Composed: 1974–75 Premiered: 1976, Avignon Libretto by Christopher Knowles, Lucinda Childs and Samuel M. Johnson Einstein on the Beach is divided into four acts, separated by five intermezzi, which allow for set changes. The performance is continuous and the audience are at liberty to leave and return as they wish. There is no plot, but there ...
b. 1937 American composer Glass studied with Nadia Boulanger and Alla Rakha, Ravi Shankar’s tabla player, but the influence of Indian traditions on his music is not overt; rather they are evident in the additive, repetitive rhythmic processes (Music in Similar Motion, 1969). Parallel lines, simple diatonic harmony and unspecified instrumentation are characteristic of Glass’s early ...
b. 1937, American Philip Glass defies conventions of traditional music and performance practice. A minimalist who is constantly extending musical boundaries, Glass has written several slowly developing, repetitively patterned operas. In the mid-1960s he became fascinated with Indian music when transcribing the work of sitarist Ravi Shankar, and he set off to explore the music of North ...
(Fe-lep’ de Ve-tre’) 1291–1361 French theorist and composer As a result of his treatise Ars nova (c. 1322) Philippe de Vitry was the most musically influential figure of his day. It described new developments in mensural notation, allowing composers more rhythmic flexibility and therefore compositional variety. Unfortunately, no songs known to be by Vitry have survived, but a number ...
(Fe-lep’ da Mon’-ta) 1521–1603 Flemish composer In his early years Monte travelled in Italy and, although his maturity was spent at the Habsburg court, he became one of the most prolific composers of Italian madrigals, publishing more than 1,100 of them. His career lasted for over 50 years, making him a good measure of changing tastes in ...
(Fe-lep’ Vâr-da-lo’) c. 1480s–1530s French composer Although French by birth and the composer of chansons and motets, Verdelot travelled to Italy early in his life, and is best known as one of the founders of the madrigal. He seems to have composed most, if not all, his madrigals in the 1520s, the genre’s first decade. Many of ...
(Zhan Fi-lep’ Ra-mo’) 1683–1764 French composer and theorist Rameau was born in Dijon, where he was first taught music by his father. During his early years he held organist’s posts in several places, including Avignon and Clermont-Ferrand, Paris (where he published his first harpsichord pieces in 1706), Dijon (1709), Lyons (c. 1713), and once more at Clermont-Ferrand (1715). He ...
(Ga-ôrg’ Fe-lep’ Te’-le-man) 1681–1767 German composer Telemann was born in Magdeburg and showed early promise as a musician. While a law student at Leipzig Univeristy he founded a collegium musicum, directed the Leipzig Opera and was commissioned to write cantatas for St Thomas’s Church. In 1705 he became Kapellmeister to Count Erdmann of Promnitz, whose residence in Sorau (Zary) brought ...
(Kärl Fe’-lip E-ma’-noo-el Bakh) 1714–88 German composer In the eighteenth century, ‘Bach’ usually meant C. P. E. Bach, not his father Johann Sebastian. Born in Weimar, he studied under his father, then read law at the university in Frankfurt an der Oder. He took up a post in Berlin at the court of Prince Frederick, later Frederick ...
Perhaps with medieval Persian origins, the glass armonica entered into the Western musical mainstream only in the eighteenth century. A series of glass vessels could be tuned by having the appropriate quantity of water poured into them; they were then struck like bells to produce a ringing sound, or the rims were dampened and then rubbed. Gluck played a ...
1781–1861 American composer Heinrich was one of the most important figures in American musical life in the nineteenth century. Born in Bohemia to a German family, he tried unsuccessfully to set up business in America, and in 1817 he settled there to embark on a musical career, becoming the country’s first professional composer, and being dubbed by ...
Understanding how to use friction to produce sounds in glass goes back to Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), who discussed the singing effect achieved by running a moistened finger around the rim of a glass. In 1743, the Irish musician Richard Puckeridge created an angelic organ, or seraphim, from glasses rubbed with wet fingers. The glasses were filled with water ...
1635–88, French Philippe Quinault was a well-known playwright when he decided to switch to the writing of opera libretti. The techniques of plays and operas – spoken and sung drama – diverged considerably, but Quinault succeeded in transferring his skills from one genre to the other. It was risky, but the star prize was collaboration with Lully, ...
1683–1764, French A respected theorist and composer of keyboard music, Rameau did not compose his first opera until he was 50 years old. Consistently adventurous in his operas, he equally inspired passionate admiration and hostility from Parisian audiences and was a comparably powerful figure between the 1730s and 1750s. The Wanderlust Years Rameau was born at Dijon in ...
Rameau’s magnificent Hippolyte et Aricie is a rare example of a major composer’s first attempt at opera also being one of his greatest achievements. However, Rameau was nearly 50 years old and already a respected and experienced musician when he composed it, and had evidently been contemplating the project for several years. The impressive literary quality of Pellegrin’s libretto ...
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