(Vocal/instrumental group, 2003–present) Canadian performers Arcade Fire – Win Butler (vocals), Regine Chassagne, Richard Reed Parry, William Butler, Tim Kingsbury, Sarah Neufeld and Jeremy Gara (all multi-instrumentalists) – gave the public what they did not think they would like with the 2004 Funeral debut. Essentially a modern gothic masterpiece, the record covered dance, folk ...
(Zhak Är’-ka-delt) c. 1505–68 French composer Although probably of French birth, Arcadelt spent much of his adulthood in the great Italian cities of Florence, Rome and Venice. He is best known for madrigals (although he composed Masses, motets and chansons as well), including some of the genre’s most precious gems. They are almost all easy to sing, but ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1984–present) Formed in Virginia by virtuoso Ann Rabson (piano, guitar, vocals) and her guitar student Gaye Adegbalola, Saffire burst out internationally in 1990 with the release of their eponymous debut. Andra Faye replaced original bassist Earlene Lewis in 1992. The band has a knack for framing contemporary songs with twists of novelty humour, written ...
(Vocal group, 1970–83) In 1972, Maurice White (drums) assembled a second line-up of Earth, Wind and Fire after two unsuccessful albums. This featured brother Verdine (bass), Jessica Cleaves (vocals), Ronnie Laws (saxophone), Larry Dunn (keyboards), Ralph Johnson (percussion), Roland Battista (guitar) and Philip Bailey (vocals). After further personnel changes, ‘Shining Star’ became the first in a string ...
(Vocal group, 2000–present) New Yorker Antony Hegarty (vocals) and his fluid supporting cast are an act that affect everyone who hears them. Lou Reed liked them so much he recruited Hegarty to his band, and provided vocals, along with Boy George, on the Mercury Award-winning I Am A Bird Now (2005). What captivates fans is undoubtedly Hegarty’s ...
January Grammy For Best Rock Album ‘Is this old hat now ?’ an interviewer from TV Guide asked the band after 21st Century Breakdown won a Grammy for Best Rock Album, ‘No, no, this is never old hat,’ replied Billie Joe, ‘when you put that much effort into a record nothing is old hat.’ At ...
As part of the Renaissance (literally ‘rebirth’), which began in Italy in around 1450, the Baroque era was a revolution within a revolution. It saw a break from the Medieval view of humanity as innately sinful. Instead, Renaissance thinking cast individuals as a dynamic force in their own right and gave free rein to human imagination, ingenuity and ...
The word ‘Baroque’ is derived from the Portuguese barrocco, a term for a misshapen pearl, and it was still with this sense of something twisted that it was first applied – to the period between about 1600 and 1750 – in the nineteenth century. In 1768, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote: ‘a Baroque music is that in which the harmony ...
By the beginning of the eighteenth century, opera was established in some form in most major European centres. The basic types of serious and comic opera in both Italian and French traditions shared similarities, although the content and style of an operatic entertainment could vary according to whether it was intended to flatter a private patron, resound with ...
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 ...
The history of opera is dominated by Italian and Austro-German composers. It is in Italy and Germany that we find the greatest number of opera houses. La Scala in Milan lays claim to be the most famous opera house in the world, and its opening night every season is a major event in the country’s social calendar. The theatre, ...
The Académie Royale de Musique (now known as the Paris Académie de Musique or the Paris Opéra), has had many homes. The Académie opened in 1671, and from 1672–87 was largely controlled by Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–87). In 1763, the building was destroyed by fire, as was the next building in 1781. The Opéra moved to rue de Richelieu ...
Sound effects and instruments trouvés include found objects and specialist machines for making noises. Composers have made extensive use of both sound effects and found objects in orchestral music, especially in music for theatre, dance and opera. Sound Effects The wind machine was originally a theatrical sound effect, and is a cylinder of wooden slats with a canvas ...
Bagpipe Somewhere, perhaps in Mesopotamia, about 7,000 years ago, a shepherd may well have looked at a goat skin and some hollow bones and had an idea for a new musical instrument: the bagpipe. In the early Christian era, the instrument spread from the Middle East eastward into India and westward to Europe. By the seventeenth ...
This section encompasses styles that were, at least initially, designed to work in tandem with other forms of expression, deepening or enhancing their impact. The scores of musical theatre are woven into stories played out by the characters on stage. A film soundtrack is composed to interlock with the action on a cinema screen, while cabaret songs ...
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