May 18th 2009
Archive for the 'Music Genres' Category
May 13th 2009
BORODIN, Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor
The Polovtsians were a Central Asian people who fought the Russians in the twelfth century. In 1890 Borodin wrote an opera, Prince Igor, about this war — or rather about the tragic love of a Polovtsian princess for a Russian prince. Continue Reading »
May 13th 2009
BIZET：Suites from L’Arlisienne
Nineteenth-century theatre-goers liked lavish incidental music, and to provide this most theatres had pit bands, ranging from two or three players to full orchestras. Writing music for plays financed many composers‘ lives. L’Arlésienne (`The Girl from Arles’) was a tragedy by the Provençal writer Alphonse Daudet, first performed in Paris in 18 72. Continue Reading »
May 11th 2009
MESSIAEN and his erotic music carvings: Turangalila-Symphony
On some temples in India, every square centimetre of wall- surface is covered with erotic carvings: people and animals coupling in every conceivable position, a monument to the exuberance and ecstasy of sex. Continue Reading »
May 8th 2009
RACHMANINOV, Prelude in C sharp minor, Op. 3 No. 2.
Rachmaninov wrote this piece when he was nineteen, and sold it to a publisher, outright, for a handful of roubles. He then introduced it at a piano recital, and it made a sensation. Continue Reading »
April 8th 2009
Holst and sumptuous orchestral show
March 3rd 2009
Tallis’ Audivi Vocem, classical song of ‘I heard a voice coming from heaven…’
Audivi vocem is the eighth respond (a chant or anthem) to be sung during Matins on All Saints Day. Responds or responsories were part of daily service at the Chapel Royal and consisted of alternating sections for soloists and choir. This setting of Audivi vocem was one of thirty-four Cantiones Sacrae, or Sacred Songs, published in 1575 by Thomas Tallis and his pupil, the composer William Byrd. Continue Reading »
February 23rd 2009
Vivaldi’s the four Seasons “winter:” first movement
By the time Vivaldi composed The Four Seasons in 1725 he was already enjoying a considerable reputation throughout Europe as a popular composer. The concertos that make up The Four Seasons were originally published as the first four of a set of eight violin concertos under the title “I’l Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Invenzione” (The Contest of Harmony and Invention). Continue Reading »
February 17th 2009
Fashionable Italian Opera
It was fashionable during the eighteenth century for composers, of whatever nationality, to write their operas in Italian, probably because the most skilful and popular singers at the time were Italian. Handel, Gluck and Haydn all used Italian librettos, as did Mozart, but Mozart was one of the last non-Italian composers to do so (and even he used German librettos for some of his operas). Continue Reading »
February 16th 2009
Viennese Chamber Music
At the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries Vienna was so full of musical talent that it became known as the music capital of Europe. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert were the pillars of Viennese Classicism and each composer, in his own way, demonstrated a unique affinity for chamber music forms. Haydn and Beethoven in particular emphasized the value of the string quartet as a vehicle for expressing music’s profoundest thoughts. Continue Reading »
