SEARCH RESULTS FOR: Bartók
1 of 3 Pages     Next ›

Composed: 1911 (re. 1912; 1918) Premiered: 1918, Budapest Libretto by Béla Balázs, after a fairy-tale by Charles Perrault Bluebeard and Judith appear in the doorway of his castle. She has left her family and declares she will never leave him. He closes the iron door. She offers to warm the stones and let in the light. There are no ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

(Ba’-la Bar’-tok) 1881–1945 Hungarian composer and pianist Bartók’s earliest works were influenced by Johannes Brahms (1833–97), by Hungary’s famous Liszt and by Richard Strauss, then regarded as the last word in modernism. Bartók’s personal style, though, was formed by his discovery of Debussy and of Hungarian folk music. The strongly rhythmic, percussive, sharply dissonant music that ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

1881–1945, Hungarian Widely recognized as one of the twentieth century’s most important composers, Bartók was a complete original in terms of his musical language, creating a national style that merged folk melodies with the asymmetric patterns of Hungarian speech. His vocal lines, often punctuated by a heavy chordal style, are evident in Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

The celesta is a type of keyboard glockenspiel, with a range of four octaves upwards from middle C, and a damping pedal like a piano. Inside the body of the instrument is a series of chromatically tuned metal bars, which are struck with felt hammers when the performer plays the keyboard. Creation of the Celesta The celesta was ...

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins

The dulcimer is a type of box zither whose name derives from dulce melos or ‘sweet sound’. Usually with four sides, none of them running parallel to each other (though as this is an instrument to be found under various names in practically every country on earth, it is difficult to be definite), it has several strings but no ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

Unusually among musical instruments, a specific date has been posited for the invention of the clarinet. Johann Christoph Denner of Nuremberg has been claimed as the man who, in 1700, devised and built the first of these instruments. Like all the best stories, however, the history of the clarinet is shrouded in mystery. The instrument attributed ...

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins

Keyboard percussion instruments include the western xylophone, marimba, vibraphone and glockenspiel, the log xylophones and marimbas of Africa and Central America, and the barred instruments played in the Indonesian gamelan. The orchestral xylophone, marimba and glockenspiel have thin wooden or metal rectangular bars laid out like a chromatic piano keyboard. The back row of bars – ...

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins

The most widely used tuned percussion in early twentieth-century classical music are the timpani. These instruments, often called ‘kettledrums’, are metal hemispheres with a tense membrane (formerly leather, now plastic) across the top and are tuned to play a single note. An instrument with military origins (as the timpani/trumpets combination in Monteverdi’s Orfeo, 1607, reminds us), timpani ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

Timpani are bowl drums or kettledrums, constructed by stretching a skin across a round metal, wooden or pottery bowl. They are beaten with sticks or leather thongs. Timpani originated in Islamic countries in Africa and the Middle East, where they were used to accompany hunting and for ceremonial and military music. Tuning Tuning a large kettledrum or timpani ...

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins

As the worldwide success of artists such as Shakira, Björk and Baha Men proves, world music is not antithetical to pop music, or to dance music, or to any other music form. For artists like India’s Ravi Shankar, the music of their world is classical music; for many Latin musicians, it is jazz; for others ...

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

b. 1953 Hungarian-British pianist Schiff studied at the Franz Liszt Academy, Budapest, before winning prizes at both the Moscow Tchaikovsky (1974) and Leeds (1975) piano competitions. Having appeared with most of the world’s major orchestras, he has focused increasingly on chamber and solo repertoire, recording the keyboard works of Bach (on the piano), the Mozart and Schubert ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

One of the greatest achievements any guitar player can attain is an immediately recognizable signature tone and style. And though many guitarists have realized this goal, few have done it as emphatically as Police guitarist Andy Summers (b. 1942). From the chord stabs of ‘Roxanne’ and ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’ to the arpeggios of ‘Message In A Bottle’ ...

Source: Rock Guitar Heroes, consultant editor Rusty Cutchin

(Klod De’-bu-se) 1862–1918 French composer Debussy was one of the father figures of twentieth-century music, often associated with the Impressionist movement. He was not only influential on subsequent French composers such as Ravel and Messiaen, but also on other major European figures, including Stravinsky and Bartók. His early songs experimented with an intimate kind of word-setting, while ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

(Âr-nö Dokh-nan’-ye) 1877–1960 Hungarian composer Less influenced by folk music than his contemporaries Bartók and Kodály, Dohnányi cultivated a late-Romantic style rooted in Brahms, though not without the sense of humour obvious in his Variations on a Nursery Theme (1914), nor occasional resort to national melodies, as in Ruralia Hungarica (‘Rural Hungary’, 1924). His success as a conductor ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

(Frants List) 1811–86 Hungarian composer and pianist Liszt was one of the leading and most adventurous composers of the nineteenth century. His vast output is unusually complicated: many works exist in more than one version, and he was constantly revising and redrafting. His body of work may be somewhat uneven, but it should hardly be surprising if a composer at ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
1 of 3 Pages     Next ›

AUTHORITATIVE

An extensive music information resource, bringing together the talents and expertise of a wide range of editors and musicologists, including Stanley Sadie, Charles Wilson, Paul Du Noyer, Tony Byworth, Bob Allen, Howard Mandel, Cliff Douse, William Schafer, John Wilson...

CURATED

Classical, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Country and more. Flame Tree has been making encyclopaedias and guides about music for over 20 years. Now Flame Tree Pro brings together a huge canon of carefully curated information on genres, styles, artists and instruments. It's a perfect tool for study, and entertaining too, a great companion to our music books.

Rock, A Life Story

Rock, A Life Story

The ultimate story of a life of rock music, from the 1950s to the present day.

David Bowie

David Bowie

Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers his life, music, art and movies, with a sweep of incredible photographs.