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(Där-yüs’ Me-yo’) 1892–1974 French composer One of the group known as ‘Les Six’, Milhaud was perhaps the most prolific composer of the twentieth century. Jazz was an important influence on him, as was the carnival music of South America, and he was famous for writing music in two or more keys at once (polytonality). He composed in most musical ...

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• Contemporary Classical

fully chromatic (12-note) harmonica was developed in the 1920s and achieved fame in the hands of Larry Adler (1914–2001). Concertos have been written for the instrument by Vaughan Williams, Milhaud, Arnold and many others. Styles & Forms | Contemporary | Classical Instruments | Synthesizer | Contemporary | Classical ...

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composers as well as performers – most notably, Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924), Manuel de Falla (1976–1946), Henry Cowell (1897–1965), Frederick Delius (1862–1934), Jean Françaix (b. 1912), Bohuslav Martino (1890–1959), Darius Milhaud (1892–1974), Carl Orff (1895–1982), Francis Poulenc (1899–1963), Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971), and later, Luciano Berio (1925–2003), Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001), Elliott Carter (b. 1908) and György Ligeti (b. 1923). Introduction | ...

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who wrote for it a 10-minute fantasia on ‘Campdown Races’ called Tribute to Foster (1915). Koechlin opened the second movement of his Symphony No. 2 (1943–44) with a marimba solo. Milhaud wrote a concerto for marimba and orchestra in 1947, which required playing with two hammers in each hand. It is also to be heard in Richard Rodney Bennett’s (1936–2012) ...

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• Woodwind

The saxophone occupies an unusual position in that it is a bespoke instrument that has barely changed since its creation. Although it does not occupy the position in the orchestra its creator had envisaged, Adolphe Sax’s invention has played a central part in music ever since it burst on to the scene in the 1840s. Sax’s father, Charles, ...

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(Bârnt A-lo’-es Tsim’-mer-man) 1918–70 German composer Initially attracted to Milhaud and Stravinsky, Zimmermann studied at Darmstadt and was already integrating serialism with elements of popular music in the ballet score Metamorphose (1954), whose ‘boogie-woogie’ passage was later incorporated into the trumpet concerto Nobody Knows da Trouble I See of the same year, itself featuring the African-American spiritual of that ...

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• Opera

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 ...

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(Yan’-nis Ze-na’-kis) 1922–2001 French/Greek composer Xenakis took up the formal study of music late, having lessons with Honegger, Milhaud and Messiaen in Paris in the early 1950s. He developed a technique in which masses of sound were manipulated according to laws of mathematical probability. This can be clearly heard in the accumulation of overlapping string glissandos in Metastasis (1954), ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

, thus distancing the text from the audience and creating characters who appear both formal and imposing. For Le Pauvre Matelot (‘The Poor Sailor’, 1927), Cocteau teamed up with Darius Milhaud to create a three-act mini-tragedy about a woman who unwittingly murders her husband whom she has not seen in over 20 years. Posthumously, Cocteau’s films and screenplays have contributed ...

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• Modern Era

Benjamin (b. 1960). Recommended Recording: Turangalîla-symphonie, Jeanne & Yvonne Loriod, Orchestre de l’Opéra Bastille, Myung-Whun Chung (Deutsche Grammophon) Introduction | Modern Era | Classical Personalities | Darius Milhaud | Modern Era | Classical ...

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b. 1936 American composer Reich studied with Hall Overton (1920–72), Vincent Persichetti (1915–87), William Bergsma (1921–94), Milhaud and Berio. A particular focus of his development was Asian music, especially its rhythmic structures. Much of Reich’s music is characterized by phasing, in which a number of instruments play identical music starting one after the other, giving an echo or ...

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whose tone was once described as ‘sounding like a dry martini’. In 1951 Desmond teamed up with the pianist Dave Brubeck, a protégé of the contemporary classical composer Darius Milhaud, who had led an experimental third-stream octet during the late 1940s. Together Desmond and Brubeck found phenomenal success on college campuses, reaching new audiences and turning a younger ...

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their rejection of heritage ‘under the guise of apparent novelty’. Much Western music, that of not only Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) but also Benjamin Britten (1913–76) and Darius Milhaud (1892–1974), was banned. The state also turned on the supposed enemy within. In 1948, resolutions were passed by the Communist party condemning, among others, Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–75), ...

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• Modern Era

either as an ethereal effect, as in The Planets (1914–16) by Gustav Holst (1874–1934), or as semi-spoken chant, as in Les choéphores (‘The Libation Bearers’, 1915) by Darius Milhaud (1892–1974). Democracies in Music One effect of World War I and its accompanying political upheavals was a change both in the desired effect of music and in its relation to ...

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, after 1920, came to provide the basis of a more rigorous means of controlling the atonal universe, namely the 12-note technique. The ‘School of Paris’ In 1923 Milhaud spoke of ‘two opposed currents in music … the school of Paris and the school of Vienna’. ‘Each,’ he wrote, is only ‘of slight acquaintance with that for ...