subsection of a piece. It can also be found before a coda or ritornello. Sometimes, the cadenza will include parts for other instruments besides the soloist. 3, where a flute, clarinet and horn are used over rippling arpeggios in the piano. The cadenza normally occurs near the end of the first movement, an example is Tchaikovskys First Piano Concerto, where in the first five minutes a cadenza is used. The cadenza is usually the most elaborate and virtuosic part that the instrument plays during the whole piece. At the end of the cadenza, the orchestra re-enters, and generally finishes off the movement on their own, or, less often, the cadenza was originally, and remains, a vocal flourish improvised by a performer to elaborate a cadence in an aria. It was later used in music, and soon became a standard part of the concerto. Originally, it was improvised in this context as well, but during the 19th century, third parties also wrote cadenzas for works in which it was intended by the composer to be improvised, so the soloist could have a well formed solo that they could practice in advance. 20, and Estelle Lieblings edition of cadenzas for operas such as Donizettiss La fille du Régiment and Lucia di Lammermoor. Perhaps the most notable deviations from this tendency towards written cadenzas are to be found in jazz, most often at the end of a ballad, though cadenzas in this genre are usually brief. Saxophonist John Coltrane, however, usually improvised an extended cadenza when performing I Want To Talk About You, in which he showcased his predilections for scalar improvisation and multiphonics. The recorded examples of I Want To Talk About You are approximately 8 minutes in length, with Coltranes unaccompanied cadenza taking up approximately 3 minutes, more sardonically, Jazz critic Martin Williams once described Coltranes improvisations on Africa/Brass as essentially extended cadenzas to pieces that never get played. Equally noteworthy is saxophonist Sonny Rollins shorter improvised cadenza at the close of Three Little Words, Cadenzas are also found in instrumental solos with piano or other accompaniment, where they are placed near the beginning or near the end or sometimes in both places. The end of the first movement of Bachs fifth Brandenburg Concerto features a harpsichord solo, the coloratura arias of bel canto composers Gaetano Donizetti, Vincenzo Bellini, and Giacchino Rossini. Mozart wrote a cadenza into the third and final movement of Piano Sonata in B-flat major, K.333, Beethovens Emperor Concerto contains a notated cadenza. It begins with a cadenza that is accompanied by the orchestra
24.
Concerto
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A concerto is a musical composition, whose characteristics have changed over time. In the 17th century, sacred works for voices and orchestra were typically called concertos, J. S. Bach was thus reflecting a long-standing tradition when he used the title concerto for many of the works that we know as cantatas. But in recent centuries, up to the present, a concerto is a piece composed in three parts or movements, in which one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra or concert band. The popularity of the concerto grosso form declined after the Baroque period, the solo concerto, however, has remained a vital musical force from its inception to this day. Examples of this form of concerto include Giovanni Gabrielis In Ecclesiis or Heinrich Schützs Saul, Saul, was verfolgst du mich. The concerto began to take its shape in the late Baroque period. Corellis concertino group was two violins and a cello, in J. S. Bachs Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, for example, the concertino is a flute, a violin, and a harpsichord, the harpsichord sometimes plays with the ripieno. Later the concerto approached its modern form in which the concertino usually reduces to a solo instrument playing with/against an orchestra. The concerto was intended as a typical of the Italian style of the time. The baroque concerto was mainly for an instrument or a wind instrument. Bach also wrote a concerto for two violins and orchestra, during the baroque period, before the invention of the piano, keyboard concertos were comparatively rare, with the exception of the organ and some harpsichord concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach. Cello concertos have been written since the Baroque era if not earlier, among the works from that period, those by Antonio Vivaldi and Giuseppe Tartini are still part of the standard repertoire today. The concerti of the sons of Johann Sebastian Bach, such as CPE Bach, are perhaps the best links between those of the Baroque period and those of the Classical era. It is conventional to state that the first movements of concerti from the Classical period onwards follow the structure of sonata form, final movements are often in rondo form, as in J. S. Mozart wrote five violin concertos, all in 1775 and they show a number of influences, notably Italian and Austrian. Several passages have leanings towards folk music, as manifested in Austrian serenades, mozart also wrote the highly regarded Sinfonia Concertante for violin, viola, and orchestra. Beethoven wrote only one violin concerto, under-appreciated until revealed as a masterpiece in a performance by violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim, Haydn wrote at least two cello concertos which are the most important works in that genre of the classical era. Bachs three cello concertos and Boccherinis are also noteworthy, Bachs keyboard concertos contain some brilliant soloistic writing
25.
Domenico Scarlatti
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Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti was an Italian composer who spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families. Like his renowned father Alessandro Scarlatti, he composed in a variety of musical forms, Domenico Scarlatti was born in Naples, Kingdom of Naples, belonging to Spanish Crown, in 1685, the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. He was the sixth of ten children of the composer and teacher Alessandro Scarlatti, domenicos older brother Pietro Filippo was also a musician. He probably first studied music under his father, other composers who may have been his early teachers include Gaetano Greco, Francesco Gasparini, and Bernardo Pasquini, all of whom may have influenced his musical style. He was appointed as composer and organist at the chapel in Naples in 1701. In 1704, he revised Carlo Francesco Pollarolos opera Irene for performance at Naples, soon afterwards, his father sent him to Venice. After this, nothing is known of Scarlattis life until 1709, later in life, he was known to cross himself in veneration when speaking of Handels skill. In Rome, Scarlatti composed several operas for Queen Casimires private theatre and he was Maestro Di Cappella at St. Peters from 1715 to 1719. In 1719 he travelled to London to direct his opera Narciso at the Kings Theatre, according to Vicente Bicchi, Domenico Scarlatti arrived in Lisbon on 29 November 1719. There he taught music to the Portuguese princess Maria Magdalena Barbara and he left Lisbon on 28 January 1727 for Rome, where he married Maria Caterina Gentili on 6 May 1728. In 1729 he moved to Seville, staying for four years, in 1733 he went to Madrid as music master to Princess Maria Barbara, who had married into the Spanish royal house. The Princess later became Queen of Spain, Scarlatti remained in the country for the remaining twenty-five years of his life, and had five children there. After the death of his first wife in 1742, he married a Spaniard, among his compositions during his time in Madrid were a number of the 555 keyboard sonatas for which he is best known. Scarlatti befriended the castrato singer Farinelli, a fellow Neapolitan also enjoying royal patronage in Madrid, the musicologist and harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick commented that Farinellis correspondence provides most of the direct information about Scarlatti that has transmitted itself to our day. Domenico Scarlatti died in Madrid, at the age of 71 and his residence on Calle Leganitos is designated with a historical plaque, and his descendants still live in Madrid. He was buried at a convent there, in Madrid, only a small fraction of Scarlattis compositions were published during his lifetime, Scarlatti himself seems to have overseen the publication in 1738 of the most famous collection, his 30 Essercizi. These were well received throughout Europe, and were championed by the foremost English writer on music of the eighteenth century, the many sonatas which were unpublished during Scarlattis lifetime have appeared in print irregularly in the two and a half centuries since. Scarlattis 555 keyboard sonatas are single movements, mostly in form, and some in early sonata form
26.
Johann Sebastian Bach
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Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. Bachs compositions include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Mass in B minor and his music is revered for its technical command, artistic beauty, and intellectual depth. He is now regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time. Bach was born in Eisenach, in the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach and his father Johann Ambrosius Bach was the director of the town musicians, and all of his uncles were professional musicians. His father probably taught him to play the violin and harpsichord, apparently at his own initiative, Bach attended St. Michaels School in Lüneburg for two years. He received the title of Royal Court Composer from Augustus III in 1736, Bachs health and vision declined in 1749, and he died on 28 July 1750. Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, the capital of the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach, in present-day Germany and he was the son of Johann Ambrosius Bach, the director of the town musicians, and Maria Elisabeth Lämmerhirt. He was the eighth and youngest child of Johann Ambrosius, who taught him violin. His uncles were all musicians, whose posts included church organists, court chamber musicians. One uncle, Johann Christoph Bach, introduced him to the organ, Bachs mother died in 1694, and his father died eight months later. The 10-year-old Bach moved in with his eldest brother, Johann Christoph Bach, there he studied, performed, and copied music, including his own brothers, despite being forbidden to do so because scores were so valuable and private and blank ledger paper of that type was costly. He received valuable teaching from his brother, who instructed him on the clavichord, also during this time he was taught theology, Latin, Greek, French and Italian at the local gymnasium. By 3 April 1700 Bach and his schoolfriend Georg Erdmann–who was two years Bachs elder–were enrolled in the prestigious St. Michaels School in Lüneburg, some two weeks travel north of Ohrdruf and their journey was probably undertaken mostly on foot. His two years there were critical in exposing Bach to a range of European culture. In addition to singing in the choir, he played the Schools three-manual organ and he came into contact with sons of aristocrats from northern Germany, sent to the highly selective school to prepare for careers in other disciplines. While in Lüneburg, Bach had access to St. Johns Church and possibly used the famous organ from 1553. His role there is unclear, but it probably included menial, non-musical duties, despite strong family connections and a musically enthusiastic employer, tension built up between Bach and the authorities after several years in the post. Bach was dissatisfied with the standard of singers in the choir and he called one of them a Zippel Fagottist
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Harpsichord
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A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed, Harpsichord designates the whole family of similar plucked keyboard instruments, including the smaller virginals, muselar, and spinet. The harpsichord was used in Renaissance and Baroque music. During the late 18th century, it disappeared from the musical scene with the rise of the piano. In the 20th century, it made a resurgence, being used in historically informed performances of music, in compositions. Harpsichords vary in size and shape, but all have the basic functional arrangement. The player depresses a key that rocks over a pivot in the middle of its length, the other end of the key lifts a jack that holds a small plectrum, which plucks the string. When the player releases the key, the far end returns to its rest position, the plectrum, mounted on a tongue that can swivel backwards away from the string, passes the string without plucking it again. As the key reaches its rest position, a felt damper atop the jack stops the strings vibrations and these basic principles are explained in detail below. The keylever is a pivot, which rocks on a balance pin that passes through a hole drilled through the keylever. The jack is a thin, rectangular piece of wood that sits upright on the end of the keylever, the jacks are held in place by the registers. These are two strips of wood, which run in the gap between pinblock and bellyrail. The registers have rectangular mortises through which the pass as they can move up. The registers hold the jacks in the location needed to pluck the string. In the jack, a plectrum juts out almost horizontally and passes just under the string, historically, plectra were made of bird quill or leather, many modern harpsichords have plastic plectra. When the front of the key is pressed, the back of the key rises, the jack is lifted, the vertical motion of the jack is then stopped by the jackrail, which is covered with soft felt to muffle the impact. When the key is released, the falls back down under its own weight. This is made possible by having the plectrum held in a tongue attached with a pivot and a spring to the body of the jack
28.
Pipe organ
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The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air through organ pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre. Most organs have multiple ranks of pipes of differing timbre, pitch, a pipe organ has one or more keyboards played by the hands, and a pedalboard played by the feet, each keyboard has its own group of stops. The keyboard, pedalboard, and stops are housed in the organs console, the smallest portable pipe organs may have only one or two dozen pipes and one manual, the largest may have over 20,000 pipes and seven manuals. A list of some of the most notable and largest pipe organs in the world can be viewed at List of pipe organs. The origins of the organ can be traced back to the water organ in Ancient Greece, in the 3rd century BC. By the 6th or 7th century AD, bellows were used to supply organs with wind, beginning in the 12th century, the organ began to evolve into a complex instrument capable of producing different timbres. A pipe organ with great leaden pipes was sent to the West by the Byzantine emperor Constantine V as a gift to Pepin the Short, King of the Franks, in 757. Pepins son Charlemagne requested a similar organ for his chapel in Aachen in 812, by the 17th century, most of the sounds available on the modern classical organ had been developed. From that time, the organ was the most complex man-made device - a distinction it retained until it was displaced by the telephone exchange in the late 19th century. Pipe organs are installed in churches, synagogues, concert halls, schools and they are used in the performance of classical music, sacred music, secular music, and popular music. The beginning of the 21st century has seen a resurgence in installations in concert halls, the organ boasts a substantial repertoire, which spans over 500 years. The organ is one of the oldest instruments used in European classical music that has commonly been credited as having derived from Greece. Its earliest predecessors were built in Ancient Greece in the 3rd century BC. The word organ is derived from the Greek όργανον, a term for an instrument or a tool, via the Latin organum. The Greek engineer Ctesibius of Alexandria is credited with inventing the organ in the 3rd century BC and he devised an instrument called the hydraulis, which delivered a wind supply maintained through water pressure to a set of pipes. The hydraulis was played in the arenas of the Roman Empire, the 9th century Persian geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih, in his lexicographical discussion of instruments, cited the urghun as one of the typical instruments of the Eastern Roman Empire. It was often used in the Hippodrome in the capital of Constantinople
29.
Basso continuo
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Basso continuo parts, almost universal in the Baroque era, provided the harmonic structure of the music. The phrase is shortened to continuo, and the instrumentalists playing the continuo part are called the continuo group. The titles of many Baroque works make mention of the section, such as J. S. Bachs Concerto for Two Violins, Strings. The makeup of the group is often left to the discretion of the performers. At least one instrument capable of playing chords must be included, such as a harpsichord, organ, lute, theorbo, guitar, regal, or harp. In addition, any number of instruments play in the bass register may be included, such as cello, double bass, bass viol. The most common combination, at least in modern performances, is harpsichord and cello for instrumental works and secular works, such as operas. Harps, lutes, and other instruments are more typical of early 17th-century music. The keyboard player realizes a continuo part by playing, in addition to the bass line, notes above it to complete chords. The figured bass notation, described below, is a guide, but performers are expected to use their musical judgment. Experienced players sometimes incorporate motives found in the instrumental parts into their improvised chordal accompaniment. Modern editions of music usually supply a realized keyboard part, fully written out in staff notation for a player. With the rise in historically informed performance, however, the number of performers who are able to improvise their parts from the figures, as Baroque players would have done, has increased. Basso continuo, though a structural and identifying element of the Baroque period, continued to be used in many works, mostly sacred choral works. An example is C. P. E. Bachs Concerto in D minor for flute, strings and basso continuo. Examples of its use in the 19th century are rarer, but they do exist, masses by Anton Bruckner, Beethoven, the phrase tasto solo indicates that only the bass line is to be played for a short period, usually until the next figure is encountered. This instructs the chord-playing instrumentalist not to play any improvised chords for a period, composers were inconsistent in the usages described below. Especially in the 17th century, the numbers were omitted whenever the composer thought the chord was obvious, early composers such as Claudio Monteverdi often specified the octave by the use of compound intervals such as 10,11, and 15
30.
Chord voicing
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In music theory, voicing is the manner in which one distributes, or spaces, notes and chords among the various instruments or simultaneous vertical placement of notes in relation to each other. In triad chords, close root position voicing is the most compact voicing, with the notes in major third intervals, close and open harmony are harmony constructed from close- and open-position chords, respectively. Many composers, as developed and gained experience, became more enterprising. For example, the theme from the movement of Beethoven’s early Piano Sonata No. 10, presents chords mostly in closed position, Whereas in the theme of the Arietta movement that concludes his last Piano Sonata No,32, Op.111 as simplicity itself … its widely-spaced harmonization creates a mood of almost mystical intensity. Ravel’s Pavane de la Belle au Bois Dormant from his 1908 suite Ma Mère lOye exploits the delicate transparency of voicing afforded through the medium of the piano duet, four hands can cope better that two when it comes to playing widely spaced chords. The two chords that open and close Stravinskys Symphony of Psalms have distinctive sonorities arising out of the voicing of the notes, austin remarks, The first and last chords of the Symphony of Psalms are famous. The doubling number of an octave is the number of individual voices assigned to each pitch within the chord, for example, in the three images in the introduction above only one pitch is doubled, the G in the rightmost image. One nomenclature for describing classes of voicings is the drop-n terminology, such as drop-2 voicings, drop-2-and-4 voicings. This systems views voicings as being built from the top down, the implicit, non-dropped, default voicing in this system is where all voices are in the same octave, with the individual voices being numbered from the top down. The highest voice is the first voice or voice 1, the second-highest voice is voice 2, etc. There is no provision in this nomenclature for having more than one voice on the same pitch, a dropped voicing is where one or more voices are lowered by an octave relative to the default state. Dropping the first voice is undefined, a drop-1 voicing would still have all voices in the same octave, there is no provision in this nomenclature for indicating the dropping of voices by two or more octaves or for having the same pitch represented in multiple octaves. A drop-2 voicing is where the voice is lowered by an octave. These are the drop-2-and-4 voicings for G7, G D F B, F B D G, D G B F, various drop combinations are possible, given enough voices, such as drop-3, drop-2-and-3, drop-5, drop-2-and-5, drop-3-and-5, etc. Blind octave Consecutive fifths Open chord Partial voicing
31.
Figured bass
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Basso continuo parts, almost universal in the Baroque era, provided the harmonic structure of the music. The phrase is shortened to continuo, and the instrumentalists playing the continuo part are called the continuo group. The titles of many Baroque works make mention of the section, such as J. S. Bachs Concerto for Two Violins, Strings. The makeup of the group is often left to the discretion of the performers. At least one instrument capable of playing chords must be included, such as a harpsichord, organ, lute, theorbo, guitar, regal, or harp. In addition, any number of instruments play in the bass register may be included, such as cello, double bass, bass viol. The most common combination, at least in modern performances, is harpsichord and cello for instrumental works and secular works, such as operas. Harps, lutes, and other instruments are more typical of early 17th-century music. The keyboard player realizes a continuo part by playing, in addition to the bass line, notes above it to complete chords. The figured bass notation, described below, is a guide, but performers are expected to use their musical judgment. Experienced players sometimes incorporate motives found in the instrumental parts into their improvised chordal accompaniment. Modern editions of music usually supply a realized keyboard part, fully written out in staff notation for a player. With the rise in historically informed performance, however, the number of performers who are able to improvise their parts from the figures, as Baroque players would have done, has increased. Basso continuo, though a structural and identifying element of the Baroque period, continued to be used in many works, mostly sacred choral works. An example is C. P. E. Bachs Concerto in D minor for flute, strings and basso continuo. Examples of its use in the 19th century are rarer, but they do exist, masses by Anton Bruckner, Beethoven, the phrase tasto solo indicates that only the bass line is to be played for a short period, usually until the next figure is encountered. This instructs the chord-playing instrumentalist not to play any improvised chords for a period, composers were inconsistent in the usages described below. Especially in the 17th century, the numbers were omitted whenever the composer thought the chord was obvious, early composers such as Claudio Monteverdi often specified the octave by the use of compound intervals such as 10,11, and 15
32.
Art music
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Art music is an umbrella term that refers to musical traditions, implying advanced structural and theoretical considerations and a written musical tradition. Serious or cultivated music are frequently used as a contrast for ordinary. After the 20th century, art music was divided into two extensions, serious music and light music and this term is mostly used to refer to music descending from the tradition of Western classical music. He explains that each of three is distinguishable from the others according to certain criteria. Musician Catherine Schmidt-Jones defines art music differently, as a music which requires more work by the listener to fully appreciate than is typical of popular music. In her view, his can include the more challenging types of jazz and rock music, the term may also refer to, The classical/art music traditions of several different cultures around the world, Some forms of jazz, excluding most forms generally considered popular music. Jazz is generally considered popular music, the term refers primarily to classical traditions that focus on formal styles, invite technical and detailed deconstruction and criticism, and demand focused attention from the listener. In strict western practice, art music is considered primarily a musical tradition, preserved in some form of music notation, as opposed to being transmitted orally, by rote. According to the academic Tim Wall, the most significant example of the struggle between Tin Pan Alley, African American, vernacular and art discourses was in jazz. As early as the 1930s, artists attempted to cultivate ideas of jazz, taking it away from its perceived vernacular. In the second half of the 20th century, there was a trend in American culture in which the boundaries between art and pop music became increasingly blurred. Beginning in 1966, the degree of social and artistic dialogue among rock musicians dramatically accelerated for bands who fused elements of composed music with the musical traditions of rock. During the late 1960s and 1970s, progressive rock bands represented a form of music that combined rock with high art musical forms either through quotation, illusion. Progressive music may be equated with explicit references to aspects of art music, Music genre Progressive music Traditional music Rockwell, John. Popular Music Takes a Serious Turn
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Indian classical music
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Indian classical music is one of many forms of art music that have their roots in particular regional cultures. For other classical and art traditions, see List of classical. Indian classical music is a genre of South Asian music, the North Indian classical music tradition is called Hindustani, while the South Indian expression is called Carnatic. These traditions were not distinct till about the 16th century, there on, during the turmoils of Islamic rule period of the Indian subcontinent, the traditions separated and evolved into distinct forms. However, the two continue to have more common features than differences. The roots of the music of India are found in the Vedic literature of Hinduism and the ancient Natyashastra. The 13th century Sanskrit text Sangita-Ratnakara of Sharngadeva is regarded as the text by both the Hindustani music and the Carnatic music traditions. The Indian classical music has two elements, raga and tala. The raga forms the fabric of a structure, the tala measures the time cycle. The raga gives an artist the ingredients palette to build the melody from sounds, dhrupads are among the oldest classical Indian music compositions, with heroic, laudatory and spiritual themes. They are the basis for many subgenre of Indian music, the roots of music in ancient India are found in the Vedic literature of Hinduism. The earliest Indian thought combined three arts, syllabic recital, melos and dance, as these fields developed, sangita became a distinct genre of art, in a form equivalent to contemporary music. This likely occurred before the time of Yāska, since he includes these terms in his nirukta studies, some of the ancient texts of Hinduism such as the Samaveda are structured entirely to melodic themes, it is sections of Rigveda set to music. The Samaveda is organized into two formats, one part is based on the musical meter, another by the aim of the rituals. The text is written with embedded coding, where svaras is either shown above or within the text and these markings identify which units are to be sung in a single breath, each unit based on multiples of one eighth. The hymns of Samaveda contain melodic content, form, rhythm and this structure is, however, not unique or limited to Samaveda. The Rigveda embeds the musical meter too, without the kind of found in the Samaveda. For example, the Gayatri mantra contains three lines of exactly eight syllables, with an embedded ternary rhythm
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Music of India
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The music of India includes multiple varieties of Indian classical music, folk music, Filmi and Indian pop. Indias classical music tradition, including Hindustani music and Carnatic, has a history spanning millennia, Music in India began as an integral part of socio-religious life. The basic concepts of music includes shruti, swaras, alankar, raga. Its tonal system divides the octave into 22 segments called shrutis, not all equal, the Hindustani music tradition diverged from Carnatic music around the 13th-14th centuries CE. The practice of singing based on notes was popular even from the Vedic times where the hymns in Sama Veda, developing a strong and diverse tradition over several centuries, it has contemporary traditions established primarily in India but also in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Classical genres are dhrupad, dhamar, khyal, tarana and sadra, the present of Carnatic music can be traced to the 14th - 15th centuries AD and thereafter. It originated in South India during the rule of Vijayanagar Empire, like Hindustani music, it is melodic, with improvised variations, but tends to have more fixed compositions. It consists of a composition with improvised embellishments added to the piece in the forms of Raga Alapana, Kalpanaswaram, Neraval and, in the case of advanced students, Raga, Tala. The main emphasis is on the vocals as most compositions are written to be sung, there are about 7.2 million ragas in Carnatic Music, with around 300 still in use today. Every December, the city of Chennai in India has its eight-week-long Music Season, Carnatic music has served as the foundation for most music in South India, including folk music, festival music and has also extended its influence to film music in the past 100–150 years or so. Light classical or semi-classical, among others, Thumri, Dadra, Ghazal, Chaiti, Kajri and Tappa, Rabindra Sangeet, also known as Tagore songs, are songs written and composed by Rabindranath Tagore. They have distinctive characteristics in the music of Bengal, popular in India, Sangeet means music, Rabindra Sangeet means music of Rabindra. Rabindra Sangeet used Indian classical music and traditional music as sources. Rabindranath Tagore was a figure in Indian music. Many singers in West Bengal and Bangladesh base their careers on the singing of Tagore musical masterpieces. The national anthem of India and national anthem of Bangladesh are Rabindra Sangeets, bihu is the festival of New Year of Assam falling on mid April. This is a festival of nature and mother earth where the first day is for the cows, second day is for the man. Bihu dances and songs accompanied by drums and wind instruments are essential part of this festival
35.
Music of Afghanistan
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Music has always been a part of Afghans lives but since the late 1970s the country has been involved in constant wars and people were less concerned about music. As such, music in Afghanistan has been suppressed and recording for outsiders is minimal, located on the crossroads between many trade routes, Afghanistans music tradition was influenced by Arabs, Persians, Indians, Mongolians, Chinese and many others passing through. During the 1990s, the Taliban governments banned instrumental music and much public music-making, in spite of arrests and destruction of musical instruments, musicians have continued to play their trade into the present. Lyrics throughout most of Afghanistan are typically in Dari and Pashto, the Afghan concept of music is closely associated with instruments, and thus unaccompanied religious singing is not considered music. The Chishti Sufi sect of Kabul is an exception in that they use instruments like the rubab, tabla and harmonium in their worship, this music is called tatti. The classical musical form of Afghanistan is called klasik, which includes both instrumental and vocal and belly dancing ragas, as well as Tarana and Ghazals. Many Ustads, or professional musicians, have learned North Indian classical music in India and they maintain cultural and personal ties with India—through discipleship or intermarriage—and they use the Hindustani musical theories and terminology, for example raga and tala. Afghan ragas, in contrast to Indian ones, tend to be focused on rhythm. Other Afghan classical instruments include the dutar, sorna, sitar, dilruba, tambur, ghichak and his composition Pai Ashk was used in the theme song of the Hindi film Mera Saya. Ubaidullah Jan Kandaharai is regarded as the king of Pashto music in the southern Afghanistan region and he died in the 1980s but his music is still very much enjoyed by the Pashtun diaspora around the world, mainly by the Pashtuns in the Kandahar-Quetta regions. Other classical singers are Ustad Qasim, Ustad Rahim Bakhsh, the rubab is a common lute-like instrument in Afghanistan, and is the forerunner of the Indian sarod. The rubab has a body carved from mulberry wood, which is chosen to give the instrument its distinct timbre. It has three strings and a plectrum made from ivory, bone or wood. The dombura is a folk instrument, particularly among the northern Tajiks. Notable Afghan dombura players include Dilagha Surood, Naseer Parwani, Mir Maftoon, Safdar Tawkloi, the dombura is played with much banging and scratching on the instrument to help give a percussive sound. The two strings are made of nylon or gut and they cross a short bridge to a pin at the other end of the body. There is a sound hole in the back of the instrument. It is not finished with any varnish, filing or sanding of any kind, ghichak is a string instrument made by the Hazara people of Afghanistan In 1925, Afghanistan began radio broadcasting, but its station was destroyed in 1929
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Music of Pakistan
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The Music of Pakistan includes diverse elements ranging from music from various parts of South Asia as well as Central Asian, Middle Eastern, and modern-day Western popular music influences. With these multiple influences, a distinctive Pakistani sound has emerged, in poetry, the ghazal is a poetic form consisting of couplets which share a rhyme and a refrain. Each line must share the same meter, etymologically, the word literally refers to the mortal cry of a gazelle. The animal is called Ghizaal, from which the English word gazelles stems, ghazals are traditionally expressions of love, separation and loneliness, for which the gazelle is an appropriate image. A ghazal can thus be understood as an expression of both the pain of loss or separation of the lover and the beauty of love in spite of that pain. The structural requirements of the ghazal are more stringent than those of most poetic forms traditionally written in English, in its style and content it is a genre which has proved capable of an extraordinary variety of expression around its central theme of love and separation between lovers. The ghazal spread into South Asia in the 12th century under the influence of the new Islamic Sultanate courts, exotic to the region, as is indicated by the very sounds of the name itself when properly pronounced as ġazal. Although the ghazal is most prominently a form of Urdu poetry, today, most Ghazal singers are trained in classical music and sing in either Khyal or Thumri. Qawwali is a vibrant musical tradition goes back more than 700 years in old India. Originally performed mainly at Sufi shrines throughout India, it has gained mainstream popularity. Listeners, and often artists themselves are transported to a state of wajad, Qawwali was essentially created by Amir Khusrau in the late 13th century in old India. During the first major migration in the 11th century, the tradition of Sama migrated to South Asia from Turkey. Rumi and his Mevlana order of Sufism have been the propagators of Sama in Central Asia. Amir Khusrau of the Chisti order of Sufis is credited with fusing the Turkish, Persian, Arabic, the word Sama is used in Central Asia and Turkey, for forms very similar to Qawwali while in Pakistan, the formal name used for a session of Qawwali is Mehfil-e-Sama. Women are usually excluded from traditional Muslim music as respectable women are prohibited from singing in mixed-gender public gatherings. Traditionally over the centuries, this has been the practice per the general interpretation of Islamic Law by the religious scholars and this again, has to be a Women Only event per the long practiced tradition where Islam generally discourages mixed-gender gatherings among unmarried women and unmarried men. For evidence, one can just read the name lists on this page to spot a lot of female names on those lists now. This is a type of Islamic religious music where poetical verses of the love for God is expressed, some of the most famous artists include Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, along with his nephew Rahat Fateh Ali Khan
37.
Music of Bangladesh
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The music of Bangladesh, also referred to as Bangladeshi music, comprises a long tradition of religious and secular song-writing over a period of almost a millennium. Composed with lyrics in the Bengali language, Bengali music spans a variety of styles. In Bangladesh music has served the purpose of documenting the lives of the people and was patronized by the rulers. Bangladeshi classical music is based on modes called ragas, all traditional Bengali music tend to be based on various variations of Hindustani Classical Music. Folk has come to occupy the lives of Bangladeshis almost more than any genre of Bengali music. Among the luminaries of the different folk traditions are Lalon Fokir, Radharaman Dutta, Hason Raja, Khursheed Nurali, Ramesh Shill, folk songs are characterised by simple musical structure and words. Before the advent of radio, entertainment in the rural areas relied on a large extent on stage performances by folk singers, with the arrival of new communication technologies and digital media, many folk songs were modernised and incorporated into modern songs. Folk music can be classified into subgenres, Baul, mainly inspired by Lalon Fokir. Bhandari, devotional music from the South, bhatiali, music of fishermen and boatman, almost always tied by a common raga, sung solo. Bhawaiya, song of bullock-cart drivers of the North, dhamail, a form of folk music and dance originated in Sylhet, Bangladesh. Ghazal, Popularity of folk music of Sufi genres, introduction of philosophy, gombhira, song performed with a particular distinctive rhythm and dance with two performers, always personifying a man and his grand father, discussing a topic to raise social awareness. Hason Raja, devotional songs written by a composer by the name of Hason Raja that was recently repopularised as dance music. Jari, songs involving musical battle between two groups Jatra Pala, songs associated exclusively with plays, usually involves colourful presentations of historical themes. Kirtan, devotional song depicting love to Hindu God Krishna and his wife, kavigan, poems sung with simple music usually presented on stage as a musical battle between poets. Lalon, best known of all songs and the most important subgenre of Baul songs, almost entirely attributed to spiritual writer and composer. He is known to all in West Bengal of India too and it is often known as workmens song as well. Shyama Sangeet, a genre of Bengali devotional songs dedicated to the Hindu goddess Shyama or Kali which is a form of supreme universal mother-goddess Durga or parvati and it is also known as Shaktagiti or Durgastuti. Baul is the most commonly known category of Bangladeshi folk songs and it is mostly performed by hermits who are followers of Sufism in Bangladesh
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Raga
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A Raga, Raag or Ragam, literally means coloring, tingeing, dyeing. The term also refers to a close to melodic mode in Indian classical music. Raga is a remarkable and central feature of classical Indian music tradition, each raga is an array of melodic structures with musical motifs, considered in the Indian tradition to have the ability to color the mind and affect the emotions of the audience. A raga consists of at least five notes, and each provides the musician with a musical framework. The specific notes within a raga can be reordered and improvised by the musician, each raga has an emotional significance and symbolic associations such as with season, time and mood. The raga is considered a means in Indian musical tradition to evoke certain feelings in an audience, hundreds of raga are recognized in the classical Indian tradition, of which about 30 are common. Each raga, state Dorothea E. Hast and others, has its own unique melodic personality, there are two main classical Indian music traditions, North Indian and South Indian, and the concept of raga is shared by both. Raga are also found in Sikh traditions such as in Guru Granth Sahib, similarly it is a part of the qawwali tradition found in Sufi Islamic communities of South Asia. Some popular Indian film songs and ghazals use rāgas in their compositions, the Sanskrit word raga has Indo-European roots, as *reg- which connotes to dye. It is found in Greek, Persian, Khwarezmian and other languages, in such as raxt, rang, rakt. The words red and rado are also related, Rāga, states Monier Monier-Williams, means the act of colouring or dyeing, or simply a colour, hue, tint, dye. The term also connotes an emotional state referring to a feeling, affection, desire, interest, joy or delight, particularly related to passion, love, or sympathy for a subject or something. In the context of ancient Indian music, the term refers to a note, melody, formula. The word appears in the ancient Principal Upanishads of Hinduism, as well as the Bhagavad Gita, for example, verse 3.5 of the Maitri Upanishad and verse 2.2.9 of the Mundaka Upanishad contain the word raga. The Mundaka Upanishad uses it in its discussion of soul and matter, with the sense that the soul does not color, dye, stain, the Maitri Upanishad uses the term in the sense of passion, inner quality, psychological state. The term raga is also found in ancient texts of Buddhism where it connotes passion, sensuality, lust, alternatively, raga is used in Buddhist texts in the sense of color, dye, hue. The term raga in the connotation of a melodic format occurs in the Brihaddeshi by Matanga dated ca. 8th century. The Brihaddeshi describes raga as a combination of tones which, with beautiful illuminating graces, pleases the people in general, bharata states that certain combination of notes are pleasant, certain not so
39.
Counterpoint
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In music, counterpoint is the relationship between voices that are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradition, strongly developing during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period, the term originates from the Latin punctus contra punctum meaning point against point. Counterpoint generally involves musical lines with strongly independent identities, Counterpoint has been used to designate a voice or even an entire composition. In each era, contrapuntally organized music writing has been subject to rules—sometimes strict ones, chords are the simultaneous soundings of notes, whereas harmonic, vertical features are considered secondary and almost incidental when counterpoint is the predominant textural element. Counterpoint focuses on melodic interaction—only secondarily on the produced by that interaction. In the words of John Rahn, It is hard to write a beautiful song and it is harder to write several individually beautiful songs that, when sung simultaneously, sound as a more beautiful polyphonic whole. The way that is accomplished in detail is, some examples of related compositional techniques include, the round, the canon, and perhaps the most complex contrapuntal convention, the fugue. All of these are examples of imitative counterpoint, Species counterpoint generally offers less freedom to the composer than other types of counterpoint and therefore is called a strict counterpoint. The student gradually attains the ability to free counterpoint according to the given rules at the time. The idea is at least as old as 1532, when Giovanni Maria Lanfranco described a concept in his Scintille di musica. Zacconi, unlike later theorists, included a few extra contrapuntal techniques, a succession of later theorists quite closely imitated Fuxs seminal work, often with some small and idiosyncratic modifications in the rules. The following rules apply to melodic writing in each species, for each part, if the final is approached from below, then the leading tone must be raised in a minor key, but not in Phrygian or Hypophrygian mode. Thus, in the Dorian mode on D, a C♯ is necessary at the cadence, permitted melodic intervals are the perfect fourth, fifth, and octave, as well as the major and minor second, major and minor third, and ascending minor sixth. The ascending minor sixth must be followed by motion downwards. The three notes should be from the triad, if this is impossible, they should not outline more than one octave. In general, do not write more than two skips in the same direction, if writing a skip in one direction, it is best to proceed after the skip with motion in the other direction. The interval of a tritone in three notes should be avoided as is the interval of a seventh in three notes, there must be a climax or high point in the line countering the cantus firmus. This usually occurs somewhere in the middle of exercise and must occur on a strong beat, an outlining of a seventh is avoided within a single line moving in the same direction
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Cantus firmus
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In music, a cantus firmus is a pre-existing melody forming the basis of a polyphonic composition. The plural of this Latin term is cantus firmi, although the corrupt form canti firmi can also be found, the Italian is often used instead, canto fermo. The term first appears in theoretical writings early in the 13th century, the earliest polyphonic compositions almost always involved a cantus firmus, typically a Gregorian chant, although by convention the term is not applied to music written before the 14th century. Later, the cantus firmus appeared in the voice, singing notes of longer duration, around which more florid lines. Elaborations came later, in what was to be known as the paraphrase technique, the cyclic mass, which became the standard type of mass composition around the middle of the 15th century, used cantus firmus technique as its commonest organising principle. At first the cantus firmus was almost always drawn from plainchant, probably the most widely set of the secular cantus firmus melodies was Lhomme armé. Over 40 settings are known, including two by Josquin des Prez, and six by a composer or composers in Naples. Many composers of the middle and late Renaissance wrote at least one mass based on melody. German composers in the Baroque period in Germany, notably Bach, in the opening movement of Bachs St Matthew Passion, the chorale O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig appears in long notes, sung by a separate choir of boys in ripieno. Many of his chorale preludes include a chorale tune in the pedal part, using a cantus firmus as a means of teaching species counterpoint was the basis of Gradus ad Parnassum by Johann Joseph Fux, although the method was first published by Girolamo Diruta in 1610. Counterpoint is still taught routinely using an adapted from Fux. Several writers have used cantus firmus as a metaphor, kate Gross used it for those childhood pursuits that give her happiness and define her - pursuits that she calls the enduring melody of her life. Dietrich Bonhoeffer also uses the metaphor for love for God in his Letters and Papers from Prison, M. Jennifer Bloxam, Cantus firmus, Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy, Sparks, E. H. Cantus firmus in Mass and Motet, Berkeley
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Ostinato
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In music, an ostinato is a motif or phrase that persistently repeats in the same musical voice, usually at the same pitch. The repeating idea may be a pattern, part of a tune. Both ostinatos and ostinati are accepted English plural forms, the reflecting the words Italian etymology. If the cadence may be regarded as the cradle of tonality, within the context of film music, Claudia Gorbman defines an obstinate as a repeated melodic or rhythmic figure that propel scenes that lack dynamic visual action. Ostinato plays an important part in improvised music, in which it is referred to as a riff or a vamp. A favorite technique of contemporary writers, ostinati are often used in modal and Latin jazz. Ostinato are used in 20th-century music to stabilize groups of pitches, as in Stravinskys The Rite of Spring Introduction and Augurs of Spring. A famous type of ostinato, called the Rossini crescendo, owes its name to a crescendo that underlies a persistent musical pattern and this style was emulated by other bel canto composers, especially Vincenzo Bellini, and later by Wagner. Applicable in homophonic and contrapuntal textures they are repetitive rhythmic-harmonic schemes, more familiar as accompanimental melodies, the techniques appeal to composers from Debussy to avant-garde composers until at least the 1970s. Lies in part in the need for unity created by the abandonment of functional chord progressions to shape phrases. Relentless, repetitive character help to establish and confirm the modal center and their popularity may also be justified by their ease as well as range of use, though. Ostinato must be employed judiciously, as its overuse can lead to monotony. Ground bass or basso ostinato is a type of form in which a bass line. Aaron Copland describes basso ostinato as, the easiest to recognize of the variation forms wherein. A long phrase—either an accompanimental figure or an actual melody—is repeated over and over again in the bass part, however, he cautions, it might more properly be termed a musical device than a musical form. Many instruments south of the Sahara Desert play ostinato melodies and these include lamellophones such as the mbira, as well as xylophones like the balafon, the bikutsi, and the gyil. Ostinato figures are also played on string instruments such as the kora, gankoqui bell ensembles, often, African ostinatos contain offbeats or cross-beats, that contradict the metric structure. Other African ostinatos generate complete cross-rhythms by sounding both the main beats and cross-beats, in the following example, a gyil sounds the three-against-two cross-rhythm
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Giulio Caccini
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Giulio Romolo Caccini, was an Italian composer, teacher, singer, instrumentalist and writer of the very late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. He was one of the founders of the genre of opera and he was also the father of the composer Francesca Caccini. Little is known about his life, but he was born in Italy. In Rome he studied the lute, the viol and the harp, in the 1560s, Francesco de Medici, Grand Duke of Florence, was so impressed with his talent that he took the young Caccini to Florence for further study. By 1579, Caccini was singing at the Medici court, in the last two decades of the 16th century, Caccini continued his activities as a singer, teacher and composer. Caccini made at least one trip to Rome, in 1592. According to his own writings, his music and singing met with an enthusiastic response, however, Rome, the home of Palestrina and the Roman School, was musically conservative, and music following Caccinis stylistic lead was relatively rare there until after 1600. After 1605, Caccini was less influential, though he continued to part in composition. He died in Florence, and is buried in the church of St. Annunziata, the stile recitativo, as the newly created style of monody was called, proved to be popular not only in Florence, but elsewhere in Italy. Caccinis most influential work was a collection of monodies and songs for voice and basso continuo, published in 1602. Although it is considered the first published collection of monodies. In fact, the collection was Caccinis attempt, evidently successful, to himself as the inventor and codifier of monody. Although the collection was published in 1602, Caccini is careful to maintain the date 1601 in his dedication of the collection to Signor Lorenzo Salviati. This likely explains why the collection is dated to 1601. Moreover, he positions himself as the inventor of the style when describing it in the introduction. The introduction to volume is probably the most clearly written description of the performance of monody, what Caccini called affetto cantando. The introduction is also important in the history of music theory and this passage is often overlooked, as it is brief, located at the very end of the introduction and even indicated by Caccini as a note, an aside or addendum to the main purpose. Caccini wrote music for three operas—Euridice, Il rapimento di Cefalo, and Euridice, though the first two were collaborations with others, in addition he wrote the music for one intermedio
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Alberti bass
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Alberti bass is a particular kind of accompaniment figure in music, often used in the Classical era, and sometimes the Romantic era. It was named after Domenico Alberti, who used it extensively, Alberti bass is a kind of broken chord or arpeggiated accompaniment, where the notes of the chord are presented in the order lowest, highest, middle, highest. The broken chord pattern helps to create a smooth, sustained, Alberti bass is usually found in the left hand of pieces for keyboard instruments, especially for Mozarts piano pieces. However, it is found in pieces for other instruments. Well-known examples of Alberti bass include the beginning of Mozarts Piano Sonata, a famous example from 20th-century American popular music is the rhythm guitar part of the 1962 surf rock standard Pipeline, by The Chantays
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Louis Vierne
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Louis Victor Jules Vierne was a French organist and composer. Louis Vierne was born in Poitiers, the capital of the Vienne department, nearly blind due to congenital cataracts, after completing school in the provinces, Louis Vierne entered the Paris Conservatory. From 1892, Vierne served as an assistant to the organist Charles-Marie Widor at the church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, Vierne subsequently became principal organist at the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, a post he held from 1900 until his death in 1937. Vierne had a life that was physically and emotionally very difficult and his congenital cataracts did not make him completely blind, but he was what would be called today legally blind. Early in his career, he composed on outsized manuscript paper, later in life, as his already limited sight continued to diminish, he resorted to Braille to do most of his work. He was deeply affected by a separation and subsequent divorce from his wife, though he held one of the most prestigious organ posts in France, the Notre-Dame organ was in a state of disrepair throughout much of his tenure at the instrument. He eventually undertook a tour of North America to raise money for its restoration. A street accident in Paris caused him to fracture his leg. The leg was saved, but his recovery, and the task of completely re-learning his pedal technique, despite his difficulties, however, his students uniformly described him as a kind, patient and encouraging teacher. The government of France made Vierne a Chevalier de la Legion dhonneur in 1931, Vierne suffered either a stroke or a heart attack while giving his 1750th organ recital at Notre-Dame de Paris on the evening of 2 June 1937. He had completed the concert, which members of the audience said showed him at his full powers—as well as he has ever played. Directly after he had finished playing his Stele pour un enfant défunt from his Triptyque Op 58 and he read the first theme in Braille, then selected the stops he would use for the improvisation. He suddenly pitched forward, and fell off the bench as his foot hit the low E pedal of the organ and he lost consciousness as the single note echoed throughout the church. He had thus fulfilled his oft-stated lifelong dream—to die at the console of the organ of Notre-Dame. Maurice Duruflé, another major French organist and composer, was at his side at the time of his death, Vierne had an elegant, clean style of writing that respected form above all else. His harmonic language was romantically rich, but not as sentimental or theatrical as that of his early mentor César Franck. Like all of the fin de siècle French organists, Viernes music was very idiomatic for his chosen instrument and has inspired most of the great Parisian organist-composers who followed him. His output for organ includes six symphonies,24 Fantasy Pieces
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Charles Tournemire
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Charles Arnould Tournemire was a French composer and organist, notable partly for his improvisations, which were often rooted in the music of Gregorian chant. Born at Bordeaux, Tournemire moved in adolescence to Paris, from 1898 to 1939, Tournemire served as the organiste titulaire at Francks old church, the Basilique Ste-Clotilde, Paris. He was also professor of Chamber Music at the Paris Conservatoire, in 1931 he published a biography of Franck. A year before the biography appeared, Tournemire recorded five organ improvisations, of ten 78-rpm discs which Tournemire made in 1930, playing the Aristide Cavaillé-Coll organ of Sainte-Clotilde, five contain Franck compositions. This set of discs was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque on 18 May 1931 and has been reissued on both LP and CD and this collection covers the cycle of the Roman Catholic liturgical year, each set being based on the Gregorian chants for the day. Unlike the symphonies of Charles-Marie Widor, which are heard in secular recitals. Tournemire died at Arcachon in 1939, the precise cause of his death is uncertain, as is the exact date. Stephen Schloesser, Mystic Modern, The Life, Thought, richmond, Virginia, Church Music Association of America,2014. ISBN 978-0991645206 Joël-Marie Fauquet, Catalogue de loeuvre de Charles Tournemire, pascal Ianco, Charles Tournemire, ou Le mythe de Tristan. ISBN 2-940310-06-8 Rollin Smith, Toward an Authentic Interpretation of the Organ Works of César Franck, new York City, Pendragon Press,1983
