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Only two record labels in pop history have lent their name to an entire musical genre. The first is Detroit’s Tamla Motown. The other is England’s 2-Tone, a late-1970s/early 1980s imprint that still stands as the UK’s most politically significant pop phenomenon. 2-Tone was set up in 1979 by The Special A.K.A., a multiracial ska- and reggae-inspired ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer

by tapping into other veins of music and infusing them with melody, sub-genres have fallen into the pop category – such as new wave (an offshoot of punk) and 2-tone (a by-product of ska). Having split off from rock while incorporating anything from funk to Latin, pop music keeps evolving. Even so, its most consistent feature is its ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer

, and the first punk era was over. But you could look around and see John Lydon’s new band Public Image Ltd, or the Gang Of Four or the 2-Tone label, and sense that punk was fiercely alive in spirit, adopting fresh ideas and striking new alliances. We can see how punk regained its purism in Crass, ...

Source: Punk: The Brutal Truth, by Hugh Fielder and Mike Gent

of the accompanying synthesizers and delivered by a male-dominated cast of good-looking, able singers. The tunes are catchy and easy to remember. Introduction | Pop Styles & Forms | 2-Tone | Pop ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer

If you ask a young music consumer what kind of acts represent pop music, they will undoubtedly reel off a list of teen-orientated, manufactured bands. Pop has come to represent a narrowly focused genre, as far away from the initial, revolutionary rock-meets-pop appeal of Elvis Presley and The Beatles as can be. Since the 1950s, pop ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer

first UK No. 1 with ‘Geno’, a tribute to club performer Geno Washington. Joboxers had a short shot at fame with northern-inspired hits ‘Boxer Beat’ and ‘Just Got Lucky’. And the 2-Tone bands took a little from the genre too, as is especially obvious on ‘Embarrassment’ by Madness. ‘… Until you’ve been there I don’t think any mere written word can fully convey to you ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer

reggae to a mainstream audience. Jamaican music has had a great influence on the pop scene on both sides of the Atlantic. Beyond 10cc and The Police are the British 2-Tone bands – The Selector, The Specials, The Beat and Madness – all punkified ska revivalists, while in the US ska bands like Bim Skala Bim, Dancehall ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, general editor Paul Du Noyer

1979 and whose radio-friendly pop songs climbed the charts one after another, shifting millions of units. Rock’s conscience, meanwhile, was safe in the hands of the British 2-Tone bands like The Specials whose music drew on bluebeat and ska but whose vision was informed by inner-city decay, racism and the anti working-class policies of the incoming Thatcher ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock, general editor Michael Heatley

1916–83, Argentinian One of the most important South American composers of the twentieth century, Ginastera combined energetic Argentine rhythms with enchanting lyricism and an almost hallucinatory ambiance to forge his unique style. He lived in New York on a Guggenheim Fellowship from 1945–48 before returning to Argentina. Here, he experimented with advanced composition techniques, yet his three ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

1918–70, German Attracted to the avant-garde, Zimmerman composed only one opera, yet it is one of the most powerful German-language works of recent years. The four-act Die Soldaten (‘The Soldiers’) premiered in Cologne in 1965. Zimmermann travelled outside Germany just once, when he was sent to France during the war. Here, he familiarized himself with the ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

1926–2012, German A prolific composer of many moods and changes, Henze was yet another 12-note serialist who nonetheless was influenced by neo-classicism, expressionism and jazz. His first full-length opera, Boulevard Solitude (1952), preceded his move to Italy the following year. There, having finally put distance between himself and the repressive Germany of his youth, Henze’s ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

1904–75, Italian At the forefront of Italian serialism, Dallapiccola was inspired to compose after attending a 1924 performance of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (‘Moonstruck Pierrot’, 1912); he made a complete analysis of Schoenberg’s 12-tone system and used this when writing his first one-act opera, Volo di notte (‘Night flight’, 1940), based on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s book Vol de nuit. ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

There is no escaping the crucial importance of World War I (1914–18) in the formation of the Modern Age (as the first half of the twentieth century has come to be known). The war changed irrevocably the development and directions of almost all pre-war innovations in politics, society, the arts and ideas in general. Declining economic conditions also altered ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

Nineteenth-century music had developed with an unprecedented awareness of its own history, and by 1900 the European musical legacy seemed as permanent and unshakeable as the institutions – the opera houses, concert halls and conservatories – that nurtured it. Above all, classical tonality and its associated forms and genres, now the everyday stuff of textbooks, had ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

In order to expand on atonality while creating a formal structure and rules for its usage, Arnold Schoenberg invented a system of composition. Schoenberg’s 12-tone technique, sometimes called dodecaphony, was founded as a replacement for the limiting traditions of formal Western harmony. These 12 tones refer to the 12 chromatic pitches contained within an octave that are used ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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