1926–87 American composer Associated with Cage’s circle of musicians, Feldman was also strongly affected by the aesthetic of the abstract Expressionist painters in New York. His music displays a distrust of intellectual, rigorous systems of writing, exploring instead abstract forms and an instinctive approach to composition. He is well known for his graphic scores, such as his ...
Ridiculed as a braggart, pimp, card shark and pool hustler, the audacious, self-proclaimed inventor of jazz Jelly Roll Morton was also hailed as a pioneering composer, gifted arranger, dazzling pianist and the greatest entertainer that New Orleans ever produced. He was one of the first jazz musicians to strike a perfect balance between composition and ...
(On-re’ Dü-te-yö’) 1916–2013 French composer Despite success as a young composer, Dutilleux disowned almost his entire oeuvre before the Piano Sonata (1946–48). He followed a very different path from his compatriot Boulez, and his two symphonies (1950–51 and 1955–59) exhibit strong links with the traditional Germanic form. Variation was a key feature of Dutilleux’s music, but he tended ...
After the devastation wrought in Europe by World War II, the urgent task of rebuilding the continent’s war-torn urban fabric demanded radical solutions. These were found in the centralized urban planning advocated before the war by architects such as Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Writing in 1953, the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928–2007) created an explicit analogy ...
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) is said to have written the first film score with L’assassinat du duc de Guise (‘The Assassination of the Duke of Guise’, c. 1908). Many composers in the US and Europe followed suit, although few wished to make a career in films. A famous exception was Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957), whose scores include the Academy Award-winning The ...
Like a great river that runs endlessly, forming numerous tributary streams as it flows, jazz continues to evolve over time. And no matter how far the River Jazz may flow from its source – whether through stylistic evolution or technological innovation – the essential spirit of the music remains intact. Granted, the more academic and esoteric extrapolations of ...
The most strikingly original and authoritative voice on cornet since Louis Armstrong, Leon ‘Bix’ Beiderbecke set the example for a generation of aspiring white jazz players during the 1920s. His meteoric rise to fame was followed by a dramatic fall from grace that led to his ultimate death from alcoholism at the age of just 28 in 1931. A Self-Taught Genius ...
(Instrumental group, 1900–17) The Eagle Band, originally led by Buddy Bolden, was an extremely popular and influential New Orleans ensemble. Frankie Duson (or Dusen) (1880–1940), a powerful tailgate trombonist, joined the band in 1906 and went on to take over the band when Bolden suffered a mental collapse the following year. Subsequently, Duson employed various Bolden ...
Although routinely – and fairly – described as the father of country music, Jimmie Rodgers (1897–1933) was actually something more. Having established himself in that genre, he gradually moved towards mainstream popular music and, but for his early death, would probably have found a niche there. So far as country music is concerned, though, his ...
1912–92 American composer Cage’s initial studies led to a devotion to Schoenberg and the new method of serialism, but this early fascination did not stay long in his music. In 1939 he composed First Construction (In Metal), which bases its structure on durations and not harmony. It was also around this time that Cage first began to use the prepared ...
(Clarinet, 1892–1940) The premier New Orleans clarinetist of the 1920s, Dodds played in Kid Ory’s band from 1912–19 and then alongside Louis Armstrong and his own brother, Warren ‘Baby’ Dodds, in Fate Marable’s riverboat band. Dodds left New Orleans in January 1921 to join King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band in Chicago, taking part in that influential ...
(Guitar, banjo, 1890–1966) Johnny St. Cyr played around New Orleans as a teenager with A.J. Piron and the Superior, Olympia and Tuxedo bands. He joined Kid Ory’s band in 1918 and later played in Fate Marable’s riverboat band. In 1923 he moved to Chicago, where he joined King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band. He played on Armstrong’s ...
It makes sense that Australia would be the one country outside North America to develop an important country-music scene of its own. Like the USA and Canada, Australia had a large, under-populated frontier that was settled by English, Irish and Scotch immigrants who brought their folk songs with them. Roughened and toughened by frontier life, those songs ...
Edward ‘Kid’ Ory was born in LaPlace, Louisiana in 1886. He learned trombone and led a group of young musicians, the Woodland Band, which he took to New Orleans around 1908. He played with veteran jazzmen in the following years and gained a reputation as a powerful ensemble player and inspired soloist, especially where the blues were ...
One of the cornet kings of early New Orleans – along with Buddy Bolden, Freddie Keppard and Bunk Johnson – Joseph ‘King’ Oliver helped to define the bravura spirit of hot jazz through his work in Chicago during the 1920s with his Creole Jazz Band. He is said to have earned the sobriquet ‘King’ by besting Keppard in a cutting ...
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